Pressures from society and those around you can feel like a bell jar hovering over you. In the novel The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, pressures from society and self doubt lead a bright young female college student with loads of opportunity to fall into depression and eventually insanity. The main character, Esther Greenwood, battles with what society wants her to be as a woman and as a person in the 1950’s. When Esther is presented with a prestigious scholarship program for journalism in New York City she is eager to go. She is ambitious and intelligent but the weight of societal expectations, expectations of those close to her, along with her own self doubt cause her to go into the downward spiral of insanity. The Bell Jar, shows that pressures from society and self doubt are dangerous to a person’s mental health. The pressure of what a women should be, what opportunities to take, and her self doubt all become too much to grasp.
Throughout the novel, Esther is falling into depression because of who society is telling her to be as a woman. Early in The Bell Jar, Esther introduces the reader to the boarding house she is staying during her internship in New York City. “This hotel – the Amazon – was for women only, they were all going to posh secretarial schools like Katy Gibbs, or they had just graduated from places like Katy Gibbs and were secretaries to executives and junior executives and simply hanging around in New York waiting to get married to some career man or