The next issue that the reader of the work must deal with is Plath's portrayal of mental illness. On this issue, the reader has no trouble accepting the validity of Plath's presentation; both her descriptions of Esther's mental state and Plath's insights into the complexity of Esther's mind are truthful and compelling. Indeed, Plath's ability to be "real" on this level, on this issue, is perhaps the best key to the book's success.
However, this again creates a problem for the reader. The knowledge that Plath eventually killed herself affects our reading of the book. All our empathy and sympathy for Esther is tinged by the fact that we know that, eventually, Plath did not recover. We start to wonder what is wrong with Esther, and we also become angry with her for not surviving, but we are responding to an extra chapter — a final chapter that was never written, one that we are never allowed to read. Plath's real suicide, which we can never really fathom in poetic or fictional, or even analytic terms, affects our reading of Esther's attempted suicide.
So to come to terms with this complex situation we must talk about the mental illness of Sylvia/Esther. This is not an easy task, not even for a trained clinical psychologist.
However, leaving aside the question of whether Plath herself had a serious, constitutional, and incurable mental problem, and aside from whether or not Plath should be classified as schizophrenic or manic-depressive or merely neurotic, the critic, sensitive to the dilemma of the intelligent woman facing America in the fifties, can make several important observations.
