the bell jar pape

Margaret Brichant (6010067) Engl 260/1 - King

‘Madness Redefined’: Plath’s Demystification of Insanity in The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar depicts the mental-breakdown of a privileged and educated

young woman in 1950s American society. To this day, the literary merit of the novel remains a

topic of intense debate. The majority of critics seem to take the stance that its overall worth lies in

the autobiographical nature of the novel, the implicit feminist undertones, or, merely in the

subject matter itself. Thus, much of the debate surrounding the merit of The Bell Jar centers on

how the novel should be read and, whether or not the novel is worth reading at all. Many critics

argue that, because Plath’s strengths lie in poetry and creating vivid images, her novel lacks

certain stylistic elements of literature and is written more like poetry than prose. I would like to

argue, however, that it is precisely Plath’s use of poetic language and imagery that is able to alter

the reader’s previous conceptions of madness. Plath’s novel succeeds in creating an account of

madness with a kind beatific innocence that urges both sympathy and understanding on the part

of the reader. Thus, I plan to present an account of how Plath is able to - through the manipulation

of language, structure, and style - alter the reader’s previous conceptions of madness by rendering

it both more alluring and comprehensible. I plan to demonstrate why Plath’s The Bell Jar should

be celebrated for more than its autobiographical content or inherent subject matter but, rather,

because of Plath’s uncanny ability to - through the manipulation of language, structure, and style

– present a demystified account of “madness” that forces the reader to question what it means to

mad.

In the majority of today’s criticisms of The Bell Jar, it is either regarded as an

autobiographical work of Sylvia Plath, detailing her youth and suicidal tendencies, or, as a social

commentary and critique of 1950s American society for women. Thus, the novel is, for the most

part, appreciated as a memoir used to better understand Plath’s plight, or as a feminist critique of

the society to which she belonged. Despite the validity of such claims, it seems that, by solely

focusing on the autobiographical or feminist nature of the novel, much of the magic and technical

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skill behind Plath’s writing, as well as the overall impact the novel has on the reader, is lost. In

support of this thesis, it is important to note that The Bell Jar was originally published under the

pseudonym of Victoria Lucas. Only after Plath’s death did the novel become known as Sylvia

Plath’s work. Linda Wagner-Martin, in Sylvia Plath: The Critical Heritage, notes the striking

contrast between the reviews of Victoria Lucas’s novel and Sylvia Plath’s. She notes that, prior to

the knowledge of Plath’s authorship, the work “stood on its own completely unknown feet, and

yet, was favorably reviewed” (Wagner-Martin, 1). However, she asserts, with Plath’s suicide in

1963 and the discovery of her authorship, criticisms of the work took a striking shift and “would

never again be untouched by biography” (Wagner-Martin, 1) Thus, upon discovering Plath’s

authorship, the majority of criticisms surrounding the work shifted into a discussion of the

novel’s existence - which was said to be loosely based on Plath’s life - as an autobiographical

novel. This shift in criticism seems to do away with an appreciation for Plath’s craft as a writer

and, rather, utilize the novel as a means to gain insight on Plath’s struggle with madness that

would eventually lead to her suicide.

In his work “What is an Author?”, Foucault ponders the nature and function of the

author. He asserts that in novels narrated in the first-person (like Plath’s The Bell Jar), neither the

first person pronoun (“I”), nor the present indicative are identical to the writer or to the moment

in which the novel was written. Rather, he claims, the narrator serves as a kind of alter ego whose

distance from the author can vary (112). Thus, even if Plath’s inspiration in writing the novel

came from her own personal experiences, the protagonist should nevertheless not be viewed as an

exact replica of Plath herself. In an interview conducted in 1962, The Poet Speaks, Plath herself

states that, while much of her writing stems from her own sensory and emotional experiences, she

nevertheless does not sympathize with these “cries from the heart that are informed by nothing

except a needle or a knife, or whatever it its.” She continues on to assert that “one should be able

to control and manipulate experiences, even the most terrific, like madness, being tortured, this

sort of experience, and one should be able to manipulate these experiences with an informed and

