Reading 1001 discussion

Review thread: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Questions from Reading Group Guides.

1. What factors, components, and stages of Esther Greenwood's descent into depression and madness are specified? How inevitable is that descent?

2. In a letter while at college, Plath wrote that "I've gone around for most of my life as in the rarefied atmosphere under a bell jar." Is this the primary meaning of the novel's titular bell jar? What other meanings does "the bell jar" have?

3. What terms does Esther use to describe herself? How does she compare or contrast herself with Doreen and others in New York City, or with Joan and other patients in the hospital?

4. What instances and images of distortion occur in the novel? What are their contexts and significance? Does Esther achieve a clear, undistorted view of herself?

5. Are Esther's attitudes toward men, sex, and marriage peculiar to herself? What role do her attitudes play in her breakdown? What are we told about her society's expectations regarding men and women, sexuality, and relationships? Have those expectations changed since that time?

6. Esther more than once admits to feelings of inadequacy. Is Esther's sense of her own inadequacies consistent with reality? Against what standards does she judge herself?

7. With what specific setting, event, and person is Esther's first thought of suicide associated? Why? In what circumstances do subsequent thoughts and plans concerning suicide occur?

8. In addition to Deer Island Prison, what other images and conditions of physical and emotional imprisonment, enclosure, confinement, and punishment are presented?

9. What are the primary relationships in Esther's life? Is she consistent in her behavior and attitudes within these relationships?

10. Esther bluntly tells Doctor Nolan that she hates her mother. What is Mrs. Greenwood's role in Esther's life and in the novel? Is Esther just in her presentation of and attitude toward her mother?

1. What factors, components, and stages of Esther Greenwood’s descent into depression and madness are specified? How inevitable is that descent?
One factor is her lack of direction or her inability to choose a purpose in life. The options for women are rather narrow and none of them completely appeal to her. She feels pressured to become a wife and mother, but that idea disgusts her at times (as when she sees the baby born at the hospital with Buddy). She wants to be a poet but seems unwilling to break from society’s expectations completely. She is also hesitant to take certain risks because of her financial constraints; unlike the wealthy women in her summer program, who travel abroad and can experiment with different careers, Esther has no financial support. When she has specific goals, such as getting good grades in a class or earning scholarships, she achieves them. With graduation looming, she has no longer has these kinds of goals and is set adrift. The confrontation with Marco combined with the rejection from the writing program seems to push her over the edge.

Esther obviously struggles with mental illness, whether it is a chemical imbalance, or trauma caused by her father’s death. Given the limited options available for women at the time AND the lack of understanding of mental health, it does seem almost inevitable that she would attempt suicide.

2. In a letter while at college, Plath wrote that “I’ve gone around for most of my life as in the rarefied atmosphere under a bell jar.” Is this the primary meaning of the novel’s titular bell jar? What other meanings does “the bell jar” have?
A bell jar is used to cover delicate objects, and Esther (despite her family’s poverty) has been protected for most of her life. She is rather naïve, e.g., drinking from a finger bowl at a fancy luncheon and not knowing how much to tip, not to mention being a virgin and having some old-fashioned notions about sex and procreation. With college over, she will emerge from her current bell jar and will not have a new one to replace it, i.e., marriage and motherhood OR a lucrative career. However, in the book, the bell jar is a symbol of her mental illness when Esther feels that no matter where she goes or what she does, she will be “sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in [her] own sour air.”

3. What terms does Esther use to describe herself? How does she compare or contrast herself with Doreen and others in New York City, or with Joan and other patients in the hospital?
At first, she admires Doreen, but she also feels inferior to her and to some of the other New York girls because of her working-class background. She is also quite jealous of their opportunities – as discussed above, their wealth cushions them from the need to marry or the pressure to pick a lucrative career. She holds herself apart from the other patients. She observes some of them in an almost clinical fashion, like the woman who never speaks. But she also feels inferior to some of them, like the women who are already at Belsize when she moves to that facility ("Bell Size", btw... a very appropriate name).

4. What instances and images of distortion occur in the novel? What are their contexts and significance? Does Esther achieve a clear, undistorted view of herself?
There are many instances where she sees herself in a mirror and doesn’t recognize herself; the first time is, I believe, when she returns to the hotel late at night and sees a “smudgy-eyed Chinese woman” reflected in the elevator mirror before recognizing herself. Later, in a similar scene, she sees herself as an “Indian.” Finally, after her suicide attempt, she sees herself in the mirror with a swollen face and shaved head.

5. Are Esther’s attitudes toward men, sex, and marriage peculiar to herself? What role do her attitudes play in her breakdown? What are we told about her society’s expectations regarding men and women, sexuality, and relationships? Have those expectations changed since that time?
Esther struggles with society’s expectations and morality regarding sex, especially the sexual double standard. She is offended that Buddy slept with another woman and wants to sleep with someone to get revenge. At the same time, she still buys into the idea of purity and is terrified of getting pregnant, which she thinks is almost unavoidable due to a pamphlet her mother gave her.

