The mood of the story, The Bell Jar is very dark and depressing. Throughout the book, the main character Esther struggles with her mental stability. She cannot understand what her role is as a woman in society in the late 1940s and early 1950s. She has difficulty accepting the fact that she will most likely end up as a stay-at-home mother or housewife. She doesn't like this idea. At the beginning of the book, Esther is doing a summer internship for a magazine in New York. She is staying in a hotel during her stay. The book takes the reader through the slow process of spiraling depression as Esther becomes more and more unstable. The book highlights Plath's own descent into depression, but provides insight into her thought process. A month after the book's publication, Plath committed suicide. She said the book was semi-autobiographical and that the characters and events in the story had happened, but she changed the names. It is obvious when reading the book that Esther is already very unstable to begin with. If I were an editor, I would change the ending. The book ends with E...