Sylvia Plath

My topic is about social unease, social suffering. The social suffering

describes a collective or individual suffering associated with life
conditions shaped by powerful social forces. Its a sort of
incapability, felt by the human being, in living in that kind of
society and that often flows in suicide. When I read Sylvia Plaths
book The Bell Jar for a school project, I found the perfect example of
this social suffering in the figure of Sylvia Plath herself.

Life and career

Sylvia Plath was born on 27 th October 1932 in Jamaica Plain, in

Massachusetts. When her father died of complications from surgery after
a leg amputation, depression hits her family and during her junior year,
she was given by bi-polar electroconvulsive shock treatments and she
attempted suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills. Recovered after six
months of intensive therapy, she went to England. She met Ted Hughes,
a Cambridge poet, she felt that life with him would be ideal. The two
were married in London in 1956. Plath tried to make a new life for
herself, but the worst winter in a century added to her depression.
Without a telephone, ill, and troubled with the care of the two infants,
she committed suicide by sleeping pills and gas inhalation on February
1963, just two weeks after the publication of The Bell Jar.

The Bell Jar

Plath's novel The Bell Jar was originally published under the
pseudonym "Victoria Lucas" in 1963. She said she tried to describe
her world and the people in it, as seen through the distorting
lens of a bell jar. Indeed, its a semi-autobiographical novel with
the names of places and people changed.

The plot

Esther Greenwood, a young woman from the suburbs of Boston, gains a

summer internship at a prominent magazine in New York City. Esther
describes in detail several seriocomic incidents that occur during her
internship. She also talks about her friend Buddy, who considers himself
her boyfriend. Then she comes back home and she decides to spend her
summer writing a novel, although she feels she doesn't have enough life
experience to write it. Esther becomes increasingly depressed, and finds
herself unable to sleep. Her mother forces her to see a psychiatrist, Dr.
Gordon, who prescribes her an electroconvulsive therapy. Esthers mental
state gets worse and she describes her depression as a feeling of being
trapped under a bell jar, struggling for breath. She makes several
attempts at suicide, before making a serious attempt. She leaves a note
where she says she is taking a long walk, then she goes into the cellar
and swallows almost 50 sleeping pills. She survives and is sent to a
different mental hospital, where she describes the electroconvulsive
therapy as an antidepressant that lifted the metaphorical bell jar in which
she has felt trapped and chocked. She feels better now and its like shes
reborn. The novel ends with Esther whos going to a meeting of doctors
who will authorize her release, or, at least, she hopes so.

Style and themes

Told in first-person, Esther Greenwood narrates the entire novel

The Bell Jar. The novel is written using a series of flashbacks that
show up parts of Esther's past. The novel refers to the pursuit of a
socially acceptable identity. Esther tried to fake her own identity
to be what others expect her to be, even if she wants to be only
herself. She is expected to become a housewife without achieving
independence, Esther feels like a prisoner to domestic duties and
she is afraid of losing herself. At first she looks at life behind a
bell jar, but then, after the electroconvulsive therapy, the bell jar
disappeared and she starts living effectively. The main themes of
the novel are: feminism, the pursuit of being herself, insanity and
suicide. Besides, the reader can notice the thin line between
sanity and insanity. She is surrounded by people who seem to
lead their lives in very strange ways, but they are sane by the
societys standards of sanity and normality.