User:Sullywithsauce/sandbox

Plot
Esther Greenwood is described as a smart, small-town girl from the Boston suburbs and a rising senior at an unnamed women’s college. Her fifteen years of straight A’s have won her many scholarships, and when the novel begins she is spending the summer in New York City with eleven other girls after winning a fashion magazine contest to work for a firm of their talent, with all expenses paid, “and piles and piles of free bonuses”. Esther is a writer for a magazine, writing and editing articles. Esther’s roommate, Doreen is described as ‘amus[ing] and mysterious” and influences Esther to miss deadlines and skip events. One night, Doreen and Esther go out with some men, where Doreen meets Lenny, and eventually spends more time with him. Without Doreen, Esther attends magazine functions with the other girls. At the Ladies’ Day Magazine Luncheon, the crab meat is poisoned with ptomaine, and Esther and the other ten girls fall ill. While she is sick, Doreen, who went out with Lenny instead, nurses her and the other girls back to health. A few days after Esther’s recovery, she gets a call from Constatin, a simultaneous interpreter working for the UN. They were set up by Mrs. Willard, an old family friend. On the date, Esther admires a Russian girl also working as a simultaneous interpreter. Esther begins to think of all the things she is not good at, and concludes that she is inadequate. After sharing a dinner, Esther “decide[s] [she] would let Constantin seduce [her],”. While reflecting on past sexual discussions, deciding that she “ought to go out and sleep with somebody [her]self”, so she accepts when Constantin invites her to his apartment to have drinks, assuming that he would like to seduce her. However on his balcony, he seems disinterested and Esther grows tired, so she tells him that she is going to lie down. He joins her momentarily, but makes no further effort to seduce her; again she feels inadequate, wondering that he might try to have sex with her her if she were different. She falls asleep in his bed, spends the night, and he drives her home the next morning. Esther then reminisces about skiing with Buddy Willard and the breaking of her leg, first blaming it on him, then accepting it as her own fault. Esther spends time with Hilda on the way to a magazine photo shoot, but decides that she doesn’t like her because of remarks she made about the Rosenbergs. As the girls were being photographed holding something that represented what they wanted as an occupation, Esther replies that she wants to be a poet, and is supposed to be photographed holding a rose, but begins to cry before they can take many pictures, and is left alone on the loveseat.

Later on, Doreen arranges for Esther to be accompanied to a party by a Peruvian man named Marco, a friend of Lenny Shepard’s. Marco gives Esther a diamond stickpin, and implies that he would like, in return, “some small service. . . worthy of a diamond”. Esther deems Marco a “woman-hater” and does not enjoy his company. Marco tries to get Esther to dance. She refuses, but he eventually persuades her, and tells her to “pretend [she’s] drowning”. After they dance, they walk to the garden together, near a deserted golf course. Esther asks him who he is in love with, and he explains that he is in love with his first cousin, who is to become a nun. Esther tells him that he will love someone else someday. Marco suddenly knocks Esther to the mud, then, as she attempts to rise, he flings her back once more, then jumps on top of her. With his teeth, he tears her sheath, then calls her a “slut”. Esther kicks him in the leg with her heel, then hits him in the nose, causing him to sit up. She begins to cry and asks for Doreen. Marco goes to look for her evening bag with the diamond in it, and Esther gets a ride back to Manhattan.

Upon arriving back in Massachusetts, Esther’s mother informs her that she did not make the writing course that she had applied to at her university; she had been looking forward to and greatly anticipating it. Now, it seemed, she “had nothing to look forward to”. Esther calls her friend, Jody, who she had made living arrangements with, and tells her replace her. She decides to spend the summer writing a novel, but finds that she is unable to write very much. Esther considers many plans for her summer and beyond, but ends up following none of them.

Esther goes to her aunt’s sister-in-law Teresa, a doctor, to ask for more sleeping pills. Teresa asks why she is having trouble sleeping and prescribes a psychiatrist named Doctor Gordon, described in the novel as “conceited.” Esther “hate[s] him from the minute [she] walk[s] in the door.” The appointment consists of Doctor Gordon asking “what [Esther] thinks is wrong,” Esther telling him about the things she “couldn't do,”and Dr. Gordon asking unrelated questions. After a few more equally unproductive appointments, Doctor Gordon recommends that she go to a hospital where she can go receive shock therapy. She considers running away to Chicago to avoid going, but does not. The hospital is described as “seem[ing] normal,” but Esther is sure that it is “chock full of crazy people." Doctor Gordon gives her shock treatments; Esther’s reaction to it is to feel that “something bent down and took hold of [her] and shook [her] like the end of the world.”  The memories of shock therapy stay with her for the rest of her time in treatment and she feels emptier afterwards.  Doctor Gordon recommends a few more shock treatments, expecting improvement. After not sleeping for twenty-one nights, Esther locks herself in the bathroom and tries to cut her wrists and lay in a warm bath to kill herself.  Esther is described as “paralyzed” when it comes to actually cutting her wrists, and cuts her knee instead.  The next morning, Esther tries to hang herself.  Her obstacle is that the house has “the wrong kind of ceilings.”  A few weeks later, Esther is invited to the beach by her friend Jody, although she suspects her mother called Jody in order to get Esther out of the house. While at the beach, Esther attempts to drown herself, finds that it is difficult, and gives up. Her last attempt is to take a bottle of sleeping pills, go to a small gap behind the oil burner in the cellar, under the breezeway of the house, climb in and swallow the pills. Before long, she faints.