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an intelligent mind,” and that, while personal experience is very important, it should not “be a

kind of shut-box and mirror looking, narcissistic experience, it should be relevant, and relevant to

the larger things, the bigger things” (Orr, 1962). From this, it can be deduced that, despite any

similarities between Plath’s protagonist, Esther Greenwood, and herself, she should neither be

regarded as an exact replica of Plath, nor should her story be interpreted as an identical account of

Plath’s own experiences. It seems, rather, that while the novel’s protagonist and events may have

been inspired from Plath’s own personal experiences, she nevertheless manipulated the language

and action in such a way as to convey an overarching feeling or impression in the reader’s mind.

In other words, the events in the novel should not be regarded as direct manifestations of Plath’s

experiences, but as reformulations that are selected for the purpose of more effectively capturing

the intended feelings and transferring them into the realms of the reader’s understanding.

The merit and overall worth of the novel is often discredited by the argument that the

novel’s appeal lies solely in the subject matter itself. In “ ‘A Ritual for Being Born Twice’: Sylvia

Plath’s The Bell Jar”, Perloff contends that “the novel’s enormous popularity, it would seem, has

less to do with any artistic merits it may have than with its inherently titillating subject matter”

that chronicles the mental-breakdown of Esther Greenwood, a well-educated, privileged, and

successful young woman” (Perloff). Furthermore, she argues that the novel’s popularity among

adolescents’ stems from its subject matter that has become “the archetypal novel that mirrors, in

however distorted a form, their own personal experiences” (Perloff). Despite the severity of

Esther’s breakdown, the general concerns depicted closely mirror the concerns of most

adolescents: a quest to forge identity in a world full of expectations. Thus, Perloff argues,

Esther’s experiences and disillusionment differ in degree rather than kind. In line with this

thought, Jo Gill, in The Cambridge Companion to Sylvia Plath, professes that the novel has

become “a teenage rite of passage” (Gill, 132). Such arguments seem to suggest that readers are

drawn to the novel simply because of the novel’s inherent subject matter and expression of

concerns that closely mirrors their own. However, it seems to be precisely this representation of

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Esther’s descent into madness – a representation that is effectively able to portray her descent in

such a way that coincides with the universal concerns of others – that makes the novel so

endearing. Plath is able to express the inner workings of a “mad woman’s” mind in an

understandable manner, which ignites sympathy and compassion on the part of the reader.

Nonetheless, Plath’s novel still stands as a target for further criticism surrounding the value of her

writing.

Many critics argue that Plath’s novel lacks any real literary merit in that, because Plath

drew heavily on her own personal experiences and emotions, the novel lacks any true originality

or creative purpose. In “Waiting for the Voice to Crack”, Saul Maloff states that the novel is

merely “a journal done up as a novel”, which was “merely recorded rather than

imagined”(Maloff, 1971). However, prior to the knowledge that the novel was both written by

and “about” Plath, reviewers had been discussing The Bell Jar in a much more favorable light. In

an unsigned review, “Under the Skin”, the reviewer applauds Plath (Lucas) for her ability to

effectively create a different world for the reader to inhabit (Wagner-Martin, 52). The reviewer

further asserts that she has “the gift of being able to feel and yet waken herself: she can feel the

dissolution and yet relate it to the landscape of everyday life” (Wagner-Martin, 52). Similarly, in

“New Novels, listener”, Laurence Lerner commends Plath’s writing for much the same reasons.

