This scattering of forces was based, perhaps foremost, in Plath's insecurity and also perhaps in a certain kind of romantic egotism. Sylvia could do anything, yet she never felt worthy of one, single, solid position in life.
This inability to be really connected to outside roles, or groups, is clearly seen in her relationship with her family and friends, and also in the scenes set in the mental institution in The Bell Jar. We wonder how Plath really did deal with her marriage to Ted Hughes, despite all the letters to her mother describing how well things were going; for many years, clearly Plath did not accept her life wholeheartedly, nor did she thoroughly reject it either. When Esther is to have her picture taken for the Ladies' Day "summer splash," Esther hides in the bathroom because she feels like crying. She finds her modeling role distasteful, but she doesn't say "no" either.
This kind of neurosis that afflicts especially the young (male and female) has been described by many writers. Some authors view it as immaturity and allow their characters to at last grow up; some see it as budding rebellion against an unjust society, but even then the characters must eventually take the world into account. Some see it as "the sickness of youth," and the outcome of the individual's life depends on the individual's character (plus fate and/or history). In The Bell Jar, we never see Esther getting beyond this intense preoccupation with herself.
Sometimes we wonder if this narcissism might be due to the fact that Plath's neurosis was simply the style then, a style that we also see in Catcher in the Rye, a novel of the same era. This inability to make choices, to decide on responsibilities, plus the scattering tendencies, the fragmentation — all these were responses to the overly rigid, conservative times of the 1950s. Susan Sontag, in her book Illness as Metaphor, talks about cancer, but she makes the point that society decides the style of what consists of "tragic illness" and how its members will deal with the illness. Plath, in The Bell Jar, tells us much about the "style" of the time, and we realize that it is Esther's stint on the fashion magazines that, Plath seems to be saying, is responsible for Esther's breakdown.
