Sylvia Plath's life and Esther Greenwood: autobiography in The Bell Jar

Plath Bell Jar

The Life of Sylvia Plath and Her Bell Jar's Esther Greenwood: Points of Convergence and Contrast

It is not unusual for the line between autobiography and fiction to be blurred -- it has, in fact, become somewhat commonplace, and has served as a perspective for analysis and criticism for many works. The death of Shakespeare's son Hamnet shortly before the creation of his masterpiece Hamlet, the tales of Americans abroad by turn-of-the-century expatriates like Henry James, and drug-filled and possibly drug-induced ramblings of Jack Kerouac's On the Road have all been linked to or serve as examples of autobiographical fiction. There are elements -- of plot and/or character in addition to sentiment and experience -- in the literary texts that mirror certain events and/or people in the author's lives.

When the literary personage under examination happens to be a poet about whose life (and death) a great deal of controversy exists, the assignation of autobiographical attributes becomes a much trickier proposition than it might otherwise be. Poetry is all necessarily autobiographical in one sense; poetry inherently stems from a very personal place within the author. This does not mean that the exact nature of the events and characters, if any, described in a given poem are real-world descriptions of the poet's experiences, and given the layers of symbolism and meaning in a well-written poem it is almost impossible for such happenings and figures to be depicted in a realistic and truly autobiographical manner. Even in works of prose by a highly poetic author, then, the line between true autobiography and outright symbolic fiction becomes both broader and more blurred.

This is certainly the case with poet Sylvia Plath's single novel, The Bell Jar. The title refers to the way that the novel's protagonist and narrator, Esther Greenwood, feels trapped underneath a jar, struggling to breathe and set herself free in the world glimpsed through the glass. Esther undergoes a mental breakdown and several forms of therapy in the course of the novel; Plath herself was institutionalized more than once and suffered from a mental anguish that was never fully diagnosed in her lifetime. Plath committed suicide by suffocating on the gas from her kitchen oven at the age of thirty-one, just one month after the first publication of The Bell Jar. This paper will examine the details of Plath's life and the progression of Esther Greenwood through the plot of the novel in an attempt to determine the degree to which this novel can be considered an autobiographical work of Plath's, and further illuminating Plath's real biography through an interpretation and extrapolation of the symbolism contained in The Bell jar pertaining to Esther.

Sylvia Plath

By the age of eight, Massachusetts-born Sylvia Plath was a published poet, and the accomplishment and trajectory of her life -- until the tragic and sudden end to it -- was set to largely follow this pattern she set for herself early in life (Steinberg, par. 3). Growing up initially in a suburb of Boston and moving while still fairly young to Wellesley after the death of her father, Plath was always around a great deal of educated adults and was no stranger to tragedy (Steinberg, par. 2-3). Still, Plath excelled academically and earned herself a scholarship to Smith College through her achievement (Gilson par 1).

By the time she arrived at Smith, Plath already had an impressive list of magazines and other publication outlets in which her stories and poems had appeared (Gilson par 2). She was also to write over four hundred other poems while in attendance at Smith, and in 1953 Plath also began an internship at Mademoiselle magazine, adding both more excitement and more stress to her life (Gislon par. 2; Liukonnen par. 3). It was during this period in her life that Plath made her first suicide attempt, suffering a complete mental breakdown and trying to swallow an entire bottle of sleeping pills while hiding under her family home's porch (Steinberg par. 9). This is a period of Plath's life in which the fairly detailed and extensive journals she kept beginning in her adolescence thinned out and eventually stopped entirely, leaving the months leading up to her suicide attempt and the attempt itself -- as well as, of course, the next period of time -- largely a matter of conjecture when it comes to reconstructing Plath's experiences and thought processes (Steinberg, par. 5-9).

Plath returned to Smith in spite of her troubles and demonstrated quite handily that her emotional setbacks had not had an effect on her mental faculties; she once again excelled in her studies and graduated summa cum laude and earning herself a Fullbright scholarship to study at Cambridge in the process (Steinberg par. 12). England presented a new set of challenges to Sylvia Plath, who at twenty-three was already considered somewhat past her prime as far as a marrying prospect, and by several accounts -- including what exists of her own -- this started off as a very lonely time for Plath, at least initially (Steinberg par. 14-5; Gilson par. 7). Loneliness would not be the source of her anguish for long, however.

It was while in England that Plath first became aware of the poet Ted Hughes, then arranged to meet him at a party with famously violent and often exaggerated -- yet doubtless immediate -- results. The tumultuous and uncertain nature of their meeting would go on to typify much of their relationship during the years prior to their marriage, and for the nearly seven years of their marriage, during which Hughes was unfaithful and Plath was thought to be largely unstable (Steinberg; Liukonnen par. 7-9). The two were both incredibly passionate, about each other as well as bout other topics of common interest including poetry, and this -- as well as the purely personality-driven aspects of their relationship -- added a great deal of tumultuousness to their marriage, which their two children did nothing to alleviate as the relationship deteriorated further (Gilson par. 8).

