THE BELL JAR

'''The Bell Jar''' is American writer 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 madness paralleling Plath's own experiences with what may have been either bipolar disorder or clinical depression. Plath committed suicide a month after its first publication.
The novel was published under Plath's name for the first time in 1971.

Contents

Publication history

Plot summary

Major themes

Parallels of Plath's life to the novel

Film adaptations

References

External links

Publication history

The manuscript arrived at Harper and Row publishing offices in 1962, but two editors rejected the book for being "...disappointing, juvenile, and overwrought." In January of 1963, British publisher William Heinemann Limited (who also published Plath's collection of poems ''The Colossus'') agreed to publish ''The Bell Jar'' in London under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. Plath and her mother, Aurelia, feared publication in the U.S. would embarrass friends and acquaintances. After Plath's suicide, Ted Hughes, who inherited the copyright on her work, assured her mother that the book would not be published during Mrs. Plath's lifetime. Bootleg copies of the novel made their way from England to New York due to high demand. After a "copyright snag" known as Ad Interim, the book was almost published in the United States by John Simon. Frances McCullough eventually informed Mrs. Plath that they wanted to publish the book.^[1]
On April 14, 1971, ''The Bell Jar'' was published in the U.S. under Sylvia Plath's name. This resulted in a successful lawsuit by one individual (Plath's Smith classmate Jane V. Anderson, portrayed as "Joan" in the book). The court ruled that the novel unfairly branded her as homosexual.^[1]

Plot summary

Esther Greenwood, a young woman from 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 exhilarated by the rush of Manhattan, but her experiences also frighten and disorient her. She appreciates the hedonism 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, who will also later during Esther's hospitalization pay for some of her treatments.
After struggling to cope with life in New York City during her internship, Esther returns to her Massachusettes home in low spirits. During her stay in New York City, she had hoped to return to another scholarly opportunity to attend a writing course taught by a world-famous author, but after being rejected, she decides instead to spend the summer potentially writing a novel, although she feels she hasn't enough life experience to write convincingly. All of her identity has been centered around doing well academically; she has no idea 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.
Esther becomes increasingly depressed, and finds herself unable to sleep. Her mother encourages, or perhaps forces her to see a psychiatrist, who then hastily diagnoses her with a mental illness and administers electroshock therapy. Also, this first therapist is noted by his sex, and also his good looks, which Esther somehow resents. By this time, Esther is suffering from intense insomnia and is traumatised by the therapy, which was improperly administered. When she tells her mother she refuses to go back, her mother smugly 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-fledged attempts at suicide, including swimming far out to sea, before making a serious attempt. She leaves out 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. After an interminable amount of time, she is discovered under her house after a rather dramatic episode in the newspapers has presumed her kidnapping and death. She survives, is sent to a different mental hospital, and meets Dr. Nolan, a therapist, who prescribes electroshock therapy and ensures that it will be 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.
Under Dr. Nolan, Esther improves and various life-changing events - such as losing her virginity and her final understanding of death through the suicide of her friend Joan - help her regain her sanity. The novel ends with her entering the room for her interview which would decide whether she was free from the hospital or not. The reader does not find out the outcome of the interview, and the novel ends with the words: "I stepped into the room."

Major themes

'The Restricted Role of Women in 1950s America:' There are a number of examples of frustration with the limited possibilities available to women, especially creative ones. When contemplating her future, Esther visualizes her ambitions as a fig tree, with many possibilities, but becomes increasingly upset knowing that she can only choose one. In addition, Esther is surrounded by women pursuing their careers, but at the same time being encouraged by the magazine authorities to attend various social events. While in college, she is only accepted by her peers when she has a boyfriend; they give her a hard time when she spends her time studying.
'Feminism:' The book has feminist connotations; for example, when Esther discovers that her boyfriend had sex with a waitress over the summer, she sees the hypocrisy of the moral code of her generation (in that promiscuity in a man is acceptable, but in a woman it is not). In order to subvert the idealism that Esther recognizes as flawed, she immediately endeavours to lose her virginity as soon as possible. While a resident of the hospital, Esther loses her virginity to a professor of mathematics at Harvard (Chapter 19), near the end of the book. After, Esther experiences uncontrollable hemorrhaging, and is admitted to a hospital.
Esther's attempt at losing her virginity in order to undermine the existing social-moral mores about sex and gender is one of Plath's statements of defiance against the codes of social and moral conduct for women.
'Growth Through Pain and Rebirth:' This novel is often seen as a coming-of-age novel. However, Esther Greenwood does not go through a typical passage from child to adulthood. She struggles with depression and paranoia, suicide attempts, and a few months stay at a mental hospital in order to find herself and feel ready to enter the real world. Esther wants to remember each of her unique experiences and take them with her as her "landscape." By the end of the novel, she finally seems prepared to re-enter the world as an adult.
'Lesbianism:' Some readers also point out the lesbian theme in the latter half of the book, when Esther discovers that her friend Joan is gay, and remembers a story of two women students who were dismissed from her university when they were found in a bedroom together, although they were only caressing each other's hair. Asked by Esther what a woman might look for in another woman, Dr. Nolan replies "tenderness." Plath has become a kind of lesbian icon in some circles for her honest look at what was then believed to be as a serious mental illness whose victims were inclined to violent and criminal behavior.

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.^[3] 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^[4]. 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 actually 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 incarcerated.

Film adaptations

★ 1979: director Larry Peerce, starring Marilyn Hassett as Esther Greenwood, the protagonist. 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.

★ 2008: Plum Pictures has announced that a new Hollywood version of the novel will go into production in early 2008, with a tentative release date of late 2008. The movie will be written by playwright and screenwriter Tristine Skyler, while Julia Stiles will star as the novel's protagonist, Esther Greenwood. ^[5]

References

1. Frances McCullough's foreword, 1996.
2. Frances McCullough's foreword, 1996.
3. Two Views of Plath's Life and Career--by Linda Wagner-Martin and Anne Stevenson
4. Correspondence with Frank O Connor & Seán Ó Faoláin, "O’Connor [traveled] to the States to give his famous course on Irish Literature at Harvard (Sylvia Plath was an aspiring student whom he refused a place on his course to)."
5. Stiles likes ring of 'Bell'

External links

★ ''The Bell Jar'' at the Internet Movie Database

★ Discussion Questions at ReadingGroupGuides