He declares that, “from satirist she (the protagonist: Esther Greenwood) becomes a patient, yet so

imperceptibly that after realizing she is sick we do not feel at all tempted to discount her previous

shrewdness, or even cease to find her funny, in a rather frightening way” (Lerner, 1963). He

further asserts that the language in the novel is “sharp, pungent, brittle, with images that catch at

almost indescribable states of mind for an instant, then shift restlessly to catch others” and,

moreover, is written with a kind of “poetic delicacy of perception” that nevertheless manages to

remain readable (Lerner, 1963). Despite such previously compelling reviews, the novel’s artistry

is forgotten with the discovery of Plath’s authorship. It seems almost irrelevant whether or not the

events in the novel were based on Plath’s own experiences, for her writing still manages to reach

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out and provide a new world for the reader to inhabit. Whether or not the events were imagined

should be extraneous, for it was never her creativity that was praised to begin with, it was her

uncanny ability to simulate such seemingly personal feelings and experiences in the mind of the

reader.

It seems precisely because of Plath’s poetic nature that she is able to convey such striking

emotional images that effectively reach the reader on a personal level. In her creation of the

sensuous and emotional experiences of the character, Plath’s narrative is able to reach out to each

individual reader through common experience. The detailed images presented in the novel have

the qualities of being both subjective and objective simultaneously. In other words, she creates

images that reflect a particular emotion, but do not necessarily fall into the category of a wholly

personal emotion, unique to the speaker alone. In one of her journal entries (1956), Plath

emphasizes her desire to present certain personal experiences in a universal light: “be stoic when

necessary and write – you have seen a lot, felt deeply and your problems are universal enough to

be made meaningful” (J. Plath, 569) Likewise, Plath also reveals (in her journals) her desire for

The Bell Jar’s narrator to exist as a statement of her generation (J. Plath, 289). Thus, by depicting

her protagonist in such a way that embodies the qualities of her generation, she ultimately forms a

connection between herself, as a representative figure, and the reader.

Herein lies a key aspect of Plath’s craftsmanship, the ability to express general

subconscious images that are so vivid they appear to be, at first glance, wholly personal. This

technique enables Plath to instill the precise feeling she wants to convey, while still presenting an

image that is objective enough so that the reader can conceptualize the feeling to his or her own

understanding. This technique, combined with the “stream-of-consciousness” style of narration -

in which the speaker’s thoughts and feelings are presented as they occur - provides the illusion

that the reader is given unrestricted access into the character’s mind, while nevertheless framing

the discourse in such a way that the reader can attribute his or her own meaning to the sentiment.

Such a depiction of Esther’s mental experience (in a seemingly personal, while consequently

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objective way) may, at least in part, provide explanation for how Plath creates a persona that

“seems to have one layer too little of skin; whose interior being becomes alarmingly visible, that

becomes a voyeuristic spectacle for our gratification but also as a means to our self-recognition”

(Gill, 81) Thus, through her manipulation of language, Plath is able to conceptualize of a speaker

whose thoughts, much like the way in which Esther describes Doreen’s intuition, are “like a

secret voice speaking straight out of (our) own bones” (Plath, 7).

Plath’s writing predominately focuses on exemplifying the nature of the mind and the

way it deals with extreme circumstances (Uroff, 1977). Thus, rather than focusing on the

underlying meaning behind certain experiences, Plath seems more focused on illustrating the way

in which the mind responds and contains feelings and thoughts. By placing her focus on how the

mind reacts and copes with undesirable situations, she is able to ignite sympathy in the reader by

touching on those general inclinations of human mentality. Due to her poetic nature and

manipulation of language, she is able to portray the inner workings of Esther’s mind so

convincingly that it sometimes becomes difficult to discern between “madness” and sanity. The

figurative language surrounding the feelings depicted in The Bell Jar is so forceful that Plath is

able to capture near inexpressible states of mind, in the form of stunning mental images of the

senses or sensory experiences. In discussing the methods behind Plath’s poetic craftsmanship,

