Analysis Of Esther By Sylvia Plath

Esther wanted to get away from the real world because she considers herself a failure. She reminds herself while in a negative phase that “[she]’ll never get anywhere like that” (Plath 146). Her inward personality creates this negative view of herself, which is another sign of suicidal tendencies (Lester). She does not feel worthy. Once, she calls herself “a dull cart horse” (Plath 32). She criticized her writing by reminding herself that her professor called it “factitious” (Plath 147) even though she won a scholarship to a college and won a writing contest that a magazine held (COSPL). When in a rough time while living with her mother, she thinks to herself that “the stupidest person at [her] mother’s college knew more than [she] did” (Plath 125). She constantly thought of herself as a “dreadfully inadequate” (Plath 77). Esther’s solitary personality was the most evident when she stayed in the hospital. When her doctor announced that she’d be having no more visitors, instead of being upset she thought it was “wonderful”(201). She thought that “if they left [her] alone [she] might get some peace”(202). At this point, Esther seems more annoyed than anything else. She seems happiest in her “cocoon”(209), an image she tells of reclusion and introspection. This isolation is key to Esther’s character, as when she was isolated is when the most disturbing, emotional events in the novel occur. Since Esther had so much inwardness, she can very easily be applied to many theories on or relating to suicide. One of which, Schneidman’s theory of suicide, is notably relevant to Esther because of its mention of “eternal sleep” and “contradictory feelings, desires, and attitudes”(Lester), among many others. As stated before in relation to Esther’s inwardness, her use of sleep and suicide were used interchangeably in some parts of the novel, like when she tried to kill herself in the cellar. It was used to escape reality, among many other ways, such as creating a fantasy as a distraction. Esther is full of contradictory feelings. She knows this, as she tells Buddy “[i]f neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at once…then I’m neurotic as hell” (Plath 94). She often plays with this when thinking about her future. At one point, she wants to finish her thesis for her honors program, then seemingly out of nowhere she wants to drop the honors course altogether and go to her mother’s community college. She then realizes that those courses were just as difficult as the ones she takes and her courses were less restricting, so Esther decides to settle on being a waitress only to decide she did not want to do that either (Plath 124-125). She often times would think all these things but never actually go through with them. Esther constantly wants different things, and often confuses the reader with her new wants and old desires. Again, with her friend Joan, Esther seems to go back and forth between loving her and hating her. “In spite of the creepy feeling, and…[her] old, ingrained dislike, Joan fascinated [her]” (Plath 219). To the reader, this makes Esther seem like a bad friend, but truly it exemplifies how contradictory Esther is. Esther and Joan are always together, even though Esther seems to hate her. She reveals herself to …show more content…
Sylvia Plath took her own life in 1963 when she turned on the gas jets of her home’s oven and suffocated herself. Plath’s novel is a piece of lost history; many women never got to share their stories because their mental illnesses were taboo. Even though in Plath’s writing “her subject is never really more than her own illness” (Whittington-Egan), this novel helped women everywhere by allowing others “to learn about suicidality (sic) from a study of the writings and lives of women such as Plath” (Gerisch). Thanks to Sylvia Plath and others like her, representation of women is less of a problem in today’s society. The Bell Jar, whether Plath realized it would or not, crossed many social boundaries that would continue to affect the greater good in the future. Plath’s personal testimony within the novel and her representation as a woman with mental illnesses had a much larger reach than what anyone could have ever