In The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath explores a number of themes, particularly regarding gender roles and, subsequently, the mental health care system for women . Her nineteen-year-old protagonist, Esther Greenwood, is the means through which Plath asks the reader many probing questions about these topics. In the 1950s, when the novel is set, women were held to a high standard: to be attractive but pure, intelligent but submissive, and generally accepting of the idea of ​​improving themselves just to make life more comfortable for the man significant in his life. life. Esther not only deals with the typical problems faced by women of her time, but she must experience those things through the lens of mental illness, although whether or not it was those same problems that caused her "madness" in the world is up for debate. first place. In particular, Esther finds herself struggling against and succumbing to the feminine ideal of the 1950s, a conflict made evident in her judgments of other women, her relationship with Buddy Willard, and her tenuous goals for the future. Each time a new character is introduced, the reader is immediately subjected to Esther's meticulous physical description, leading to her final judgment of their character. For example, when Esther introduces one of her fellow interns, Doreen, in the first chapter, she says, “Doreen. . . he had shiny white hair that stood out in a cotton candy fuzz around his head and blue eyes like transparent agate marbles, hard and shiny and almost indestructible, and a mouth set in a sort of perpetual grin. . . as if all the people around her were quite silly and she could tell some good joke about them if she wanted to” (Plath 4). It's clear she admires Dore... middle of paper... urges her to abandon all her other half-hearted plans, a choice she's not willing to make at this point in her life. On the eve of her release from the asylum, Esther laments: “I had hoped, on my departure, to feel safe and informed about all that awaited me – after all, I had been 'analysed'. Instead, all I could see were question marks” (243). The novel is left open-ended, with a slightly optimistic tone but without details that help the reader fully understand the final stage of his healing process. Esther longed to be free from social conventions and double standards, but she constantly imposed them on herself and the people around her. His evolution in understanding never reaches a satisfactory conclusion, and the reader is also left with nothing but question marks. Works Cited Plath, Sylvia. The bell jar. New York: Harper Perennial, 2006.