Images of Breakdowns Similarities Between Plath's ‘The Bell

The latter charts the emotional breakdown and eventual institutionalisation of Maria Wyeth – a thirty one year old burnt out actress; Didion choosing Hollywood to serve as a microcosm of contemporary American society, exposing a culture characterised by emptiness. Plath’s novel is often described as the story of a young woman’s struggle to survive in a society that does not take her talents or ambitions seriously; but it is also the story of the protagonist Esther Greenwood’s mental illness, her struggle to become independent, and her journey of sexual discovery. Through the psychological alienation of the heroine, we are given an increasingly objective and exterior view of the culture she has inherited.

The aim of this essay is to discuss the images of mental breakdowns presented in these two novels, and identify similarities between the two in the way this is represented.

They imported Betsy straight from Kansas with her bouncing blonde ponytail and Sweet-of-Stigma-Chi smile. …and Betsy started to tell about the male and female corn in Kansas. She got so excited about the damn corn even the producer had tears in his eyes… What surprised me was that Doreen didn’t let on she noticed what he was doing. She just sat there, dusky as a bleach blonde negress in her white dress and sipped daintily at her drink.

You couldn’t tell whether the person in the mirror was a manor a woman, because their hair was shaved off…I smiled. The mouth in the mirror cracked into a grin. A minute after the crash another nurse ran in.

CARTER: Here are some scenes I have very clear in my head…After BZ’s death there was a time when I played and replayed these scenes and others like them, composed them as if for the camera… (p. 13-14).MARIA: …all the images of the family they might have been: Carter throwing a clear plastic ball filled with confetti, Kate missing the ball. Kate crying. Carter swinging Kate by her wrists…Freeze frame…The images would flash at Maria like slides in a dark room. On film they might have seemed a family.

Some topics in this essay:
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