Exploring Depression In Sylvia Plaths The Bell Jar - Essay Example

Exploring Depression in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar Essay Introduction The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath is the author’s personal life story that depicts the life of the teenager Esther Greenwood, narrating her depression, suicidal behavior, and institutionalization. This story happens in the districts of Boston and in New York City during the Cold War. An adulthood narrative, The Bell Jar is popular for its portrayal of adolescent anxiety, its depiction of women’s oppression during the 1950s, and its fearless exposure of mental disorder and the medical institution. Esther, forced by her family and the larger society to live up to their standards and rules, suffers a psychological illness and identity crisis (Cooper, 2003). This paper explores depression, particularly female depression, as portrayed in the novel. The story begins in 1953. Esther, employed in a New York fashion magazine Ladies’ Day, realizes it unbearable to be like the usual 1950’s college woman whose education is abandoned in order to fulfill the duties of a wife and a mother, but she also fears moving off on another direction. From a feminist point of view, the story is an evaluation of women’s traditional role in society—wife and mother—and the male-dominated medical institution (Charteris-Black, 2012). Esther thinks she is being forced to take on conflicting traditional female roles, which results in a feeling of confusion, both in identity and psychological state. Incapable of fitting into the loud and glaring New York City or the oppressive environs of Boston, she later on fell into serious depression and suffers a mental breakdown. Depression in The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar intensely demonstrates the episode of depression as an episode of the self, and how important rhetoric is to the wellbeing of the self. Plath’s portrayal of her experience with depression can be interpreted as a story of traditional-female rhetoric and how feminist rhetoric can contradict and wrestle with it. This novel can be interpreted as a depiction of various conflicting rhetoric at the heart of a woman’s self. At the beginning of the story there is a scene that shows the self-suppression of female depression. Esther and Doreen stumble upon several boys, and they decide to go to a bar. It quickly became obvious that the more likeable of the boys were hooked on Doreen, whereas Esther regarded the other boy to be socially miserable. In such uncomfortable social setting Esther utters some declarations about her self-worth (Plath, 1971, 4): I felt myself melting into the shadows like the negative of a person I’d never seen before… I felt myself shrinking to a small black dot against all those red and white rugs and that pine paneling. I felt like a hole in the ground. Esther further proclaims, “The silence depressed me. It wasn’t the silent of silence. It was my own silence” (Plath, 1971, 7). Although she was breathing and conscious and slightly involved in the episode, she had a feeling of alienation from a known and perceptible self. The words she used, like ‘melting’, ‘silence’, ‘a hole’, ‘shrinking’, are the signs of a gradually regressing, suppressed self (Runco, 1998). The social event wherein she is not picked by the most likeable boys arouses a feeling of worthlessness and undesirability. The weakening sense of self experienced in depression started with an incompatibility between emotions and actions. The social demands on Esther to conform to stereotypical expectations of women to the detriment of coherence between behavior and self is the starting point of the depression that she suffers at this time. There was a scene where Esther talks about a “year after year of doubleness and smiles and compromise” (Plath, 1971, 30). This statement suggests Foucault’s theory of strength in the interstices, the burden of “doubleness and smiles and compromise” (Plath, 1971, 30) that traditional-woman rhetoric forces on the interstitial domain, the domain of every woman’s inner self. At this point the root of depression, self-suppression inflicted by prevailing rhetoric, co-exists with a sign of depression, a remote, isolated self. The occurrence of a regressing and loss of self that is linked to depression merges with cultural demands for women to reject the self in order to fulfill the feminine expectations (Gomes, O’Brien, & Nakano, 2009). The story also illustrates Esther’s opinion of her physical being. In talking about her being taller than the socially undesirable guy, she mentions being “gawky and morbid as somebody in a sideshow” (Plath, 1971, 4). It was undesirable to be a woman taller than a man. Eventually, she refers to herself as ‘wrinkled’ and ‘used up’ (Plath, 1971, 7). Her opinion of her physical appearance is obviously inferior. Afterward she does a quite fascinating activity, which appears to be an attempt to regain her body. She plunges into a steamy bath. The soaking of the body in a steamy bath was still capable of functioning as comfort and cure for the early depression of Esther (Cooper, 2003). She regains her lost self once she submerges