Hughes eventually moved out of the home he shared with Plath and the couple's children and moved in with his mistress, Assia Wevill, late in 1962. In February, Sylvia Plath committed suicide by sealing herself in the kitchen, away from her children, and turning the gas on to her stove, effectively suffocating herself (Stinberg par. 43). There is some evidence that Plath expected to be found before she had died -- a note left for her downstairs neighbor instructing him to call her doctor went unnoticed when the gas leaked through the floorboards to his apartment, rendering him unconscious -- but her true intentions in this regard will never be truly known (Steinberg par. 43). What is certain is that Plath's gravesite has become a major attraction for many literary pilgrims, and that both her novel The Bell Jar and her impressive volumes of poetry continue to inspire people today.

A Comparison of Heroines

There are many details of Esther's experience that cannot be confirmed or refuted by Plath's own life, largely because her journals from this period are either non-existent or simply remain unpublished and hidden by her estate, primarily her mother and Ted Hughes in the years immediately following her death (Steinberg par. 14-5). There are also many areas that can serve as excellent points of comparison between the semi-autobiographical story of Esther Greenwood as it appears in The Bell Jar and Sylvia Plath's real life, both in terms of the symbolism that creates difference yet illuminates similar qualities, and in the events of both lives -- real and fictional -- that coincide in nearly every detail, showing the obvious crafting of her own story in Plath's one and only novel.

The most obvious incident for comparison is the sleeping-pill suicide attempt that was such a pivotal point in both Plath Esther greenwood's lives. The details of the two incidents are almost identical, from the hiding in the cellar to the newspaper's printing of a kidnapping report before she is found to the series of hospitals that both Plath and Greenwood were transferred to before finally receiving adequate care at a private institution thanks to the largesse of a friend (Plath; Steinberg). From this scene alone, regardless of the other details of Esther Greenwood's summer that are quite obviously taken from the rela-life experiences of Sylvia Plath, it is clear that Greenwood is serving as a surrogate for Plath in her own life story. Though the full trajectory of Plath's life is not, of course, included in the novel, the apparent optimism with which it ends is likely indicative of Plath's real feelings at that pint in her life.

At the same time, it is essential to remember that the novel is a fictionalized and highly symbolic version of Plath's life. It has even been suggested that a more correct and meaningful reading of The Bell Jar focuses in the symbolic elements of the novel itself rather than on the relation the plot bears to Plath's own life or even to the narrative of the novel itself (Buell). According to this view, the clear relationship that exists between Esther Greenwood and Sylvia Plath is largely immaterial in the face of the additional and supporting details and aspects of setting provided by the author as a backdrop for the story. Even if it is her story that is being told, Plath chose to tell it in a highly specific and fictionalized way that colors all of the events and characters in The Bell Jar, real or imagined, creating very real and perceivable differences that nonetheless illuminate the possible inner life and perspective of Plath during the period of her life in which she was writing, and during which she largely lived the story she relates in this novel.

One such fictionalized detail was setting Esther's story during the same summer that the Rosenberg's were being executed, the summer of 1953. Plath had actually spent her time at the magazine and then at her mothers in 1952; from the opening of the novel it is fairly clear that the adjustment of a year was meant to have the story specifically coincide with the Rosenberg's execution: "It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they executed the Rosenbergs...that's all there was to read about in the papers" (Plath 1). The backdrop of fear and of choosing sides that the case of the Rosenbergs presented matches the tone of Etsher's (and Plath's) dilemma in many aspects, making it an excellent if inaccurate symbol.

Accuracy is obviously not Plath's goal with the writing of this book; she does not attempt to tell a complete tale of the summer leading up to her first and up to that point most famous breakdown; instead she tells a highly selective version of the events with certain scenes and characters heightened and others not appearing at all, keeping the flow of a narrative. Esther does not have a previous and highly unsuccessful bout with electroconvulsive therapy mentioned in The Bell Jar, though Plath suffered this treatment at the hands of a doctor who completely botched the procedure, leaving Plath hugely frightened by the experience (Steinberg par. 10). This detail was not part of the story of seeming redemption, rebirth, and even of simply finding oneself that Plath was telling in The Bell Jar, and so it was left out. At the end of the story, when Esther Greenwood approaches the interview that will determine her suitability for release with a definite optimism, it is easy to believe that everything really can work out; this was part of the fiction Plath created.

Conclusion

Things did not work out for Plath in the end, quite obviously, though one can certainly hope that she is less tortured now than she was here on Earth. Esther Greenwood has the comfort of remaining statically poised at the edge of her potential, un-fallen and un-risen -- undecided. Sylvia Plath, like everyone in the mortal realm, had to keep on growing, changing, and adjusting, and as life dealt her a series of disappointment she eventually bowed before the onslaught. The Bell Jar is not an autobiography if only because it captures only a single voice of Plath's rather than the multitude she experienced throughout her life.