As I type this blog post, my mind is weighed heavily by the book that I have finished. The Bell Jar has been following the story of Esther, who has gone from a woman who felt as if she wasn’t fitting in society into a woman who is on the path of self-destruction.
I found myself having to put down the book and pace around the room, reminding myself that this is a piece of realistic fiction, based on a life that has already passed. I wanted to help the woman. She needed help, and it felt like so few people wanted to help her. Her parents of course, but her friends. They acted as if there was nothing wrong, and they went on with their lives. It made me question how to support Esther? She needs help. What is making the problem worse?
That’s when it hit me. The sad truth of this story. The help that Esther was receiving was NOT helping, sometimes making her condition worse. Throughout the story, we see Esther going in and out of hospitals, both private and public. Going through different therapies, even electro-shock, but in the end, we always find her back ready to take her life. It’s a twisted cycle we see as she moved through her life.
There are a pair of quotes I found in chapter 15 and 20 that best describes how Esther truly feels with her mental illness.
“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” (185).
“To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream” (237).
This is where the title of the book comes into play. A bell jar is used in science to contain an area while they vacuum the air out of it. Hypothetically, you can put an alarm clock in one, vacuum the air from it, and no sound would come from it. The clock is the mental illness of Esther. No matter where she is and what help she gets, she will always be trapped in her mind and will suffer for it. She will always feel alone, and THAT’S where her suicidal urges come from.
This forced me to realize that I wasn’t a part of the authorial audience that Plath was trying to pull in. I am not like the Esther and the other characters of the story who suffer the depression and suicidal thoughts. I am OUTSIDE of the bell jar. The audience that Plath wanted to bring in were people like her and Esther. Individuals who feel trapped and alone, and feel suffocated by being so alone. People who are ‘in the bell jar.’ Maybe as a way to show that they AREN’T alone. There are other people who feel like this and knowing that there are people who understand what the authorial audience is going through might be a comfort.
One could argue that Plath meant for it to be the opposite and have the authorial audience to be the ‘outsiders.’ This could be true, but I have to bring up the characters who are ‘outside’ in the story. People like the Doctors and Esther’s family end up mistreating her, even though this is how we know to help those mentally ill. It could discourage some outsiders to help. Either way, the book has opened the eyes of those outside, while giving comfort to those within at the fact they are NOT alone.
How Writers Read... 
There are several narrator/addressee relationships between Esther and other main characters I’d like to make note of, specifically between Doreen and Buddy. Both of these characters project a role on to Esther, calling her to take that role. Esther is very studious and likes to get her work done on a deadline. She is confronted by Doreen who tells Esther, typing away, “What are you sweating over that for?” and “You know old Jay Cee won’t give a damn if that story’s in tomorrow or Monday.”(pg.5) Doreen is calling or interpolating Esther into playing a different role as an editor, one who isn’t so diligent. From the spectrum of absolute resistance to absolute submission Esther says “I fitted the lid on my typewriter and clicked it shut”, she temporarily takes on the role asked of her in submission (pg.6). Buddy frequently interpellates Esther in the narrative, calling her to do what he wants or thinks. This interpellation is allowed by Esther who fails to voice her opinion or concern in most instances. For example when they go skiing Buddy tells Esther she’s going to try the rope tow. Esther, a beginner, says “But Buddy, I don’t know how to zigzag yet…” but Buddy still makes her do it and Esther reflects “It never occurred to me to say no”(pg.96). Buddy calls Esther to accept his own judgement over her own, Esther resists the role inwardly but submits to it outwardly.
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The image of a bell jar itself offers us many relationships between narrators and audiences. It’s interesting how you say you are outside the bell jar. One would think this is a good place to be, but it’s not. Perhaps it’s better than inside the jar, but you even explain the helplessness you feel from the outside. Of course, as readers we want to demonize all of the people who don’t understand Esther, but isn’t it possible her mom and her doctors and her “friends” all feel helpless too? They’re stuck outside the jar, and she is stuck inside.
Take Joan for example. When I was introduced to her character, I thought she was there making a joke out of the severity of depression and the situations that arise from it. I figured she was treating the asylum like a vacation. It turns out she was worse off than I believed. Joan was in her own jar, and jars are crystal clear, meaning can anyone actually see who is inside and outside the symbolic jar?
I imagine these jars to be airtight and soundproof. Can anybody inside or outside of their respective jars hear anything that’s on the other side? People who are inside are both a narrator and an audience, as are those who are outside. There don’t seem to be an easy way for one party to communicate with another.
I was also thinking about the ideal narrative audience. Mental illness is a unique experience – one’s experience isn’t anything like another’s. We are told that this book is semi-autobiographical, meaning pieces of this story belong to Plath. She was presumably inside the jar, right? Is there even a proper audience who can understand what she’s trying to say? Plath herself might be the only successful narrative audience.
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