Depression and the Dangers of Perfectionism in The Bell Jar, Phoebe Mills

The novel follows Esther as she navigates her life as a young adult. Esther struggles to fit in with her peers on the fashion internship, and this creates her initial struggle for identity. Esther becomes a myriad of dichotomies and extremes; she wants to be pure but sexually active, free but organised. But, contributing to her eventual downfall, the 1950s society does not allow for such ambiguity and uncertainty and that is why she struggles to find her identity in the patriarchal society, creating a devastating vulnerability that pushes her toward her tipping point.

Following the internship, Plath displays how Esther takes on a passive role in her own life, and the lives of others, and tip-toes through her own life as if it were not even hers at all, through the powerful and poetic statement: ‘I am an observer.” By merely drifting through her life, it becomes easier for Esther to lose her identity as she does nothing to maintain it.

A key aspect of Esther’s identity stems from taking great pride in her intelligence, her A-grades, her scholarship, and her writing, and so she pins all of her self-worth on her intellectual ability: “nineteen years of running after good marks and prizes and grants of one sort or another.” By pinning her self-worth on her intellectual ability, Esther creates a rigid environment for herself in which there is no allowance for error or failure in her identity. To Esther, failings are not learning opportunities, they are horrendous acts of idiocy that she cannot recover from. The rejection from the writing programme is the straw that breaks the camel’s back for Esther and the rejection made her question her abilities and intelligence. No longer receiving the academic praise and validation that she craves – and is used to – Esther didn’t know where to find her value, and so assumed that she no longer had a value in society.

As her depression spirals, it becomes easier for Esther to criticise her intelligence as a form of self-attack, as her intelligence is the thing that she values most about her identity. When looking for a course to occupy her time at the local college, Esther realises that “the stupidest person at my mother’s college knew more than I did.” The wings of academic praise that once supported Esther, now are melting, and falling apart, dragging her down to the sea of depression that will inevitably drown her

Even after one of her attempts at suicide, Esther criticises her intelligence for not being able to follow-through with her plan, “but the person in the mirror was paralysed and too stupid to do a thing.” It is clear to see that Esther sets unattainable goals for herself and becomes increasingly depressed and disappointed when she is unable to meet them, further edging herself toward the limit of her capacity for failure and dissatisfaction. Esther is undoubtedly intelligent with a bright future and many opportunities and paths ahead of her.

However, Esther’s depression means that she is unable to decide on a path to walk, and her indecision is what adds to her already diminished identity. Plath encapsulates this sentiment through the image of the fig tree. The branches have plenty of ripe figs, all representing aspirations in Esther’s life, “from the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned me,” all that Esther needs to do is choose one, but she is paralysed in indecision, and the figs grow too ripe, fall, and rot on the ground around her.

Plath uses the fig tree as a symbol for Esther’s life and indecision, displaying the various futures that she could choose from; “a happy husband and a happy home and children. . . a famous poet . . .a brilliant professor. . . the amazing editor. . . Europe and Africa, and South America. . . Constantin and Socrates and Attila. . .” Esther’s main struggle with identity is that she cannot choose just one thing for her future; she wants to be a myriad of wonderful and impressive identities; she wants to travel the world and experience everything, but she also wants a happy and rooted home – this idea further shows how Esther’s identity is slowly being fractured as she fights with herself over the contrasting things she wants in life.

Esther also worries that she is “inadequate” in choosing her own path. Esther’s struggle with maintaining her identity coincides with the existential feeling of recognising the insignificance of her life, and having ambitions that far surpass anything capable of any person – let alone a woman in 1950s society – and these are feelings that Plath herself relates to and embeds into Esther’s core identity, “I am gone quite mad with the knowledge of accepting the overwhelming number of things I can never know, places I can never go, and people I can never be.” Plath also says – that encompasses Esther’s identity in a nutshell: “I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want.”

Esther’s ambition and desire for perfection is her hamartia and is a key contributor to her poor mental health – she wants to be so many things, but cannot, and to Esther this is the same as failing at them all.