The Bell Jar

Esther Greenwood spends a glittering, hollow month as a guest editor at a women's magazine in New York, staying at a women-only hotel and going through the motions of a life she cannot feel, before returning to her mother's house in the Boston suburbs and a breakdown. The New York half is closely mapped: the Amazon hotel is the real Barbizon, the magazine is Plath's own Mademoiselle, and the United Nations turns up on a date. The Massachusetts scenes of home and hospital run outside the setting.

Esther Greenwood

The Amazon hotel (the Barbizon)

Chapter 1

Esther lives with the other prize-winning college girls at the Amazon, a hotel for young women whose careful respectability she watches with detachment. From her room high above the city she throws her expensive New York wardrobe out the window piece by piece, an early sign of the numbness closing over her.

Chapter 1

inspired by The women-only Amazon hotel where Esther and the other guest editors stay is the real Barbizon Hotel for Women at 140 East 63rd Street, where Plath herself lodged during her Mademoiselle internship. Sited at the Barbizon.

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