xref 0000008139 00000 n She is also, it seems, starved for answers. At times, she spitefully blames others for her unhappiness or points to the inadequacies and hypocrisies of the 1950s. Her guilt about following the right forms even impedes her judgment. She is seemingly devoid of human caring. Previous Esther sees Doreen as "dusky as a bleached-blonde Negress." JavaScript seems to be disabled in your browser. She is not a happy, carefree coed off for a summer fling, even if it appears that way. They are to be the example for millions of college girls. After staying at a couple of hospitals, Esther is taken to a private psychiatric institution, where she meets Dr. Nolan, a compassionate female doctor.
Certainly the girls who work for the magazine are programmed into the newest colors and styles. We ask ourselves: why does Esther allow herself to be in situations in which she does not even want to admit her true identity? She also tells us that her boyfriend, Buddy Willard, a pre-med student, showed her a cadaver. 0000003968 00000 n The Bell Jar opens in the summer of 1953. Our central image of Esther, at this point, is of a starved girl. 0000007523 00000 n The reader should pay close attention to the images that Esther gives us of New York; they clearly reveal that something is wrong. Ironically, it is Betsy who has her hair cut and is made into a cover girl. 0000000016 00000 n Sometimes students work, but even that is a short-term commitment, and thus more relaxed. Removing #book# What kind of change is she going through? Esther/Elly represents the New England "Yankee" girl, one with extraordinary perceptions. When Jay Cee calls her and tries to advise her and give her some help, however limited, Esther's response is that Jay Cee said terrible things to her. 0000006926 00000 n The Bell Jar (SparkNotes Literature Guide) (SparkNotes Literature Guide Series) by SparkNotes accessibility Books LIbrary as well as its powerful features, including thousands and thousands of title from favorite author, along with the capability to read or download hundreds of boos on your pc or smartphone in minutes. The year is 1953 and Esther Greenwood, having finished college for the academic year, has won a one-month paid internship at Ladies Day magazine in New York City. The other girls fit some "image," but Esther, because of the insights that she is sharing with the reader, slips in and out of an ugly duckling state. The first sentence of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar alerts the reader to the conflicts that will be dealt with in this semi-autobiographical novel: "It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York." %PDF-1.4 %���� She is starved physically because of the results of food poisoning, but, more important, she has been starved psychologically from the beginning of the book. 0000001770 00000 n Joan also returns to stay at the institution, and commits suicide near the institution's grounds soon after.

She also gives us glimpses of her future; we hear, for instance that "last week I cut the plastic starfish off the sunglasses case for the baby to play with." This reminds Esther of her dilemma with physics and chemistry, and after that story, the reader wonders if Esther really does "love school." But if Esther seems to think that she knows how to please herself at free banquets, she does not know how to navigate the other areas of high life in New York. Esther vacillates between wanting to be cynical like Doreen and innocent like Betsy. She is not sophisticated enough, as the southern Doreen and the New England Esther, to really understand what is happening that summer, but the magazine's beauty editor makes a cover girl out of Betsy, and Betsy keeps on smiling her "Sweetheart of Sigma Chi smile.". And then she has to confess and tell us how she got her chemistry credit in college from poor Mr. Manzi by fraudulent means. Indeed, Esther is starved, but she is starved for more than just food. Esther Greenwood is steeped in the "mirage-gray at the bottom of their granite canyons"; her New York world is filled with images of cadavers. She does not know why she feels the way she does, and at times, she does not really know how she feels. The New York world of whirlwind fashion events and professional engagements is clearly a shock, especially for a studious girl who arrives fresh from her sheltered New England existence.

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