Encased in Imprisonment
A jar, simple, small and serene, fragile with ornate curves, and yet dazzlingly unique, becomes the powerful and influential force to be reckoned with that motivates and explains the title of Sylvia Plath’s novel, The Bell Jar. A bell jar, as an object, describes a glass vessel with a rounded top and an open base. It protects and displays fragile objects, such as in Beauty and the Beast, where an enchanted and delicate rose was kept under a glass ball jar. As the story goes, the rose in the fairy tale symbolized the Beast’s future. Similarly, in The Bell Jar, the state of the main character Esther’s mind (which corresponds with the rose as the frail subject inside the bell jar) determines the future she in store for her. The isolation of the rose in the bell jar, being the symbol of his destiny, confined the Beast himself. Esther’s successful destiny remains hindered as long as she abandons rational decisions in the solitary prison of the bell jar. Simply, yet strictly, the bell jar signifies madness, such as its development and presence within the mind of the protagonist, Esther Greenwood. However, as a symbolic representation of an emotional state, the bell jar can take on a wide range of meanings, including the feeling of a trapped existence and the sense of dwelling as a subject of studious and vigilant eyes. Both interpretations weave frequently through the pages of Sylvia Plath’s dramatic novel. The Bell Jar depicts Esther Greenwood’s mental imprisonment, social imprisonment, and the distortions the jar causes upon her views, as well as the views of others.
Initially, the bell jar represents the mental struggles Esther experienced, presumably living ensnared and contained by the boundaries of her own mind. “I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air” (185). The sour air Esther idly stews in metaphorically depicts the ravenous and accumulating madness dwelling in her consciousness. The suffocating...