THE BELL JAR DESCENDS AGAIN: A FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF MODERN MEDICINE BY SYLVIA PLATH AND REBECCA MYERS-SPIERS

Abstract

This article examines Sylvia Plath’s novel The Bell Jar within the context of the 1950s’ America and the ways the novel criticizes the workings of medicine in perpetuating the gender roles of the time together with Rebecca Myers-Spiers’s personal account entitled “The Bell Jar Revisited: Putting Young Girls Under the Lenses of Patriarchy” that was published in 1999 and aims at showing that there has not been much progression in psychiatry in terms of focusing on the female problem. The Bell Jar chronicles the life of Esther, an independent young woman, and her journey of self-realization and psychological crisis during the 1950s which was a decade of conformism and traditionalism that encouraged the traditional gender roles. On the way to her crisis and final recovery, Esther interacts with different doctors through which Plath criticizes how modern medicine is treating women in general. As exemplified by the characters Buddy Willard and Doctor Gordon, doctors of the time use their scientific knowledge and medical profession as ways to manipulate and dominate women. In this respect, they act as the proxies of the patriarchal discourse and oppress Esther which worsens her condition. On the other hand, Esther’s relationship with a female psychiatrist Doctor Nolan highly contrasts her previous experiences with medicine. Doctor Nolan’s treatment methods are gynocentric. Thanks to this feminist approach and the female solidarity she builds with Esther, Esther is able to overcome her psychological crisis. In The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath recognizes feminism and a gynocentric approach in medicine as a cure for the problems of women in the 1950s. Similarly, Rebecca Myers-Spiers’s account shows that that there has not been much change in terms of the treatment of women in psychiatric clinics since the 1950s. Patriarchal ideology still oppresses women by using and manipulating the scientific discourse.

Keywords

• The Bell Jar
• Modern medicine
• Feminism
• Rebecca Myers-Spiers
• psychiatry.

References

1. BERGER, P. A. (2009). “Medical Treatment of Mental Illness.” Science. 200. 974-98. JSTOR. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1746395>
2. BIRMINGHAM FEMINIST HISTORY GROUP (2005). “Feminism as Femininity in the Nineteen-Fifties?” Feminist Review 80: 6-23. JSTOR. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3874362.
3. BUDICK, E. M. “The Feminist Discourse of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.” College English. 49: 872-885. JSTOR. http://www.jstor.org/ stable/378115.
4. BUELL, F. (1976). Sylvia Plath’s Traditionalism. Boundary 2, 5(1), 195-212. doi:10.2307/302025
5. FARLAND, M. (2002). “Sylvia Plath’s Anti-Psychiatry.” Critical Insights: The Bell Jar, edited by Janet McCann. California & New Jersey: Salem Press.
6. FOUCAULT, M. (1978). The History of Sexuality. Trans. by Robert Hurley. New York: Pantheon Books.