Hughes asserts that her method was to “collect a heap of vivid objects and good words and make

a pattern that would be projected from somewhere deep inside”, he describes her method as

almost “painterly” (Hughes, 95). Thus, this assertion reflects Plath’s tendency to depict emotion

through the sensory experiences. An example of this “painterly” aspect Hughes describes occurs

early on in the novel, when Esther watches her friend Doreen “jitterbug” with Lenny, a man

whom they had only just met earlier that evening. When Esther, the only other person in the

room, is left to watch the two of them dancing she reflects on her feelings on the matter and

states, “I felt myself shrinking to a small black dot against all those red and white rugs and that

pine-panelling. I felt like a hole in the ground” (Plath, 15). Such a description of Esther’s inner-

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feelings effectively captures the present nature of her mind by creating an image of her as a small

black dot that is shrinking against the bright colors of the red and white rugs. The manifestation

of Esther’s current feeling through metaphor provides an external, or discernable image that

allows the reader to visualize the feeling internally. Hence, by providing the reader with a

metaphorical depiction of the emotion, Plath is able to instill the feeling in the mind, while

simultaneously creating an image that is objective enough to allow the reader to internalize the

feeling in a way that he or she can make sense of.

Plath’s use of a stream-of-consciousness narrative style succeeds in thrusting the reader

into Esther’s world as she sees it, thus creating a world in which all of Esther’s externals are

filtered through her own interpretations of them. In other words, the reader is provided insight

into this other world, but is only able to perceive of things through Esther’s eyes. Therefore,

Esther’s overall tone in her observations becomes a crucial aspect in the way in which the reader

responds to the events presented. Esther’s persona maintains a certain level of detachment, and

often indifference, throughout the entirety of the novel. This level of detachment both highlights

the level of Esther’s mentality, while also allowing Plath to create a persona who is able to both

feel and observe herself as an outsider. This aspect of Esther’s persona almost places her on the

level of the reader – she has insight into her feelings, thoughts, and reactions (just as the reader

does), but seems to, at the same time, observe these reactions objectively. Esther constantly refers

to herself as “I” when discussing her feelings and thoughts, however, when it comes to actually

conceiving of herself in any sort of tangible way, with a fixed identity, she withdraws and

subsumes the role of the observer. This is most apparent in her interpretations of her own

reflection (a tangible, physical body that unifies a person’s existence). When Esther returns to her

room after leaving Lenny’s apartment (where she watches her friend Doreen grow more and more

enamored with Lenny), she glimpses into the mirror and states, “the face in it looked like the

reflection in a ball of dentist’s mercury” (Plath, 18). She seems to take herself out of the situation

entirely and expresses no sense of personal identification with her reflection. Immediately after

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this she proclaims, “I thought of crawling in between the bed sheets and trying to sleep, but that

appealed to me about as much as stuffing a dirty, scrawled-over letter into a fresh, clean

envelope” (Plath, 18). Thus, immediately after objectifying herself and her face (by referring to it

as “the face”), she subsumes her previous state referring to herself as “I”. Plath has consequently

created a persona that is both intimate and detached; she has succeeded in delving into Esther’s

innermost concerns with striking detail, while also presenting these feelings in such a way that

relates them to the perceptions of the external world. In other words, Plath has conceived of a

persona that embodies the intensity of desolation and yet is in tune with the framework of

everyday discourse. Furthermore, the detachedness of Esther’s tone when describing her

seemingly strange behavior and feelings seems to impart this detachment on the part of the reader

as well. The portrayal of Esther’s emotions in this detached manner downplays the severity of

them, thus the reader is inclined to react to them in much the same way – there is nothing in

Esther’s tone to suggest that her behavior is abnormal, so the reader is likely to accept them rather

than question them. In fact, all of Esther’s descriptions suggest just the opposite. When describing

the behaviors of others she shifts into a cynical tone that frequently depicts them more as

caricatures than actual people, emphasizing the ridiculousness and absurdity of their actions in a

strikingly comical manner.

