Describe Esther's relationship with her mother in The Bell Jar.

Esther’s mom clearly means well, but at no point does she give the impression that she fully understands her or what she’s going through. Mrs. Greenwood is very much a traditionalist when it comes to raising children and is convinced that the tried and tested ways will help reclaim Esther from the grip of madness and get her life back on track.

Mrs. Greenwood unthinkingly subscribes to the traditional role of women in society and thinks that everything will turn out just fine for her daughter if she follows the path that other women of her age are expected to follow. Among other things, this means that Esther must guard her virginity; she must also learn to write shorthand so that she can find work as a secretary.

Esther understands that her mother only has her best interests at heart. But at the same time, she cannot help but apportion blame to Mrs. Greenwood for the various mental health issues with which she has to deal.

In fact, Esther’s feelings toward her are even more negative than that. During a meeting with her doctor, Esther comes flat out and tells him that she hates her mother. As a result of this candid confession, the doctors recommend that she should stay in the hospital until the beginning of the winter college term rather than go home and live with her mother.

Mrs. Greenwood is described as an emotionally detached mother who favors practicality over feeling. Esther is fundamentally different than her mother, craving the emotional warmth her mother lacks and which she had received from her father before his untimely death. Additionally, Mrs. Greenwood's resentment toward her late husband serves as a point of contention with Esther; she doesn't recall her mother crying after he died, and Mrs. Greenwood expects the children to behave in a similar fashion. Because Esther was attached to her father, she resents her mother's seeming nonchalance about his passing.

Furthermore, Esther feels alienated from her mother because of their differences. Mrs. Greenwood wants her daughter to be successful in a practical career field like she is, while Esther dreams of being a writer. Mrs. Greenwood also believes in keeping emotions held inside out of a sense of propriety, while Esther wishes her mother would lose control at least once. The measure of control that Mrs. Greenwood possesses is what Esther lacks, and perhaps one could argue that Esther is somewhat jealous of her mother's ability to maintain control.

Overall, the relationship between mother and daughter is best described as a simmering resentment rather than a volatile one. At her core, Mrs. Greenwood does care about her daughter, yet she doesn't know how to provide Esther with the kind of love her daughter wants. As a result, Esther feels kept at arm's length and unsupported.

Esther displays many complex emotional relationships to people in the novel.  I think that one distinct emotional reality that Esther does display is the dislike she has for her mother.  There is an icy frigidity that underscores their relationship.  One such example of this is how Esther's mother tells her daughter that she was turned down from the writing program in an almost detached manner. There is no emotional quotient in the relaying of this difficult piece of news.  Their relationship is guarded by Mrs. Greenwood's desire for Esther follow the path of "what is" and of the Status Quo.  Mrs. Greenwood is more concerned with providing reasons for her daughter's institutionalization, as opposed to actually caring for her daughter's well- being.  When Esther receives flowers from her mother, they are thrown away and there is relief when Esther receives the news that she will not be able to receive any more visitors.  Esther's burning desire is to question the value of "what is" and posit what can be or what might be.  This transformative vision is something that Mrs. Greenwood lacks.  Such a different construction of reality is what lies at the heart of their relationship.  It is for this reason that there is little emotional connection between them.  

For all of the battle in which Esther is engaged in with the world and with herself, much of the root of this conflict comes back to the relationship she has with her mother.  Their difference in perception can be traced to the perception of the role that her father, Mrs. Greenwood's husband, played in their lives.  Esther was never allowed to grieve and properly process the pain of his loss, a cause of the anger that she feels towards her mother:  "I had always been my father's favorite, and it seemed fitting that I should take on a mourning my mother had never bothered with."  Esther's hostility and anger towards her mother is rooted in the perceived abandonment of a nurturing figure in childhood, something that can be traced to the way in which Esther views the women in her life.  The fact that Esther sees "sees Doreen, Betsy, Jay Cee, Joan Gilling, and many others as role models" can be traced to the lack of a role model Esther sees in her mother.

How do the attitudes and behavior of Esther's mother in The Bell Jar affect Esther's depression?

Following her father’s death, Esther was raised by her mother as a single parent. Mrs. Greenwood’s pragmatic worldview and aptitude for business helped her succeed. However, her single-mindedness led her to believe that everyone else could succeed by following the same path. Mother and daughter have a strained relationship, with Esther frequently resenting her mother for not taking her feelings and goals seriously.

