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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 is an autobiographical novel that conforms closely to the events of the author’s life. Sylvia Plath was born to Otto and Aurelia Plath in 1932 and spent her early childhood in the seaport town of Winthrop, Massachusetts. Otto Plath died when Plath was eight years old, and she moved with her mother, younger brother, and maternal ...
The Bell Jar offers an in-depth meditation on womanhood and presents a complex, frequently disturbing portrait of what it meant to be female in 1950s America. Esther reflects often on the differences between men and women as well as on the different social roles they are expected to perform. Most of her reflections circulate around sex and career.
Other Major Character. Minor Character. Character Analysis Plot Summary. Have study documents to share about The Bell Jar? Upload them to earn free Course Hero access! Characters Map for Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. Learn the roles and relationships of the characters in The Bell Jar, and how they contribute to the plot.
Betsy is the Ladies' Day girl from the Midwest. She is truly innocent and sweet and has none of the cynicism of the southern Doreen or the New Englander Esther. She becomes a photographic model for the magazine and is portrayed as being healthy and cheerful. Doreen calls Betsy "Pollyanna Cowgirl." As a character, Betsy seems well brought-up ...
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 contest ...
Sylvia Plath. The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable ...