Plath’s shift in Esther’s tone when describing the external world elucidates another

effective technique used to render a more comprehensible account of madness and what it means

to be mad. In her observations of the world around her, Plath’s persona depicts a world of

characters that are dehumanized and flat. This sets up striking contrasts between the narrative “I”

(Esther) and the existence of others. The other characters in the novel seem to only exist as a

contrast to Esther, thus suggesting that they lack any fundamental qualities that would distinguish

them from a stereotyped other. This, in turn, causes Esther to appear as the only humane

character, with depth and insight. In Esther’s descriptions of the girls around her (in the opening

of the novel) Esther states, “These girls looked awfully bored to me. I saw them on the sun-roof,

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yawning and painting their nails and trying to keep up their Bermuda tans, and they seemed bored

as hell. I talked with one of them, and she was bored with yachts and bored with flying around in

aeroplanes and bored with skiing in Switzerland at Christmas and bored with men in Brazil”

(Plath, 4). From this description, the reader is inclined to sympathize with Esther rather than the

other girls. Esther admits that she has been given a once in a lifetime opportunity by winning a

scholarship to study in New York. The other girls, however, appear to be completely bored and

indifferent to this opportunity altogether. Esther portrays them as spoiled and ungrateful –

characteristics which are generally looked down upon. When Esther’s descent into madness

continues, her descriptions of others become even more comical and absurd. When she is back at

her mother’s house in Boston, she describes one of her neighbors (Mrs. Ockenden) in such a way

that ultimately paints a picture of her as an utterly absurd woman. Esther states, “Mrs. Ockenden

was a retired nurse who had just married her third husband – the other two died in curious

circumstances – and she spent an inordinate amount of time peering from behind the starched

white curtains of her windows” (Plath, 111). Her depiction of Mrs. Ockenden as, a nosy old

woman who’s onto her third marriage and spends her time spying on others, is both comical and

ludicrous. She continues by providing examples of the types of things Mrs. Ockenden concerns

herself with. She reveals, “she had called my mother up twice about me – once to report that I had

been sitting in front of the house for an hour under the streetlight and kissing somebody in a blue

Plymouth, and once to say that I had better pull the blinds down in my room, because she had

seen me half-naked getting ready for bed one night when she happened to be out walking her

Scotch terrier” (Plath, 111). The reader thus gets a sense that Mrs. Ockenden, a woman who is

supposed to be “sane” or normal, spends her time muddling in the insignificant businesses of

others. Plath’s depiction of Mrs. Ockenden closely resembles her characterization of all other

characters in the novel. Such characterizations elucidate the thin veil between sanity and

madness. Esther, who is deemed “mad” by society’s standards, is surrounded by people with

bizarre characteristics and modes of living, but who are nevertheless considered “sane”. This

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juxtaposition between Esther’s mentality and the mentality of the “sane” instills the reader with a

feeling that madness and sanity are not the polar opposites that they appear. In fact, Plath’s

conception of madness forces the reader to question what “madness” really is, and whether the

“insane” are actually more sane than the “sane”. From the beginning of the novel, the reader gets

a sense that Esther is searching for her identity through the identities of others (Perloff). It then

seems that her discontentment with herself results from her discontentment with those around her.

Thus, the reader is led to speculate the nature of Esther’s madness; is Esther’s descent a result of

society, or her own inability to cope with the external world?

Plath depicts Esther’s descent into madness through a series of episodes that ultimately

reveal the effects of certain external causes as psychological motivation for her inevitable

breakdown. Esther’s narrative style reveals elements of her past through flashbacks, all of which

maintain her at the center of all the action. When characterizations of other characters do occur,

they seem to only exist for the purpose of demonstrating their effects on Esther’s breakdown.

