The politics of “The Bell Jar”: the heroine’s madness and her social world.

It could be said of Sylvia Plath’s only novel “The Bell Jar” that it attempts to place responsibility for Esther’s breakdown on the social pressures and conventions of the 1950s, or at least relates the breakdown to the times. Esther’s observations of her social world contribute to her emotional downfall. Chapter Six of the novel does particularly well in describing her restricted and patriarchal social world, and her confusion concerning her role in it.

Esther’s disillusionment with her adult world is portrayed especially well in Chapter Six of the novel. This chapter works much like the rest of the novel does – through the process of juxtaposition. The two main scenes, a birth and the discovery that Buddy is not a virgin, contrast greatly. The first event is not personally connected to Esther, but has an effect on her, and the second event is much more personal and is actually inside Esther’s world, yet her disappointment in both links the two disparate experience...