Sylvia's Social Satire Success
The Bell Jar is an excellent novel about coming-of-age and struggling with mental health, but it would be a shame to leave it at just that. To me, it has various other unseen virtues. For example, I found it to be rather darkly funny and an excellent use of satire. Throughout the book, it is abundantly clear that Esther finds society to be absurd and almost grotesque, and Plath does an impressive job of conveying this through Esther’s language and inner thoughts. Probably one of the most, if not the most, targeted subject of Plath’s sharp humor is the set of norms and expectations laid out for Esther and other women of the time period. One example is how Esther perceives motherhood and the process of childbirth. Describing the delivery of a baby, she says: “The woman’s stomach stuck up so high I couldn’t see her face or the upper part of her body at all. She seemed to have nothing but an enormous spider-fat stomach and two little ugly spindl...