The Girl in the Mirror: Sylvia Plath Tara Bell

inthe MIRROR SYLVIA PLATH'S LIFE AND WORK

Tara Bell YEAR 12

Mirrors function as a medium of truth; they reflect appearances as they are, without distortion. This can be useful as, in the absence of deception, our understanding of the world around us is echoed plainly, albeit the reflection can be altered upon interpretation. In other words, the impact of the truth on an individual is very much dependent on their prevailing perspectives: for example, whether they’re cynical or optimistic, what they view their personal identity to be, or what previous knowledge and preconceptions they may hold. As a result, people see the world in many different ways. After reading The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath during isolation, I have become increasingly aware of the

Sylvia Plath

different perspectives that people may take upon viewing the world and how that, in turn, affects their experiences of life. More specifically, the narrator of the novel, Esther Greenwood, suffers from a form of depression; as a result, she views the world through a ‘bell jar’, her perspective distorted to the point that she seems to lose touch with reality.

The novel follows Esther through what at first seems an amazing New York internship, but is soon seen to be unfulfilling as Esther struggles to uphold personal and societal expectations. Esther soon becomes disassociated from the world around her and begins to contemplate many forms of suicide. As she describes it: “To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream”. And so, the amazing life experiences that she has been given don’t make a difference to her, “because wherever I sat - on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok - I would be

sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air”. This ‘bell jar’ is a symbol of Esther’s insane state of mind, which lessens her understanding of the world around her.

This novel was published on the 14th January 1963, and to make it even more dismal, it felt heavily autobiographical. One of the early titles of the novel was The Girl in the Mirror; once Plath’s own life experiences are taken In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.” into context, she almost perfectly mirrors her THE MIRROR ‘fictional’ character. Like Esther, Plath received ... REPEATEDLY This poem was written in 1961, whilst Plath was a scholarship to College where she studied DISPLAYS THE still living with her husband, Ted Hughes, and English, but throughout her life was consumed WOMAN'S their first child Frieda. This must have been a by her depressive state. This spurred from the TRUE INNER stressful time for Plath; she did not want to settle age of 8, following the death of her father; the FEELINGS THAT into the quiet married life that was expected later estrangement from her abusive husband, CONTINUALLY for most women at the time. This uncertainty Ted Hughes, also played a large part in this. As a HAUNT HER. surrounding her identity shines through The result, she a ttempted suicide by taking sleeping Bell Jar: "I saw my life branching out before pills in her mother’s home, in 1953, which led to me like the green fig tree in the story. From the her stay in a psychiatric ward of a public hospital where she tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future underwent shock treatments. These worked to an extent and beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy allowed Plath to write many collections of poetry such as Ariel home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and and The Colossus. On 11th February, 1963, less than a month another fig was a brilliant professor …I saw myself sitting in after The Bell Jar was published, Plath killed herself, aged 30, the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I at her London home, by sticking her head in an oven. couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant Plath’s mental health and state of depression permeate her losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs literary works. She viewed life through the distorting lens of a began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped ‘bell jar’, and this pessimism is prevalent in her poem ‘Mirror’, to the ground at my feet." from a collection of poetry released after her death, called In ‘Mirror’, the poet’s attitude is ambiguous; the truth Crossing the Water. displayed by the mirror damages the woman’s perception of her appearance, but she cannot help returning to the truth “I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. for solace. The mirror is a source of stability; it repeatedly Whatever you see I swallow immediately displays the woman’s true inner feelings that continually Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. haunt her. The mystical writing style personifies the mirror as I am not cruel, only truthful — an immortal, arrogant object, elevated as an object of sacred The eye of a little god, four-cornered. significance, a ‘God’. It mocks Plath’s loss of vitality as she Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall. progresses in age; as she grows older, the truth becomes more It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long and more damaging to her mental state, destabilising her sense I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers. of identity, her self- perception distorted as she struggles to Faces and darkness separate us over and over. uphold youthful beauty to conform to society’s perception of Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me, Sylvia Plath’s powerful ability to express and articulate her Searching my reaches for what she really is. inner feelings in her literary works led her to become one of Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon. the most renowned American writers of the twentieth century. I see her back, and reflect it faithfully. Over half a century after her death, her writing continues to She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands. give a real insight into the injustices she suffered in her role as I am important to her. She comes and goes. a woman in society with extreme mental illness and to reveal Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness. how it affected her perception of the world. an ‘ideal woman’.