No Need for Penis-Envy : A Feminist Psychoanalytic Reading of The Bell Jar

Abstract: This essay analyzes Esther Greenwood’s identity crisis, mental illness, and recovery in Sylvia Plath’s novel The Bell Jar (1963) from a feminist psychoanalytic perspective. The purpose is to understand the cultural and psychological mechanisms behind the main character’s situation. Esther is a talented and hardworking student who dreams of a literary career in 1950’s America. At the age of nineteen, events and realizations launch Esther into an identity crisis that leads to severe depression. Why she falls ill, and the nature of her illness and recovery, are up for interpretation. The thesis of this essay is that Esther Greenwood’s identity crisis, mental illness, and recovery can be explained using a feminist interpretation of Freud’s theories of hysteria and melancholia, and the development of the differences between the sexes, which includes the Freudian concepts of castration, bisexuality, and the Oedipus complex.