The Bell Jar: the aspects of existentialism and the plight of human experience - Essay Example

?The Bell Jar: a study into the aspects of existentialism and the plight of human experience The fame of the novel, The Bell Jar has often been attributed as being the only novel of the world renowned American poet, Sylvia Plath. The author, Plath, parallels her life experience with the protagonist of the novel, Esther Greenwood. The novel unfolds the author’s mental trauma with that of the protagonist. The novel does not speak any theory; rather it speaks the state of a young lady under mental strain in her exposure to the outside world. Her descent into mental breakdown and the attempts to recover from that form the expressions of basic human nature. The existential elements of a person are also highly attached with the novel, The Bell Jar. The present essay tries to analyze the human and existential elements involved in this novel. The novel is more attached to existentialism than feministic attributes. Wesley Barnes put existentialism as, “Existentialism, then, is the consciousness of a man that he is existing in terms of his own flowing of experience, a flow which he can know, feel, and sense only within himself.”1 So, here in existentialism a person’s individual aspects like despair, agony, disgust, etc., are analyzed. The novel, takes the readers plunge into the personal life of the protagonist Esther (Plath herself) and her movement towards mental breakdown and then the attempts to recuperate from that. Throughout the novel it can be seen that the protagonist Esther plunges into her own experiences. Her relationship with Doreen seems to be a consolation for her mental state but when Doreen meets with Lenny Shepherd, Esther is seen as isolated. The elements of loneliness that prevail in The Bell Jar depict the existential aspects. The protagonist, Esther Greenwood’s life is shown in the plot of the novel. She works as an intern at an editorial in New York City along with other eleven girls. The primary incidents are centered on these eleven girls. Jay Cee, their boss has been seemed as very strict towards Esther. She says, “Jay Cee wanted to teach me something, all the old ladies I ever knew wanted to teach me something, but I suddenly didn’t think they had anything to teach me.”2 Esther attributes the character of Jay Cee to all old women who tried to teach her including her mother. Esther finds only one among the group who can be trusted and it is Doreen, who is her roommate in ‘Amazon’ where they all stay. The activities of Doreen show that she considers only of herself. So when she finds a pair, Lenny, she joins him without minding Esther. She dances with him and indulge in sexual relationship. Esther does not want to join in the dancing party and so she denies the invitation of Frankie to dance with him. She had witnessed the love making between Lenny and Doreen and being disconcerted she came back to their room. In totality, the various aspects of Esther’s life comprise the novel. The inner experience of her existence is often connected with the outer experiences that she gets in the novel. From the very experience of Doreen and Buddy Willard in the life of Esther, she faces setbacks. The feelings of being alone overpower her mind. Having a high degree of aestheticism the feelings play high in the mind of Esther. The pathetic condition of Esther in her physical and mental life tortures her. She was befooled by her boyfriend, Buddy. She believed that he was true to her but soon she discovered that she had intercourse with a waitress many times. Others think that Buddy and Esther are in good terms but the reality is the opposite. His action of being naked makes her no reaction. She wants to breakdown from him but his TB prevents her. She waits for the recovery for the breaking up with him. In the novel she presents herself as a woman having the feelings and expectations. When all these fail she resorts to suicide. The novel is going through the intense emotional aspect of Esther’s personal life. The emotional condition of Esther is often at the brink of a break down. She is swung between the reality and the dreamy world. This aspect of a person’s mental condition is highly associated with the works of existential writings. The personal elements move a person up and down in the life and this is very clearly depicted by the author, who is the counterpart of the protagonist. Sexuality has been seen as one of the prime aspects in The Bell Jar. The persistent sexual elements that happened in the life of the protagonist make other aspects of true human and existential element in the novel. As with the protagonist the writer, Sylvia Plath had severe sexual experiences. The illegal sexual relationships, pregnancy, rape, abortion, and painful experience she received from her husband, Ted Hughes had made her write a novel with high level of autobiographic elements. Esther in the novel speaks, “It might be nice to be pure and then to marry a pure man, but what if he suddenly confessed he wasn’t pure after we were married, the way Buddy Willard had? I couldn’t stand the idea of a woman having to have a single pure life and a man being able to have a double life, one pure and one not.”3 Men want to have virgins to marry and at the same time they don’t remain to be pure. The disparity of this sexual notion between male and female is highly remarked in the novel. In this way the writer was giving justice to her experience in the subject. The realization that Esther received from her boy friend about his sexual relationships with the waitress made her take revenge against being pure. Her request to Constantin to have sex is an explanation for her agitated mind. The readers can see her break down, when Constanin objects the request. The mental flux of Esther often moves up and down against her will. The same day it can be seen that a person named Marco tries to rape her. She escapes from his attempts by punching him in his face. The same night Esther is seen throwing all her dress away at the hotel. She presumes the elements of mental breakdown here. The sexual element is playing a key role when she recovers from the break down. It is here Dr. Nolan, who treats her at the asylum, arranges an intercourse at her request. The sexual relationship becomes a prime biological factor for Esther now. Even the name of person with whom she does the intercourse is not a matter at all. The Negro with whom she had made intercourse on the other hand is a person who understands her. Harold Bloom states that, “In spite of his namelessness, however, the Negro is the one character in the novel who reads Esther accurately.”4 The writer tells that the fact that sexuality, as a human being, is