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Much of The Bell Jar was modeled after her own life: her and the protagonist Esther both had fathers who died when they were eight, went to the same college, were from the same hometown, attempted suicide, and wrote poetry.

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The setting is in New York City and Boston in 1953.

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A bell jar is a glass jar shaped like a bell that is used to trap things, often in science labs. In the book, Esther says that people in bell jars feel as if the world is a bad dream, as blank as dead babies. This also refers to earlier in the book, when Esther and Buddy are at the hospital. There are dead babies in bell jars. To Esther, the world is not just a bad dream because she remembers everything that happens and can't forget about anything.

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Esther goes by Elly Higginbottom when she is uncomfortable and doesn't want to reveal her real name.
"'My name's Elly Higginbottom,' I said... After that I felt safer. I didn't want anything I said or did that night to be associated with me and my real name..." (11).

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The protagonist's name is Esther Greenwood.
"'Is that Miss Esther Greenwood?'...
'It certainly is,' I said" (50).

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Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005.

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Esther has a summer job at a fashion magazine in New York after winning a writing contest.
"We had all won a fashion magazine contest, by writing essays and stories and poems and fashion blurbs, and as prizes they gave us jobs in New York for a month..." (3).

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Esther was pushed to the ground by her misogynistic blind date, Marco. He is very violent towards her.
"Mud squirmed through my fingers. Marco waited until I half rose. then he put both hands on my shoulders and flung me back" (10).

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Esther believes that there is a double standard for men and women, and that they should be treated equally.
"The main point of the article was that a man's world is different from a woman's world and a man's emotions are different from a woman's emotions... Now the one thing this article didn't seem to me to consider was how a girl felt... I couldn't stand the idea of a woman having to have a single pure life and a man being able to have a double life, one pure and one not" (81).

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Her main relationship is with her boyfriend, Buddy Willard.
"Then I heard him whisper, 'How would you like to be Mrs. Buddy Willard?'
I had an awful impulse to laugh... 'I'm never going to get married'" (93).

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Esther is a good writer, so she is good at writing scholarship essays and winning them.
"The one thing I was good at was winning scholarships and prizes, and that era was coming to an end" (77).

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Esther doesn't shower, wash her clothes, or sleep very much when she's in a bad mental state.
"I was still wearing Betsy's white blouse and dirndl skirt... I hadn't washed them in my three weeks at home... I hadn't washed my hair for three weeks, either. I hadn't slept for seven nights" (127).

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After college, Esther wants to work in publishing.
"'I've always thought I'd like to go into publishing... I guess what I'll do is apply at some publishing house" (33).

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Esther doesn't always say what she's thinking, and doesn't say much to certain people.
"I modestly didn't say anything...
'That's nice.' I was almost fainting and dying to get back to college and tell everybody'" (61).

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Since it's set in the '50s, Esther uses '50s slang like heel, which means a mean person.
"'No, I broke it myself. I broke it on purpose to pay myself back for being such a heel'" (86).

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For the majority of the book, Esther lives in New York City.
"It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York" (1).

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When Esther is in a mental hospital, her appearance is rough and strange.
"You couldn't tell whether the person in the picture was a man or a woman, because their hair was shaved off and sprouted in bristly chicken-feather tufts all over their head. One side of the person's face was purple, and bulged out in a shapeless way, shading to green along the edges, and then to a sallow yellow. The person's mouth was pale brown, with a rose-colored sore at either corner" (174).

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A photo of Esther from earlier in the novel has her with Bloomingdale jewelry. She worked for a fashion company so she had fashionable jewelry.
"I noticed the Bloomingdale earrings and the Bloomingdale necklace glinting out of it with bright, white highlights, like imitation stars" (198).

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Esther was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts, in New England.
"Nineteen years, and I hadn't been out of New England except for this trip to New York" (4).