After Esther tries to kill herself, she wakes up in the town hospital. Her brother and her mother are her first visitors, and after her brother asks her how she feels, she responds, “The same.” Esther later asks to see a mirror, even though the nurse says it is a bad idea. Esther doesn’t recognize the girl in the mirror, and breaks the mirror once she realizes the girl is her. As a consequence, Esther is relocated from the small town hospital to the big city hospital. Esther is aggravated with the staff and occasionally lashes out.

Her writing sponsor, Philomena Guinea, hears about her mental health issues, and insists on moving Esther to a luxurious mental hospital in the countryside. Esther gets her own room and meets her new psychiatrist, Doctor Nolan. Doctor Nolan prescribes Esther to insulin and eventually administers shock treatments, which are more effective this time. Esther gradually moves up through the wards of the hospital, eventually ending up in the healthiest ward with her old friend, Joan. Joan shows Esther newspaper articles about herself, explaining that this is how she heard about her and is the reason she tried to commit suicide in New York. Esther’s health begins to improve, and she says that the shock therapy treatments “[suspend] the bell jar a few feet over [her] head. . . [she] was open to the circulating air”. Doctor Nolan fits Esther for a diaphragm, which liberates Esther sexually. Then Joan, whose mental health had paralleled Esther’s for a while, commits suicide. At the end of the novel, Esther has an interview to leave the hospital so she can return to college as a normal student. The novel concludes with Esther walking into the interview.

Characters
Esther Greenwood, the protagonist of the story, is a mentally unstable young adult who develops the idea that she is inadequate while living in New York. She is tormented with the idea and tries to commit suicide, believing that death is freedom after her father died when she was 9.

Joan, an old friend of Esther’s, is mentally unstable and eventually commits suicide after living in the asylum with Esther for a while.

Doctor Nolan is Esther’s doctor at the countryside hospital. She is a slim young woman who manages to connect with Esther more than any other doctor. She also administers shock therapy to Esther and does it correctly, which leads to positive results.

Doctor Gordon is the first doctor Esther sees. He subjects her to traumatic shock treatments that haunt her for the rest of her time in medical care.

Mrs. Greenwood, Esther’s mother, is a woman who only wants the best for Esther, but is not always sure how to go about giving her that.

Buddy Willard is Esther’s former boyfriend from her hometown. Esther adored him until he slept with a waitress who worked at a restaurant with him. He proposes to her at one point, and Esther laughs it off and then argues with him about how unrealistic and hypocritical he is.

Doreen, a rebellious young woman, is Esther’s roommate at the hotel in New York. Esther wants to please Doreen, and spends most of her time with her.

Constatin, a simultaneous interpreter with a foreign accent, got Esther’s phone number from Mrs. Willard. They go on a date together and Esther sleeps the night at his apartment.

Mrs. Willard is Buddy Willard’s mother, a dedicated homemaker, who is determined to set up Buddy and Esther.

Mr. Willard, Buddy Willard’s father, Mrs. Willard’s husband, and a good family friend, he is kind to Esther.

Irwin, a tall but rather ugly young man, is the man to whom Esther loses her virginity, and also causes her to hemorrhage. He is a “very well paid professor of mathematics” and invites Esther to have coffee, which leads to her having sex with him, which leads to Esther having to go to the hospital to have help getting her to stop bleeding.

Jay Cee is Esther’s strict boss who is very intelligent, so “Her plug-ugly look don’t seem to matter” (Plath 6). She is responsible for editing Esther’s work.

Lenny Shepard, a wealthy young man living in New York, invites Doreen and Esther for drinks while they are on their way to a party. Doreen and Lenny start dating, taking Doreen away from Esther more often.

Philomena Guinea, a wealthy elderly lady, is the person who donated the money for Esther’s college scholarship. Esther’s college requires the girls on scholarship to write a letter to their benefactor, thanking them. Philomena invites Esther to have a meal with her. At one point, she was also in an asylum herself, and pays for the “upscale” asylum that Esther stays in.

Marco a Peruvian man and friend of Lenny Shepard, is set up to take Esther to a party.

Betsy, a wealthier girl from the magazine, is a “good” girl from Kansas who Esther strives to be more like, torn between two extremes.

Hilda is another girl from the magazine who makes negative comments about the Rosenburgs, and is looked upon poorly by Esther.

Publication History
Publication History According to Plath’s husband, poet Ted Hughes, Plath began writing the novel in 1961, after publishing her first collection of poetry, The Colossus. The same year, she gave birth to her first daughter, then became pregnant again, but suffered a miscarriage. The following year, her second child, Nicholas Farrar, was born, she separated from Hughes, and she moved to a smaller apartment in London. “But in the spring of 1961 by good luck circumstances cooperated,” Hughes explained, “giving her time and place to work uninterruptedly. Then at top speed and with very little revision from start to finish she wrote The Bell Jar.” Plath was writing the novel under the sponsorship of the Eugene F. Saxton Fellowship, affiliated with publisher Harper & Row, but they were disappointed by the manuscript and withdrew, calling it, “disappointing, juvenile, and overwrought.” Early working titles of the novel included “Diary of a Suicide” and “The Girl in the Mirror.” The novel was first published in 1963 the United Kingdom under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, about a month before Plath’s suicide. Three years later, publisher Faber & Faber published the novel under Plath’s own name. Sylvia Plath’s mother, Aurelia Plath, was concerned about the novel’s status as autobiographical. Mrs. Plath claimed that the protagonist’s mother was portrayed as uncaring, and tried to block publication in the United States to avoid damaging her reputation and the reputations of those who were the basis of other characters in The Bell Jar. Despite her efforts, The Bell Jar was published in the United States in 1971 by Harper & Row ref>. Since its 1963 publication, The Bell Jar has been translated into nearly a dozen languages.