Status
Checked out
Genres
Publication
HarperCollins / Perennial Classics (2013), Edition: 50 Anv, 320 pages
Description
Classic Literature. Fiction. Literature. HTML: A realistic and emotional look at a woman who falls into the grips of insanity written by the iconic American writer Sylvia Plath "It is this perfectly wrought prose and the freshness of Plath's voice in The Bell Jar that make this book enduring in its appeal." ?? USA Today The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under??maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's neuroses become completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic… (more)
Media reviews
Esther Greenwood's account of her year in the bell jar is as clear and readable as it is witty and disturbing. It makes for a novel such as Dorothy Parker might have written if she had not belonged to a generation infected with the relentless frivolity of the college- humor magazine. The brittle
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humor of that early generation is reincarnated in "The Bell Jar," but raised to a more serious level because it is recognized as a resource of hysteria. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member KateLowry
Quite brilliant. The Bell Jar is aptly named; in the first two thirds of the book Plath captures perfectly the sense of suffocation and stodginess that comes of the disconnection Esther finds in depression. Within this isolation Plath renders her thought processes and logic so clear that her
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reactions can, at times, seem almost normal, such is the extent to which we are permitted to enter into the psyche of an ill mind. Then, in the last third of the story, one really does feel the lightening sensation of recovery, the coming up for air if you will. Truly a must read, Plath portrays her era from a fascinating perspective. Show Less
LibraryThing member sweetiegherkin
"Write what you know" is a common mantra heard by beginning authors. Sylvia Plath did precisely that in The Bell Jar with stunning results. The book chronicles Esther Greenwood’s spiral into depression and mental illness, which coincides with Plath's own life experiences and struggles with mental
On re-reading The Bell Jar, I was almost immediately struck by just how great a book it is and remembered why I liked it so much the first time. The book feels contemporary despite its age, and it is filled with such beautiful prose and apt characterizations.
The Bell Jar has a strange way of making mental illness seem rational. The edition I read this time says it best when it states on the back cover: “Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther’s breakdown with such intensity that Esther’s insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies.” Indeed, many of Esther’s concerns are valid for a young girl in college. In the early part of the book, the question that plagues Esther most is what she will do with her life, which is hardly an uncommon concern for college students. But unlike other young adults, Ester is staggered into inertia and depression by the many alternate routes open to her for she knows by choosing one, she will have to forgo the others.
Her near rape on her final night in New York City seems to be the snapping point for Esther, and she returns home to contemplate suicide every day before finally attempting. In the sections where Esther spends her time making and unmaking decisions daily, even hourly, Plath loses me a little. Her prose is not nearly so succinct or beautiful here and some parts drag a little.
The book then picks up again when chronicling Esther’s experiences in a mental institution and the treatment (or lack of) she gets there. It was heartbreaking to read when she started receiving shock therapy three times a week (and a sad reminder that we still don't treat depression well, although at least now we're not shocking people over it). A cautiously optimistic ending concludes Esther’s tale, yet we all know how the real-life story ended for Plath.
For the audio reader, Maggie Gyllenhaal is a superb audio reader. She perfectly caught all of Esther’s emotions with both obvious and subtle gradations of tone. Her reading made the character of Esther really come alive for the listener. This audio edition also included a brief biography of Sylvia Plath that was very interesting and highlighted the influence of Plath’s own life on this particular book. Of particular significance was Plath’s explanation that writing The Bell Jar helped her address this part of her past and finally get the needed closure to move on with her life, but that she published in under a pseudonym because she didn’t consider it a serious work.
I highly recommend this book to just about everyone.
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health.On re-reading The Bell Jar, I was almost immediately struck by just how great a book it is and remembered why I liked it so much the first time. The book feels contemporary despite its age, and it is filled with such beautiful prose and apt characterizations.
The Bell Jar has a strange way of making mental illness seem rational. The edition I read this time says it best when it states on the back cover: “Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther’s breakdown with such intensity that Esther’s insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies.” Indeed, many of Esther’s concerns are valid for a young girl in college. In the early part of the book, the question that plagues Esther most is what she will do with her life, which is hardly an uncommon concern for college students. But unlike other young adults, Ester is staggered into inertia and depression by the many alternate routes open to her for she knows by choosing one, she will have to forgo the others.
Her near rape on her final night in New York City seems to be the snapping point for Esther, and she returns home to contemplate suicide every day before finally attempting. In the sections where Esther spends her time making and unmaking decisions daily, even hourly, Plath loses me a little. Her prose is not nearly so succinct or beautiful here and some parts drag a little.
The book then picks up again when chronicling Esther’s experiences in a mental institution and the treatment (or lack of) she gets there. It was heartbreaking to read when she started receiving shock therapy three times a week (and a sad reminder that we still don't treat depression well, although at least now we're not shocking people over it). A cautiously optimistic ending concludes Esther’s tale, yet we all know how the real-life story ended for Plath.
For the audio reader, Maggie Gyllenhaal is a superb audio reader. She perfectly caught all of Esther’s emotions with both obvious and subtle gradations of tone. Her reading made the character of Esther really come alive for the listener. This audio edition also included a brief biography of Sylvia Plath that was very interesting and highlighted the influence of Plath’s own life on this particular book. Of particular significance was Plath’s explanation that writing The Bell Jar helped her address this part of her past and finally get the needed closure to move on with her life, but that she published in under a pseudonym because she didn’t consider it a serious work.
I highly recommend this book to just about everyone.
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LibraryThing member Pummzie
Part of me thinks, as for Douglas Coupland and Dave Eggers, I may have missed the optimal age for appreciation of this author. My late teens and early twenties would have been the most dangerous time to let Esther's depression get its nails into me. I think the Bell Jar will resonate with
Esther is so authentic, so believable that it is hard not to think that much of this is autobiographical and I can't imagine how painful it must have been to write, although of course, it may well have been cathartic for Plath.
Plath possessed a keen eye, a taste for wickedness and a love for irony which mean the tale of slide into depression and back is not all this work has to offer. The saddest thing about it is that it contains or alludes to much of the bitterest aspects of life which anyone, if moved to dwell on them often and deeply, could find incapacitating.
Time to read something vaguely uplifting methinks
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introverted, bookish teenagers and young adults who possess a life long tendancy towards solitariness and romantic notions of suicide but who will (hopefully) with the passing of time and a vague maturity, learn to live in the world as best they can. Esther is so authentic, so believable that it is hard not to think that much of this is autobiographical and I can't imagine how painful it must have been to write, although of course, it may well have been cathartic for Plath.
