Book Group: The Bell Jar

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (New York: Harper Perennial, 2005; originally published in 1971. 288 pp)

To Recap

The Bell Jar details Esther Greenwood, a college student who travels to New York to work as an editorial intern for a popular magazine. While she should be thoroughly enjoying herself, Esther feels dead inside, largely disconnected from the world. As she lives in New York, she begins to question her abilities as a writer and her future in general, which only causes her to sink into extreme depression. Esther wonders if she should be a typical woman and marry, or pursue a career instead.

Esther returns to the Boston suburbs, where she grew up, in the hopes to reawaken herself from depression. Soon, however, she finds she can’t, and the feelings she had in New York are all the stronger. What follows are suicide attempts, mental hospital stays, and unhealthy relationships. The only question is, will Esther make it out of the suburbs and out of her depression in time to start the next semester at college?

Parallels Between Fiction and Reality

Donovan: I found considerable resemblance between the author’s life and that of the main character, Esther. Did you?

Andrew: Yes. Plath wrote The Bell Jar as somewhat of an autobiography. Plath herself worked during college in New York City, and suffered depression. She also ended up in a mental hospital at one point. Plath eventually committed suicide in 1963, only one month after The Bell Jar’s initial publication.

What intrigued me was the lyrical prose Esther, the protagonist, uses intermittently throughout the novel. Mirroring Plath, herself a poet, I found this styliing to be an eye-opening experience into the inner workings of Plath’s mind.

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another…” (85).

Andrew: How about you?

Donovan: Esther’s slide into suicidal depression elicits gloomy feelings in the reader since the plot resembles Plath’s real-life bout with depression and eventual suicide. Plath’s life evokes rumination considering her dramatic demise.

Understanding her life story, Esther Greenwood resembles Plath closely. As such, her constant desires to inflict bodily harm conjure deep fears in the reader.

“The interior voice nagging me not to be a fool—to save my skin and take off my skis and walk down, camouflaged by the scrub pines bordering the slop—fled like a disconsolate mosquito. The thought that I might kill myself formed in my mind coolly as a tree or a flower” (97).

As Esther devises new forms of attempted suicide, my heart broke for Plath’s family and the pain such portent, semi-autobiographical prose generates.

Let's Talk Culture

Andrew: In many ways, The Bell Jar serves as a cultural commentary of the time. How did you see this notion conveyed?

Donovan: For starters, Esther’s stay at the mental institution reinforces the horrors regarding how humanity dealt with mental illness less than 60 years ago.

“To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream” (237).

Pages upon pages in The Bell Jar describe shock therapy and the painful ways in which physicians attempted to cure the mentally sick. These treatments—cutting edge at the time—remind me of the frailty of human knowledge. What are we doing these days that 50 years from now will seem brutally inhumane?

Andrew: I agree completely, and couldn’t have said it better. However, I think it’s also important to note, at this point, the importance a Bell Jar in the novel.

“I knew I should be grateful to Mrs. Guinea, only I couldn’t feel a thing. If Mrs. Guinea had given me a ticket to Europe, or a round-the-world cruise, it wouldn’t have made one scrap of difference to me, because wherever I sat—on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok—I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air” (207).

The bell jar, something which is generally placed over pastries to keep them fresh, symbolizes the inability to escape from depression, something perhaps more painful in Esther’s life (and vicariously Plath’s) than the ways in which physicians tried to cure the mentally ill.

A Proto-Feminist Work?

Donovan: Many literary critics suggest Plath’s depiction of Esther is a strong feminist viewpoint. Did you see this theme in the novel?

Andrew: The restricted role of women in 1950s America is assuredly something Plath intentionally included in the novel. Coupled with the realization that conventional expectations only provide emptiness, feminism is one of the more explicit themes in The Bell Jar. Esther observes a gap between what society says should happen and what she actually feels. As a result, she becomes alienated, and pulls between the desire to start a family and continue her English career. More to the point, she doesn’t fit in because of her individualism, something females weren’t necessarily encouraged to develop at the time.

“I was the only girl on the beach in a skirt and high heels, and it occurred to me I must stand out. I had removed my patent leather shoes after a while, for they foundered badly in the sand. It pleased me to think they would be perched there on the silver log, pointing out to the sea, like a sort of soul-compass, after I was dead” (169).

