The title metaphor

Will Landschulz
Am Lit Per. 2
Mrs. LaMagdeleine

Well, this is awkward.  I, going off on tangents like I sometimes do, covered some of this in the last blog, and thus got some of it wrong.  Rather than BS my way through this one, I'm going to cover this again, and consider it a chance to correct my mistakes.  When Esther describes herself as being inside a bell jar, she is saying that no matter where she moves, be it in her old workplace or a Paris boutique or a Bangkok teahouse, she's inside an unchanging environment that will not bend to her appeals to get out.  She finds the air to be stuffy and stale, and therefore her entire life, being inside this jar, is stale as well.  Hence, the attempts to kill herself.  When she attempts to look at something outside the jar (such as writing) it appears distorted, as though the jar itself is rippled and uneven.  Presumably, the shock treatments as administered by Dr. Gordon cracked this jar, but did not break it, increasing her distortion and alienation from the world (after the sleeping pill incident, her face is multicolored, as if seen through refractive glass), but making it easier for Dr. Nolan to break through and get Esther to sanity.