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

Year 2021, Volume: 8 Issue: 23, 323 - 333, 30.05.2021

Gülşen Aslan Uslu

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

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