Plath possessed a keen eye, a taste for wickedness and a love for irony which mean the tale of slide into depression and back is not all this work has to offer. The saddest thing about it is that it contains or alludes to much of the bitterest aspects of life which anyone, if moved to dwell on them often and deeply, could find incapacitating.
Time to read something vaguely uplifting methinks
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LibraryThing member gbill
Sylvia Plath’s only novel is a brilliant, stark account of an intelligent and successful young woman’s descent into depression. It’s hard to pinpoint just why the wheels come off, but her frustrations stem from trying to fit into a world which seems pointless and phony, and which has a double
There are elements of The Catcher in the Rye in the main character’s disillusionment, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in her hospitalization, but the novel has such a darker meaning than either in part because it was largely drawn from Plath’s own life. It stands on its own and moves you regardless of that, particularly if you’ve wrestled with darkness, but it makes your skin tingle knowing she committed suicide a month after its publication by sticking her head into an oven while her two small children slept.
Quotes:
On feminism:
“I thought it sounded just like the sort of drug a man would invent. Here was a woman in terrible pain, obviously feeling every bit of it or she wouldn’t groan like that, and she would go straight home and start another baby, because the drug would make her forget how bad the pain had been, when all the time, in some secret part of her, that long, blind, doorless and windowless corridor of pain was waiting to open up and shut her in again.”
“The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way. I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters. Besides, those little shorthand symbols in the book my mother showed me seemed just as bad as let t equals time and let s equal the total distance.”
“It might be nice to be pure and then to marry a pure man, but what if he suddenly confessed he wasn’t pure after we were married, the way Buddy Willard had? 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.”
“That’s one of the reasons I never wanted to get married. The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.”
“This seemed like a dreary and wasted life for a girl with fifteen years of straight A’s, but I knew that’s what marriage was like, because cook and clean and wash was just what Buddy Willard’s mother did from morning till night, and she was the wife of a university professor and had been a private school teacher herself.”
On happiness, this feeling while skiing:
“Edging to the rim of the hilltop, I dug the spikes of my poles into the snow and pushed myself into a flight I knew I couldn’t stop by skill or any belated access of will.
I aimed straight down.
A keen wind that had been hiding itself struck me full in the mouth and raked the hair back horizontal on my head. I was descending, but the white sun rose no higher. It hung over the suspended waves of the hills, an insentient pivot without which the world would not exist.
A small answering point in my own body flew toward it. I felt my lungs inflate with the inrush of scenery – air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, ‘This is what it is to be happy.’
I plummeted down past the zigzaggers, the students, the experts, through year after year of doubleness and smiles and compromise, into my own past.
People and trees receded on either hand like the dark sides of a tunnel and I hurtled on to the still, bright point at the end of it, the pebble at the bottom of the well, the white sweet baby cradled in its mother’s belly.”
On physics:
“Physics made me sick the whole time I learned it. What I couldn’t stand was this shrinking everything into letters and numbers. Instead of leaf shapes and enlarged diagrams of the holes the leaves breathe through and fascinating words like carotene and xanthophyll on the blackboard, there were these hideous, cramped, scorpion-lettered formulas in Mr. Manzi’s special red chalk.”
On sadness:
“I didn’t know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of my throat and I’d cry for a week. I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full.”
“I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.”
“I felt myself melting into the shadows like the negative of a person I’d never seen before in my life.”
“I felt myself shrinking to a small black dot against all those red and white rugs and that pine paneling. I felt like a hole in the ground.”
On suicide:
“But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defenseless that I couldn’t do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn’t in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get at.”
On therapy:
“I had imagined a kind, ugly, intuitive man looking up and saying ‘Ah!’ in an encouraging way, as if he could see something I couldn’t, and then I would find words to tell him how I was so scared, as if I were being stuffed farther and farther into a black, airless sack with no way out.
Then he would lean back in his chair and match the tips of his fingers together in a little steeple and tell me why I couldn’t sleep and why I couldn’t read and why I couldn’t eat and why everything people did seemed so silly, because they only died in the end.”
Lastly, this haunting scene, atop a building, throwing her clothes off of it:
“A white flake floated out into the night, and began its slow descent. I wondered on what street or rooftop it would come to rest.
I tugged at the bundle again.
The wind made an effort, but failed, and a batlike shadow sank toward the roof garden of the penthouse opposite.
Piece by piece, I fed my wardrobe to the night wind, and flutteringly, like a loved one’s ashes, the gray scraps were ferried off, to settle here, there, exactly where I would never know, in the dark heart of New York.”
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standard against women, wanting them to be chaste before marriage and housewives afterwards no matter what their desires or abilities are. And when they do come off, it’s a rather steep spiral into various suicide attempts, followed by the horrors of hospitalization and electroconvulsive shock therapy. There are elements of The Catcher in the Rye in the main character’s disillusionment, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in her hospitalization, but the novel has such a darker meaning than either in part because it was largely drawn from Plath’s own life. It stands on its own and moves you regardless of that, particularly if you’ve wrestled with darkness, but it makes your skin tingle knowing she committed suicide a month after its publication by sticking her head into an oven while her two small children slept.
Quotes:
On feminism:
“I thought it sounded just like the sort of drug a man would invent. Here was a woman in terrible pain, obviously feeling every bit of it or she wouldn’t groan like that, and she would go straight home and start another baby, because the drug would make her forget how bad the pain had been, when all the time, in some secret part of her, that long, blind, doorless and windowless corridor of pain was waiting to open up and shut her in again.”
“The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way. I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters. Besides, those little shorthand symbols in the book my mother showed me seemed just as bad as let t equals time and let s equal the total distance.”
“It might be nice to be pure and then to marry a pure man, but what if he suddenly confessed he wasn’t pure after we were married, the way Buddy Willard had? 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.”
“That’s one of the reasons I never wanted to get married. The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.”
“This seemed like a dreary and wasted life for a girl with fifteen years of straight A’s, but I knew that’s what marriage was like, because cook and clean and wash was just what Buddy Willard’s mother did from morning till night, and she was the wife of a university professor and had been a private school teacher herself.”
On happiness, this feeling while skiing:
“Edging to the rim of the hilltop, I dug the spikes of my poles into the snow and pushed myself into a flight I knew I couldn’t stop by skill or any belated access of will.
I aimed straight down.
A keen wind that had been hiding itself struck me full in the mouth and raked the hair back horizontal on my head. I was descending, but the white sun rose no higher. It hung over the suspended waves of the hills, an insentient pivot without which the world would not exist.
