51 pages • 1 hour read
Sylvia PlathThe Bell Jar
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1963A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
In summer 1953, 19-year-old Esther Greenwood is spending a month interning at Ladies’ Day magazine in New York, a position she secured by winning an essay-writing contest. Despite having an opportunity that other girls would kill for, Esther isn’t enjoying herself. She feels as numb and lifeless as “the eye of a tornado” (3). Esther grew up in the suburbs of Boston, and she struggles to relate to her fellow interns, most of whom are wealthy high-society girls just waiting around to get married. She makes friends with Doreen, a sharp-tongued girl from the South, and Betsy, another intern with a wholesome, all-American appearance and demeanor. Esther and Doreen are on their way to a party when a radio jockey named Lenny Shepherd approaches and invites them to join him for a drink. Lenny instantly attaches himself to Doreen, and Esther is paired with a friend of Lenny’s named Frankie, whom she finds unattractive due to his short stature. The group visits a bar, and Esther, who knows nothing about alcohol, orders a vodka neat on a whim. She tells Frankie that her name is Elly Higginbottom and that she’s from Chicago. He asks her to dance but she turns him down, and he eventually leaves.
Chapter 2 Summary
Esther and Doreen follow Lenny back to his apartment. Doreen asks Esther to stick around in case Lenny “[tries] anything funny” (15). She and Lenny dance while Esther watches, feeling lonely and detached. They begin play-fighting. Lenny calls Doreen a “bitch” and playfully bites her. Doreen’s dress slips down, exposing her breasts, which Esther takes as her cue to leave. She walks back to the Amazon hotel, where she and the other interns are staying, and looks out of her window at New York, reflecting on her detachment from the city. To cheer herself up she takes a bath, symbolically washing away the night until she feels “pure and sweet as a new baby” (20). After her bath she falls asleep but is soon awakened by a drunk Doreen pounding on the door. Esther doesn’t want to carry Doreen all the way back to her room and decides to leave her out in the hallway. As she lowers Doreen onto the carpet Doreen vomits and blacks out. Esther is disgusted and decides that she is much more like Betsy than Doreen.
Chapter 3 Summary
Esther attends a banquet catered by the Ladies’ Day test kitchen. Having grown up in a working-class family, she is delighted by the decadent food. Doreen is spending the day in Coney Island with Lenny and Esther is seated next to Betsy, who asks her why she didn’t attend the morning’s fur show. Esther tears up as she admits that she missed the show because she was rebuked by Jay Cee, her supervising editor.
Esther recalls the morning’s events. Unable to decide between visiting Coney Island with Doreen and Lenny or going to the fur show with the other interns, she instead spent the morning lying in bed feeling dejected until Jay Cee called to summon her to the office. Jay Cee asked Esther if she was bored by her work and asked about her plans after graduation. Esther struggled to answer. Finally, she replied that she might like to go into publishing. Jay Cee advised her to learn a foreign language or two to distinguish herself from the thousands of other young women trying to break into the industry. Esther agreed even though there is no room in her packed senior-year schedule for a language course.
Esther wishes her mother were more like Jay Cee. Her real mother is a traditionally-thinking woman who teaches writing and typing to support the family and resents Esther’s father for dying and leaving them no money. She wants Esther to learn a practical skill like typing, because “even the apostles” have to earn a living (40).
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
These initial characters set up the paradox of Esther Greenwood’s life in New York and hint at her coming struggle with depression. On the surface, Esther should be ecstatic. Her life has all of the trappings of a successful, modern young woman’s—a loving boyfriend, an internship at a trendy magazine, and an upwardly mobile trajectory. Esther herself can’t understand why she feels the way she does. She continually tries to engage in the activities that are expected of her, hoping that by acting like a happy young woman she will become one.
Esther lacks a sense of identity. Her struggle to find herself is directly tied to the sexism of her surroundings. In 1953, the options for what a woman can be in the world are limited, and none of those options seem to fit Esther. She oscillates between feeling drawn to two of her fellow interns: Doreen, who represents transgression against typical female social norms with her sharp-tongued, heavy drinking and casual sexual encounters, and Betsy, the all-American sweetheart who models chipper adherence to the archetype of the ideal, well-behaved woman. Esther shares Doreen’s cynicism and humor, but when she tries to act like her friend the reality of drinking and casual sex leaves her feeling dirtied, indicating that she has internalized the misogynistic idea that premarital sex tarnishes a woman’s value. She senses a distance between herself and Betsy too—although she would like to be as naturally happy and bubbly as Betsy, she can’t suppress her self-critical inner voice or the feelings of inertia and depression that overwhelm her.
So far, Esther’s troubles sound a lot like the normal insecurity and listlessness of young adulthood. Despite her demonstrated intelligence she lacks passion or a drive toward any particular career. Unlike the other girls at her internship, Esther doesn’t have the luxury of idling around spending her family’s money after college. If she wants to escape her small-town life she has to keep finding jobs or scholarships—in other words, she has to find a societal slot that she can fit into. Esther’s uncertainty about what she wants to do after graduation is typical of a 19-year-old. However, it deeply distresses Esther, a perfectionist who holds herself to high standards in every aspect of life.
Chapter 2 introduces the symbol of rebirth. When Esther takes a hot bath after leaving Lenny’s apartment, the bathwater strips off the metaphorical grime she feels from witnessing Doreen’s behavior. Esther compares the bath to holy water. Despite her often-cavalier attitude toward the idea of female purity, Esther strives for purity in a larger sense. She wants to be cleansed of her convoluted desires and the dark complexities of her mind. Already, she is aware that her brain functions in atypical ways. As the novel continues it will become evident that Esther feels there is something innately wrong about the way her mind works, and by undergoing a process of rebirth she hopes to cleanse herself of her anomalies and become an ordinary, happy member of society.
Related Titles
By Sylvia Plath
