Blog No. 2: Thoughts on Plath

It's often difficult to disentangle Sylvia from Esther, particularly as so much of The Bell Jar draws from or, at the very least, is inspired by events in Plath's own life. So, my two questions, posed to both you and to myself, are: a.) how deeply should we allow outside knowledge of Plath's life to influence our reading of novel, and b.) how do we examine the theme of death throughout the work? 

I'm often torn about the first issue when dealing with Plath's materials, as some scholars and poets believe that novels/poems should be able to be read "on their own" so to speak, and analyzed accordingly. Yet, with a writer like Plath, perhaps it is beneficial to have an understanding of her life and mindset so as to better understand her work itself. Certainly, when reading a poem like "Lady Lazarus" one may approach interpretation in two ways: without any knowledge of the speaker's life, or knowing that Plath was indeed fixated with both death and suicide. 

So how, exactly, are we to feel about the topic of death in The Bell Jar? It's an open-question: I will not presume to tell you how you "should" feel about it, as there isn't any right answer. And I do believe that it's a fairly typical response to feel a sort of repulsion or apathy to Esther as a character, as on the surface she appears to be moping, crying for attention, and perhaps too dramatic to be taken seriously. On the other hand, if we are to view her (and likewise her fixation with death) through a different lens, we might see Esther as a particularly sympathetic character whose pressure to achieve, to do, do, do, and to escape her own mental traps push her into stasis--she cannot create, she cannot write, she cannot do anything she feels necessary. From my perspective, I strongly believe Esther's fascination and attempts toward death are not acting as a punishment to her family or herself, but rather that in a way, she is focused on the idea of death as a release from pressure. She turns it into a powerful Thing, or perhaps a powerful Solution, which works its way into her thoughts until she cannot rid herself of it. 

I'm certainly rambling by now. The point I'm attempting to make is that we might hesitate to label Esther as either a pitiful, sympathetic character or one which we shove aside and say "bah" to.