Characters & Plot
Set on the East Coast in the 1950s, The Bell Jar is about Esther Greenwood and how she sees life. The book starts out in the summer in New York City where Esther has started an internship to be an editor for a magazine. Esther has been chosen, along with a handful of other women for this one-month and everything-paid-for stay at an all women’s hotel in the city. All of the women around her are different and live in different ways, so Esther starts to catch on. She becomes friends with one person in particular, Doreen, and starts to adopt her ways. Back home she has a man waiting to marry her, Buddy Willard, a man who doesn’t understand her, but while in New York she finds out that he slept with a woman while they were dating. This factor and the independency around her makes her think differently. It makes her think about her future and why she should wait for someone who’s no good when she can be her own person. Because of this wake-up call, she attempts to try and lose her virginity to a UN interpreter named Constantine while still in the city, but when it comes down to it she is too afraid. Once she gets back to Boston, she doesn’t know what to do. She had applied for a class to take in the fall, but only to find out she wasn’t admitted. Ideas of different things to do pops in her head. She attempts to write a novel, but loses interest. Soon after she can’t sleep, can’t read and can’t eat. She doesn’t see the point in washing your clothes if you’re just going to wear them again; same goes for bathing. Fed up with this, she takes several sleeping pills and crawls under the cellar. Days later she’s found and taken to the hospital, then released into a mental hospital. There she is given shock treatments and insul injections. Her stay in hospitals transfers to more lenient ones as she progresses in treatment. The final hospital allows her to leave the grounds and come back at a certain time. These trips lead her to meet a man, Irwin, and to finally lose her virginity. After this she planned to go back to college.
Important Themes & Symbols
An important theme in The Bell Jar is the role women had in the 1950s. All throughout her life, Esther was raised to not go to college and to get married and settle down and have kids as soon as possible; this is what all of the women around her were doing. The fact that she's going to college to get a degree surprises me; this isn't something that most books written in the '50s are about. Her mother had planned for her to marry Buddy Willard, but during her stay in New York City, she started to think otherwise. She started to consider breaking out of this routine and be independent after college to become a write, instead of marrying someone she didn't even like (93,116).
A symbol in The Bell Jar is an actual bell jar. It Esther's eyes it resembles mental illness; it's always there. When her mental state is poor, she feels like she is trapped underneath a bell jar as the distorted-looking world goes by around her. She just has to sit there and suffer, not being able to do anything about it, not being able to lift it. However, when her mental state is good and healthy, the bell jar still totters above her head, always ready to strike.
A symbol in The Bell Jar is an actual bell jar. It Esther's eyes it resembles mental illness; it's always there. When her mental state is poor, she feels like she is trapped underneath a bell jar as the distorted-looking world goes by around her. She just has to sit there and suffer, not being able to do anything about it, not being able to lift it. However, when her mental state is good and healthy, the bell jar still totters above her head, always ready to strike.