A small answering point in my own body flew toward it. I felt my lungs inflate with the inrush of scenery – air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, ‘This is what it is to be happy.’
I plummeted down past the zigzaggers, the students, the experts, through year after year of doubleness and smiles and compromise, into my own past.
People and trees receded on either hand like the dark sides of a tunnel and I hurtled on to the still, bright point at the end of it, the pebble at the bottom of the well, the white sweet baby cradled in its mother’s belly.”
On physics:
“Physics made me sick the whole time I learned it. What I couldn’t stand was this shrinking everything into letters and numbers. Instead of leaf shapes and enlarged diagrams of the holes the leaves breathe through and fascinating words like carotene and xanthophyll on the blackboard, there were these hideous, cramped, scorpion-lettered formulas in Mr. Manzi’s special red chalk.”
On sadness:
“I didn’t know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of my throat and I’d cry for a week. I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full.”
“I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.”
“I felt myself melting into the shadows like the negative of a person I’d never seen before in my life.”
“I felt myself shrinking to a small black dot against all those red and white rugs and that pine paneling. I felt like a hole in the ground.”
On suicide:
“But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defenseless that I couldn’t do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn’t in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get at.”
On therapy:
“I had imagined a kind, ugly, intuitive man looking up and saying ‘Ah!’ in an encouraging way, as if he could see something I couldn’t, and then I would find words to tell him how I was so scared, as if I were being stuffed farther and farther into a black, airless sack with no way out.
Then he would lean back in his chair and match the tips of his fingers together in a little steeple and tell me why I couldn’t sleep and why I couldn’t read and why I couldn’t eat and why everything people did seemed so silly, because they only died in the end.”
Lastly, this haunting scene, atop a building, throwing her clothes off of it:
“A white flake floated out into the night, and began its slow descent. I wondered on what street or rooftop it would come to rest.
I tugged at the bundle again.
The wind made an effort, but failed, and a batlike shadow sank toward the roof garden of the penthouse opposite.
Piece by piece, I fed my wardrobe to the night wind, and flutteringly, like a loved one’s ashes, the gray scraps were ferried off, to settle here, there, exactly where I would never know, in the dark heart of New York.”
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LibraryThing member rcooper3589
BOOK #19
This is, without a doubt, one of the best books I've ever read. Plath's ability to accurately articulate the feeling of falling into a deep depression is amazing. I actually felt as though she had tapped into my head and had poured my thoughts onto paper. I was also impressed by how
FAVORITE QUOTE(S): I wanted to tell her that if only something were wrong with my body it would be fine, I would rather have anything wrong with my body than something wrong with my head, but the idea seemed so involved and wearisome that I didn't say anything. I only burrowed down further in the bed. // To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream.
This is, without a doubt, one of the best books I've ever read. Plath's ability to accurately articulate the feeling of falling into a deep depression is amazing. I actually felt as though she had tapped into my head and had poured my thoughts onto paper. I was also impressed by how
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advanced Plath is when it comes to a woman's role in society at the time- she didn't want to settle down and have a family and couldn't understand the double-standards set up for men and women. A part of me is curious to know if Plath had been born a little later if she would've had the same problems- my initial reaction is yes, but then again, she'd probably have been a completely different person.... The only criticism I have is I found it difficult to follow the flashbacks- when they started and ended- and at times I was confused as to what was going on exactly. This problem, however, could very well just have been me and not the books fault at all. If you've never read this book, I highly (highly!) recommend it- especially if you or someone you know has dealt with depression.FAVORITE QUOTE(S): I wanted to tell her that if only something were wrong with my body it would be fine, I would rather have anything wrong with my body than something wrong with my head, but the idea seemed so involved and wearisome that I didn't say anything. I only burrowed down further in the bed. // To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream.
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LibraryThing member imabooknerd
I could hardly breathe. As i read, the room seemed to get smaller, the air thinner, a feeling of claustrophobia settled around me. The slow mental demise of Esther Greenwood seemed almost personal. The writing was so powerful, when i shut the book, my face was blue, because i had stopped breathing.
I wanted to reach out and touch Esther Greenwood. I felt her pain, and needed to comfort her. I tried to share her emotional burden.(Pointless, as she is a character from the twisted but sensational mind of Sylvia Plath.)Her fears became mine. Her pain became mine. Her instability became mine.
Why aren't you having the time of your life in a job a million girls would kill for? Why are you still floating in the gray blob of time between adolescence and adulthood, with neither a set identity, or an outline of a future? What will you do with your seemingly uncontrollable mind, that wanders and dances and aimlessly roams and stays away from the exact place you want it to go, like a slacker from med school? What can i do to help you Esther Greenwood?
After my face returned to its normal color, my pulse slowed, my breathing was once again at its normal pace, i realized that i had just devoured a piece of literature, so unbearably melancholy, that i was feeling blue. (and i don't mean the color of my face, as i was once again breathing regularly) Anything that can make a person feel as i did reading The Bell Jar, should be praised, reread, absorbed, every drop of juice should be squeezed out of it, until it is as dry as the sahara. But when finished, it should still be as juicy, as breathtaking, as it was the first time the binding was cracked.
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I saw an annoying woman with a carriage, and didn't want her to see me. I wanted to swim to that rock, take a dip in the ocean to get away from a boy, and to escape the heat. I felt the pain of the shock therapy, and the comfort of Doctor Nolan. I wanted to reach out and touch Esther Greenwood. I felt her pain, and needed to comfort her. I tried to share her emotional burden.(Pointless, as she is a character from the twisted but sensational mind of Sylvia Plath.)Her fears became mine. Her pain became mine. Her instability became mine.
Why aren't you having the time of your life in a job a million girls would kill for? Why are you still floating in the gray blob of time between adolescence and adulthood, with neither a set identity, or an outline of a future? What will you do with your seemingly uncontrollable mind, that wanders and dances and aimlessly roams and stays away from the exact place you want it to go, like a slacker from med school? What can i do to help you Esther Greenwood?
After my face returned to its normal color, my pulse slowed, my breathing was once again at its normal pace, i realized that i had just devoured a piece of literature, so unbearably melancholy, that i was feeling blue. (and i don't mean the color of my face, as i was once again breathing regularly) Anything that can make a person feel as i did reading The Bell Jar, should be praised, reread, absorbed, every drop of juice should be squeezed out of it, until it is as dry as the sahara. But when finished, it should still be as juicy, as breathtaking, as it was the first time the binding was cracked.
