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Esther Greenwood
- The Bell Jar details the life of Esther Greenwood, a college student who dreams of becoming a poet. She is selected for a month-long summer internship as a guest editor of Ladies’ Day magazine, but her time in New York City is unfulfilling as she struggles with issues of identity and societal norms.
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The Bell Jar | Plot Summary. Share. See Plot Diagram. Summary. On the surface 19-year-old Esther Greenwood manages her life perfectly. She is a scholarship student at a prestigious college, gets top grades, and consistently wins awards, including, most recently, a guest editorship at a famous fashion magazine in New York City.
- Character Map
Characters Map for Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. Learn the...
- Chapter 15
A bell jar, shaped as an upturned bell, creates a vacuum...
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Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar Notes, Test Prep Materials, and...
- Author Biography
Like Lowell, she wrote poetry that was confessional and...
- Things You Didn't Know
The Bell Jar is Sylvia Plath's only novel, published the...
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Literary Resources and Articles about Sylvia Plath's The...
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"They" are Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who have been found...
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Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar Infographic to help you...
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In Chapter 2 of The Bell Jar, what does bathing represent to...
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The Bell Jar Full Book Summary. Esther Greenwood, a college student from Massachusetts, travels to New York to work on a magazine for a month as a guest editor. She works for Jay Cee, a sympathetic but demanding woman. Esther and eleven other college girls live in a women’s hotel. The sponsors of their trip wine and dine them and shower them ...
- Sylvia Plath, Frances Monson McCullough, Lois Ames
- 1963
- Overview
- Summary
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The Bell Jar, novel by Sylvia Plath, first published in January 1963 under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas and later released posthumously under her real name. The work, a thinly veiled autobiography, chronicles a young woman’s mental breakdown and eventual recovery, while also exploring societal expectations of women in the 1950s. Plath committed sui...
The Bell Jar details the life of Esther Greenwood, a college student who dreams of becoming a poet. She is selected for a month-long summer internship as a guest editor of Ladies’ Day magazine, but her time in New York City is unfulfilling as she struggles with issues of identity and societal norms. She meets two other interns who manifest contrasting views of femininity as well as Esther’s own internal conflicts: the rebellious and sexual Doreen and the wholesome and virginal Betsy. During this time, Esther thinks about her boyfriend, Buddy Willard, and her anger when he admitted that he was not a virgin, claiming to have been seduced. She believes he is a hypocrite, having acted as if she was more sexually experienced. After being rejected for a writing class, Esther must spend the rest of her summer at home with her mother; Esther’s father died when she was young. She struggles to write a novel and becomes increasingly despondent, making several half-hearted suicide attempts. She ultimately overdoses on sleeping pills but survives.
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Esther is admitted to a mental institute, where she is treated by a progressive psychiatrist who, among other things, eases her concerns about premarital sex and encourages her to obtain a diaphragm. In addition, Esther undergoes electric-shock treatment, which makes her feel as if she has been freed from a bell jar. While on a night pass, Esther loses her virginity, which she sees as a millstone. When she begins hemorrhaging, she seeks the help of another patient, Joan, who goes with her to the emergency room. Shortly thereafter Joan commits suicide, and her death seems to quell Esther’s own suicidal thoughts. The novel ends with a seemingly reborn Esther about to face the examination board, which will decide if she can go home.
Initially celebrated for its dry self-deprecation and ruthless honesty, The Bell Jar is now read as a damning critique of 1950s social politics. Plath made clear connections between Esther’s dawning awareness of the limited female roles available to her and her increasing sense of isolation and paranoia. The contradictory expectations imposed upon women in relation to sexuality, motherhood, and intellectual achievement are linked to Esther’s sense of herself as fragmented. Her eventual recovery relies on her ability to dismiss the dominant versions of femininity that populate the novel.
Although concerned with the stifling atmosphere of 1950s America, The Bell Jar is not limited to examination of gender. The novel opens with the sentence “It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs,” which refers to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted of spying for the Soviet Union. This allusion to the Cold War and McCarthyism makes implicit connections between Esther’s experiences and the other paranoias and betrayals that characterized the decade.
The novel was inspired by events that occurred when Plath was in her early 20s. Although the work ends on a hopeful note, Plath took her own life in 1963. Her acclaimed poetry collection Ariel (1965) was published posthumously.
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- Sylvia Plath, Frances Monson McCullough, Lois Ames
- 1963
The Bell Jar Summary. In the summer of 1953, Esther Greenwood, a brilliant college student, wins a month to work as guest editor with eleven other girls at a New York magazine. Esther lives with the other girls at the Amazon, a woman’s hotel, and attends a steady stream of events and parties hosted by the magazine.
The Bell Jar addresses the question of socially acceptable identity. It examines Esther's "quest to forge her identity, to be herself rather than what others expect her to be." [9] Esther is expected to become a housewife, and a self-sufficient woman, without the options to achieve independence. [8]
- Sylvia Plath, Frances Monson McCullough, Lois Ames
- 1963
Book Summary. The Bell Jar is the story of 19-year-old Esther Greenwood, the breakdown she experiences, and the beginnings of her recovery. The year is 1953 and Esther Greenwood, having finished college for the academic year, has won a one-month paid internship at Ladies Day magazine in New York City. She and eleven other college students, also ...
Explanations of The Bell Jar's symbols, and tracking of where they appear. The Bell Jar: Theme Wheel An interactive data visualization of The Bell Jar 's plot and themes.
