Esther's story is really not universal and I kind of like that
The story of The Bell Jar is fundamentally one about mental health and the fairly severe six-month psychological break that Esther experiences during it. Many coming-of-age protagonists suffer mental health issues, Holden Caulfield, for example, definitely had some stuff going on and we theorized that he might be in a mental hospital while telling the story of The Catcher in the Rye . However, the severity of Esther's illness is something that I think is quite rare, in other words, this is not a universalizing coming-of-age narrative. Sylvia Plath is not trying to access some sort of essence of adulthood and convey it to the reader, she is telling the story of one specific person, arguably herself. It is undeniably true that people can relate to Esther Greenwood and her struggles. After all, many of the issues that she struggles to reconcile are larger sociocultural problems that affect many women of her generation, race, and status. It is also true that the lines between