If Esther Trapped Herself Inside “the Bell Jar” or Was She Placed There by the Societal Pressures of Her Day.

The Bell Jar was the single novel Sylvia Plath ever wrote. The writer used the name of Victoria Lucas to publish it. This novel written in 1963 is closely connected with the real events from the Plath’s life. The Bell Jar fundamentally tells the story of a young and talented woman in the 1950-s suddenly getting into a culminating isolating process according to a psychic inability to cope with her seemingly established in advance social life. Her work had always been critically discussed, because her written work opposed almost every norm and value of the stabilized American society of the Fifties. One of the discussed issues is if Esther trapped herself inside “the bell jar” or was she placed there by the societal pressures of her day. The human tragedies which “The Bell Jar” describes are three-fold: the execution of the Rosenbergs with which the novel opens, the horrific medical treatment given to Esther Greenwood and the more general situation of many women who are expected to conform to one or two rigid models about women. The parallel between the Rosenbergs’ execution and Esther unhappy fate is quite clear in describing the methods of treatment from her madness. Electroshock like electrocution kills everything human in living personality. Besides it is a method of repression against dissenters. The protagonist Esther was placed inside “the bell jar” by the societal pressures of her day. The postwar settlement of gender relations allowed for the higher education for women but it did not mean that women with children would actually use their education in employment. Esther Greenwood cannot find her place in the sun because of her extraordinary personality. She got scholarships and awards due to abilities and hard work. For the first time the readers meet her in New York where she is a junior editor in Ladies Day Magazine during a summer internship. Greenwood seems to have a brilliant future in front of her. She is thought “to be having the time of my

References: Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. New York: Harper, 1971.