Response 2

When I think of the word “experience” I tend to think that this is the series of events that happen to us during the course of our lives.  In the case of a novel, it’s the individual events, revealed in the narrative discourse, that forms an “experience”.  I can’t remember whether we actually talked about this directly in class or wether this is my own idea, but an experience never actually takes place until you recollect it into a narration.  Many times, as in Plath’s novel “The Bell Jar”, the series of events, or narrative discourse, are not really related to each other.  They take place over a series of months and are, much of the time, seemingly unrelated.  However, “The Bell Jar” is referred to as being experiential.  We wouldn’t have any comprehension of her experience except she reveals it to us through narration, making the “experience” real for us.

Plath creates a solid parellel between her own life experiences and those experiences that Esther lives in the novel.  With referential function, and the knowledge that this is not an autobiography, Plath is able to create an experience for the reader, similar to what she was feeling when she wrote the novel, without necessarily being constrained to her “experience”.  To me, The Bell Jar is more about mental illness in general than it is about Sylvia Plath’s personal life.  Abbott refers to what he refers to as fictional truth.  This is not truth in fact, but in meaning.  After learning a couple of things about Sylvia Plath’s life, The Bell Jar is very close to some of the things happening in Plath’s life.  Plath, like Esther, attended an all girls school, once dated a man from Yale which is represented in Buddy Willard, once broke her leg, had a scholarship sponsor, and was rejected from a summer course that she really wanted.

I really think the discussion that was started during class about Joan being created as a sort of alternative to Esther.  Esther describes Joan as being like her in some ways, but was more of a dark outline of her own thoughts and feelings.  I think it was very relevant whoever said that Plath was in a way distinguishing two possible courses for her own life.  Esther endures her shock treatments, is able to conquer her indecisions when she decides to lose her virginity, and eventually moves back to school.  We are left with Esther on the doorstep of her meeting with her Doctors to see if she could be released.  Although we are not given the outcome of the meeting, the book ends with the impression the meeting will go well and she will be released.  On the other hand, we have Joan who at first shows rapid signs of improvement, but eventually regresses and ends up hanging herself.  This is the other possible direction Plath’s life could go.

Plath

As I read The Bell Jar, I couldn’t  help but think, despite the tragedy in Plath’s demise, that her problems were not that peculure to her, but rather problems that many people experience growing up.  Many of the issues which Esther/Plath finds troublesome (I’m assuming that while this is not autobiographical, Plath reflects a lot of her own experiences and feelings in Esther), such as feeling Buddy was leading a double life, feelings of inadequacy that she didn’t know as much as her peers, feelings of indecision as to a suitable person to marry, questions about which career path to pursue, and a general sense of hopelessness.  Today, these are common feelings that doctor’s can more readily identify and treat.  However, I believe Plath was a woman slightly before her time.  She had already broken gender role barriers in her mind, when in the 1950′s women were forced to take a back seat with both her ambitions as well as their feelings.  This time didn’t embrace mental illness, or self actualization, and consequently lead to Plaths death.