KHADIJA BURKI KHAS124 - SPRING 2021– FINAL PAPER INSTRUCTOR: DR. YÜCE AYDOĞAN 06.2021

The Bell Jar of Loneliness

All great and precious things are lonely. ― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates… despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter – they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. ― , The Journals of Sylvia Plath

Loneliness has always been a part of human existence, being idiosyncratic to each individual. Loneliness holds power to keep a person in the shackles of feeling alone despite being in a room full of people, feeling unwanted, negative feelings arising from self-doubt and self-worth, and inability to touch others on a deeper level. It can be linked to depression, isolation, serious illnesses, substance abuse, a shift to a novel life, or the death of a loved one. In extreme and long-term cases, it can also lead to chronic loneliness. This paper examines the novel The Bell

Jar by Sylvia Plath in terms of the emotion of loneliness. This novel follows a lonely and disjointed journey of the protagonist going through adolescence, signifying how powerful loneliness can be as it can emerge into depression and life- altering circumstances.

Regardless of loneliness being familiar, it in fact, is a modern idea. It did not exist in the 18th century due to the language of the phenomenon being alive much later. The concept of “Oneliness” existed, meaning being alone but was not connected

1 to any emotional feelings (Alberti, 2019, pp. 17-39). In the Georgian era, many believed solitude was destructive to an individual’s physical and mental health. In contrast, the others thought it was imperative to stay sane. The term “solitude” is no stranger to philosophy and literature. It was often illustrated as a rite of passage, using the time alone to ponder and form wise reflections of the world. The modern era, specifically with urbanization and globalization, created a distinct detachment we recognize as loneliness. The adoption of loneliness from oneliness became more concentrated as it got examined in psychiatry and psychology, emphasizing the pathology of solitude. Before the 1960s, loneliness was considered as a social problem and now in the 21st century, it has become an “epidemic” as expressed by

Alberti (p. 17). Loneliness crept into the modern language as a manifestation of the anxieties people held about the world and how they fit into it, still being relevant to contemporary society.

The Bell Jar residing in 1953, revolves around a 19-year-old college student named Esther Greenwood. Esther is rewarded with the opportunity to intern as a guest editor for a month for the Ladies’ Day magazine in New York. Cherishing poetry and literature, Esther wholeheartedly accepts and travels to New York from . Esther is showered with grandeur by the trip’s sponsors yet still feels incongruous. She struggles with her identity and purpose feeling as though she is drifting aimlessly. Esther comes across two other interns juxtaposing one another,

Doreen embodying her sexual and rebellious identity, and Betsy who is harmonious with her cheery and chaste existence. During a banquet, the three undergo food poisoning, and a turn of events shows Esther pursues to lose her virginity but is rejected by her interest. She starts overanalyzing herself as incapable of her capabilities, wondering how lost she would be after graduating from college. To give her mind a break, on the last night of her time in the city, she suffers from a tragic

2 blind date with a man who tries to rape her. Experiencing the men and situations the world has to offer, Esther finds herself going back to the thought of her college boyfriend, Buddy Willard who intends to marry Esther once he has recovered from tuberculosis. On a surface level, Buddy seems ideal, being good looking, smart, and motivated. Although she is not very fond of him due to his inability to understand

Esther and pursuing her love to write poetry. She thinks of him as a hypocrite when

Buddy claims to have been seduced and cheats on her whilst critiquing Esther on being more sexually experienced, which in reality was not the case. Knowing she could never marry Buddy; Esther continues on her chase to lose her virginity believing it would help with her self-identity.

Esther receives unpleasant news of her being refused from a writing class she signed up for when she returned home. Therefore, she decides to live with her mother for the summer, begin her senior thesis, and make amorphous plans to write her novel. She becomes incredibly despondent as her mind is unable to escape the events that occurred in New York. All the emotions of self-doubt, not having elaborate plans, being alone and mistreated come rushing back to her, eventually making her incapable of doing anything, whether working, writing, or even sleeping and showering. Sliding into depression, she is taken to a psychiatrist who determines she requires an electric shock treatment. After each inhumane treatment, Esther’s condition only deteriorates. She tries various suicide attempts.

Her unsuccessful attempts cause her to take an abundance of sleeping pills. After regaining consciousness, Esther realizes she is in a mental hospital where her depressive state does not improve. Ultimately, she is moved to a private hospital where improvements are made with a better-administrated therapy process. Esther also befriends a patient, Joan as they both held similar experiences. When being on a night pass, Esther loses her virginity which she views as a breakthrough. Her suicidal

3 thoughts come to a hold when Joan commits suicide. The novel ends on an uncertain note as Esther is to be interviewed by an examination board who would determine if she were fit to leave and go back to her “normal” life. Esther presumes she holds a steady grip on her sanity but remains fearful of the bell jar of insanity holding her captive again.

The Bell Jar reflects on the loneliness and depression of a vast audience and heavily correlates to the life of its author, Sylvia Plath. Plath was diagnosed with depression and committed suicide in 1963, The Bell Jar being her last publication.