Thus, Plath’s structuring of The Bell Jar portrays a world of situations and characters that all

serve the purpose of elucidating Esther’s accelerated disillusionment, which ultimately results in

a world in which the reader is only given fragmentations of events that have impacted Esther in

some way. Therefore, Plath has conceived of a world in which the reader is able to experience

Esther’s descent along with her - for the reader is only presented with select fragments that pave

the way for Esther’s breakdown. The events in the novel are presented in three parts – (1)

Esther’s encounters in New York and Boston that lead to her breakdown, (2) Esther’s breakdown

itself, and (3) Esther’s recovery in the hospital. The first part of the novel portrays the nature of

Esther’s confusion with respect to her maintenance of a series of conflicting identities. Esther is

depicted as the cynical best friend and the innocent and eager to please young lady, the successful

writer and the immature student, the virginal girlfriend and the experienced lover, the obliging

daughter and the ungrateful woman, etc. (Wagner). Thus, by setting up the framework of the

novel in such a fragmented structure, Plath is able to demonstrate how closely these conflicting

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identities are interwoven, and furthermore, how these conflicting identities result in a kind of

“fragmented self”. By presenting Esther’s maintenance of these conflicting identities in the first

part of the novel, Plath has ensured that reader has all of the necessary background information

needed to understand Esther’s character and can now focus more on the nature of Esther’s

mentality and her descent. Thus, the second part of the novel chronicles Esther’s downward

descent and her various attempts at suicide. By providing the reader with all the necessary

motivation for her inevitable descent, Plath is able to focus almost entirely on the nature of

Esther’ broken psyche for the remainder of the novel, while still conceiving of an account of

madness that is both comprehensible and sympathizing.

Through the manipulation of language, style, and structure, Plath conceives a world in

which madness and sanity appear more alike than they do different. Plath’s employment of

figurative language imparts vivid descriptions of emotions and sensory experiences to the reader

that seem so personal, but are at the same time universal. Rather than merely describing the

emotions of a “mad” woman, Plath demonstrates them by presenting emotional descriptions

through the senses. Plath’s creates a persona whose tone and personal insight allows the reader to

react to her (Esther’s) madness with compassion, sympathy, and understanding. By illustrating

her persona’s emotions through compellingly vivid metaphors, Plath effectively transfers the

intended emotions into the minds of the reader by forcing them to recall similar emotional

experiences. Thus, Plath succeeds in creating a character whose thoughts and feelings seem so

personal, while at the same time are universal enough for the reader to be able to relate.

Furthermore, Plath’s manipulation of the novels narrative structure provides such an account of

madness that the reader is able to experience the character’s descent along with her. Plath thus

creates a character who embodies certain qualities of a “mad woman”, but who nevertheless

remains sympathetic and human-like in the eyes of the reader. In creating such a character, Plath

forces the reader to question the very nature of madness in a seemingly dehumanizing society,

which, in turn, demonstrates the fine line that separates madness from sanity.

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Works Cited

Axelrod, Steven. "Sylvia Plath." The Literary Encyclopedia. University of California Riverside,

2003.

Bonds, Diane S. "The Separative Self in Sylvia Plathâ€™s The Bell Jar." Women's Studies 18

(1990): 49-64.

Foucault, Michel. "What is an Author." The Foucault Reader: An Introduction to Foucault's

Thought. By Paul Rabinow. Pantheon Books, 1984.

Gill, Jo, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Sylvia Plath. New York: Cambridge UP, 2006.

"An Interview with Ted Hughes." Paris Review 1995.

Kukil, Karen V., ed. The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. New York: Vintage Books, 2000.

Martin, Wendy. "'God's Lioness' - Sylvia Plath, Her Prose and Poetry." Women's Studies 1

(1973): 191-98.

Perloff, Marjorie G. "'A Ritual for Being Born Twice': Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar." Contemporary

Literature 13 (1972): 507-22.

Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. London: Faber and Faber Limited, 2005.

Uroff, M. D. "Sylvia Plath and Confessional Poetry: A Reconsideration." Iowa Review 8 (1977):

104-15.

Wagner, Linda W. "Plath's The Bell Jar as Female 'Bildungsroman'" Womenâ€™s Studies: An

Interdisciplinary Journal 12 (1986): 55-68.

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