Andrew: Would you agree?

Donovan: Certainly. I found Plath’s depiction of Esther to be a representation of a strong female fighting against the expectations of the dominant culture. Esther had the perfect education, the perfect internship, the almost perfect boyfriend, and the perfect life, potentially. But the notion of perfect coincides with the accepted virtues of the dominant culture. Esther had other plans.

 “What I always thought I had in mind was getting some big scholarship to graduate school or a grant to study all over Europe, and then I thought I’d be a professor and write books of poems or write books of poems and be an editor of some sort” (32).

While men slept around, Esther needed to remain virginal to attract the highest quality husband. These expectations, coupled with her desires to cast her line in the other direction, shepherd her toward mental breakdown.

Expressing frustration about unreasonable cultural expectations about marriage and parenthood, Esther proclaims,

“'What I hate is the thought of being under a man’s thumb,’ I had told Doctor Nolan. ‘A man doesn’t have a worry in the world, while I’ve got a baby hanging over my head like a big sick, to keep me in line’” (221).

Not to say traditional roles are bad, I find the pressure for people with a myriad of personalities to fit into one specific cultural box to be problematic. Esther, and to a certain extent, Slyvia, do not fit the specific traditional mold. As such, the pressure to fit in became too much to bear.

The Final Word

Donovan: What’s your verdict?

Andrew: Much like Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, I found The Bell Jar to depict both teenage angst and depressive characters in a way that deserves acclaim. Perhaps Esther is the female version of Salinger’s Holden Caufield, the novel was assuredly written to challenge the populace and garner praise to help push the feminist movement forward. However, I found the book to be too simply written for the literary acclaim it has raised. Perhaps there is beauty in the simplicity, but I had trouble pressing on past it.

Andrew: And you?

Donovan: The Bell Jar offers good prose and an intriguing story. Had Sylvia Plath not mirrored her depressive character in real life, I am not sure if The Ball Jar would receive as high of praise. Whether good or bad, a dead artist intrigues the populace and I believe this effect to be the case in this instance. The Bell Jar is worth reading but I am unsure if it qualifies as a modern classic of literary genius.

Andrew’s Verdict: 4 out of 5

Donovan’s Verdict: 4 out of 5

Sylvia Plath was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1932. She graduated from Smith College in 1955 and won a Fulbright Scholarship to the University of Cambridge. Her many books include the poetry collections, Ariel, Colossus, Crossing the Water, Winter Trees, and The Collected Poems, which won the Pulitzer Prize. The Bell Jar is her only novel. She was married to the poet Ted Hughes, and together they had two children. She died in London in 1963.
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Book Review: God the Economist

God the Economist: The Doctrine of God and Political Economy by M. Douglas Meeks (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989. 272 pp.)

Currently the Cal Turner Chancellor’s Chair in Wesleyan Studies and Theology at Vanderbilt University, M. Douglas Meeks is a renowned researcher on the relation of Christian doctrine to economic, social, and political theory. Dr. Meeks earned both his B.D. and Ph.D. from Duke University and studied as a Fulbright Fellow at Tübingen University. In his previous appointment, he served as the dean and professor of systematic theology at Wesley Theological Seminary. Dr. Meeks has authored 16 books and numerous scholarly articles. He is an ordained minister in the United Methodist Church serving as the Director of Wesleyan Studies and the United Methodist Programs.

A Global Community

With the world flattening as Thomas Friedman so famously noted, it is becoming increasingly easy to make relational connections with the worldwide community. Where in the past, the culture of foreign lands seemed distant and, well, foreign, current urban centers amalgamate a myriad of cultures. In other words, the modern age illustrates the ease in which citizens throughout the world can consider the globe as a community.

Yet, business often operates under individualistic principles. Functioning under the theory of self-interest, many companies seek to further their interests only. Is there a theological case to be made for or against these current business practices? In his book, God the Economist, M. Douglas Meeks argues against the current marketplace practices and proposes a dramatic redefinition of “economy.”

Economist Etymology

The premise behind God the Economist is an etymological study of the word “economy.” Current conceptions of the economy conjure visions of a global marketplace and transnational transactions. But, where does the word “economy” come from? Citing the etymology of the word, M. Douglas Meeks suggests that “economy” should be understood through its Greek roots, oikos and nomos or “household” and “rule or law”.

