Plath’s portrayal of mental illness through the character of Esther
Sylvia Plath is considered to be one of the most poignant women of the postwar and modernist eras. Plath’s work as well as her personal life has influenced literature a lot. The fact that most of Plath’s work was driven by her mental illness is not a secret to anyone and with The Bell Jar, Plath proved that no one could write about her mental health better than herself. Through The Bell Jar, Plath created for herself a literary place wherein she could employ a fictional character that represented herself and let the world know about her illness (Gourley). The present paper will analyze the treatment of mental illness as well as the treatment of individuals who are mentally ill, in the book. It will aim at performing a thoroughly researched discussion about the novel and how the novel deals with the stigma attached to mental illness and will aim to answer the questions regarding the discrimination that exists between mental and physical illness (Plath).
The fact that The Bell Jar is a semi-autobiographical novel is not unknown to many. Plath used the narrative discourse of a novel in order to share her own emotions, her own fears, and her own anxieties regarding the terrible mental illness that had consumed her ever since she was a young girl, this illness spiraled and consumed her after her few suicides attempt a what broke Plath was her marriage with the famous poet, Ted Hughes, a marriage that trigged Plath massively because of the actions of her husband and which led to her unfortunate death by suicide (Imtiaz et al.). Plath wrote this book a few months before her death. It was a time of her literary rebirth, as she told her mother in a telephonic conversation a few months before her death. Thus, The Bell Jar and its protagonist Esther, became, for Plath, the literary tools to narrate her own story (Jafari et al.).
Throughout the course of the book, the protagonist can be seen battling with her illness, constantly beginning embarrassed by the sheer existence of her illness. At various events, Esther can be seen scared of the fact that the people around her might find out about her illness. It can be understood after a thorough reading of the book that the society that Esther inhabited was not very different from the one that Plath herself lived in, it was a society where individuals had massive stigmas about mental illness and the sheer utterance of the topic was considered to be a taboo. As the novel begins, Plath leaves for her readers’ bits and pieces of the upcoming events, ever since the beginning, readers realize that Esther has an eating disorder which is not so significant in the beginning but as the novel progresses, this disorder unfurls with the developing anxieties of Plath (Dowbnia). After Esther had been offered a summer internship in a magazine in New York City, she finds herself struggling amidst her inner chaos. At times, Plath can be seen employing the literary device of stream of consciousness to introduce the readers to the inner workings of her ill mind. The entire narrative is filled with incidents that led to the spiral of Ether’s illness, for instance, when Esther goes to a club with her friend Doreen, she is sexually assaulted by a man, additionally, she reminisces about her boyfriend Buddy who firmly believes that he is her fiancé while she is having doubts about their relationship (DONOFRIO). Her illness gets the better of her after some time and her mother suggests that she goes to a psychiatrist, Dr. Gordon but Esther does not trust him with her secrets and her anxieties and the medication that he gives is also not beneficial for her as her illness soon worsens and she starts making half-hearted suicide attempts, something that happened throughout the course of Plath’s personal life as well. Further, after a few more attempts at suicide, Esther meets a female therapist, Dr. Nolan whom she trusts and with whom she shares her feelings and describes that living in depression, for her, is like being trapped inside a bell jar where breath ceases to come to her. While living at a treatment center, Esther meets Joan, someone who used to date Buddy, and one day, Joan unexpectantly dies by suicide (de Villiers). This incident and her introduction to her personal opinion about her sexuality bring within her an entirely new perspective which makes her look at things in a new light. And this is the moment where the autobiographical element of the novel finally breaks off with Plath’s life as, unlike Esther, Plath’s illness got the better of her (Clark).
The stigma of mental illness in society
The Bell Jar is a reflection of the society that believed that people who were diagnosed with mental illness belonged nowhere else but in an institution. Additionally, the novel also deals with the fact that patriarchy finds a way to comment upon the lives of women even in the matter of mental illness towards the end of the novel Buddy laments that who is going to marry Esther now that she has been hospitalized for mental illness (Miyatsu). This act shows the utter hypocrisy that exists at the heart of the society when it comes to mental illness as Buddy, a man who is undoubtedly physically not well enough, believes that he can discard the notion of being with Esther because she is mentally unwell. Mental illness was already a humongous stigma in that society, it still remains so in the modern world, but, when this mental illness occupied the life of a woman, there, the sexist notions of the patriarchal world reigned in the thoughts of individuals (Secreast).
