Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar” (post 4): Further symptoms of multiple personality that was diagnosable at the beginning of the novel (post 3)

Hearing Voices

The first-person narrator and protagonist, Esther Greenwood, never complains of, mentions to a doctor, or is ever treated for, auditory hallucinations. It is not considered one of her symptoms. Why not? Apparently, she had heard voices for a long time and they were not associated with distress or dysfunction. She mentions them only in passing:

When she is about to ski dangerously, she hears an “interior voice nagging me not to be a fool” and says she has had “year after year of doubleness” (1, p. 97).

“I summoned my little chorus of voices.

Doesn't your work interest you, Esther?

You know, Esther, you’ve got the perfect setup of a true neurotic.

You’ll never get anywhere like that, you’ll never get anywhere like that, you’ll never get anywhere like that” (1, p. 146).

These are the voices of some of her alternate personalities.

Alternate Personalities

“I decided I would spend the summer writing a novel. That would fix a lot of people…From another, distanced mind, I saw myself…(1, pp. 119-120).

“I tried to speak in a cool, calm way, but the zombie rose up in my throat and choked me off” (1, p. 126).

Alternate Handwriting

“And then, I thought, [the doctor] would help me, step by step, to be myself again…I told Doctor Gordon about not sleeping and not eating and not reading. I didn’t tell him about the handwriting, which bothered me most of all…when I took up my pen, my hand made big, jerky letters like those of a child…” (1, pp. 129-130).

Alternate personalities may have different handwritings. The “letters like those of a child” suggest that some of her distress and dysfunction may have been due to the presence of a depressed, child-aged, alternate personality.

Mirrors

Mirrors have been a recurrent subject in this blog, because persons with multiple personality may see an alternate personality when they look in the mirror. A previous instance in this novel—Esther saw a Chinese woman when she looked in the mirror—was cited in a previous post. Here is another example:

“I moved in front of the medicine cabinet. If I looked in the mirror while I did it [committed suicide], it would be like watching somebody else, in a book or play. But the person in the mirror was paralyzed and too stupid to do a thing” (1, p. 148).

Unreliable Narrator

Esther’s main complaints to psychiatrists (other than her suicidality) were her insomnia, anorexia, and inability to read, already mentioned above. Her claim not to have slept for a month is not only impossible, but belied by the fact of her reserves of energy when she was swimming in the ocean, and by the fact that a nurse in the hospital witnessed that she slept. She claimed not to be able to read, but then she admits reading books on abnormal psychology. She claims to have no appetite, but then realizes she has just demonstrated a good appetite. She is not knowingly lying. It is just that one personality often does not know what other personalities are doing.

“…I must be just about the only person in the world who had stayed awake for a solid month without dropping dead of exhaustion…I thought drowning must be the kindest way to die…[She is at the beach, and she challenges the young man she is with to swim out into the ocean with her] out to that rock out there. Are you crazy? That’s a mile out [he says]. What are you?, I said. Chicken?” (1, p. 157). They swim out, but he turns back due to exhaustion. She continues to swim out, and tries to drown herself, but she keeps bobbing up to the surface. “I knew I was beaten. I turned back” (1, p. 161).

“The only thing I could read, besides the scandal sheets, were those abnormal-psychology books. It was as if some slim opening had been left, so I could learn all I needed to know about my case to end it in the proper way” (1, p. 159).

“I can’t sleep…

They interrupted me. “But the nurse says you slept last night.”

“I can’t eat” [but] “It occurred to me I’d been eating ravenously ever since I came to” [after her recent, near-fatal, suicide attempt] (1, p. 177).

Pseudonym

The novel was originally published under the pseudonym “Victoria Lucas,” with the explanation that it would protect the feelings of people on whom characters were based. Another reason might have been that the author’s main writing personality did not identify with the author’s regular name.

Diagnosis and Treatment

No diagnosis is ever mentioned in the novel. Hospital treatment includes a supportive environment, insulin injections, psychoanalytic psychotherapy, and ECT.

Based on what I have cited from the text in this and prior posts, I am sure that Esther had multiple personality. She also had major depression, but, based on available information, I cannot be sure of whether her depression was a separate condition or was secondary to the multiple personality (confined to only certain personalities, and would have remitted with appropriate psychotherapy for the multiple personality).

Esther proclaims her recovery in terms of a restoration of her regular personality:

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am” (1, p. 243).

However, for Sylvia Plath, the cure was only temporary, because multiple personality was rarely diagnosed and treated in those days.

1. Sylvia Plath. The Bell Jar [1963/1971]. New York, Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006.