The Bell Jar and Humanity

Throughout the contents of The Bell Jar, our main character Esther sort of struggles with the idea of humanity and being like others. There are multiple moments in the book where Esther struggles to understand others or herself, wanting someone that she feels is like her. There are also times when she either views herself or others as being unhuman. She's generally surrounded by "creatures" of sorts while she herself feels like a bug trapped in a bell jar, studied by everyone. Eventually towards the end of the book she does end up finding people who are like her in a sense, people that are truly human like her.

When Esther was having her conversation with Hilda about the Rosenbergs in chapter 9, she only described her using animalistic terms such as cat-like, deeming her as unhuman. The specific word she uses to describe Hilda is “dybbuk”, which translates to demon or beast (Plath, 100). Even though she did at first view Hilda to be this sort of creature, when she started to talk about the Rosenbergs, she for a moment had Esther believe that she was like her. But then, that slight part of displayed humanity was lost when Hilda continued on, saying she was happy they were being executed. Her animalistic features were re-applied, and with this Esther realized that once again she had no one that was "human" like her.

Consistent with this theme itself was the use of the term “bell jar”. While also being the title of the book, there’s this idea of this bell jar constantly keeping Esther inside has been mentioned throughout the book. The first mention of this bell jar is in chapter 15, where she narrates “because wherever I sat--on the deck of a ship or at a street cafe in Paris or Bangkok--I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.” (Plath, 185). To Esther, the implication of a bell jar trapping her deems her as something that isn’t human. It’s as though she’s some sort of bug or specimen being observed and judged every second she’s under it. She’s not like other people, regular people, but she wants to be and wants to find people like her. Which is why after she ends up at the new psych hospital, the one that gives her a treatment that actually seems to work, she tells us that the bell jar that once was suffocating her has been lifted off of her (Plath, 215). She’s able to feel more human, not like some unhuman specimen that’s being studied all the time. She no longer feels like she’s suffocating as the way she was while trapped under the bell jar.