Show Less
LibraryThing member apartmentcarpet
Plath's semi-autobiographical novel about a a young woman's journey through mental illness is still relevant today. This book is very readable, and the ending image of a bell jar hanging over the woman's head, ready to drop and suffocate her at any moment, is very powerful.
LibraryThing member Lisa2013
recommended for: young women, everybody who enjoys really good fiction
I first read this book when I was 19 and I loved it; it immediately became one of my favorite books, even though I went through a long bout of writers’ block that I attribute to my reading of it. I think that it’s a truly
I first read this book when I was 19 and I loved it; it immediately became one of my favorite books, even though I went through a long bout of writers’ block that I attribute to my reading of it. I think that it’s a truly
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brilliant novel (and I really felt for Sylvia Plath when I found out that upon publication it got scathingly poor reviews). It’s hilarious and tragic and I so empathize with the protagonist. Like many first novels, it’s a thinly veiled biographical work. I know that a lot of people pick up this book because they are fascinated by Plath’s suicide, but I think that it stands on its own, even without any knowledge of the author. Incredibly well written story of a talented young women going through a mental breakdown. Show Less
LibraryThing member lukeasrodgers
After finishing the book, I'm tempted to read it over again immediately, which isn't common for me. The novel's main character, Esther, inhabits a complex emotional world, one that as the novel progresses increasingly spills over into the narration, which I is often disjointed, without any warning,
The story in general is sad, but is punctuated by moments of a sort of morbid hilarity, as when Esther is visiting the convalescing Buddy Willard, a former object of desire and now of revulsion, with Buddy's father who "couldn't stand the sight of sickness, especially his son's, as he believed all sickness was sickness of the will" (paraphrase). Such episodes, little glimpses into absurd and ridiculous aspects of Esther's world, put the reader more in touch with her state of mind, as their lack of development and sustained attention, out of joint with what you would expect, results in an deep sense of alienation.
The effect of the book, throughout, is to transport the reader into Esther's bell jar, the reader however being deprived of the relief that is apparently granted to Esther via the shock treatments, the result being that you are left in a state of suspension as to whether she will retain her sense of the lifted burden, or whether it will return. Which leads to one of the central problems of the book, in my mind: whether the locus (and consequently, treatment) of mental illness and depression resides in the patient or the society.
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leaving the reader with some sense of the disorientation that is central to Esther's experience. The story in general is sad, but is punctuated by moments of a sort of morbid hilarity, as when Esther is visiting the convalescing Buddy Willard, a former object of desire and now of revulsion, with Buddy's father who "couldn't stand the sight of sickness, especially his son's, as he believed all sickness was sickness of the will" (paraphrase). Such episodes, little glimpses into absurd and ridiculous aspects of Esther's world, put the reader more in touch with her state of mind, as their lack of development and sustained attention, out of joint with what you would expect, results in an deep sense of alienation.
The effect of the book, throughout, is to transport the reader into Esther's bell jar, the reader however being deprived of the relief that is apparently granted to Esther via the shock treatments, the result being that you are left in a state of suspension as to whether she will retain her sense of the lifted burden, or whether it will return. Which leads to one of the central problems of the book, in my mind: whether the locus (and consequently, treatment) of mental illness and depression resides in the patient or the society.
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LibraryThing member shulera1
I can't believe I was never required to read this book. I found so much of myself reflected in the pages, and I'm sure I'm not alone.
LibraryThing member Eilantha_Le_Fay
I guess it’s hard to talk about this book, since it isn’t really a fictional story but rather a sort of biography dressed in different names.
She writes handsomely, I don’t quite remember reading a book in which the words flowed so easily and beautifully. The scenes she paints are vivid and
I must confess I was kind of bored with the “most doctors are assholes” approach. Yea, yea, we all know that. Still maybe back then no one knew that. Maybe back then all doctors were utterly respected.
The same applies to the inherent feminism. She despises men (though she only meets assholes) and often thinks of a life without them. She even uses birth control methods, which must have been outrageous back then. But next she wonders about having a regular life with a husband and babies. So her feminism is always full of doubt. Then again, she is always full of doubt and I felt that was what locked her definitely inside the bell jar.
In the end it’s sad to know that Sylvia Plath couldn’t take it anymore and ended her own life by putting her head inside the oven and turning the gas on. Maybe today things would have been different, and she wouldn’t have been submitted to shock treatments and such. But I guess her story wouldn’t be as romantic and tragic as it is. Now I am curious to read her poetry works.
She writes handsomely, I don’t quite remember reading a book in which the words flowed so easily and beautifully. The scenes she paints are vivid and
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real. I liked the way Esther describes things, unenthusiastically, like a journalist talking about some distant war on the other side of the planet. She talks about her pain as if it’s given, as if there’s no other way of being.I must confess I was kind of bored with the “most doctors are assholes” approach. Yea, yea, we all know that. Still maybe back then no one knew that. Maybe back then all doctors were utterly respected.
The same applies to the inherent feminism. She despises men (though she only meets assholes) and often thinks of a life without them. She even uses birth control methods, which must have been outrageous back then. But next she wonders about having a regular life with a husband and babies. So her feminism is always full of doubt. Then again, she is always full of doubt and I felt that was what locked her definitely inside the bell jar.
In the end it’s sad to know that Sylvia Plath couldn’t take it anymore and ended her own life by putting her head inside the oven and turning the gas on. Maybe today things would have been different, and she wouldn’t have been submitted to shock treatments and such. But I guess her story wouldn’t be as romantic and tragic as it is. Now I am curious to read her poetry works.
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LibraryThing member skavlanj
A Book You Were Supposed To Read In School But Didn't
Knowing Plath's personal history, I was surprised by the open-ended, potentially optimistic ending of The Bell Jar, a story of descent into and "recovery" from mental illness. I use quotes and say potentially because I'm uncertain whether we're
My copy has a foreword calling The Bell Jar a feminine version of The Catcher in the Rye, and I think that's a good analogy. Although Esther is a few years older than Holden and already in college, she displays the same immaturity and lack of direction. Instead of phonies, Esther labels her boyfriend a hypocrite because he has the temerity to have sex before she does and not volunteer the information until directly asked. In revenge or to equal the equation, she spends a great deal of time looking for the right opportunity to lose her virginity and ends up doing so in a manner more akin to today's hookup culture than the crew-cut stereotype of the fifties while drifting in and out of lucidity.
