All this makes us wonder if Plath, as well as her character Esther Greenwood, was not a victim of multiple failures created by the historical era that Plath was caught in. Concerning many matters, we can say only, "But if" or "If only." Yet those are the very but's and if's and only's that we sigh whenever we view a tragedy.
Thus the attempted suicide of Esther and the real one of Sylvia Plath are another single tragedy for us to ponder. We see clearly that this tragedy is caused not only by a historical situation but also by old male-female conflicts, by a denial of death itself, and also probably by "the sickness of youth" — a condition well described by many German authors, some perhaps a bit akin to Sylvia Plath. It is impossible, one realizes finally, to analyze The Bell Jar without coming to terms with a host of modern existential dilemmas and without coming to terms with the problem of mental illness, or mental health, as it manifests itself in modern American society.
Esther Greenwood takes on several names and sees her friends as other parts of herself, or fragments of herself; indeed, she calls Joan Gilling her double — not just because Joan is having a nervous breakdown, but because Joan is a modern, dual-natured American. Esther, or perhaps even Sylvia, could not choose just one "fig," or one role — that is, she could not be just a mother, or "just a housewife," or just a one-dimensional editor, or a spinster professor; therefore, Esther had to invent other names and other masks. She could not accept the old traditional cliche that all these feelings and notions would leave her after she had a baby. Perhaps her several selves were actually a sign of mental health, for she did not repress her personality into one shape as so many others did. But society did not support her in this, and soon Esther is convinced that she is a hopeless mental case.
