The Bell Jar- A story of Anxiety, Depression and Mental Illness

Abstract

Sylvia Plath was a twentieth century American poet and novelist, who is best known for her semi autobiographical novel The Bell Jar that confirms closely to the events of her own life. It is a vivid combination of her vision and nightmare. It clearly interprets her rejecter of certain kinds of feminity as well as the restricted role of women in 1950s America. She has secured a great place among the modern writers writing in a new genre. She has employed the stream of consciousness technique in the development of the plot and story of her only novel The Bell Jar. The Bell Jar is a 1963 novel by Sylvia Plath describing the decline of main character Esther into a depressive episode and her stay in a psychiatric ward. Plath herself had recurrent depression and was hospitalised for this. She committed suicide a month after the book's publication. Her own understanding-by-experience may have helped her to write about depression both accurately and powerfully. The novel places her among the greatest novelists of the twentieth century American fiction.