The Delusions of Health and Happiness in the Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath's feelings of suffocation induced by her cultural expectations considerately influenced her novel, The Bell Jar, in how its central theme focuses on the effects of mid-century society on women. The novel carried a huge impact, as it was the first of its kind. Through the main character, Esther Greenwood, Plath exhibited her own struggle to effectively balance the gravity of her culture and the contradicting complexity of herself. By doing this, she turns her personal incidents into a fantasy of conforming, which, by her standards, are completely unrealistic. These delusions can be proven by showing the evident correlation between Esther and Plath involving identity, the refutation and ambiguity of the ending, the conflict between society and women, and Plath's belief that maleness was the center of creativity.

Plath once wrote: "My greatest trouble…is jealousy. I am jealous of men-a dangerous and subtle envy which can corrode…any relationship. It is an envy born of the desire to be active and doing, not passive and listening. I envy the man his physical freedom to lead a double life-his career and his sexual and family life. I can pretend to forget my envy; no matter, it is there, insidious, malignant, latent."

Plath affiliated any and all power with men. She regarded her femininity as a curse and the naked female body as a reminder of her physical and artistic failures, because it is vulnerable and susceptible to violation (Lant 624, 625, 630). Plath felt "rigidly circumscribed by [her] inescapable femininity" and incredibly envious that men easily obtained the stability of their social and personal lives (Lant 630). For fear of allowing the green-eyed monster to overcome and ruin her, she aimed to attain success by purging herself of womanhood and challenging her culture by trying to "achieve poetic liberty…valued by her male contemporaries" (Lant 628). Sadly, patriarchal stereotypes "defied her figurative efforts" (Lant 628). Because of her opinions on male power, she realized the cultural trap she was in.

Plath's diffusion of accepting cultural prototype that implied she must deform or mutilate herself in submission to men manifests itself in Esther's relations with women in the novel (Bonds 53). Her efforts to evade social formulas at all costs results in her dismissal of many nurturing women because each fit some stereotype she refused to relate to (Bonds 56-57). At one point in The Bell Jar, Plath unearths her suffocation through Esther realizing she is home alone and cannot escape because the door is locked. She becomes fully aware of the femininity of her mother's home that has lured her since the beginning (Gerbig 87). The rejection of the influential women in her efforts to purify herself and to avoid their fate weakens the talent the women nourished and leaves Esther's self-image distorted, stripped, dismembered, and alienated (Bonds 52, 58).

Plath's attitude towards men and women leads her to search for the answer that can satisfy both obligations Her "comparatively fragmented structure" presents Esther's struggle to be happy with herself and relates her conflicting identities through dismemberment (Wagner 58). Plath hints at dismemberment when accounting how Esther deals with early incidents in the novel, specifically how almost every scene is flooded with bodiless heads, faces, and limbs. Dismemberment is shown as the aftermath of Esther's fragmentation, as well as her longing to relate to others and to replaces her severed parts to a whole (Bonds 52). The most pivotal and complete metaphor for this detachment is the fig tree. In both of its appearances in The Bell Jar, the fig tree applies extraordinarily to her present dilemma. The first is with her deteriorating relationship with Buddy Willard and again when she contemplates her choices in life. She sees herself sitting in the hollow of a blooming fig tree, and each ripe fruit holds a separate and distinct future. She can only choose one, which means forfeiting the rest. Her procrastination stimulates the figs to rot and die, as she starves and fades away. The fig tree also reiterates the central theme that there is no way in her culture " that a talented woman could successfully combine a professional career with homemaking" (Wagner 60). Each aspect of the metaphor holds a crown of negativity and sarcasm that Plath inflicts upon the novel in reaction to her violent inclinations towards Esther's growth (Wagner 60).

Linda Wagner believes that "much of the life-as well as the ambivalence-of the novel exists because the author is so involved in the process...she is describing" (67-68). This statement, along with Plath's evident convictions regarding society and herself, supports how fantastical and unrealistic the conclusion of the novel is. This support is extended through the apparent nexus between Plath and Esther. Plath intricately describes each scene and character to show his or her effects on Esther's growth, keeping her constantly at the center of the novel's attention (Wagner 55). She was so involved in The Bell Jar because she finally had the opportunity to communicate her desperate struggle in the hopes that someone would understand. Because of her commitment to the novel, even she was unsure of its ending, as she knew Esther must be, despite her newfound confidence and understanding. Esther had not fully evaluated the benefits and consequences of her enlightenment, and The Bell Jar grew because Plath held this uncertainty as well (Wagner 63-64). Esther's consistent rebirth is a prime example of this doubt, as it seems to stem from the same spring from which her breakdown erupted: her domestic servitude. She is torn between avoiding all stereotypes and her inability to discover a credible future that avoids that fate (Bonds 55).

Within each of the previous perspectives, The Bell Jar accurately portrays a woman's struggle to remain psychosomatically whole when her goal to take advantage of her capabilities clashes with patriarchal norms. Because of this, and because of Plath's "wry self-mockery," the novel carried a massive impact, as it bore no antecedent in earlier novels of development. For mid-century women, it was more than an autobiographical release because they endured that ongoing decadent era of dull repetition and tedium that barred their satisfaction. The greatest impact though, hit Sylvia Plath, as it serves as a thinly veiled testimony of her anger towards her conditional culture and family. If her goal was self-discovery, then her obvious malignancy may have been as dismaying as it was unexpected (Wagner 68). Plath's release was writing, and The Bell Jar provided her with a way to interpret her past and explore her future's possibilities, however disappointing her journey may have been.

Works Cited

• Bonds, Diane S. "The Separative Self in Sylvia's Plath's The Bell Jar." Women's Studies 18.1 (May 1990): 49-64.
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• Gerbig, Andrea. "Trapped in Language: Aspects of Ambiguity and Intertextuality in Selected Poetry and Prose by Sylvia Plath." Style 36.1 (Spring 2002): 76-93.
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• Lant, Kathleen Margaret. "The Big Strip Tease: Female Bodies and Male Power in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath." Contemporary Literature 34.4 (Winter 1993): 620-670.
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• Wagner, Linda W. "Plath's The Bell Jar as Female Bildungsroman." Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 12.1-6 (1986): 55-68.
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