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 larger societal issues and Esther's personal life problems are sometimes difficult to distinguish, all blending together to create the bell jar that she finds herself trapped in. Esther is not imprisoned by society more than any other woman, but it is also disingenuous to say that her mental health issues are not at all related to the things that she struggles with because of her gender. 

    This creates a really interesting and complicated mixture, for me at least. Esther is clinically depressed. She has an illness and needs treatment in order to get better so that she can continue her life. But especially considering that the first ten chapters of this book, 113 pages or roughly 45% of this book's entire content are dedicated to the events leading up to Esther's eventual breakdown, her mental illness is not the only focus. Esther's time in the asylum and the events preceding it when she is in the suburbs definitely strike me as the part of this book that sticks with people, but a solid portion of it was dedicated to laying out Esther's world and what lead her to exactly where she is. This includes of course the many vignettes that lay out what Esther views to be problems with the world, although she often pares them down to the faults or the hypocrisy of a single person, as she does with Buddy. 

    Sylvia Plath, through Esther Greenwood, is not trying to represent what it is to be a woman in America, or what it is to be a woman in academics, or what it is to be mentally ill, or even what it is to be a mentally ill American woman in academics. Esther Greenwood's story, the things that lead to her breakdown, how she handles it, the way that she is treated, the way that she treats others, and the way she thinks about everything from the world to herself, is unique to her, and that is what I find so interesting about it. 

   The biographical note at the end quotes Plath as saying, "I've tried to picture my world and the people in it as seen through the distorting lens of a bell jar" and her mother as saying that, "she became...frightened when, at the time of publication, the book was widely read and showed signs of becoming a success" (14). Most coming-of-age narratives do focus on a single character and their personal struggles which of course in many cases are unique to their life. However, I often feel like there is some sort of universal essence of coming-of-age that these books, movies, television shows, or whatever they may be are trying to access and project to the audience, and The Bell Jar just isn't. This the world view and observations of one person occupying a very specific place in society, experiencing a blend of sexism, the pressure to grow up, the pressure to compete, trauma, and mental illness that totally shapes her experiences, but they are still uniquely her own, individual and personal, and that feels really different in this kind of story.