The Bell Jar
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For the 1979 film, see The Bell Jar (film).
The Bell Jar is American writer and poet Sylvia Plath's
only novel, which was originally published under the pseudonym "Victoria
Lucas" in 1963. The novel is semi-autobiographical with the names of
places and people changed. The book is often regarded as a roman à clef,
with the protagonist's descent into mental illness paralleling Plath's own
experiences with what may have been clinical depression. Plath committed
suicide a month after its first UK publication. The novel was published under
Plath's name for the first time in 1967 and was not published in the United
States until 1971, pursuant to the wishes of Plath's husband Ted Hughes
and her mother.
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Plot
summary
Esther Greenwood, a young woman from
the suburbs of Boston,
Massachusetts, gains a summer internship at a
prominent magazine in New York City
under editor Jay Cee. At the time of the Rosenbergs' execution,
Esther is neither stimulated nor excited by the big city and glamorous culture
and lifestyle that girls her age are expected to idolize and emulate. Instead
her experiences frighten and disorient her. She appreciates the witty sarcasm
and adventurousness of her friend Doreen, but also identifies with the piety of
Betsy (dubbed "Pollyanna
Cowgirl" by Doreen, because she's from Kansas), a
'goody-goody' sorority girl who always does the right thing. She has a
benefactress in Philomena Guinea, a formerly successful fiction writer (based
on Olive Higgins Prouty), who will, later during Esther's hospitalization, pay for
some of her treatments.
Esther describes in detail several
seriocomic incidents that occur during her internship, kicked off by an
unfortunate but amusing experience at a banquet for the girls given by the
staff of Ladies' Day magazine. She reminisces about her friend Buddy,
whom she has dated more or less seriously and who considers himself her de facto
fiancé. She also muses about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who are scheduled for execution. She returns to her
Massachusetts home in low spirits. During her stay in New York City, she had
hoped to return to another scholarly opportunity, a writing course taught by a
world-famous author. Upon her return home, her mother immediately tells her she
was not accepted for the course. She decides to spend the summer potentially
writing a novel, although she feels she doesn't have enough life experience to
write convincingly. All of her identity has been centered around doing well
academically; she is unsure of what to make of her life once she leaves school,
and the choices presented to her (motherhood, as exemplified by the prolific
child-bearer and vacuous Dodo Conway, or stereotypical female careers such as stenography) do not appeal to her.
Esther becomes increasingly
depressed, and finds herself unable to sleep. Her mother encourages, or perhaps
forces, her to see a psychiatrist, Dr. Gordon, whom Esther mistrusts because he is attractive
and seems to be showing off pictures of his charming family rather than
listening to her. He hastily diagnoses her with a mental illness and has her
hospitalized. She receives electroconvulsive therapy, improperly administered, and feels she's being
electrocuted like the Rosenbergs. When she tells her mother she refuses to go
back, her mother smugly and callously announces, "I knew you'd decide to
be all right."
Esther's mental state worsens. She
describes her depression as a feeling of being trapped under a bell jar,
struggling for breath. She makes several half-hearted attempts at suicide,
including swimming far out to sea, before making a serious attempt. She leaves
a note that says she is taking a long walk, then crawls into the cellar and
swallows almost 50 sleeping pills that have been prescribed for her insomnia.
She is discovered under her house after a rather dramatic episode in the
newspapers has presumed her kidnapping and death, all taking place over an
indeterminate amount of time. She survives and is sent to a different mental
hospital, where she meets Dr. Nolan, a female therapist. Along with regular
sessions of psychotherapy Esther is given huge amounts of insulin to produce a
"reaction," and again receives shock treatments, with Dr. Nolan
ensuring that they are properly administered. Esther describes the ECT as
beneficial in that it has a sort of antidepressant
effect, lifting the metaphorical bell jar in which she has felt trapped and
stifled. Her stay at the private institution is funded by her benefactress,
Philomena Guinea.
Esther tells Dr. Nolan how she
envies the freedom that men have, but as a woman, worries about getting
pregnant. Dr. Nolan refers her to a doctor who fits her for a diaphragm. Esther
now feels free from her fears about the consequences of sex. She feels free
from previous pressures to get married, potentially to the wrong man. Under Dr.
Nolan, Esther improves and various life-changing events help her regain her
sanity. The novel ends with her entering the room for her interview which will
decide whether she can leave the hospital.
Parallels
of Plath's life to the novel
The book contains many references to
real people and events in Plath's life. Plath's real-life magazine scholarship
was at Mademoiselle magazine beginning in 1953.[2]
Furthermore, Philomena Guinea is based on Plath's own patron, Olive Higgins Prouty, author of Stella
Dallas and Now, Voyager,
who funded Plath's scholarship to study at Smith College.
Plath was rejected from a Harvard course taught by Frank O'Connor.[3]
Dr. Nolan is thought to be based on Plath's own therapist, Ruth Beuscher, whom
she continued seeing into adulthood. A good portion of this part of the novel
closely resembles the experiences chronicled by Mary Jane Ward in her
autobiographical novel The Snake Pit;
Plath later stated that she'd seen reviews of The Snake Pit and believed
the public wanted to see "mental health stuff," so she deliberately
based details of Esther's hospitalization on the procedures and methods outlined
in Ward's book. Plath was a patient at McLean Hospital,
an upscale facility which resembled the "snake pit" much less than
certain wards in Metropolitan State Hospital,
which may have been where Mary Jane Ward was actually hospitalized.
In a 2006 interview, Joanne Greenberg
revealed that she had been interviewed in 1986 by one of the women who had
worked on Mademoiselle with Plath in the college guest editors group.
The woman claimed that Plath had put so many details of the students' real
lives into The Bell Jar that "they could never look at each other
again", and that it had caused the breakup of her marriage and possibly
others.[4][5]
Film
adaptations
Larry Peerce's The Bell Jar (1979) starred Marilyn Hassett
as Esther Greenwood, the protagonist and featured the tagline: "Sometimes
just being a woman is an act of courage." After the movie came out, Jane
Anderson claimed she was portrayed as the character "Joan" in the
movie and filed a lawsuit. She felt that her character was ill-represented,
which resulted in her subsequent emotional trauma. In 2008 Plum Pictures
announced plans for a Hollywood version of the novel, the movie to be written
by playwright and screenwriter Tristine Skyler
and Julia Stiles to star as the novel's protagonist[6],
with Rose McGowan as Doreen. As of January 2011, the film remains in
development.[7]
