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1-Page Summary of The Bell Jar
Overall Summary
Esther Greenwood is a smart woman who lives in New York. She has been invited to be the guest editor of a magazine for one month. While she’s there, she meets many interesting people and attends parties and events with them. Esther feels conflicted about what she wants out of life because her friends have very different views on how they want to live their lives than she does. For instance, Betsy wants to get married and start a family while Doreen doesn’t care much about that at all; instead, Doreen cares more about having fun. Esther also worries about whether or not it’s appropriate for women to date men when they’re young, as well as if it’s okay for women to have sex before marriage or even just casual sex without being in love with someone first.
Throughout the book, Esther keeps thinking about her relationship with Buddy Willard. She first met him in New York when she was there for a summer internship and he was a medical student. He seemed nice at first, but then it turned out that he was a hypocrite who wanted to appear virginal even though he had sex with other women before. Now he’s suffering from tuberculosis and is currently living in a sanatorium while waiting for his health to improve so they can get married.
Back home in the suburbs of Boston, Esther is rejected from a writing course that she had planned to take for her summer break. She’s stuck at home and her mental illness gets worse because she stops bathing or changing clothes. She lies about who she is to strangers and tries unsuccessfully to kill herself by slitting her wrists, hanging herself, and drowning. She hides under the house and takes fifty sleeping pills before being found by paramedics.
Esther is found and rescued. She wakes up in a hospital, but she doesn’t recognize herself in the mirror because she’s severely depressed. Esther is then moved to a psychiatric ward of the city hospital where she remains paranoid, uncooperative and suicidal. Eventually, her college scholarship sponsor decides to move her to a private asylum where she gets treated by Dr Nolan who is compassionate towards Esther and treats her with kindness unlike any other doctor had done before. The doctors arrange for Esther’s mother and friends (who have been exhausting Esther with their advice) to stop visiting so that they can give Esther space when it comes time for her treatment. Joan Gilling, an old college friend of Esther’s also ends up at the same asylum after trying to commit suicide too like how Esther did earlier on in the story. Through therapy sessions along with insulin injections administered by Dr Nolan which allows him access into his patient’s brain as well as electro-shock therapy treatments which are given correctly this time around due to advancements made over recent years thanks to new technology available nowadays; both patients recover from their depression much faster than expected.
As Esther’s health improves, she gets more freedom to come and go from the asylum. She uses this freedom to buy a diaphragm and sleep with her math professor Irwin. With Dr. Nolan’s encouragement, Esther has learned to embrace her independence as a woman and shake off the stifling social expectations she used to feel constrained by. Unfortunately, though Esther expects losing her virginity will be a revelation, it results in painful hemorrhaging. Later on, she discovers Joan having an affair with another patient DeeDee and thinks about lesbianism which is something that doesn’t appeal to her at all. Soon afterwards Joan hangs herself. Buddy visits Esther at the asylum where they get closure on their relationship after his visit with Dr Nolan who reassures him of his own sanity again (Buddy had been thinking he might be crazy). In fact now he feels happy for himself and wants everyone else around him to feel happy too so he goes out into New York City singing “I’m gonna wash that man right outta my hair” while dressed in drag because when you’re crazy anything can happen! At the end of the novel we find out that Esther is going back to college but knows that one day soon insanity could hit again like it did before (the bell jar)
