My Personal Experience

Initially, I didn't want to bring this up. I thought it might come off as pity-fishing or as an exploitation of an opportunity to share "my struggle." But there should be no shame in sharing my personal experience, especially when it so appropriately pertains to our discussion. Hopefully this all isn't too uncomfortably personal:

I have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I've had numerous bouts of severe depression, sometimes with suicidal behavior. I have been hospitalized twice for mental illness, and on the second occasion I was treated with electroconvulsive therapy, also known as ECT or shock therapy. Quite a bit of what Esther went through, I went through.

The reason I mention this is because I was noticing a little chatter about "empathy" and the likability of Esther on this blog. For personal reasons, I suppose I may be one of the few who relates to Esther. It's hard to say I like Esther--I don't think anyone should--but I do have an emotional attachment to her, similar to the kind of attachment you'd have to Heath Ledger: he must be derided for the decisions he made, but you feel like he was a better person than that.

As someone who has shared similar experiences with Esther (or really, Plath), it becomes necessary to separate the mentally ill Esther from the mentally healthy Esther, both for us and for Esther. Plath talked about writing a book after The Bell Jar which featured another pseudo-Plath, except instead of portraying a narrative through the lens of a distorted reality, it would be through an older, wiser lens of mental stability. Unfortunately (and with tragic irony), she killed herself before she wrote that second novel. I wish that book had been written, because I believe having the chance to see the two dimensions of a character like Esther would be invaluable to our understanding of her--and of mental illness, also.

Of course it's common sense to say that someone who is in a state of mental illness isn't behaving the way he/she normally would, but I think that simple idea can easily be forgotten when you read The Bell Jar. It's a credit to Plath that she's able to portray the insular logic of a depressed person so convincingly that we forget this is a character who is essentially sick. If you read this book and thought to yourself, "God, I can't stand Esther," then give yourself a pat on the back for being in acceptable mental health. If you read Esther's narrative and thought, "She's saying what I'm thinking!" then you might want to check your immediate vicinity for that bell jar covering your head.

I suppose I would just like to suggest that maybe the "bell jar" enclosing Esther should be given more weight as the main source of your distaste of Esther, much more so than Esther herself.