Passive, Out-of-Body Narration in The Bell Jar

            One of the most defining aspects of The Bell Jar is Sylvia Plath’s unique style of narration. Her writing is characterized by a decidedly poetic descriptiveness that helps to convey details and emotion in an incredibly nuanced way. The book is jam-packed with similes, metaphors, and other literary devices scattered among the pages amidst a backdrop of consistently vivid descriptions. And while these details are essential for the overall character of the novel, they are ultimately traditional literary techniques that you could theoretically find in many other works of poetry or prose if you looked hard enough.

            However, there are some other aspects of Plath’s writing that stand out to me far more than the blanket-level similes and descriptions, like the intense, aromatic herbs and spices that add robust flavor to an already fragrant, satisfactory dish. There are ways in which Plath plays with the framing of events throughout The Bell Jar that really help to encapsulate the feelings of uncertainty, helplessness, and detachment that Esther experiences throughout the novel.

            Although this style of writing appears in the book in some earlier chapters, the first time I personally noticed it was at the end of chapter four when Esther gets food poisoning. In this scene, Esther has just left the hotel bathroom and is actively stumbling her way down the hall to her own room. Suddenly, the paragraph breaks, and the reader is met with, “The next thing I had a view of was somebody’s shoe … and it was pointed at me. It seemed to be placed on a hard green surface that was hurting my right cheekbone” (45). At this point, the reader pieces together that Esther has fallen. But prior to that, there is a good chunk of time during which the reader is left confused as to Esther’s actual whereabouts. Esther herself doesn’t even figure it out until after a few sentences of observation. Based on the first sentence alone, the reader will likely default, as I did, to thinking that Esther had seen someone else’s foot down the hall. The act of falling must be retroactively pieced together using the subsequent unorthodox descriptions provided by Plath that, while technically correct, don’t provide the most direct route to comprehension.

            An important concept in physics is the notion of equality across different reference frames: the idea that there is just as much merit in claiming that something is moving towards you as there is in claiming that you are moving towards it. An easy example would be driving in a car. You could either claim that the car is moving forwards through the still landscape or that the landscape is moving backwards past the still car. Mathematically, both of those perspectives are equally valid. However, one of them may be more useful depending on the situation. It’s usually best to think of the car as moving through the environment since that’s what everyone outside the car observes. But if the car is instead on a high-speed racetrack with sharp turns, and you want to analyze the g-forces on the driver for safety purposes, then it’s best to ground yourself inside the racecar where the driver is and claim that the outside world is the thing moving so you can better see all of its effects on the driver directly.

            In physics, perspective changes are always carried out for a reason, and that is no different in The Bell Jar. Plath frames Esther’s fall as if the ground had suddenly slammed into her instead of the other way around. She also makes Esther regard her own shoes and clothes as if they were somebody else’s. Both of these acts together create the feeling that Esther has left her own body and is observing the world from a distant spot. Now would be the time where I attempt to make a very smart remark and say that this distant spot in question is, in fact, the Bell Jar™. But you probably knew that already. The primary focus of the Bell Jar™ metaphor is still what is going on inside (the racecar driver and g-forces, if you will; only the driver is Esther and the g-forces are her clinical depression). But there is indeed an obligatory second side of the metaphor in which Esther is prevented from interacting with the outside world by this Bell Jar™ barrier.

            This out-of-body barrier shows up a lot throughout the book. One example is in chapter fourteen when Esther first regains consciousness after her suicide attempt: “Someone was moaning. Then a great, hard weight smashed against my cheek like a stone wall and the moaning stopped … Then the chisel struck again, and the light leapt into my head, and through the thick, warm, furry, dark, a voice cried. ‘Mother!’” (170-171). Once again, a sense of disembodiment is created, this time from Esther not recognizing the sound of her own voice. The framing also has a noticeable passiveness to it. Everything happens around Esther, mediated by individuals and forces out of her control, and she chooses to let it pass instead of taking any action.

            Many of these experiences occur when Esther looks at herself. There’s one in chapter two when she looks in a mirror after getting back from that first night out with Dorene (18), another in chapter fourteen when Esther first sees herself in a mirror at the hospital (174), and yet another in chapter seventeen when she sees an old photo of herself in a magazine while in the asylum (207). Disembodied framing is used in all these examples to heighten the degree of alienation that Esther feels towards herself. Across all these moments, Esther is consistently stricken with the feeling that “this isn’t me,” and the narration is framed accordingly. Plath does an excellent job manipulating the presentation of events in The Bell Jar to demonstrate the idea that Esther feels just as disconnected from her world as the reader is and that, according to her, everything that happens is entirely beyond her control. This is an important part of Esther’s character and underlies many of the conflicts seen in the novel. While the reader may benefit from this kind of framing when it comes to understanding Esther’s struggles, Esther herself would probably do well with a change in perspective.

MXW
3.2.2026

Page numbers referenced from the Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition of The Bell Jar.