Treatment of madness in The Bell Jar and The Yellow WallpaperMental illness and madness is a theme often explored in literature and the range of texts that explore them is extremely varied. Various factors can threaten a character's mental health, ranging from traumatic events that trigger a decline to pressures from larger, impersonal sources. Generally speaking, the authors attempted to show that most threats to mental health include a combination of long-term and short-term factors - the library fire in the novel "Titus Groan" by Mervyn Peake precipitated Lord Sepulchrave's descent into madness, but a longer term The problem can be discerned in the weight of tradition which made him fear "that with him the line of Groan would perish". Such an interaction between the acute and the chronic is, it seems, a matter of agreement among authors who have explored this issue. How the characters react to these threats is not. In some works, the threatened character manages to become autonomous – he finds a way to maintain himself and emerge from the ordeal unconquered, even undefeated. Esther Greenwood, as portrayed in Sylvia Plath's autobiographical novel "The Bell Jar," is one such character, although the question still remains whether such a victory is a permanent solution. In many other works, the only option for characters is to escape. Perhaps it is an escape from reality, as described in Roald Dahl's short story "Georgy Porgy." Perhaps it is an escape from self-awareness, as shown in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story "The Yellow Wallpaper." The ultimate escape is self-destruction - the death of Sepulchrave in "Titus Groan" and the real-life suicide of Sylvia Plath in 1963 (just three weeks after the publication of "The Bell Jar") approximately...... middle paper... ...demonstrates throughout the first half of the novel that Greenwood is increasingly withdrawing from herself, with her inability to identify with her reflection in a mirror ("The Face in the mirror looked like a sick Indian" - she uses no words to suggest that "the face in the mirror" is herself, and only through context does the reader know), which is the symbol. The first half of Bell Jar therefore demonstrates that Esther Greenwood's initial responses to the pressures threatening her mental health are first to lose her emotional connection to the world, and then to lose that connection to herself. Such a response only leads to further problems that the author explores throughout the rest of the novel, and it is worth noting that in many cases, defenses that may initially be useful in response to a threat may end up being be part of the defense system. problem itself.