The Bell Jar is the story of a young woman who has a mental breakdown and has the further misfortune to have it during the late 1950s when ‘doctors’ were fond of things like lobotomies and electroshock therapy. We follow Esther Greenwood around as she finds life a bit too much to deal with and tries to kill herself. She comes to think of her world as being muffled by a bell jar that has been lowered over her head, so that the world she sees is distorted and not quite as it should be. One thing leads to another…