Mental illness in The Bell Jar Mental illness and madness are themes often explored in literature and the range of texts that explore these themes is extremely varied. Various factors can threaten a character's sanity, from traumatic events that trigger a decline to pressures from larger, impersonal sources. In general, writers have tried to demonstrate that most threats to sanity comprise a combination of long- and short-term factors: the library fire in Mervyn Peake's novel "Titus Groan" accelerated the descent of Lord Sepulchrave in madness, but in the long term. The problem can be identified in the weight of tradition which made him fear «that with him the line of the Groan should perish». This interaction between acute and chronic is, it would seem, a matter of agreement among authors who have explored this issue. How the characters respond to these threats is not. In some works the threatened character manages to acquire power: he finds a way to maintain himself and emerge from the test undefeated, if not indomitable. Esther Greenwood, as portrayed in Sylvia Plath's autobiographical novel "The Bell Jar," is one such character, although the question always remains whether such a victory is a permanent solution. In many other works the characters' only option is to escape. This may be an escape from reality as described in Roald Dahl's short story "Georgy Porgy". It may be an escape from self-awareness, as shown in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story "The Yellow Wallpaper." The ultimate escape is self-destruction: Sepulchrave's death in "Titus Groan" and Sylvia Plath's real-life suicide in 1963 (just three weeks after the publication of "The Bell Jar") can both be seen as an last resort when the pressures threatening their sanity proved too all-pervasive and powerful to overcome. Esther Greenwood's initial response is to withdraw: she tries to protect herself by severing her emotional connection both with the outside world and, increasingly, with herself. At various points Plath describes scenes that would normally be repulsive and horrifying; the language used, however, is clinical and cold and gives the reader the impression that the narrator is unable to respond emotionally to what he is observing. In describing medical samples of preserved fetuses, Greenwood says that "The baby in the first bottle had a large white head folded over a tiny curled up body the size of a frog." No comment is made on this or similar descriptions that follow until the next paragraph, when she confides that "I was quite proud of the calm way in which I stared at all these gruesome things." This response has an almost childish and irreverent tone and doesn't calm down with the horrible sites she was seeing (and Plath implicitly admits this with the "creepy things") - however the tone of the comment emphasizes the block she is placing between herself and disturbing scenes. The very structure of the writing highlights this: the position of the comment at the beginning of the next paragraph creates a break in the flow of the writing and emphasizes Plath's disjointed emotional state. Other episodes reiterate this. When Greenwood first sees Buddy Willard naked we would expect him to have a passionate or at least emotional response given that they were in a serious relationship. Her comment is "The only thing I could think of was turkey necks and turkey gizzards and I felt very impressed" - a reaction which could be due to other causes but which in context suggests a lack of connection with the world and "normal" responses. With the.