Mrs. Greenwood has not been able to accept that her daughter is grown up and making independent choices about her life and career. Her persistent pattern of denial also applies to Esther’s illness. Even when she acknowledges that her daughter is struggling, she insists on a psychiatrist that fits with her ideas about appropriate treatment. Her inability or refusal to connect with and respect her daughter are additional stressors that apparently contribute to Esther’s depression.

The emotional distance between the two women is so longstanding and vast, the author implies, that it cannot be bridged. Her mother belittles Esther’s aspirations to become a writer, imagining that she can simply switch to a more practical career track. In a similar vein, for far too long she downplays the many symptoms that Esther presents, as if she might outgrow or get over her illness through force of will. When she does admit the severity of the situation, she selects a doctor who uses electroshock therapy (which was widely used in the 1950s). Esther’s reaction to this treatment worsens her condition.

How do the attitudes and behavior of Esther's mother towards her and Mr. Greenwood's death influence Esther's depression in The Bell Jar?

As your question makes quite clear, Esther and her mom do not have the most loving and warm relationship. While we can't describe it for you in 1000–1500 words, we can find for you ways in which her mom's behavior might reinforce Esther's depression.

Almost right away, we get the sense that Esther and her mom have something of a cold and harsh relationship. When Esther's mom picks her up at the train station, does she greet her daughter with a warm hug? No. She's "waiting by the glove-gray Chevrolet." It's almost as if she's not excited to see her daughter again.

Their lack of closeness is reinforced when Esther rides in the backseat instead of the front seat. Why does she prefer the backseat? Esther tells us. She says, "I didn't want her staring at me." What does this show us? It shows us that Esther doesn't want her mom examining, scrutinizing, or monitoring her. We could say that Esther's mom could have tried harder to break through to her sullen daughter.

As we already know from her time in New York City, Esther is smart, wilful, disciplined, and cunning. She can be deceptive and does not always tell the truth. You might want to think about how Esther might be an unreliable narrator. Should we believe everything Esther is telling us? Should we trust that her depiction of her mom is the objective, unbiased reality?

Yes, we can reasonably fault Esther's mom for failing to see how depressed her daughter was. We can criticize the way in which she passes her off to psychiatrists and finally to the sanatorium. Yet we might also ask the following: What would you have done differently?

We should be careful not to surrender to sexist tropes in which we blame the mother for her child's behavior. We should also be careful not to diminish Esther's own agency and powers. After all, Esther chose to try to kill herself. She came up with the plan.

From the start, Esther is concerned with death. What's the first paragraph in the novel about? Electrocutions. It's almost as if Esther is fated to carry out her desolate, near-death narrative. Can we really expect Esther's mom to somehow change such a forceful fate?

You might also think about why Esther tells us the following:

My mother took care never to tell me to do anything. She would only reason with me sweetly, like one intelligent mature person with another.

If this is true, then perhaps the problem has more to do with Esther's mom giving her daughter too much independence. Perhaps if she treated Esther as an immature, unintelligent person, things would have turned out differently.

Then again, it doesn't seem like anyone could have stopped Esther. Even in the oppressive sanatorium, she still figures out ways to rebel.

How do the mother's attitudes and behavior in "The Bell Jar" contribute to or exacerbate Esther's depression?

Esther's mother actually says relatively little to her, and this is part of the problem. There is a basic lack of real communication between mother and daughter. This was not an unusual dynamic in the time The Bell Jar takes place—the early 1950s.

The story reveals, apart from the details of Esther's illness, how much has changed since the middle of the twentieth century in our ways of dealing with problems, mental or otherwise, that young people encounter. Things which might seem common wisdom now were not generally recognized several generations ago. For instance, Mrs. Greenwood is clueless when asked about Esther's toilet training as an infant. She also tells Esther, "you're not like those people," meaning the other psychiatric patients. She repeats unhelpful truisms such as the idea that if one thinks about oneself too much, the solution is to think about other people's problems. By saying nothing but nevertheless letting out a sigh, Esther's mother expresses her displeasure that the psychiatrist, Dr. Gordon, wants to see Esther again next week. Esther tells us his fee is twenty-five dollars an hour, which, accounting for inflation, would probably amount to $400 today.

Esther's difficulties can be seen as resulting not so much from her mother's approach to the specific issue of illness as from Mrs. Greenwood's general attitude. She pressures her daughter in ways typical of ambitious parents of that time and later by saying, for instance, that for job opportunities, nobody wants a plain English major. Despite all this, it's unfair to put the onus of Esther's situation entirely or even mostly on her mother. Plath's overall theme in The Bell Jar may be that psychological problems are so complex that they cannot be attributed narrowly to a small set of causes.