“Piece by piece, I fed my wardrobe to the night wind, and flutteringly, like a loved one's ashes, the grey scraps were ferried off, to settle here, there, exactly where I would never know, in the dark heart of New York.” 

“The Bell Jar” is often mistaken for fiction and reads like fiction, but the meaningful creation of it has a much deeper origin than just being some story. In her first and last novel which she published under a pseudonym in 14. January 1963 a few weeks before committing suicide, Sylvia Plath is able to convey her own feelings while addressing the oppressive conditions women lived in during the 1950s and 60s. 

The setting of the book frequently changes whenever a new chapter begins, but the book can roughly be divided into three stages: The first being twelve young women winning a fashion magazine contest and being gifted internships in New York for a month. Furthermore, we are introduced to the main character character Esther and the early stages of the conflict; Esther’s battle with mental health and stability, while living in a man-led, oppressive world. 

In the second stage, Esther is confronted with a person from her past, Buddy Willard, which causes many past conflicts and memories to resurface, causing the main conflict to branch out into sub-conflicts. 

The third and final stage deals with Esther’s admission into a mental institution and the final steps leading up to that point. 

Even though one might be able to segregate these parts of the book the reader is often left confused by where exactly Esther is located because of her jumping to different settings within paragraphs. This is not due to lazy writing but due to Plath trying to show the reader how focused Esther is on herself and how she will shut out people in her life and stay in her own “bubble”. 

The first part of “The Bell Jar” is arguably the most significant segment of the book, since most of the conflict is introduced and the grounds for the rest of the book are laid out. 

However, every other part of the book shows different sides of the conflict and constantly adds to the conflict and thus to the plot. 

When analysing “The Bell Jar” one can easily tell that the way in which Esther is introduced is quite definitive. While being introduced to Esther's character we

are simultaneously introduced to a friend she makes during the internship: Doreen; she is the exact opposite of Esther and is represented as a “liberated” woman in her time. She is outgoing and unfazed by other's opinions, even though many might look down on her. She doesn’t care for the upkeep of a permanent partner, she goes partying (often even alone) and doesn’t want to follow the gender roles of her time (which might be the only thing Esther and her share, though the execution of that belief is very different). 

Esther, on the contrary, keeps to herself more and has a darker more reserved personality.