Although it isn't introduced until well into the novel, after we've had a glimpse of the coming events, the bell jar is an effective if somewhat perplexing device as a representation of Esther's mental illness. On the one hand, it isolates her from the world around her, letting in light and muted sound but limiting her interaction with that world. It also turns Esther into the subject of an experiment, as she herself must feel as she undergoes shock therapy and what seems like a haphazard treatment regimen. Since it is Esther, as our first-person narrator, who introduces us to this device and Esther who relates her awareness that the bell jar can descend again without warning, we are left to determine on our own the efficacy of Esther's cure.
I had been intending to read this book for a while and putting it off due to my expectations. While it isn't an upbeat book, it also wasn't as depressing a book as say Revolutionary Road and might be viewed differently had Plath herself chosen to live.
Knowing Plath's personal history, I was surprised by the open-ended, potentially optimistic ending of The Bell Jar, a story of descent into and "recovery" from mental illness. I use quotes and say potentially because I'm uncertain whether we're
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supposed to believe the heroine, Esther Greenwood, is cured in the end.My copy has a foreword calling The Bell Jar a feminine version of The Catcher in the Rye, and I think that's a good analogy. Although Esther is a few years older than Holden and already in college, she displays the same immaturity and lack of direction. Instead of phonies, Esther labels her boyfriend a hypocrite because he has the temerity to have sex before she does and not volunteer the information until directly asked. In revenge or to equal the equation, she spends a great deal of time looking for the right opportunity to lose her virginity and ends up doing so in a manner more akin to today's hookup culture than the crew-cut stereotype of the fifties while drifting in and out of lucidity.
Although it isn't introduced until well into the novel, after we've had a glimpse of the coming events, the bell jar is an effective if somewhat perplexing device as a representation of Esther's mental illness. On the one hand, it isolates her from the world around her, letting in light and muted sound but limiting her interaction with that world. It also turns Esther into the subject of an experiment, as she herself must feel as she undergoes shock therapy and what seems like a haphazard treatment regimen. Since it is Esther, as our first-person narrator, who introduces us to this device and Esther who relates her awareness that the bell jar can descend again without warning, we are left to determine on our own the efficacy of Esther's cure.
I had been intending to read this book for a while and putting it off due to my expectations. While it isn't an upbeat book, it also wasn't as depressing a book as say Revolutionary Road and might be viewed differently had Plath herself chosen to live.
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LibraryThing member HeatherCHoffman
Unless she is a person who has never gone through a period of doubt and/or sadness, "The Bell Jar" is a book that all women should read at some point in their lives. It is the story of Esther Greenwood, who finds herself first having what is supposed to be the summer of a lifetime (although her
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mental state does not allow her to enjoy it). As her story unfolds, and we see her gradual descent into a deep depression), we are allowed to contemplate the expectations not only of women in society, but of young adults moving from earlier carefree days to days of responsibility and harsh scrutiny from fellow "grown ups." It provides important commentary on the treatment of mental disease, and will make the reader consider how these diseases are treated today (both medically and socially). Esther's story is one of transition, inner torment, and personal growth. It is a story that will resonate with women from all generations and walks of life. Show Less
LibraryThing member samantha.1020
This is another one of those books that I've been meaning to read for some time. Considered to be a classic, Plath's novel takes the reader deep into Esther's mindset as she battles mental illness and depression. Wow, what a ride it was if I do say so myself. When we first meet Esther she is in New
When Esther's internship ends and she returns home you can just feel the downward spiral. Plath describes with such detail and the way she writes just made me feel for Esther the entire time. I couldn't always understand the reasoning that made Esther behave the way she did but I was always rooting for her and hoping that she would be able to get better.
In a previous post, I talked about how I wondered if Sylvia Plath based part of this book on her own life. Once I finished the book and read the afterword I had my answer. A lot of Esther's experiences with depression and mental illness are based on Plath's own experience with depression. I can't even begin to imagine the way that Plath felt writing this book let alone ever hearing it critiqued. This was a powerful story and one I'm glad that I took the time to read. Wow!
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York participating in an internship that she won from a magazine along with 11 other girls. Esther's story switches from the present to the past as she goes back and forth between her memories and what she is presently experiencing. And even from the beginning the reader can sense that something is a bit off with the way that Esther is feeling.When Esther's internship ends and she returns home you can just feel the downward spiral. Plath describes with such detail and the way she writes just made me feel for Esther the entire time. I couldn't always understand the reasoning that made Esther behave the way she did but I was always rooting for her and hoping that she would be able to get better.
In a previous post, I talked about how I wondered if Sylvia Plath based part of this book on her own life. Once I finished the book and read the afterword I had my answer. A lot of Esther's experiences with depression and mental illness are based on Plath's own experience with depression. I can't even begin to imagine the way that Plath felt writing this book let alone ever hearing it critiqued. This was a powerful story and one I'm glad that I took the time to read. Wow!
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LibraryThing member HankIII
[groan] when I was in my twenties, I read this book and liked it immensely; I related to Esther; I empathized with her angst and anxiety about what life had handed unfairly to her, and how she had enabled all of that woe to alienate her from a world she felt she had no part. The prose was clear;
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well-written; and was steeped in persecution and isolation as Esther spiraled into the darkest recesses of depression.In grad school, all I heard was how great Ms. Plath was, how her writing--her poetry, her fiction, her confessional themes--had set her apart as one of those great writers who suffered in a partriarchal world, amid scandulous, indignant speculations that Mr. Hughes had abused her. Yes, it was the archetypical abused female writer and the expected abusive Hemingway-like genius together that fed the academic PC interpretative legions of Feminist-Gender Studies.Somehow between that time I read The Bell Jar, and heard others using this novel as an pseudo-autobiographical explanation of Ms. Plath living a dysfunctional existence, as well as supporting their own political agendas, I came to an epiphany: this book is a self-serving/self-pitying pretentious literary load of classic whine. I'm glad God gives us choices in life because I won't ever read The Bell Jar again or read it inside the oven on broil. Show Less
LibraryThing member krau0098
Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I borrowed a copy of this on audiobook from the library.
Thoughts: I thought this book did an excellent job of both portraying an intelligent woman's struggles in the 1950's and her mental breakdown and recovery. While I didn't really enjoy this per
This story follows Esther, an incredibly brilliant young woman who gets an opportunity to go to New York and write for a fashion magazine. She wants to be a poet or editor after she finishes college and this internship in New York is perfect. This story is supposed to parallel Plath's own life and struggles.
