"Doctor Gordon twiddled a silver pencil. "Your mother tells me you are upset." I curled in the cavernous leather chair." (Plath, 1999, p.128) "A few more shock treatments, Mrs. Greenwood," I heard Doctor Gordon say, "and I think you'll notice a wonderful improvement." (Plath, 1999, p.145) Insulin therapies merely make her miserable and gain weight. Only her own bonding with the female psychiatrists on staff, and overcoming her sexual frustrations and hang-ups provides her with some tenuous relief at the conclusion of the book.
Thus, the Bell Jar can be seen as a portrait of a uniquely feminist crisis of the self, of the adolescent self in a normal but fragile and frustrating juncture of development, or of modern psychiatry's inability to deal with such a crisis, except in very ineffectual ways. Esther feels conflict as a woman frustrated to choose between masculine professional ideals and maternity, although upon closer analysis her identity conflict becomes even more multifaceted...
The pressures of modern life, combined with the lack of understanding of the therapeutic community at the time serve to compound rather than alleviate her stress.
Works Cited
Borgen, William a. And Norman E. Amundson. (2005) "Stages of Adolescent Development." (2005) From Amundson, N.E., Borgen, W.A., & Tench, E. "Personality and intelligence in career education and vocational guidance counseling." In DH Saklofske & M. Zeidner, Editors. International Handbook of Personality and Intelligence. New York: Plenum.
Kaplan, Cora. (1990) "Language and Gender." The feminist critique of language. Routledge: London and New York.
Plath, Sylvia. (1999) the Bell Jar. New York: HarperPerennial.
Plath, Sylvia. (1992) the Collected Poems. New York: HarperPerennial.
Wagner-Martin, Linda. (1992) the Bell Jar: A Novel of the Fifties. New York:…
