Nowadays, many literary critics tend to discuss the semantic meaning of Sylvia Plaths novel The Bell Jar from strictly environmentalist perspective that is, they refer to Esther Greenwoods mental inadequateness as the result of novels protagonist being exposed to Americas male chauvinistic socio-political realities in time when womens ability to gain social prominence used to be limited by their gender affiliation. And, in support of such their claim they usually quote Esthers following remark: I couldnt stand the idea of a woman having to have a single pure life and a man being able to have a double life, one pure and one not (Plath 66). Moreover, some critics go as far as suggesting that Esthers mental problems have arisen out of her realization that male and female psyches are not only different, but that the particularities of mens perception of surrounding reality inevitably force women into submission. In its turn, this brings them to the conclusion that Esthers suicidal leanings were nothing but a form of protagonists conscious protest against male sexism. For example, in her article The Feminist Discourse of Sylvia Plaths The Bell Jar, Emily Miller Budick refers to Esthers inability to come to terms with objective reality as something that should deserve our admiration, simply because in authors eyes, feminine concepts of spirituality and sappy emotionalism represent much bigger exis
tential value, as compared to the notions that we traditionally associate with manliness logic and rationality: Esther retreats from the language that abbreviates and shrinks and kills, to a language that, like the language of botany, breathes fascination and sustains life. She immerses herself in villanelles and sonnets which, in their complex metaphoricity, represent retreat from the concrete, abbreviated world of physics and chemistry (Budick 885). While agreeing with suggestions that Esthers mental inadequacy represents a rather complicated psychiatric case, we nevertheless do not agree with those critics who think of Plath novels main character as feminist martyr. And the reason for this is simple Esther herself refers to her psychological anxieties as being of clearly pathological nature: The sickness rolled through me in great waves. After each wave it would fade away and leave me limp as a wet leaf and shivering all over and then I would feel it rising up in me again (Plath 150). Therefore, The Bell Jar cannot really be discussed as a literary work that contains clearly defined socio-political statements, but rather as a literary account of ones descent into madness. The fact that, while growing ever-more mentally unstable, Esther philosophizes on the subjects of art, poetry and gender equality, does not give us a right to think of her as being a particularly progressive individual.