The Bell Jar Video

The Bell Jar is the sole novel written by American writer and poet Sylvia Plath. The story is semi-autobiographical, with protagonist Esther Greenwood serving as a fictional counterpart to the author herself. The book is regarded as a roman à clef, since Esther’s descent into mental illness closely parallels Plath’s own mental health struggles. The work is also a quintessential example of “confessional literature,” which is defined as works that focus on personal trauma and previously taboo matters such as mental illness and suicide.

Plath herself questioned the literary value of the novel, which prompted her to publish it under the pseudonym “Victoria Lucas.” Plath committed suicide in February 1963, one month after the book’s first publication in the United Kingdom. The Bell Jar was not published under Plath’s own name until 1967, and it was not published in the United States until 1971.

The story begins in New York during the summer of 1953. Esther Greenwood, a nineteen-year-old student at an elite women’s college in Massachusetts, has been awarded a prestigious summer internship at the fictional Ladies’ Day magazine in Manhattan. Although Esther wants to be excited for the opportunities she has been granted, she finds herself disinterested and skeptical of the fast-paced, hierarchical New York literary scene. Throughout the duration of her internship, Esther stays at an all-women hotel called The Amazon with eleven other students working at Ladies’ Day. While there, she feels ostracized by her peers for her middle-class background and unconventional thinking style.

Esther describes a series of dramatic and humorous incidents that occur at the beginning of her internship. She befriends Doreen, another internship recipient who comes from a society school in the South. Together, the two meet a Disc Jockey named Lenny and spend a night with him, though Esther becomes overwhelmed with a sense of despair and leaves early. In another vignette, Esther talks with Jay Cee, her editor at Ladies’ Day. Once again, Esther enters into a spiral of self-loathing when Jay Cee asks her about her future goals and career ambitions. In another vignette, all of the Ladies’ Day interns contract food poisoning from the magazine’s banquet.

One morning, a man named Constantin, who works as an interpreter at the United Nations, calls Esther to ask her on a date. His advance prompts Esther to reminisce about her former boyfriend, Buddy Willard. Before Buddy contracted tuberculosis and was sent away to a recovery facility in the Adirondacks, he studied science at Yale. Esther remembers how he wooed her by giving her a tour of the hospital he was apprenticing at. The narration flashes back to the present day, where Esther is on a date with Constantin. She enjoys his company, and although she hopes for him to seduce her, their night ends rather platonically.

Just a few days before their internship ends, Doreen arranges a date for Esther with a Peruvian man named Marco. When the two meet to go to the country club, Marco gives Esther a large diamond and makes a cryptic remark about her “earning it.” As the night progresses, Marco admits to Esther that he is involved in a forbidden love affair with his first cousin. After Esther tells Marco that he will fall in love again someday, he forcefully pushes her on the ground and assaults her. Esther fights Marco off while he aggressively demands that she return his diamond. After she escapes and returns to the hotel later that night, Esther impulsively throws her new, gifted clothing off of the roof of The Amazon.

With the internship coming to an end, Esther returns to Massachusetts to live with her mother. Upon her arrival at home, she is notified that she has not been accepted to a writing course that she was hoping to attend. Upset at the derailment of her plans, Esther meditates upon the importance of her academic performance and fears life after graduation. Esther’s depression intensifies, and her mother instructs her to see a psychiatrist. Dr. Gordon advises Esther to begin “shock therapy” treatments, but they are ineffective. After not being able to sleep for nearly three weeks, Esther half-heartedly attempts suicide on more than one occasion.

Esther’s torment compounds, and she makes a more thought-through plan to commit suicide. In a note she leaves for her mother, Esther declares that she is “going for a walk.” However, she takes the bottle of pills that have been prescribed for her insomnia and takes a copious amount while hiding in a hole in her home’s cellar. When Esther regains consciousness, she learns that her case has been covered by various news outlets. Philomena Guinea, Esther’s benefactress from college, reads about Esther in a Boston newspaper and offers to pay for her stay at an elite treatment center.

At the treatment center, Esther analogizes her depression to “sitting under a bell jar.” She soon discovers that her acquaintance, Joan Giling, has recently been admitted to the facility. Joan used to date Buddy, and the two bond over this commonality. Joan tells Esther that she attempted suicide herself after reading about Esther’s disappearance in a newspaper. After spending more time together, Joan admits that she likes Esther more than she ever liked Buddy, which implies that she has a physical attraction to the protagonist. Esther tells Joan that her feelings are not reciprocal. Esther resumes shock therapy under the guidance of her new psychiatrist at the asylum, Dr. Nolan. She begins to feel a certain sense of relief from these treatments.

Joan gets discharged from the facility and moves to downtown Boston with a nurse. Esther decides to visit Joan, and on her trip she meets Irwin, to whom she loses her virginity. Her night with Irwin turns sour when she hemorrhages. Joan takes Esther to receive medical care before Joan is readmitted to the asylum. One night, Esther is awakened by a doctor at the hospital. Esther learns that Joan has gone missing, and she later discovers that Joan has died by hanging herself in the woods nearby.

Time passes, and Esther continues to rehabilitate under the guidance of Dr. Nolan. As Esther prepares for a hopeful discharge from the asylum, she receives a visit from Buddy, who asks if there is something about his own behavior that has driven two of his ex-girlfriends to insanity. Esther finds the comment funny and out-of-touch, and, to her relief, the two amicably decide to not get married. In the novel’s final scene, Esther walks into a conference with the asylum doctors, who will make a formal decision about her “graduation” from the treatment facility. She compares the experience to a “ritual of being born twice––patched, retreaded and approved for the road.”