The Bell Jar is about a young reporter, Esther Greenwood, and her life during anall expenses paid trip to New York in the 1950s. Esther won the month longtrip in a fashion magazine, one of only twelve winners.
She is jealous of allthe rich girls staying at the all female hotel, especially since it is her firsttime out of her humble home in New England. In the presence of all the upperclass girls, she feels out of place and unwelcome. While in New York, Esthermeets Doreen, a social butterfly with no definite personality. While on theirway to a party, they meet a man by the name of Lenny who invites them to havedrinks they end up bypassing the party.
Lennys friend is obviously intoEsther, and Lenny is interested in Doreen. Lennys friends feelings areunwanted, and Esther spends most of the night trying to get away from him. Eventually Esther and Doreen are invited to Lennys house, and Doreenconvinces Esther to go with her. As things begin to heat up between Lenny andDoreen, Esther feels out of place and wants to go back to the hotel, but isunable to because of Doreens insisting that she must stay to stop any”funny business” from ocurring. Eventually, Doreen invites the “funnybusiness” and Esther walks all the way back to her hotel, on the other side ofthe city.
After that night, Esther decides that she wont be close to Doreenand begins to focus her attention on a calmer person with higher goals Betsy. After eating as much as possible at a banquet held by the magazinetheyre interning for, Esther and Betsy become ill and vomit everywhere untilthey nearly passed out. When Esther wakes up, she finds out that everyone gotfood poisoning from the food at the banquet except for Doreen, who wassocializing with Lenny at the time. Doreen tells Esther that the crab everyoneate had too much bacteria growing in it. Even though Esther is too ill to evenwalk around, she enjoys the time in which she doesnt have to socialize withothers, just sit around and do nothing at all which is what she really wantsto do anyway.