This is a tough read. Esther has so much going for her, but she is also smart enough to recognize the poor decisions and pandering that happen around her. She is both intrigued and disillusioned by the fast-paced New York scene. Watching the way she was treated by a lot of the men around her was painful. Then watching as a relatively small set back (not making it into a literary college class) set her into a depressive (and finally suicidal) spiral was tough. Plath portrays this all in a way that is realistic and easy to relate to. Esther seems fairly reasonable throughout her mental collapse and does her best to seek help and support. She is lucky enough to get supportive assistance and is determined enough to pull through onto the path of recovery.
I think what frustrated me most is that, although things have gotten better for both women in general and people suffering from mental illness, we still have a long way to go as a society. Esther has so many people tell her to "just hurry up and get better", like she has a choice. For a long time the support and assistance just isn't there for her. The character of Esther was lucky enough to get involved with a hospital and group that was cutting edge for the time and supported her recovery. A big part of her recovery is figuring out what makes Esther feel so out of control and sad.
The afterward goes into Plath's life and her struggles. Plath struggled and unfortunately, it doesn't seem like she got the same support that Esther did. So, while this was a book I think should be read, it wasn't really an uplifting or happy read.
My Summary (4/5): Overall, while this isn't something I will reread, it was masterfully written and I am glad that I read it. This touches on so many societal issues that are still problems today. In addition it makes this type of depressive spiral relatable and understandable for those who haven't gone through this sort of thing. This is beautifully written and does end on a hopeful note. Although in general it left me feeling pretty down when I thought about how much further we have to go as a society.
Thoughts: I thought this book did an excellent job of both portraying an intelligent woman's struggles in the 1950's and her mental breakdown and recovery. While I didn't really enjoy this per
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say, I do respect how well written this is and stayed engaged in the story. I listened to this on audiobook and I thought the narrator did an amazing job. This story follows Esther, an incredibly brilliant young woman who gets an opportunity to go to New York and write for a fashion magazine. She wants to be a poet or editor after she finishes college and this internship in New York is perfect. This story is supposed to parallel Plath's own life and struggles.
This is a tough read. Esther has so much going for her, but she is also smart enough to recognize the poor decisions and pandering that happen around her. She is both intrigued and disillusioned by the fast-paced New York scene. Watching the way she was treated by a lot of the men around her was painful. Then watching as a relatively small set back (not making it into a literary college class) set her into a depressive (and finally suicidal) spiral was tough. Plath portrays this all in a way that is realistic and easy to relate to. Esther seems fairly reasonable throughout her mental collapse and does her best to seek help and support. She is lucky enough to get supportive assistance and is determined enough to pull through onto the path of recovery.
I think what frustrated me most is that, although things have gotten better for both women in general and people suffering from mental illness, we still have a long way to go as a society. Esther has so many people tell her to "just hurry up and get better", like she has a choice. For a long time the support and assistance just isn't there for her. The character of Esther was lucky enough to get involved with a hospital and group that was cutting edge for the time and supported her recovery. A big part of her recovery is figuring out what makes Esther feel so out of control and sad.
The afterward goes into Plath's life and her struggles. Plath struggled and unfortunately, it doesn't seem like she got the same support that Esther did. So, while this was a book I think should be read, it wasn't really an uplifting or happy read.
My Summary (4/5): Overall, while this isn't something I will reread, it was masterfully written and I am glad that I read it. This touches on so many societal issues that are still problems today. In addition it makes this type of depressive spiral relatable and understandable for those who haven't gone through this sort of thing. This is beautifully written and does end on a hopeful note. Although in general it left me feeling pretty down when I thought about how much further we have to go as a society.
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LibraryThing member ladycato
I've read other reviews of this book. I knew what to expect, and I knew it interested me because of my own life experiences. But geez, this book is depressing. The first-person narration sounds so limp and hopeless, but that is not a bad thing. This is a thinly-veiled autobiographical tale, and
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Plath captured the very spirit - or lack thereof - of depression with her words. I am am empathetic creature. I don't watch horror because I pick up on all the nuances and scare too easily. Reading a book like this dredged up many of my own memories and emotions, and that made it a difficult read. I'm glad to have read this classic, but I don't think I ever could again. It's too personal. Show Less
LibraryThing member sandglass
Esther Greenwood is in college for English, she is an A-student and won an internship in New York at a fashion magazine. She is very concerned with her own virginity and the virginity of the men she dates and considers marrying. When she finds out her boyfriend of sorts has already lost his
She is depressed and has some paranoia, particularly about men and her male doctors. She spends many pages trying to kill herself, either by drowning (she floats back up), or by strangling herself (her hands go limp before she dies), and finally takes 50 sleeping pills, but is found before she dies and is sent to one mental hospital, with doctors she distrusts, then when her mother's money runs out, the woman who gave her a scholarship for school sends her to a very fancy hospital with a female doctor whom she very much likes.
The book is very modernist. The narrator is unreliable due to her paranoia, and the narrative moves back and forth through time, usually without any indication as to where it is. The feminism is sometimes pasted on very thick.
(This is not really a review, just my recollections for my records.)
Read: June 10, 2010
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virginity--although her family and friends consider him very pure--her world is rocked, and she decides that if a man can keep a secret life of hypocrisy, there is no point in her staying pure either. She is depressed and has some paranoia, particularly about men and her male doctors. She spends many pages trying to kill herself, either by drowning (she floats back up), or by strangling herself (her hands go limp before she dies), and finally takes 50 sleeping pills, but is found before she dies and is sent to one mental hospital, with doctors she distrusts, then when her mother's money runs out, the woman who gave her a scholarship for school sends her to a very fancy hospital with a female doctor whom she very much likes.
The book is very modernist. The narrator is unreliable due to her paranoia, and the narrative moves back and forth through time, usually without any indication as to where it is. The feminism is sometimes pasted on very thick.
(This is not really a review, just my recollections for my records.)
Read: June 10, 2010
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LibraryThing member kaylajordan
Took me quite awhile to get through this book...I was going through a very deep depression at the time and had to repeatedly stop...some passages struck raw nerves and going on felt like wading through thick, dark water. The passages about the Rosenberg's and, for some odd reason, the luncheon they
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attended for the magazine stayed with me. Lovely book, very very sad, seeing as how, unlike her protagonist, Plath didn't make it. Show Less
LibraryThing member DeltaQueen50
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath tells the story of Esther Greenwood, a brilliant young women who is slowly being devoured by her clinical depression. The book is a semi-autobiographical account of the author’s own life, a life riddled with depression and suicide attempts.
It opens in New York City
The Bell Jar was an emotional and immersive experience. Plath was a poet and certainly knew how to write expressively but nevertheless, this book is a glimpse into the dark side of the mind, and of course, knowing the details of Plath’s life made this book all the more realistic and poignant. I will long remember how the author lyrically exposed her raw feelings of vulnerability and failure.