6. Esther more than once admits to feelings of inadequacy. Is Esther’s sense of her own inadequacies consistent with reality? Against what standards does she judge herself?
She measures herself against wealthy and successful people, such as the other summer interns, the women from her college, the interpreters at the United Nations. Esther believes that if she can get good grades and scholarships, she will level the playing field, despite her poverty and lack of worldly experience. As mentioned above, when those objective standards are removed, she fears she will no longer have a way of proving herself as intelligent and accomplished.

7. With what specific setting, event, and person is Esther’s first thought of suicide associated? Why? In what circumstances do subsequent thoughts and plans concerning suicide occur?
It is the skiing incident, I believe. She mentions being surprised that the thought came to her without any emotion. As discussed above, the real mental breakdown seems to occur after she leaves New York and returns home, directionless and more than a little bit traumatized by her encounter with Marco.

8. In addition to Deer Island Prison, what other images and conditions of physical and emotional imprisonment, enclosure, confinement, and punishment are presented?
The scholarship winners are all confined in a safe hotel for women and their days and evenings are planned for them. The asylum is an obvious place of both confinement and punishment, e.g., receiving electric shock therapy or losing privileges if one does not show signs of improvement.

9. What are the primary relationships in Esther’s life? Is she consistent in her behavior and attitudes within these relationships?
Her mother and brother are the most significant living relatives. We don’t find out much about the brother (see below for discussion of mother). She has only fond memories of her father and her grandparents. Doreen is the first significant friendship; Esther admires her wit and the way she sets herself apart from the rest of the summer interns. Later she is disgusted by the way Doreen behaves with Lenny and wants to distance herself, believing she is more like the more conventional Betsy. She dislikes Joan at first but then she becomes a significant friend, if only because they are going through the same experience.

10. Esther bluntly tells Doctor Nolan that she hates her mother. What is Mrs. Greenwood’s role in Esther’s life and in the novel? Is Esther just in her presentation of and attitude toward her mother?
Esther idealizes her father who died when she was quite young and, perhaps, blames her mother for being too pragmatic, for pressuring her to learn practical skills like shorthand. But then, her mother had to work to support two children after her husband’s death, and she likely wants Esther to have a more secure and stable future. Her mother comes off a bit cold and uncommunicative, having never discussed her husband’s death with the children. But she also worries a great deal about Esther and spends a lot of time and money getting her the best care.

1. What factors, components, and stages of Esther Greenwood's descent into depression and madness are specified? How inevitable is that descent?

There are many forces that contribute to Esther's descent including the stress of being a scholarship student with high expectations placed on her, the stress of poverty, the stress of a mother with little understanding of what was happening to her daughter. The larger societal forces such as the constrictions and assumptions about what a woman of that era could and could not do also leaned heavily on Esther. Buddy made her feel betrayed and Marco was out and out violent and would trigger a reaction in anyone. However, the reader is also lead to believe that there were internal drivers that impacted Esther beyond the situational ones.


2. In a letter while at college, Plath wrote that "I've gone around for most of my life as in the rarefied atmosphere under a bell jar." Is this the primary meaning of the novel's titular bell jar? What other meanings does "the bell jar" have?

In a scientific setting, a bell jar is used to protect something such as a vacuum or an experiment that needs to be done in a specific environment. In this book, we are given a view of a bell jar as something that is suffocating and constraining. When in the bell jar, Esther, feels unable to connect to herself, or her former self.

3. What terms does Esther use to describe herself? How does she compare or contrast herself with Doreen and others in New York City, or with Joan and other patients in the hospital?

Generally speaking, Esther is naive and vulnerable compared to Doreen and she sees Joan almost as someone she is competing with to get out the door first. Esther, from the beginning, is confused about how to act under many circumstances and has difficulty connecting to others in an authentic way but she is not appreciably different than any other provincial and poor girl who finds herself in a big corporate environment in a large urban setting. Even when she is in recovery, she sees herself as a patchwork and not a whole.

4. What instances and images of distortion occur in the novel? What are their contexts and significance? Does Esther achieve a clear, undistorted view of herself?

Does anyone ever get a clear, undistorted view of themselves? Esther does lose touch with many aspects of reality. Her not changing her clothes because she would just have to change them again was a typical example. There is reason behind the argument and I have used the same reasoning when it comes to doing the dishes, but it displays a lack of understanding of how the world works. The book ends on an ambiguous note in which it is not clear exactly how healthy Esther may remain.

5. Are Esther's attitudes toward men, sex, and marriage peculiar to herself? What role do her attitudes play in her breakdown? What are we told about her society's expectations regarding men and women, sexuality, and relationships? Have those expectations changed since that time?