The book highlights the complexity and outcomes loneliness can have. During the beginning of the novel, Esther is portrayed to be a normal individual working towards her passion of writing. However, as the story prolongs, we know how

Esther’s loneliness plays a role in her thinking and decision-making, all of which could be spoken of Plath. Loneliness was evident in her writings and letters along with themes of identity and psychological health being communicated; “And there’s the fallacy of existence: the idea that one could be happy forever and age with a given situation or series of accomplishments.” Her writings show her attempts at self- fashioning—how she presented herself and how she desired to be perceived. Plath’s loneliness kept transforming and evolving based on the demands of society upon her and her literary aspirations. Plath’s image of being a stereotyped “tortured artist” is synchronous with Virgina Woolf. Plath admired Woolf to a point she tried committing suicide the same way Woolf did. Both are considered as artists crafting their creations out of suffering. Perhaps, this could be a reason Plath felt the need to uncover her own identity (Alberti, 2019, p. 42). Plath has written how she felt like a fish out of water being a lonely child who tried diligently to make friends in her letters. She was not outspoken and spent her time writing poetry and pieces for magazines and newspapers. Loneliness for Plath occupied much of her life whether it

4 was in a hostile relationship with her mother, her college experiences and not feeling as if she belonged, her relationships and need to find the “perfect one”, obstacles in her profession and later on in her life, loneliness occupied her marriage, divorce and motherhood (Alberti, pp. 43-44).

“Fear about loneliness creates loneliness” (Alberti, p. 3). This fear is observable in the obsession Esther holds on losing her virginity. Achieving this would be a milestone and help her understand some mystery she is oblivious to. Esther believes if she can lose her virginity, she would hold an ability that reassures her that she cannot be alone even if it only physically means intimacy. This could be a belief adopted due to her unhealthy relationship with her boyfriend.

Capturing loneliness subjectively and objectively becomes a challenging task. It can be viewed as a cumulation of multiple emotions such as self-pity, shame, anger,

(Alberti, p. 6) all that can be noticed in Esther.

Moreover, social expectations and a restricted role for women contribute to loneliness, a repeating trope in literature entailing women to be submissive and confined only to motherhood (Alberti, p. 46). Esther feels conflicted as she desires to work and write however, she feels pressured into settling down and starting a family.

Her intelligence and achievements are disregarded, and she is only shown respect once being in a relationship with Buddy Willard who is attractive and popular. Buddy expects Esther to give up her dreams and become a mother once they are married. Another reason why losing her virginity becomes so meaningful to

Esther is due to the hypocrisy Buddy represents. He wishes Esther to remain “pure” until they marry when Buddy has already taken part in infidelity. Esther’s first step towards independence would be going after her pursuit. She does not want to

5 conform to confining roles wanting a more fulfilling and free life that only transcends her insanity, detachment, and doubtfulness.

Another theme the novel delves into is Esther’s preoccupation with either remaining “pure” or “impure”. In Esther’s life and society, pureness was a colossal matter. She saw the world being divided into who had lost their virginity and who had not. To her, the division in the world of Republicans and Democrats, Black men and White men or women and men simply had been eclipsed. In the book pure is delineated by Betsy and impure by Doreen. The two women are acting as a symbol for a “type of woman” (Bloom, 2009, p.22). Esther tries to impersonate both to find her sense of identity. Doreen is the polar opposite of Esther, whereas Betsy is the kind Esther is pressurized to be; an ideal wife and mother who has been chaste until her marriage. Esther’s obsessive need to embody the quintessential woman leads to her own identity lost in limbo. In The Bell Jar, it is seen when Esther looks in the elevator mirror to see someone who she does not recognize looking back at her.

While contemplating suicide, Esther looks in the mirror, “the person in the mirror was paralyzed and too stupid to do a thing”. When rushed to the hospital after overdosing on pills, Esther again looks into a mirror. Her own self so torments her she shatters the mirror when she throws it. Throughout the book, intangible faces and disfigured reflections are prevalent symbols as Esther loses herself when she is ironically trying to find herself. The mirrors symbolize her deteriorating mental health and dismal self-image. The shattering of the mirror could symbolize how

Esther was at a point where her self-image is entirely destroyed and stripped away from her. She becomes unfamiliar with herself, descending into loneliness, and eventually loses her voice as well: “The silence depressed me. It wasn’t the silence of silence. It was my own silence” (Bloom, 2009, pp. 24-25).

6 The Bell Jar can be viewed as a case study of Plath as Esther’s character and life are analogous to Plath’s loneliness regarding her life circumstances and perspective of the world and herself. Just like Esther, Plath felt as if she was not good enough despite her literary and academic achievements, unable to find a sense of her identity and belonging, troublesome relationships along with tiptoeing around anything and everything that could descend the bell jar of madness on her. The book and Plath’s life present an exceptional example of the severity and threat loneliness holds.

Bibliography

Alberti, F. B. (2019). A Biography of Loneliness: The History of an Emotion. Oxford

University Press.

Bloom, H. (2009). Bloom’s Guides Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. Infobase Publishing.

BBC History Magazine & BBC History Revealed. (2020, April 16). The invention of

loneliness: why being ‘unhappy alone’ is a surprisingly modern idea.

HistoryExtra. https://www.historyextra.com/period/victorian/invention-

loneliness-mental-health-lonely-history-modern-unhappy-self-isolation-

alone/

Plath, S. (1963). The Bell Jar. Heinemann.

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