The Bell Jar (SparkNotes Literature Guide)
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The Bell Jar (SparkNotes Literature Guide) - SparkNotes
The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath
© 2003, 2007 by Spark Publishing
This Spark Publishing edition 2014 by SparkNotes LLC, an Affiliate of Barnes & Noble
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.
Sparknotes is a registered trademark of SparkNotes LLC
Spark Publishing
A Division of Barnes & Noble
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New York, NY 10011
www.sparknotes.com /
ISBN-13: 978-1-4114-7410-9
Please submit changes or report errors to www.sparknotes.com/.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Context
Plot Overview
Character List
Analysis of Major Characters
Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Chapters 1-2
Chapters 3-4
Chapters 5-6
Chapters 7-8
Chapters 9-10
Chapters 11-12
Chapters 13-14
Chapters 15-16
Chapters 17-18
Chapters 19-20
Important Quotations Explained
Key Facts
Study Questions and Essay Topics
Review & Resources
Context
T
he 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 grandparents to Wellesley, an inland suburb of Boston. Plath excelled in school and developed a strong interest in writing and drawing. In
1950
, she won a scholarship to attend Smith College, where she majored in English. The Bell Jar recounts, in slightly fictionalized form, the events of the summer and autumn after Plath’s junior year. Like Esther, the protagonist of The Bell Jar, Plath was invited to serve as guest editor for a woman’s magazine in New York. After returning to Wellesley for the remainder of the summer, she had a nervous breakdown and attempted suicide.
Plath went on to complete a highly successful college career. She won the prestigious Fulbright scholarship to study at Cambridge University in England, where she met the English poet Ted Hughes. They married in
1956
, and after a brief stint in the United States, where Plath taught at Smith, they moved back to England in
1959
. Plath gave birth to her first child, Freda, the following year. The same year, she published The Colossus, her first volume of poetry. Her second child, Nicholas, was born in
1962
. Hughes and Plath separated shortly afterward; her instability and his affair with another woman had placed great strain on their marriage. Plath and her children moved to a flat in London, where she continued to write poetry. The poems she wrote at this time were later published in a collection titled Ariel (
1965
). In February
1963
, she gassed herself in her kitchen, ending her life at the age of thirty-one.
Plath most likely wrote a first draft of The Bell Jar in the late
1950
s. In
1961
she received a fellowship that allowed her to complete the novel. The Bell Jar was published in London in January
1963
under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. Plath chose to publish the work under a pseudonym in order to protect the people she portrayed in the novel, and because she was uncertain of the novel’s literary merit. The novel appeared posthumously in England under her own name in
1966
, and in America, over the objections of her mother, in
1971
. The Bell Jar has received moderate critical acclaim, and has long been valued not only as a glimpse into the psyche of a major poet, but as a witty and harrowing American coming-of-age story. Plath is primarily known not as a novelist, but as an outstanding poet. Ariel cemented her reputation as a great artist. Her other volumes of poetry, published posthumously, include Crossing the Water (
1971
), Winter Trees (
1971
), and The Collected Poems (
1981
), which won the Pulitzer Prize.
Sylvia Plath’s literary persona has always provoked extreme reactions. Onlookers tend to mythologize Plath either as a feminist martyr or a tragic heroine. The feminist martyr version of her life holds that Plath was driven over the edge by her misogynist husband, and sacrificed on the altar of pre-feminist, repressive
1950
s America. The tragic heroine version of her life casts Plath as a talented but doomed young woman, unable to deal with the pressures of society because of her debilitating mental illness. Although neither myth presents a wholly accurate picture, truth exists in both. The Bell Jar does not label its protagonist’s life as either martyred or heroic. Plath does not attribute Esther’s instability to men, society, or Esther herself, although she does criticize all three. Rather, she blames mental illness, which she characterizes as a mysterious and horrific disease.
Plot Overview
E
sther Greenwood, a college student
from Massachusetts, travels to New York to work on a magazine for a month as a guest editor. She works for Jay Cee, a sympathetic but demanding woman. Esther and eleven other college girls live in a women’s hotel. The sponsors of their trip wine and dine them and shower them with presents. Esther knows she should be having the time of her life, but she feels deadened. The execution of the Rosenbergs worries her, and she can embrace neither the rebellious attitude of her friend Doreen nor the perky conformism of her friend Betsy. Esther and the other girls suffer food poisoning after a fancy banquet. Esther attempts to lose her virginity with a UN interpreter, but he seems uninterested. She questions her abilities and worries about what she will do after college. On her last night in the city, she goes on a disastrous blind date with a man named Marco, who tries to rape her.
Esther wonders if she should marry and live a conventional domestic life, or