In other words, the source of the term “economy” comes from the word for the household manager. In Greco-Roman times, commerce functioned between households, not companies; the family managed the business, and the marketplace existed as a portion of familial life.

In contrast, current cultural norms bifurcate work life and home life. Given the ancient term defining the economist as household manager, Meeks offers God the Economist as a new metaphor for God. He writes,

“Many of the biblical traditions represent God as engaged in creating, sustaining, and recreating households. Household can refer to the people Israel of the church of Jesus Christ, to families to a royal court or dynasty, to a place of God’s abode, or, in the most comprehensive sense, to the whole creation. God has made Godself responsible for the households of Israel and the church, the households of nations, and the household of everything God has brought into being. The oikonomia tou theo (economy of God) applies to the life of the Christian community (Col. 1:25; 1 Cor. 9:17; Eph. 3:2; 1 Tim. 1:4) as well as to God’s work of creating salvation for the household of the creation (Eph. 1:9-10; 3:9-10). Because of the peculiar promises made by this God, the life of God is inextricably connected with the livelihood and future of these households” (4).

Stated differently, although the modern conception of economy functions remarkably well, it neglects the comprehensive and communal meaning behind the economy – managing the household. This metaphor for God argues for the importance of human livelihood, the significance of a household community above profit.

 The Household Economy as Community

Considering the household community ethic with God understood as an economist, Meeks asserts that the economy ought to perform a transformative task writing,

“it can be said that a theological correlation of the God of Jesus Christ and economy should take place in the midst of and for the sake of those who have been denied access to the household in our society and to the global household” (42-43). 

The economy ought not function as a means to ascertain personal needs; it exists as a global household where economics functions as a way in which we relate to each other and serve the poor in order to transform all of society.

The Importance of Service

As the etymology of “economist” suggests, the term defined the household servant in antiquity. The ancient economist served the interests of the household community and entered the marketplace with the household in mind.

Since Scripture frequently mentions the servant-nature of God (see 1 Cor. 1:20-32 and Matt. 6:33 among many others), it is natural to view God as the household economist who acts for the common good of the household.

Arguments Against a Self-Interested Marketplace

What does it mean, however, for businesses to elevate community above profit? Meeks contends that a dramatic shifting of the marketplace must occur.

Currently, markets function under the capitalist assumptions of Adam Smith. With an ethical system based in egoistic consequentialism, business practitioners versed in Adam Smith’s theories trade under the principles of self-interest. In other words, self-interest moderates the marketplace and increases efficiency as everyone produces goods and services at a comparative advantage.

This theory, however, is exceedingly individualistic. By nature, the person in the marketplace looks after her interests and expects everyone else to do the same. In this rubric, it is quite easy for individuals to receive the proverbial short end of the stick.

Growth for Self or Growth for Others

Stated differently, current business practices function on the principle of exchange. With scarce resources, people in the marketplace seek to exchange goods and services in order to maximize individual gain. Under this assumption, modern economists believe that exchange will foster growth for citizens worldwide.

From the perspective of a household economy, unlimited growth is not the ultimate goal. Meeks writes,

“Growth should not be based on infinite needs and acquisition leading to an ever-widening appropriation of nature for the sake of accumulation of wealth as power. Rather growth should be a deepening of human capacities for the service of human development within community” (57).

Again, the critical argument Meeks presents is grounded in the value of the household community in the market place. By inference, the individual exists for the purpose of community, not individuality.

Reconstructing Business as a Household

While God the Economist discusses the Christian principles for rethinking the definition of economy and critiques the modern conception of the marketplace, it does very little reconstruction. However, the principles in the book offer a foundation for Christian-based business operations in the current market.  

First, Christians in business must reconsider the classical view of Capitalism presented by Adam Smith. Despite the success of the self-interest system in the marketplace, its individualistic outlook on life makes the creation of community problematic.

Second, the metaphor of God as an economist presents God as a servant leader. Just as the ancient household manager performed business operations with the household in mind, so too does God serve the needs of the global household.

As a Christian in the marketplace, the principle of service is necessary in order to maximize the usefulness of profits for others. The marketplace ought to function for the good of everyone. Thus, as it becomes increasingly easy to connect with the globe, the notion of serving the worldwide community will become more important. For these reasons, I recommend this book!