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Description edit
Esther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented and successful, but slowly going under — maybe for the last time. In her acclaimed and enduring masterwork, Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that her insanity becomes palpably... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
Summary edit
Esther Greenwood is a young woman who gets a summer internship at a fashionable magazine in New York. Her roommate Doreen is glamorous and clever, and while Esther envies her, a night out with Doreen ends disastrously when Esther's date attempts to sexually assault her.
Esther muses about...
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(warning: may contain spoilers)
Characters/People edit
- Esther Greenwood: The main character of the novel; a mentally unstable young adult with numerous psychological problems.
- Joan Gilling: An old friend of Esther's.
- Doreen: A rebellious young woman; Esther's roommate at the hotel in New York.
- Buddy Willard: Esther's ex-boyfriend.
- Irwin: The man Esther loses her virginity to.
- Jay Cee: Esther's boss at the magazine; responsible for editing Esther's work.
- Betsy: An intern from Kansas; a "goody-goody" "Pollyanna Cowgirl."
- Doctor Nolan: Esther’s psychiatrist at the private mental hospital.
- Marco: Add a description of this character.
- Lenny Shepherd: A wealthy young man who lives in New York.
- Doctor Gordon: The first doctor Esther sees.
- Constantin
- Elly Higginbottom
- Jody
- Deedee
- Miss Norris
- Hilda
- Doctor Quinn
- Frankie
- Valerie
- Mrs. Tomolillo: The woman is in the mental hospital with Esther.
- Mr. Manzi
- Dodo Conway
- Mrs. Bannister
- Eric
- Teresa
- Philomena Guinea: A writer who awards Esther her scholarship to the college.
- Mrs. Mole
- Kennedy
- Mark
- Mrs. Savage
- Libby
- Will
- Loubelle
- Olga
- George Bakewell
- Mrs Ockenden
- Cal
- Mr George Pollucci
- Miss Huey
- Elaine
- Mr Anderson
- Mr Willard
- Gladys
- Aunt Libby
- Mrs Willard
Quotes edit
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“If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. (page 94)”
Esther -
“I wondered why I couldn't go the whole way doing what I should any more. This made me sad and tired. Then I wondered why I couldn't go the whole way doing what I shouldn't, and this made me even sadder and more tired. (page 30)”
Esther (narration) -
“There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends. (page 44)”
Esther (narration) -
“It mightn't make me any happier, but it would be one more little pebble of efficiency among all the other pebbles.”
Esther (narration) -
“It was my first big chance, but here I was, sitting back and letting it run through my fingers like so much water.”
Esther (narration) -
“I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.)”
Esther (narration) -
“I felt myself melting into the shadows like the negative of a person I'd never seen before in my life.”
Esther (narration) -
“I saw the years of my life spaced along a road in the form of telephone poles, threaded together by wires. I counted one, two, three... nineteen telephone poles, and then the wires dangled into space, and try as I would, I couldn't see a single pole beyond the nineteenth.”
Esther (narration) -
“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart.I am, I am, I am.”
Esther (narration) -
“How did I know that someday-- at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere-- the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn't descend again?”
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“There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room. It's like watching Paris from an express caboose heading in the opposite direction--every second the city gets smaller and smaller, only you feel it's really you getting smaller and smaller and lonelier and lonelier, rushing away from all those lights and excitement at about a million miles an hour.”
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“There must be quite a few things a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them.”
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“So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about as numb as a slave in a totalitarian state.”
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“<Chapter 1> By nine in the morning the fake, country-wet freshness that somehow seeped in overnight evaporated like the tale end of a sweet dream.”
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“<Chapter 1> For weeks afterward, the cadavers head - or what there was left of it - floated up behind my eggs and bacon at breakfast and behind the face of Buddy Willard, who was responsible for my seeing it in the first place, and pretty soon I felt as though I were carrying that cadavers head around with me on a string, like some black, noseless balloon stinking of vinegar.”
