A Summer in New York City Before
The Trapping of a Bell Jar
Pain, Parties, Work by Elizabeth Winder gives an account of the summer in New York City that Sylvia Plath talks about in her novel, The Bell Jar. This novel captivates in great and vivid detail the enjoyment that Sylvia Plath has in the summer of 1953. However, while Pain, Parties, Work sheds light on the vivacious side of Sylvia Plath during that summer, it doesn’t match the life that Sylvia portrays in her own novel. Sylvia in New York City is electrically alive; Sylvia in her own novel is drained from it.
In 1953, Sylvia Plath had applied for an internship with the magazine, Mademoiselle. Before her summer in New York, she was attending Smith College and was feeling overworked and in need of an escape, “Everyone wanted to be one of Mademoiselle’s guest editors, but Sylvia needed it--- some shot of …show more content…
Through these proceeding chapters, we see the actual possibility of a cause for her death. We see Esther as an unhappy person, a person with mental issues, having to go though electro shock therapy, and having to live in a psych ward. She describes the electro shock procedure as “. . . and with each flash a great jolt drubbed me till I thought my bones would break and sap fly out of me like a split plant” (143). This left her wondering, what was the terrible thing she had done to receive this?
In Pain, Parties, Work, the mention of suicide is brought up as other people going through with it, while in The Bell Jar, it is the main character who attempts it. Esther once tries to commit suicide by contemplating to slash her wrists. It is in this scene that we get an insight to the darkness in her mind through her words, “It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn’t in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get at”
The Trapping of a Bell Jar
Pain, Parties, Work by Elizabeth Winder gives an account of the summer in New York City that Sylvia Plath talks about in her novel, The Bell Jar. This novel captivates in great and vivid detail the enjoyment that Sylvia Plath has in the summer of 1953. However, while Pain, Parties, Work sheds light on the vivacious side of Sylvia Plath during that summer, it doesn’t match the life that Sylvia portrays in her own novel. Sylvia in New York City is electrically alive; Sylvia in her own novel is drained from it.
In 1953, Sylvia Plath had applied for an internship with the magazine, Mademoiselle. Before her summer in New York, she was attending Smith College and was feeling overworked and in need of an escape, “Everyone wanted to be one of Mademoiselle’s guest editors, but Sylvia needed it--- some shot of …show more content…
Through these proceeding chapters, we see the actual possibility of a cause for her death. We see Esther as an unhappy person, a person with mental issues, having to go though electro shock therapy, and having to live in a psych ward. She describes the electro shock procedure as “. . . and with each flash a great jolt drubbed me till I thought my bones would break and sap fly out of me like a split plant” (143). This left her wondering, what was the terrible thing she had done to receive this?
In Pain, Parties, Work, the mention of suicide is brought up as other people going through with it, while in The Bell Jar, it is the main character who attempts it. Esther once tries to commit suicide by contemplating to slash her wrists. It is in this scene that we get an insight to the darkness in her mind through her words, “It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn’t in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get at”