Mainstream Depictions of Clinical Depression versus The Bell Jar

    In class, we talked about The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath as being one of the first of its kind to give a first-hand account of the onset and progression of clinical depression when it became popular in the 1970s. I found it important to consider the context of the stigma and general attitudes towards mental health disorders in the time period of The Bell Jar in contrast to more progressive outlooks towards the issue today. In particular, the discourse surrounding the topic has become far more mainstream, and even popular TV shows have emerged starring protagonists who experience clinical depression. One show that came to mind was 13 Reasons Why, and while none of these depictions should be taken as representative of broad trends, it was interesting to compare the differences in how each story chooses to depict mental health disorders.

    13 Reasons Why is a Netflix TV series that first came out in 2017 based off of a 2007 novel that became extremely popular amongst teenagers. The story surrounds the aftermath of the suicide of a high school student Hannah Baker, who leaves behind thirteen cassette tapes narrating incidents with people who are responsible for making her decide to end her life.

    One parallel I noticed between 13 Reasons Why and The Bell Jar was the idea of planning a suicide to happen. In The Bell Jar, Esther often narrates herself looking for opportunities for ending her life and contemplating the idea of death. In Chapter 13 when Esther goes to the beach with Jody and her date Cal, she is fascinated by the topic of dying; she asks Cal, “If you were to kill yourself, how would you do it?” and is disappointed when Cal answers a gun, almost out of the infeasibility of obtaining one herself. However, I felt that while Esther frequently considered opportunities inside her head, her thoughts about death were generally impulsive. Later in Chapter 13 when she decides to swim out to a rock and try to drown herself, she says “Then I saw it would be pointless to swim as far as the rock, because my body would take that excuse to climb out and lie in the sun…” It is clear her exact plan for how she would end her life isn’t really completely thought out, so when she has swum out far enough, she herself is not sure what to do.

    In contrast, in 13 Reasons Why, the premise behind Hannah’s “thirteen reasons” reveals the meticulous planning and documentation preceding Hannah’s decision to end her life. She plants the box of cassette tapes so that it was passed onto each person who was featured. Each of the tapes points fingers at a specific person and events with them as culprits that “drove” Hannah to commit suicide. While the events of the story are extremely graphic and feature themes of bullying, isolation, and sexual assault, I think the idea that the way others treated Hannah being the sole reason for the ending of her life takes away from the actual mental health disorder that Hannah was struggling with.

    In The Bell Jar, a similar idea of the suicide being brought up as the fault of another person is brought up by Buddy Willard, who asks Esther “Do you think there’s something in me that drives women crazy?... I dated Joan, and then you, and first you… went, and then Joan…” (Chapter 20). However, Esther laughs off the absurdity of the idea by thinking of Dr. Nolan, who asserts about Joan that “Nobody did it. She did it” (Chapter 20).

    The different messages depicted by these two accounts of depression are revealing. With 13 Reasons Why, I find that the message feels easy to romanticize the idea of suicide as being an easy way out, or as a revenge scheme as a response to experiencing certain traumas. The show sensationalizes death, and neglects to give any acknowledgement to the actual mental health disorder that Hannah was dealing with and the need for her to seek professional help and treatment. In The Bell Jar, the onset of Esther’s depression is increasingly disturbing to the reader. She begins the story seemingly disconnected to the scholarship program in New York, and feeling that she is not living up to the high expectations of academic achievement that she should be. But through the story, her crisis escalates to the point where her narration of others is distorted by the bell jar; she sees the peers around her and other representations of suburban motherhood and conventional lifestyle as monstrous and grotesque. She reveals physical symptoms of her disorder and seeks medical help, and her recovery process through shock treatments and therapy slowly allows her to feel less suffocated by her thoughts. While the onset of her condition can be placed as the result of some factors such as her isolation given the gender double standard of the time and her “failures” academically, it is never emphasized as “driving” Esther towards ending her life. Esther’s episode is far from sensational; it is a nuanced and deeply troubling first-hand experience of depression.