Plath creates various parallels throughout the narration of the novel in order to express the stigmas that led her to live with constant anxieties about her own illness which led to the gradual unfurling of her illness. The fact that Plath employs a male psychiatrist whom she does not trust and a female therapist whom she trusts and with whom she is able to feel comfortable signifies the importance of womanhood, it represents the fact that women cannot feel safe with the other sex when all they have ever gotten from that sex is abuse and violence, it also portrays the importance of womanhood and feminism in the world, one of the reasons why The Bell Jar is considered to be one of the most crucial feminist texts (Sharma). The imagery of the novel is entirely symbolic, male characters are used in the novel majorly to signify violence, abuse, and mistrust while the women of the novel suffer from various mental illnesses because of the impacts of the patriarchal society and the violence erupted by that had on their lives.
In conclusion, it can be stated that Sylvia Plath’s magnum opus, The Bell Jar deals with various forms of mental illness, and throughout the course of the noel, through the protagonist Esther, Plath describes the impacts of mental illness on the life of an individual, specifically if that individual occupies a feminine space in the world. The present paper analyzes how Plath employs a character who represents her own story in order to come to terms with her own illness, it also examines how the stigmas regarding mental illness are treated in the novel through the protagonist as well as through the minor characters who occupy space in Esther’s life.
References
Clark, Heather. “Sylvia Plath: An Iconic Life.” Women’s History Review, vol. 1, 15 May 2021, pp. 1–14, 10.1080/09612025.2021.1927376.
de Villiers, Stephanie. “Metaphors of Madness: Sylvia Plath’s Rejection of Patriarchal Language in the Bell Jar.” English Studies in Africa, vol. 62, no. 2, 3 July 2019, pp. 1–11, 10.1080/00138398.2019.1685200.
DONOFRIO, NICHOLAS. “Esther Greenwood’s Internship: White-Collar Work and Literary Careerism in Sylvia Plath’sThe Bell Jar.” Contemporary Literature, vol. 56, no. 2, 2015, pp. 216–254, 10.3368/cl.56.2.216.
Dowbnia, Renée. “Consuming Appetites: Food, Sex, and Freedom in Sylvia Plath’s the Bell Jar.” Women’s Studies, vol. 43, no. 5, 1 July 2014, pp. 567–588,
Web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?vid=6&sid=efe2878c-7b41-4691-9458-8c2f06f6e4be%40sessionmgr102&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPXNoaWIsaXAmc2l0ZT1la, 10.1080/00497878.2014.914392.
Gourley, James. ““The Same Anew”: James Joyce’s Modernism and Its Influence on Sylvia Plath’s the Bell Jar.” College Literature, vol. 45, no. 4, 2018, pp. 695–723, 10.1353/lit.2018.0044.
Imtiaz, Maryam, et al. “Marriage and the Exploitation of Women: A Case-Study of the Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.” INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL of LANGUAGE & LITERATURE, vol. 7, no. 2, 2019, 10.15640/ijll.v7n2a10.
Jafari, Sepideh, et al. “The Acquired Capability for Lethal Self Injury: Case Studies of Plath’s the Bell Jar and Eugenides’ the Virgin Suicides.” International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, vol. 6, no. 5, 6 July 2017, p. 21, journals.aiac.org.au/index.php/IJALEL/article/view/3362, 10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.6n.5p.21.
Miyatsu, Rose. ““Hundreds of People like Me”: A Search for a Mad Community in the Bell Jar.” Literatures of Madness, 2018, pp. 51–69, 10.1007/978-3-319-92666-7_4.
Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. S.L., Faber And Faber, 2019.
Secreast, Donnie. “Stones, Turkey Necks, and Gizzards: Grotesque Humor and Metaphors of Masculinity in Sylvia Plath’s the Bell Jar.” Studies in the Novel, vol. 52, no. 1, 2020, pp. 60–74, 10.1353/sdn.2020.0009.
Sharma, Dr Eva. “The Bell Jar: An Inextricable Hysteria of a Woman Consequent of a Distorted Identity.” History Research Journal, vol. 5, no. 5, 26 Sept. 2019, pp. 26–31, 10.26643/hrj.v5i5.7915.
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
