"The Bell Jar"and Madness

The following excerpt is the end of the introduction and Paragraph 1 of an essay written for the class '20th Century Women Writers'. The prompt for the essay is also included below. TW: Suicide, Illness, poor Mental Health

‘Madness is a lie’ (Thomas Szaz). How do you understand this comment? Explore some of the ways in which one or more writers make use of the ‘lie’ of madness.

The comment ‘madness is a lie’ is on the surface quite unsettling, especially when coupled with Szaz’s other prominent work the ‘Myth of mental illness’, as it implies those who struggle with mental health are not being truthful about their ailment. Which is a theme still used today to reduce and dismiss the very real struggle of living with poor mental health as you can’t always see its symptoms in the same way you can see a broken leg. As Esther exclaims in The Bell Jar, “If only something were wrong with my body it would be fine.”[1] Through more research into his work, readers come to understand that Szaz is simply being wary of the processes of psychiatric diagnosis and disagrees with the terminology “disease” in relation to discussing mental health.[2] While he has every right to be critical of some outdated psychiatric practices, shock therapy for example, his thesis that the “patient is the maligner” and that many people “fake” their mental illness in order to escape a task is deeply unsettling.[3] There is a need to insert a kind of disclaimer at this point, stating that this essay is in no way reducing the struggles faced by those living with poor mental health to a mere reaction to their immediate environment. Szaz’s standpoint is echoed by Susan Bordo’s theory that eating disorders, such as anorexia, are a form of unintentional protest against political construction of gender, therefore viewing a very real disorder in a superficial light .[4] The idea that environment and society is the all-powerful decider is also rebuked by Plath who suggests as much when describing how her protagonist should be "having the time of her life” in her internship but still cannot escape the suffocation of her bell jar.[5] While societal norms are deeply oppressive and important factors which can lead to an aggravated internal life, mental health should not be reduced to a mere reaction to the environment. This essay will use Szaz’s hypothesis that ‘madness is a lie’ to understand the various ways Plath shows that the word ‘madness’ is not enough to describe her the struggle faced by her protagonist Esther in The Bell Jar.

One way to explore the idea of madness as a lie is to investigate the comments Ester’s mother makes about her situation being a ‘choice’. [6] To her mother, Ester’s suicide attempt was her simply acting out like an angsty teenager, and the language she uses to describe her thoughts about Ester’s release from the hospital demonstrates as much. The mother smiles at the idea her daughter is not like “those awful dead people” on the ward and seems confident of this distinction.[7] It is significant that Plath describes those at the hospital as appearing “dead” to the mother, considering Esther’s suicide attempt was due to her feeling dead on the inside. Furthermore, she describes Esther as her “baby” which reduces Esther from someone dealing with the pressures of living with a mental illness to being perceived as a child who is acting out. The final line in this conversation is perhaps the most frustrating, with her mother stating “I knew you’d decide to be all right again.”[8] The very suggestion that Esther at this point has a choice as to whether she is “all right” or not shows that Ester’s mother does not realise the depth of her daughter’s issues. It is not so much that she thinks Esther is lying rather that her mother does not understand the situation her daughter is in, and does absolutely nothing to change that. This is a concept which is also present in another work about the ‘madwoman’, The Yellow Wallpaper, where the unnamed protagonist’s husband, John, states “She shall be as sick as she pleases.”[9] It is due to this kind of ignorance that mental illness can be perceived as a lie. The ‘choice’ to be mad follows the theme that female madness is often portrayed as preferable to sanity, due to its perceived liberating properties in a society that omits the female experience.[10] While this literary trope can be useful superficially, as there are of course strong links between the suffering of characters like Esther and the oppressive society that they are encased by, critics must be careful not to romanticise poor mental health by stating ‘madness’ is freedom.

Citations [1] Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar , 3rd edn. (London : Faber and Faber, 2001), in iBooks, [accessed

24 October 2019], p. 262 [2] Thomas Szaz, The Second Sin, (n.p: Anchor Press, 1973), n.p [3] Thomas Szasz, "7 Language and Protolanguage", The Myth of Mental Illness:

Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct, (New York: Harper & Row Publishers,

1974), pp. 117–19 [4] Susan Bordo, The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity: A Feminist appropriation of

Foucault, (California: California UP, 2004), in Critical Theory,

<http://criticaltheoryindex.org/assets/bordosusan_body-and-the-reproduction-of-

femininity.pdf> 1.1.19, p.21 [5] Plath, p. 7 [6] Ibid., p. 207 [7] Ibid., p.224 [8] Ibid. [9] Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper, (n.p: n.pub, 1892), in iBooks,

<https://www.apple.com/uk/apple-books/> accessed 24.10.19, p. 30 [10] Marta Caminero-Santangelo, ‘Introduction: Emerging from the Attic’, The Madwoman

Can’t Speak: Or Why Insanity is not subversive, (New York: Cornell UP, 1998), in Google

Books, accessed 1.1.19, p.1