The reviews were lukewarm, for British critics found it to be a critique of American society and deemed the title character a hopeless neurotic. When The Bell Jar was first published, Sylvia Plath was disconcerted by the reviews, which criticized the novel a feminist counterpart to the works of J.D. Sylvia underwent electroshock therapy and disappeared after a suicide attempt, after which she was hospitalized for psychotherapy. The most important events of the novel are almost strictly drawn from Sylvia Plath's biography. Replicating the events of the first chapters of The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath won an internship at Mademoiselle. Sylvia and Esther were both poets who were noted for winning prizes and scholarships although the college which Esther attends is not stated explicitly in The Bell Jar, it is a prestigious women's college that could easily be Sylvia Plath's alma mater, Smith College.Īt Smith College, Sylvia Plath received a scholarship donated by Olive Higgins Prouty, the novelist and author of Stella Dallas, who later became a friend and patron for Plath, thus paralleling the relationship between the fictional philanthropist Philomena Guinea and Esther Greenwood. Both Sylvia Plath and her fictional counterpart, Esther Greenwood, lost their father at early ages and hail from the Boston area. The Bell Jar was first published in London in January 1963 by William Heinemann Limited publishers under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, for Sylvia Plath questioned the literary value of the novel and did not believe that it was a 'serious work.' More importantly, the novel had numerous parallels to the life of its author.

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