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Plath was taken to McLean Hospital in Massachusetts, which has also treated Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, David Foster Wallace, James Taylor, and Ray Charles, among others.

Greenwood, like Plath, was found and brought to a mental hospital.

Greenwood’s attempt to die by suicide mirrors Plath’s actions. Likewise, Plath was rejected from Frank O’Connor’s writing class at Harvard. Like Sylvia Plath, Esther Greenwood tries to die by suicide and is sent to a hospital.Īfter returning from New York, Greenwood discovers that she didn’t get into a writing class, which accelerates her depression. The scene in which Greenwood eats an entire bowl of caviar by herself was a real thing Plath did. For example, the character Philomena Guinea was based on Plath’s literary patron, Olive Higgins Prouty. (Other past guest editors included Joan Didion and Ann Beattie.) The experiences in the novel are based on real events and people. Plath won a “guest editorship” at Mademoiselle in 1953.

The first half of the novel follows Greenwood though a summer internship at Ladies' Day magazine in New York. The Bell Jar is partially based on Sylvia Plath’s “guest editorship” at Mademoiselle. I am a fool if I don't relive, recreate it.” 2. There is an increasing market for mental-hospital stuff. In 1959, Plath wrote in her journal, “Must get out Snake Pit. Like The Bell Jar, Ward’s book is about her experiences in a mental hospital. Her intention was to write something like the 1946 novel The Snake Pit by Mary Jane Ward. Plath always called The Bell Jar a “ potboiler”-a term used to refer to something created with the popular tastes of the day in mind. Sylvia Plath wanted to write a bestseller like The Snake Pit. The novel and the spate of brilliant poems Plath wrote right before her death still reverberate today. Published one month before Plath died by suicide at age 30, the story follows a young woman, Esther Greenwood, through a mental breakdown, suicide attempt, and electroshock therapy in a hospital. The Bell Jar is the only novel written by the poet Sylvia Plath.