Esther thought she had to save herself and remain a virgin until marriage, based on her upbringing and societal expectations of that time. However, she didn't want to marry so what was she saving herself for. Also Buddy had no such expectations placed on him. This confusion did play a part in her breakdown as she could not reconcile these conflicting aspects of male and female relationships.
Many sexual expectations have changed but the old ones linger on with added dimensions.

6. Esther more than once admits to feelings of inadequacy. Is Esther's sense of her own inadequacies consistent with reality? Against what standards does she judge herself?

As I mentioned above, Esther is poor, naive and unsophisticated and it causes her to feel out of place in New York. As a college aged person with few life experiences, she feels less than many of the people around her who have money, success or work at the UN. However, she is a scholarship student with great grades and is able to win very competitive contests. She is clearly quite capable on many levels. However, she begins to lose herself when she can not align the two view points, and then when she does not get into the writer's program she becomes very lost, as suddenly she is not even a person who "wins contests" or is perceived to be a budding writer.

7. With what specific setting, event, and person is Esther's first thought of suicide associated? Why? In what circumstances do subsequent thoughts and plans concerning suicide occur?

Esther gets a bit obsessed with suicide and I believe the first mention is when she is fascinated with a man that jumps out a window that is seven stories high. She takes note that it is important to not jump out a window that is too low because you could disable yourself instead of kill yourself. Why she would need to take note of that is the readers first glimpse of where we are going.

8. In addition to Deer Island Prison, what other images and conditions of physical and emotional imprisonment, enclosure, confinement, and punishment are presented?

Esther is often wrapped up in a blanket, or other cocoon like garment. She tends to hide in corners. She persists in staying in bed when she is starting her long descent. In her suicide attempt she literally crawls into a hole and covers herself up.

9. What are the primary relationships in Esther's life? Is she consistent in her behavior and attitudes within these relationships?

Esther misses her father, a man she lost when she was 9 years old and never really got a chance to mourn. She has a difficult relationship with her mother as her mother can not understand her behavior and blames it on Esther's acting up rather than on a disease. Her mother clearly loves her daughter, she is just not able to comprehend what is happening. Esther at times really hates her mother. She also goes from loving Buddy to really disliking him to being indifferent. Her relationships with Doreen and other friends tends to disappear over time.

10. Esther bluntly tells Doctor Nolan that she hates her mother. What is Mrs. Greenwood's role in Esther's life and in the novel? Is Esther just in her presentation of and attitude toward her mother?

As I answered in #9, her mother can not understand what is happening to Esther but Esther also doesn't know what is happening to Esther. I believe that Esther sees her mother as the central constraining force in her life. Her mother wants her to learn short hand rather than be a writer and the fact that her mother can not see the potential for a life that Esther needs is enough to make Esther hate her.

1. Esther is constrained by the expectation that she should "settle down" ie marry and have children, when she is ambitious to be a published writer. Her academic success also provides a stressful factor, despite it leading to an exciting opportunity in New York, she finds her occupation without purpose. She struggles with her sense of self, she feels isolated from other people and becomes depressed. Her relationships with men are unhappy and contribute to her feelings of alienation. The rejection from a writing programme, her witnessing someone undergoing shock treatment and her own health treatments increase her sense of despair. She can't sleep. She thinks about suicide. Then she attempts it. But is this inevitable? There is a hint of hope at the end, but knowing what happened to the author overshadows any optimism.
2. The bell jar in a science lab is a protective covering to keep out extraneous factors. Plath wrote about feeling that she was trapped in a bell jar, which is interpreted as a container preventing her from interacting normally with the world. So it symbolises societal pressures. But it might also mean that she feels trapped in a situation where she is being watched and evaluated by society. And thirdly the bell jar is a metaphor for her mental struggles which keep her constrained.
5. I don't think her attitudes are peculiar. I think this is why I found the novel underwhelming when I first read it. I think most women found the double standard infuriating and navigated their first sexual experimentations with doubt and ambiguity. especially before the pill was available. I certainly hope that attitudes have changed!
6. Esther is always comparing herself to others who are more successful academically, more attractive, or more attuned to society's expectations. Her perfectionism means she judges herself harshly and somewhat unrealistically, which leads to depression when she feels unable to conform.
7. Marco's attempted rape is when Esther first thinks of suicide. It accenuates her feelings of worthessness. When she returns home she feels that life is confined and boring and suicidal thoughts return. Her rejection from the writing programme makes her think she has nothing left to live for and shock therapy makes her feel helpless. I was immersed in the writings of Janet Frame when I first read The Bell Jar, which is probably why I had little patience with Esther.
10. Esther's attitude to her mother is what I remember most about reading this book for the first time. I thought she was unjustified in her criticism of her mother. My mother, too, encouraged me to be a shorthand typist, and actively prevented me from studying medicine which was what I wanted to do. But on re-reading this book now, I can see that Esther's mother did not understand her mental illness and her interventions made things worse.