The Bell Jar
Bell Jar, The,a novel by S. Plath , published 1963 under the pseudonym of Victoria Lucas , and under her own name in 1966 .
It opens in New York in the summer of 1953 (the year of the execution of the Rosenbergs, an event which provides a recurrent motif) as the narrator, Esther Greenwood , a highly ambitious, intelligent college girl from Boston, spends time working on a trainee programme for a women's magazine with a group of other award-winning young women, and throws herself recklessly into the dangers of city life. Her story is interwoven with recollections of her boyfriend, Yale medical student Buddy Willard, who represents in part the threats of the flesh, in part the dullness of the provincial existence she fears will engulf her. She returns home, suffers a nervous breakdown, undergoes ECT, attempts suicide, is kept in psychiatric care, and in the penultimate chapter succeeds in losing her virginity to a mathematics...
[The entire page is 208 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Oxford University Press Titles
