noun
1. A bell-shaped glass jar or cover for protecting delicate instruments, bric-a-brac, or the like, or for containing gases or a vacuum in chemical experiments.
EX. There is something about the proverbial "devil in the bell jar" that appeals to my sense of visual and literary taste. To capture and contain evil, to put it on display, makes it an example. To combat evil, one may argue, you must understand evil. If you put a villain in a regular jail cell that means that you don't want to see them and want to hide them away. The problem with hiding evil is that it makes it all the more effective. When people forget evil and fail to understand it, they're almost always doomed to be defeated by it.
Then, of course, there is the dramatic license of having the villain contained, but not sequestered away from outside contact. This is the reason we love scenes where a villain taunts the hero from inside their glass prisons, because the glass represents the thin and fragile barrier between the two characters and how easy it would for the evil to escape.
I think there is certainly something to it-- after all, putting something on display and under glass makes it all the more... tantalizing...
