Mood

In the novel, The Bell Jar, written by Sylvia Plath, the overall mood is a cynical one. Plath tells a story about a woman’s coming-of-age, but it does not adopt the typical direction of an adolescent’s development into adulthood. The protagonist, Esther continuously regresses into a state of insanity to the point of attempting suicide, as she is trapped in societal expectations and is constantly worried about her future. "What a man wants is a mate and what a woman wants is infinity security," and, "What a man is is an arrow into the future and what a woman is is the place the arrow shoots off from" (Plath 79). These are the words from Mrs. Willard, Esther’s expected mother-in-law. The idea that a woman would want to be something other than her husband’s bigger fan is alien to Mrs. Willard. Unlike Mrs. Willard, Esther rejects this idea and much of her own cynicism is directed towards this sexism and the conventionalism of American society, as the novel is taking place in the 1950’s. Esther’s sarcasm and bitterness is often directed at her own misconceptions as a youth about men and sex because a few years before, Esther had the same belief system as Mrs. Willard. And despite Esther’s deep and saddening struggle with her own doubts about her future, she narrates the novel with a self-deprecating mordant humor. On the outside Esther displays herself as sarcastic and dry, but her agony as she contends with a suicidal depression is apparent. One particular way the mood is shown, is how Esther perceives people. She is an outsider to society so she is able to see the idiocies of it to the point where her surrounding peoples come off as caricatures. This depicts her belief of society and the people in it as being silly and dumb, thus she mocks it throughout her narration.