The Bell

The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath is about a girl named Esther who is a young women from the suburbs in Boston. She is working for an editor in New York interning at a magazine during the summer. She feels like she doesn’t fit in or belong with society and this is leading to depression. After many suicide attempts, her mother sends her to a psychiatric institution where she meets a female doctor named Doctor Nolan who eventually helps her overcome her problems and depression. I chose the signpost…

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…

3. The Psychological Outcomes of Women in the Bell Jar The Bell Jar is a story of a young woman struggling with her mental health. Many factors including social oppressions reveal in the novel led her into madness. Esther Greenwood the protagonist of the novel experienced breakdowns in her life which led her at many times to suicide. 3.1 .The Protagonist’s Madness and the Woman initiate mental Illness Sylvia Plath describes her long term depression that blocks her mind her scope of…

yearning to understand a pain that has no answer. This search can be linked to the human condition to romanticize the unsightly in order to make it an ideal, but mental illness is unfortunately unyielding to easy explanations. In Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar,” protagonist Esther Greenwood struggles with her mental illness in many ways, most of all in finding the strength to understand it. While wrestling with her separation from the world, she explores the ways in which to represent and analyze,…

The Bell Jar: Esther’s Transformation Sanity is defined as the ability to think and and behave in a normal and rational manner; sound mental health. Everyone is born sane. Even mental illnesses that are genetic, develop over time. Other mental illnesses are produced from things like stress, trauma, abuse, and alcohol or drug use. People react differently depending on the type of illness and how it was caused. They might hurt themselves or others. Eric Leuschner states “In many ways, the…

The Bell Witch: Apparition? Witch? Demon? or Poltergeist? The book Ghosts and Demons: The Truth of the Bell Witch written by KyL T. Cobb, Jr. is a skeptical and scholarly review that explores the conflicting facts among different literary texts written about a sinister entity that tortured a Tennessee pioneer family during the 1800’s. Types of paranormal entities such as Apparitions, Poltergeists, Orbs, and Shadow People are defined and their history and nature is discussed. Some of the earliest…

This excerpt from Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar describes the main character’s feelings that madness separates her from the outside world. Referring to those feelings as the “bell jar,” Plath explores the themes of reality, sexuality, and femininity. Plath also creates a tone of hopelessness and gloom as the main character battles with suicidal depression. Esther Greenwood is full of academic promise and ambition. She should be thrilled with her progress towards her career, but she feels…

Sylvia Plath is known for being a feminist writer before the women’s rights movement. She wrote numerous poems and books including The Bell Jar. The story is about a women that is slowly losing her sanity and includes all of her family and friends. The time frame makes the story more intense because treatment then was very harsh against mental illness. But they didn’t know how much more damage they were actually causing. Mental illness can’t be forced out of a human but it can be helped if the…

Plath was largely recognized for her poetry, she also wrote a novel. The Bell Jar, published in January 1963, was not only reflective of Plath’s life, but also focused on the limitations…

identity in a society where basic values are less likely to be tampered with. In "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath, she faces horrific mental, physical, and emotional breakdowns throughout her life to figure out her purpose. Esther Greenwood's dreams and aspirations are smothered by her demanding environment and impinging madness. Esther is probable to fall into a crisis or two and lose her courage to live life. In "The Bell Jar", Esther seeks out crisis situations (almost always purposely)…