It opens in New York City
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where Esther is spending a month as a guest editor for a magazine, I was surprised at the lightness of tone and the humor in some of her encounters. Slowly the book turns dark and disturbing as Esther starts to unravel and is eventually unable to cope. By now she is back home in Boston and as her breakdown accelerates in intensity, she sinks deeper into her own thoughts of suicide. The Bell Jar was an emotional and immersive experience. Plath was a poet and certainly knew how to write expressively but nevertheless, this book is a glimpse into the dark side of the mind, and of course, knowing the details of Plath’s life made this book all the more realistic and poignant. I will long remember how the author lyrically exposed her raw feelings of vulnerability and failure.
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LibraryThing member varwenea
I read Bell Jar because I wanted to know more about suicide, especially the path that leads to it. The Bell Jar is a semi-autobiographical account of Sylvia Plath’s life in the summer and autumn of 1953 (college time), addressing her initial on-set of depression and her first major suicide
For a book that should be sad, perhaps difficult to read/digest, the first portions flew by. I enjoyed the references to the 50’s (what is a pocketbook cover?), the beginnings of feminism, the ideals of the parents upon their children, marriage, perspective on sex and virginity. I found the writing to be honest, crisp, and direct, even though she jumped timelines as needed to address back stories. The later chapters were harder to process as the spiraling of this intelligent woman deepened – covering her shock treatments and institutionalization. I resonated with her writing style, ex: regarding the bad things in life: “But they were part of me. They were my landscape.”
I underlined numerous details about her disappointments, rather it is at herself, the people around her, the society then, the expectations upon the female sex, and wondered when/how do these add up to be too much. The book doesn’t attempt to explain. It’s just her facts, her view of her life, and the evaluation of herself. This book, when interpreted with a current mind set, may represent the struggle of women to fit in and define an equal say in this world (still a huge gap) . She hated the idea of serving men in any way (via her job), doesn’t want to become a floor mat and to be brainwashed because of marriage. I find she expressed a lot of strength in her convictions. After reading the book, I think she simply succumbed to her demons one day. Despite one’s life successes, rather in the home and/or career, the sadness dominates us. Then we cave in, especially when we think our death doesn’t mean anything to anyone.
Some Quotes:
On Success but feeling empty and not in her control:
“Only I wasn’t steering anything, not even myself. I just bumped from my hotel to work and to parties and from parties to my hotel and back to work like a numb trolleybus. I guess I should have been excited the way most of the other girls were, but I couldn’t get myself to react. I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.”
Tired of the rat race at the age of 19:
“After nineteen years of running after good marks and prizes and grants of one sort and another, I was letting up, slowing down, dropping clean out of the race.”
On Physics – this made me smile as physics was the first science class I had to really study to understand:
“Physics made me sick the whole time I learned it. What I couldn’t stand was this shrinking everything into letters and numbers. Instead of leaf shapes and enlarged diagrams of the holes the leaves breathe through and fascinating words like carotene and xanthophyll on the blackboard, there were these hideous, cramped, scorpion-lettered formulas in Mr. Manzi’s special red chalk.”
The view on women, as expressed by Mrs. Willard:
“What a man wants is a mate and what a woman wants is infinite security. What a man is is an arrow into the future and what a woman is is the place the arrow shoots off from.”
And Esther’s response:
“That’s one of the reasons I never wanted to get married. The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.”
More on Feminism:
“The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way. I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters. Besides, those little shorthand symbols in the book my mother showed me seemed just as bad as let t equals time and let s equal the total distance.”
Marriage and Feminism:
“This seemed like a dreary and wasted life for a girl with fifteen years of straight A’s, but I knew that’s what marriage was like, because cook and clean and wash was just what Buddy Willard’s mother did from morning till night, and she was the wife of a university professor and had been a private school teacher herself.”
“And I knew that in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs. Willard’s kitchen mat.”
“I also remembered Buddy Willard saying in a sinister, knowing way that after I had children I would feel differently, I wouldn’t want to write poems any more. So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state.”
In indication of much worse ahead, throwing her clothing away on her last night in New York:
“Piece by piece, I fed my wardrobe to the night wind, and flutteringly, like a loved one’s ashes, the gray scraps were ferried off, to settle here, there, exactly where I would never know, in the dark heart of New York.”
On Suicide, and the depth of it:
“But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defenseless that I couldn’t do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn’t in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get at.”
On Death: Do all women whose fathers died early have deep laden issues?
“Then I remembered that I had never cried for my father’s death.
My mother hadn’t cried either. She had just smiled and said what a merciful thing it was for him he had died, because if he had lived he would have been crippled and an invalid for life, and he couldn’t have stood that, he would rather have died than had that happen.
I laid my face to the smooth face of the marble and howled my loss into the cold salt rain.”
The Bell Jar – To be suffocating in it, selected references:
“I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.”
“To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream.”
“But I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure at all. How did I know that someday – at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere – the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn’t descend again?”
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attempt. She ultimately ended her life by sticking her head in an oven while her two young children slept, one month after this book is released in January of 1963. (Gruesome. Somehow attacking the little veins in her wrist is too cruel, but sticking her head in the oven is acceptable. Her version of poetic justice perhaps.) With these facts in mind, I found myself reading this book honing in on her sadness, self-deprecation, inadequacies, and exhaustion. Before reading, I wondered if the book is her last cry for help or does it represent her ‘brain-dump’ before she proceeds with her plans. For a book that should be sad, perhaps difficult to read/digest, the first portions flew by. I enjoyed the references to the 50’s (what is a pocketbook cover?), the beginnings of feminism, the ideals of the parents upon their children, marriage, perspective on sex and virginity. I found the writing to be honest, crisp, and direct, even though she jumped timelines as needed to address back stories. The later chapters were harder to process as the spiraling of this intelligent woman deepened – covering her shock treatments and institutionalization. I resonated with her writing style, ex: regarding the bad things in life: “But they were part of me. They were my landscape.”
I underlined numerous details about her disappointments, rather it is at herself, the people around her, the society then, the expectations upon the female sex, and wondered when/how do these add up to be too much. The book doesn’t attempt to explain. It’s just her facts, her view of her life, and the evaluation of herself. This book, when interpreted with a current mind set, may represent the struggle of women to fit in and define an equal say in this world (still a huge gap) . She hated the idea of serving men in any way (via her job), doesn’t want to become a floor mat and to be brainwashed because of marriage. I find she expressed a lot of strength in her convictions. After reading the book, I think she simply succumbed to her demons one day. Despite one’s life successes, rather in the home and/or career, the sadness dominates us. Then we cave in, especially when we think our death doesn’t mean anything to anyone.
