One evening at the beginning of the novel, Esther and Doreen head out in a cab, only half-intending to go to the event scheduled for the contest winners. During this summer, Buddy is in a sanitarium recovering from tuberculosis. Buddy has asked her to marry him, but she told him she never plans to marry. She has been dating Buddy Willard, a Yale medical student who bores her and minimizes those things she holds dear: poetry, literature, creation.
Her father died when she was nine while Esther wants to be a poet, her mother wants her to learn shorthand so that she will have a vocation to fall back on. The reader learns early on about the struggles in Esther's life. Esther's primary friend during this month is Doreen, a glamorous platinum-blond student who chain-smokes, dresses provocatively, and does not take her work seriously. Esther's manager at Ladies Day, Jay Cee, is a hardworking, hard-hitting, homely professional who expects much of Esther. She and eleven other college students, also contest winners, are set up in the Amazon Hotel and juggle work with the scheduled events the magazine has created for them. The year is 1953 and Esther Greenwood, having finished college for the academic year, has won a one-month paid internship at Ladies Day magazine in New York City. The Bell Jar is the story of 19-year-old Esther Greenwood, the breakdown she experiences, and the beginnings of her recovery.
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