Crossing The Threshold
Sylvia Plath's, The Bell Jar, ends in a powerful yet uncertain scene where Esther Greenwood is crossing an imaginary threshold that determines whether or not she is qualified to leave the asylum. Not only is she consumed by fear, but also by the likelihood that she won’t be able to be let out. This moment holds all that she has experienced and has yet to discover. Throughout the novel, Esther undergoes a whirlwind of emotions from the moment she stepped into New York City for her summer internship, to her last possible moments at the Belsize asylum. Through her ups and downs, she finds herself annoyed by society's standards pushing her to be someone she is not. In New York, she felt pressured to be the stereotypical teenage girl that goes to parties and drinks. At home in Massachusetts, she was expected to be the perfect, accomplished daughter that followed societal expectations and wrote in shorthand to showcase the intelligence that she was expected to have. The pressure she ...