a matter for her also. In a world, governed by men, the female sexuality was not analyzed clearly. All wanted was female body for the sexual pleasures of men. The writer, Plath dared to write about the female sexuality in her novel, and so many other women writers followed the path of Plath. Writers of later period could very well discuss the female sexuality as Plath had elaborated it in her works. So for her what she had elaborated through the character of Esther on sexuality was the expression of her existence and true human experience. Thus sexuality plays a key factor of existentialism and human experience in the novel. Suicide has seen as another element discussed in the novel. The protagonist tries to experiment different methods of suicide. After becoming highly desperate and gloomy she lost her sleep and she wanted high doses of sleeping pills. She once again became under the dominance of her mother which he hated much earlier. In the poem Lady Lazarus says, “Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well.”5 Here too, the protagonist tries to attempt suicide by different methods like hanging, cutting her writs with razors and even thought the possibilities of drowning. Finally Esther overdoses sleeping pills and hides in a basement. The experience of the protagonist is experimented on the life of the writer. Soon after the attempt of Plath, the poem Lady Lazarus was written. The poem assumes Plath as the female version of Lazarus who was resurrected by Jesus Christ after three days of his death. Likewise, Plath was found out and came to life after three days of unconsciousness. Suicide was an experimentation of existential nature of her. Harold Bloom asserts that, “And so the second half of the novel becomes a chronicle of Esther’s education in suicide and her various suicide attempts.”6 Further the writer says that “In her study of suicide, she reads, asks questions, correlates material, chooses according to her own personality.”7 The attempt of suicide is another way out for the protagonist but it was hampered to suffer more at the coming days of her life in different asylums. If the novel is analyzed in terms with existential writing the aspect of suicide can be seen as a major topic. Life in hospitals forms personal sphere of the life of Esther in the novel. When she reaches home she was sent to the psychiatrist and the psychiatrist prescribed shock treatment. This also caused her to commit suicide. She was also seen hospitalized soon after her attempt of suicide. The life in hospital became another torment for the protagonist. She becomes violent and breaks a mirror in order to be shifted from that place. The trauma of Esther has seen as at its worse. The second hospital too became a burden for her. The life in these two hospitals made her plunge into more and more mental breakdown. When she is moved to the private asylum of Dr. Nolan she is seen as getting normalized. It is he who for the first time among the doctors understands the patient. He realizes the violent nature of the patient is against her mother and against the frequent visitors. So under the expert treatment of the doctor, after making her excluded from the visitors and mother, Esther is seen coming back to normal condition. The visit of Buddy does not make any feelings in her. She finds a moderate look towards all. The agitated mind has come to moderate outlook towards the end of the novel. The life that the protagonist spent in hospitals has made her receive everything with a cool mind. The novel ends when Esther tries to come back to the normal position. She moves to realization after a series of experiences. A kind of rebirth prevails in the mind of Esther. The writer, Rita Horvath takes the words of Wagner Martin in her book entitled Never Asking Why Build- Only Asking Which Tools “The metaphor of birth pervades the scene as Esther, dressed in a blood “red wool suit”, is assisted by doctors, whose gaze, compared to a “magical thread”, calls to mind the umbilical code.”8 This marks the progress of the protagonist to view things with a matured outlook. The readers feel the coming back of Esther to life whereas in reality the death of the writer puzzles the readers of this book. As Plath had died one after the publication of this book, this book has to be read as the very personal diary of Plath comprising her human experiences in black and white. Conclusions: The life of the writer, Sylvia Plath and that of the protagonist of the novel, Esther Greenwood are associated very closely. The incidents in the novel are very closely related to the life of Sylvia Plath. The protagonist of the novel carries the elements like melancholy and despair throughout her life. She depicts the intense emotions of feeling alone in her life. It can again be seen that the protagonist is overwhelmed with the things happen in her life. The series of incidents which she thinks as supreme make her plunge into gloominess and melancholic. The use of these two elements in the novel tends a reader to name it a work that concerns the basic human and existential aspects. Often the protagonist shows the excessive state of being alone in a hectic world. The novel is a replica of the life of the writer Sylvia Plath. The only difference between the novel and her lies in the tone of it. Edward Butscher makes out in his book named Sylvia Plath: method and madness about the major difference between the novel and her life. He accuses that Plath had put a revenge tone in the novel on all those persons who supported her either financially and psychologically9. Readers often get confused while reading the passages, whether they are real or fancy. The intermittent emotional flux of the protagonist with the incidents marks as an important part of the novel. It is these emotional aspects which play a considerable role to determine the movements of her life. As the novel is focusing on the self of the protagonist and other characters it can very well be called as a novel of existentialism. What is in the novel is the life of the writer and her experiences as a human. So it is doubtless to say that existentialism and human emotions are the major concerns in the novel. Reference List Barnes, Wesley. The Philosophy and Literature of Existentialism. Barron's Educational Series, 1968. Bloom, Harold. Sylvia Plath's The bell jar. Infobase Publishing, 2009. Butscher, Edward. Sylvia Plath: method and madness. Illustrated edn: IPG, 2003. Horvath, Rita. Never Asking Why Build-Only Asking Which Tools, Akademiai Kiado, 2005. Lazarus, Lady. “Sylvia Plath Forum” sylviaplathforum.com, http://www.sylviaplathforum.com/ll.html Plath, Sylvia. “The Bell Jar” nubuk.com, http://www.nubuk.com/literature/plathbelljar_etext.pdf Read More