The Jar

I want to explore the object of The Bell Jar’s title. Until Esther explicitly mentions it in the story I hadn’t thought about the imagery of a literal bell jar, assuming it to be an abstract reference or something that would get tied in in the last line of the novel. However, it turns out to be a really meaningful metaphor for what Esther, and by extension Sylvia Plath, are going through. 

So what does the bell jar really represent? Merriam-Webster defines it as “a bell-shaped usually glass vessel designed to cover objects or to contain gases or a vacuum.” The words “cover” and “contain” seem to lend themselves to what Esther is going through; both invoke a sense of separation. She certainly feels isolated, sometimes literally like a specimen, being observed instead of included, especially around psychologists and in mental hospitals. In these medical settings it is easy to see how Esther begins to feel more like an experiment than a person. There is a gaping distance she perceives between herself and those interacting with her (similar to a glass enclosure). Circling back to the question I posed initially, the bell jar is this inability to reach out or be reached - it represents this distance between the person suffering and the world around them. For Esther it is mental illness, seeming like an intense depression. She states that  “To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream,” illustrating how the person in the bell jar is rendered utterly alone (237).

Esther’s discussion of others’ bell jars is also interesting. In the above quote on page 237, she acknowledges that bell jars exist around other people too with the ambiguous phrase “the person”. It seems like with distance from everything that happened she realized her experiences weren’t as uncommon as she had thought, and I think that coming to terms with the bell jar's existence is part of what allowed her to grow through her breakdown. At the end of the novel she asks “How did I know that someday–at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere–the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn’t descend again?” (241). To be sure, the bell jar may descend again. However, I think/hope that recognition of it and its effects will help her keep moving forward. It feels significant that she can point to the ”stifling distortions” she experienced, and having undergone everything she went through, she is hopefully better equipped now to avoid or survive another breakdown. 

Lastly, I enjoyed her acknowledgment of other types of bell jars. As the story evolves, Esther starts seeing that people around her are all in their own jars, applying the metaphor to a wider range of experiences. Talking about the girls she would go back to at college, as well as the ones in Belsize, she says “Those girls, too, sat under bell jars of a sort,” (237). For the girls in college, the bell jar can place them in a spotlight, constantly being evaluated and observed for their accolades and potential. And in the sense that their views are distorted, it’s easy to lose track of what is real and to start to focus on scholarships, grades, awards, etc. exclusively (as we see Esther do).

Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. Harper Perennial, 2005.