Depression In Esther By Sylvia Plath

Peoples live were shaped by one’s own success and failure in life with relation to other people. Feeling of societal impotence have the ability to impact lives of every individual in a negative way, thus affecting one’s own relationship with the people around you. Impotence is described as a lack of feeling powerful along with having feelings of being incapable to succeed. Thus, most of the scene, we saw Esther as a person who cannot do anything about the situation that she experiences. In the novel, Esther experienced a great deal of anxiety from social pressure especially from the people around her who expect her to achieve for the greatest since Esther is always one of the top in class. Esther’s desire is to be perfect although she wants …show more content…
Research found out that inadequate family support and being away from the family members are some of the reasons why people especially adolescent experienced a great deal of anxiety and even depression throughout their life. One of factor that made Esther vulnerable to depression is the high expectation from her mother. Thus, her mother also encouraged Esther in many directions that overwhelmed her. In the novel, Plath reserves major part for the Character of Mrs. Greenwoods. Even the word “motherly” breath of suburb horrified her. Esther’s anger toward her mother is one of the key for her psychoses due to increase demands with her work. "the worst. She never scolded me, but kept begging me, with a sorrowful face, to tell her what she had done wrong" According to some of the passage from the novel, her mother is being dictatorial yet knowing nothing. Mrs Greenwood also presents a paragon for the difference between her generations from Esther. Esther in the few first chapters even thinks of having Jay Cee as her mother instead of her own mother. Mrs. Greenwood also has this belief that she knows everything especially about her …show more content…
According to Alaskan, “Nothing is more important than a support system for a person who is subjected to mod changes, and who can hurt themselves with negative ideas”. Esther feels that there is a sense of alienation from the society as a young woman living in 1950th century in America. Thus, society as explained in the first part expects a woman like her to be confident enough when it comes to having a higher academic performance. There is this expectation that she should keep progressing until she finished school and then settle down with a man she’s going to marry with having a 2 children. Until then, this is what exactly what Esther is doing and the concept is already set in her mind, not by own choice but by the expectation led by the society. Having this social pressure suffocates her and is the reason for being depressed. "After nineteen years of running after good marks ¦ I was letting up, slowing down, dropping clean out of the race. After nineteen years of withstanding the pressure, following the footsteps of societal expectations” She realized that she was not being true for being herself and the realization made her vulnerable to different stressors especially when finding her true