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“<Chapter 1> All I could think about was...how stupid I'd been to buy all those uncomfortable, expensive clothes, hanging limp as fish in my closet, and how all the little successes I'd totted up so happily at college fizzled to nothing outside the slick marble and plate-glass fronts along Madison-Avenue.”
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“<Chapter 1> I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.”
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“<Chapter 1> Doreen..had bright white hair standing out in a cotton candy fluff round her head and blue eyes like transparent agate marbles, hard and polished and just about indestructible, and a mouth set in a sort of perpetual sneer. I don't mean a nasty sneer, but an amused, mysterious sneer, as if all the people around her were pretty silly and she could tell some good jokes on them if she wanted to.”
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“<Chapter 1> Everything she said was like a secret voice speaking straight out of my own bones.”
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“<Chapter 1> He kept staring at her the way people stare at the great white macaw in the zoo, waiting for it to say something human.”
-
“<Chapter 1> I began to think Vodka was my drink at last. It didn't taste like anything, but it went straight down into my stomach like a sword swallower's sword and made me feel powerful and Godlike.”
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“<Chapter 1> I liked looking on at other people in crucial situations. If there was a road accident or a street fight or a baby pickled in a laboratory jar for me to look at, I'd stop and look so hard I never forgot it.”
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“The trouble about jumping was that if you didn't pick the right number of stories, you might still be alive when you hit bottom. I thought seven stories must be a safe distance. (p. 112)”
Esther (Narration) -
“The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence.”
Esther Greenwood -
“All the heat and fear had purged itself. I felt suprisingly at peace. The bell jar hung, suspended, a few feet above my head. I was open to the circulating air”
Esther (Narration) -
“A bad dream.To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream.A bad dream.”
Esther (Narration) -
“The sun, emerged from its ray shrouds of cloud, shone with a summer brilliance on the untouched slopes. Pausing in my work to overlook that pristine expanse, I felt the same profound thrill it gives me to see trees and grassland waist-high under flood water – as if the usual order of the world had shifted slightly, and entered a new phase.”
Esther (Narration) -
“If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed.”
First Sentence edit
IT WAS A QUEER, SULTRY SUMMER, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.
Themes & Symbolism edit
- Depression and Suicide: The book revolves around the whole idea of a girl that may seem she has everything who inside is not very satisfied at all. But it is a lot more than that, it is about the way people view society and how we as a human race affect each other. It also explores how depression could drive you to suicide- the novel gives you a true insight into a depressive's mind.
Series & Lists edit
This is book 178 of 194 in Shelfari Most Popular (December 2010). (authoritative list)
This is book 177 of 195 in Shelfari Most Popular (December 2011). (authoritative list)
This is book 174 of 195 in Shelfari Most Popular (June 2010). (authoritative list)
This is book 175 of 195 in Shelfari Most Popular (June 2011). (authoritative list)
This book is in The Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge. (community list)
This book is in Guardian 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read. (authoritative list)
This is book 1 of 6 in Kat Stratfords Reading List (from ten things i hate about you). (community list)
This is book 172 of 213 in Best English-Language Fiction of the 20th Century. (authoritative list)
This is book 433 of 1286 in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. (authoritative list)
This book is in Faber Firsts. (community list)
This is book 57 of 97 in Waterstone's Top 100 Books of the 20th Century. (authoritative list)
This is book 76 of 95 in Telegraph Top 100 Books, 2008. (authoritative list)
Authors & Contributors edit
- Sylvia Plath (Author)
First Edition edit
Original Language: English
Publisher: William Heinemann Limited
Country: London
Publication Date: 1963
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 216
Publisher: William Heinemann Limited
Country: London
Publication Date: 1963
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 216
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: PS3566.L27B4 1996b
- Dewey: 818'.54
Subjects edit
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Movie Connections edit
- The Bell Jar (IMDb): in production; expected release in 2012
- The Bell Jar (IMDb): 1979 version with Marilyn Hassett as Esther
More Books Like This edit
Books Influenced by This Book edit
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