Some Quotes:
On Success but feeling empty and not in her control:
“Only I wasn’t steering anything, not even myself. I just bumped from my hotel to work and to parties and from parties to my hotel and back to work like a numb trolleybus. I guess I should have been excited the way most of the other girls were, but I couldn’t get myself to react. I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.”
Tired of the rat race at the age of 19:
“After nineteen years of running after good marks and prizes and grants of one sort and another, I was letting up, slowing down, dropping clean out of the race.”
On Physics – this made me smile as physics was the first science class I had to really study to understand:
“Physics made me sick the whole time I learned it. What I couldn’t stand was this shrinking everything into letters and numbers. Instead of leaf shapes and enlarged diagrams of the holes the leaves breathe through and fascinating words like carotene and xanthophyll on the blackboard, there were these hideous, cramped, scorpion-lettered formulas in Mr. Manzi’s special red chalk.”
The view on women, as expressed by Mrs. Willard:
“What a man wants is a mate and what a woman wants is infinite security. What a man is is an arrow into the future and what a woman is is the place the arrow shoots off from.”
And Esther’s response:
“That’s one of the reasons I never wanted to get married. The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.”
More on Feminism:
“The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way. I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters. Besides, those little shorthand symbols in the book my mother showed me seemed just as bad as let t equals time and let s equal the total distance.”
Marriage and Feminism:
“This seemed like a dreary and wasted life for a girl with fifteen years of straight A’s, but I knew that’s what marriage was like, because cook and clean and wash was just what Buddy Willard’s mother did from morning till night, and she was the wife of a university professor and had been a private school teacher herself.”
“And I knew that in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs. Willard’s kitchen mat.”
“I also remembered Buddy Willard saying in a sinister, knowing way that after I had children I would feel differently, I wouldn’t want to write poems any more. So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state.”
In indication of much worse ahead, throwing her clothing away on her last night in New York:
“Piece by piece, I fed my wardrobe to the night wind, and flutteringly, like a loved one’s ashes, the gray scraps were ferried off, to settle here, there, exactly where I would never know, in the dark heart of New York.”
On Suicide, and the depth of it:
“But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defenseless that I couldn’t do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn’t in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get at.”
On Death: Do all women whose fathers died early have deep laden issues?
“Then I remembered that I had never cried for my father’s death.
My mother hadn’t cried either. She had just smiled and said what a merciful thing it was for him he had died, because if he had lived he would have been crippled and an invalid for life, and he couldn’t have stood that, he would rather have died than had that happen.
I laid my face to the smooth face of the marble and howled my loss into the cold salt rain.”
The Bell Jar – To be suffocating in it, selected references:
“I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.”
“To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream.”
“But I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure at all. How did I know that someday – at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere – the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn’t descend again?”
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LibraryThing member jlelliott
Reading The Bell Jar, I have uncomfortable moments where I see whispers of Esther’s insanity in myself. Plath has created a character (or maybe recorded herself) that is eminently believable, and begins the book with a personality that doesn’t hint at what is to come later. Her apathy and
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distraction grow so gradually, normality and madness blend into each other so finely, that it is disconcertingly jarring to realize how hazy and meaningless the word “normal” really is. For some reason we seem to expect that we would know insanity instantly were we to see it, or experience it, ourselves. But of course the difference between a “normal” person and a person suffering from a mental disorder is a construct of our society, not an immutable distinction. This book is beautifully written, with many scenes that linger in my memory. It ends ambiguously, but the sad story of its author gives the entire work a somber feel. Show Less
LibraryThing member Matke
Plath has created a wonderfully written story of a yong woman's descent in the pit, the absolute pit, of depression and madness, and her painful recovery. The book is presented as the slow warping of Esther's point of view into something seriously skewed. Also very, very funny. Interesting note:
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Plath didn't like this book. Show Less
LibraryThing member queensheherezade
This is, in fact, an excellent novel. I went into it with an open mind and wasn't disappointed. The way Sylvia Plath writes is resonant, vivid and haunting. She really gets her hooks into you and you can hear her telling you the story as you read it. I mourn the fact that this is her only novel.
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Although this is a book about madness and the blackness of depression, oddly enough I didn't find that it was overly depressing. You don't need to have spent time in the bell jar to connect with the protagonist and take a deep interest in her story. The fact that the novel is semi-autobiographical makes it even more compelling. Sylvia Plath was (is) the real deal, a very real and scintillating talent, and despite it's associations with tiresome emo culture and the "cult of Sylvia Plath", The Bell Jar really is worth reading. Show Less
LibraryThing member mrs.starbucks
I found the whole thing to be painfully contrived. Her word use, while precise, is TOO precise, in the sense that I get the distinct feeling she agonized over each one to make the character sound as depressed as possible. What's odd about it is that there doesn't seem to be any real reason for any
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of it, nor is any particular behavior described that might give me a hint at what goes on in anyone else's mind while interacting with her [Esther Greenwood:]. All sincerity seems to have been leeched out of the book which is then peppered with ridiculous assertions that make self-proclaimed feminists sigh with pleasure. Since this is evidently semi-autobiographical I can't imagine what to make of that.Nearly every transition is abrupt and awkward and most of the characters have been flattened out and made into caricatures of feminist archetypes in the most tortured, juvenile manner imaginable. Needless to say that the plot, such as it is, is not helped in the least by any of the "people" that inhabit it. I could say so much more, but rest assured that it is all scathing. Luckily, it's the only novel she ever wrote, thus sparing me from the agony of someone convincing me to give her another chance. Unfortunately I spent $17 on this book. I consider this another stroke of luck as it is the only feminist work I imagine I'll ever buy, and consider my education complete and cheap at the price! Show Less
Subjects
Awards
Audie Award (Finalist — Classic — 2004)
Best Fiction for Young Adults (Selection — 1971)
Waterstones Books of the Century (57 — 1997)
Uncovered Classics (1963)
The Great American Novels (1963)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1963-01-14
Physical description
320 p.; 5.38 inches
ISBN
0060174900 / 9780060174903
Other editions
The Bell Jar (P.S.) by Sylvia Plath (Paperback)
The Bell Jar (Modern Classics) by Sylvia Plath (Paperback)
The Bell Jar (Modern Classics) by Sylvia Plath (Paperback)