her body in the hot bath. Apparently, a recovery of her body was a recovery of her own self. After a suicide attempt, Esther is confined to a hospital. When Mrs. Guinea, a rich woman, makes an offer to financially support her treatment, Esther is transferred to a luxurious residential hospital. While she is being transported into the new hospital, she passes through a bridge and plans an escape from the vehicle to throw herself onto the waters under the bridge. Here arises the most heartbreaking revelation in the novel, a revelation that expresses the loss of the inner self in depression, damaged ability to become interested and feel pleasure, and a feeling of inner deterioration or distortion (Plath, 1971, 58): I knew I should be grateful to Mrs. Guinea, only I couldn’t feel a thing. If Mrs. Guinea had given me a ticket to Europe, or a round-the-world cruise, it wouldn’t have made one scrap of difference to me, because wherever I sat—on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok—I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air. The bell jar seemingly symbolizes her feeling of being trapped in her prison of depression with its corrupted, nonsensical, declining, and still air. It appears that being stuck in a bell jar resembles being stuck in rhetoric or, in cognitive therapy perspective, stuck in misleading patterns. While the bends of the bell jar screw and mislead the insight of the person outside it, the depressogen (factors that bring about depression) also distort the perception of the person suffering from depression (Gomes et al., 2009). It becomes also noticeable the outside rhetoric here, which creates a subject perspective where some truths are conceivable. While a bell jar forms a perspective with these truths, rhetoric also build a perspective where some things are viewed as truth. Within the point of view of women suffering from depression, these truths are woman-hating opinions of women as useless, less worthy than men, and so on. The bell jar determines what the person inside it will believe, experience, feel, and see. As the story moves on, Esther comes across Dr. Nolan, a psychiatrist who greatly changes her life. Throughout their affair, Esther regains her self-worth and life. There is even an instance where Esther hesitantly approves being treated with electroconvulsive shock treatment. Soon after, she explains the positive change in her: “All the heat and fear purged itself. I felt surprisingly at peace. The bell jar hung, suspended, a few feet above my head. I was open to the circulating air” (Plath, 1971, 67). But the final mention of the bell jar is unpromising: “How did I know that someday—at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere—the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn’t descend again?” (Plath, 1971, 76). Someone who has experienced depression knows the likelihood of relapse, the helplessness in the face of it, and the anxiety that the stability of relationships, support systems, the future, the self, and the world, could once more be shattered (Gomes et al., 2009). She talks about the lies of the bell jar, the truth that the self, the world, and everything around her, are abnormal, perverted, solidified terrors. As the self of the nineteen-year-old Esther surfaces, the bell jar raises, and she is recreated. However, while Esther is recreated, Plath gives a looming threat in her statement that the bell jar could descend again. Plath describes the breakability and instability of Esther’s self-image in a setting that continues to be resentful of the rise of women’s powerful self-image (Cooper, 2003). The Bell Jar provides a valuable depiction not just of the gloomy experiences of a person suffering from depression, but also an explanation of how discussing rhetoric can work to suppress the self, pushing women into depression, and how resistance or feminist rhetoric works to strengthen the struggle against it. Conclusions Female depression has been poignantly illustrated in The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. It describes how stereotypical view and stereotypical expectations of women contribute to the development of depression in women. However, more importantly, Plath appeared most interested in the limitations that society imposed on women. Esther thinks there are almost no other options for her. She is conflicted and does not know where to place herself in a patriarchal society. She is plagued with the thought that all the things she will do will only serve the interests of men; and, thus, the plunge into depression. References Charteris-Black, J. (2012). Shattering the Bell Jar: Metaphor, Gender, and Depression. Metaphor and Symbol, 27, 199-216. Cooper, B. (2003). Sylvia Plath and the depression continuum. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 96(6), 296-301. Gomes, F., O’Brien, B., & Nakano, A. (2009). Attempted Suicide in Reproductive Age Women. Health Care for Women International, 30, 707-719. Plath, S. (1971). The Bell Jar. Retrieved from http://webdelprofesor.ula.ve/humanidades/cpozzobon/Downloads_files/The_Bell_Jar.pdf. Runco, M. (1998). Suicide and Creativity: The Case of Sylvia Plath. Death Studies, 22, 637-654. Read More