What do You think about The Bell Jar (2006)?
There are many who have read The Bell Jar and absolutely loved it. I am gladly considering myself one of them. I was a little caught of guard when I read a few reviews of The Bell Jar comparing it to The Catcher in the Rye stating how it's the female version of it. I liked Catcher but I know there are many people who didn't and upon hearing that may be similar to Catcher not have the desire to read it. I assure you, The Bell Jar is a book all on it's own and should not be compared to any other book... even as a compliment.When I first started reading the book I was a little put off, feeling it was an extremely pretensious novel. Her descriptions were crisp and precise, often using words that one rarely hears spoken or even read. I went into the novel knowing that Plath was a poet and felt that at first the book was just another form of her poetry and her showing off her writing abilities. But that only remained within the first two pages, because after that I became absorbed. The writing that I was a little sketchy about at first helped me visualize the setting and get to know the characters. And though Plath never really described many characters as to their personality, I began to feel I knew them all intimately.Strangely enough, if you remember in my last review, what bothered me most about The Good Earth did not bother me in The Bell Jar. Because the Esther, the character we are following, is slowly descending into madness, time no longer matters. There are a few times I was confused about the timeline, but it did not upset me. The book really spoke to me because of my own personal experiences with depression and suicide. It spoke to me as a woman and my views on sex and the confusion I'm sure most other girls out there face. It's amazing that this book was written and published over 30 years ago, really, when a new woman was coming out into the world. I have a feeling that this book helped women realize that they're not alone, and brought things to light that most people have commonly shoved aside; women and men. But what else is amazing is how relevant these topics still are today. Specifically with suicide, and specifically about the virtue and pureness of women compared to men.So I guess that is why The Bell Jar is often compared to The Catcher in the Rye, with it's discussions and writings of often controversial titles. Setting off a new generation of writers, styles, and people. Another book also came to mind as I was reading, and that was The Perks of Being a Wallflower. There are moments when I could make a few direct comparisons between the two. With Esther slowly seperating herself from socialization and sinking deeper into her own thoughts and depression. Analyzing things that go on around her and her surroundings. Very reminscent of Perks.If you feel you're suffering from depression, madness, confusion about topics pertaining to society and sex, or just looking for a good read, The Bell Jar is definetly the book for you. I also advise, if you're seriously suffering from depression, to get help for yourself. There is no shame in it, and getting help is better than ending your life. Even if you need to go on medication, DO NOT feel ashamed, especially if it's going to help you even more.
—Sammy
The Bell Jar left me very uneasy. I feel like going to sleep for a month, yet I am completely amazed. I didn't realize how much of it was based on Sylvia Plath own life until after reading up on her afterwards. I think that’s why I liked it so much; it was just so real. I found myself relating to so much of it - not so much the psychotic problems Esther dealt with, but definitely the whole feeling down and “trapped under a bell jar” thing.While dated, the transition into young-adult life is modern and timeless. The stresses to perform well in school, to maintain social protocol (dating, marriage), and sexual exploration are ever present today. Plath transcribes the nuances in brilliant fidelity. Not only does the main character struggle with society's sexist double standards, she is also striving to find her place in the world, establish a career, carve out an identity for herself. “I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”“When they asked me what I wanted to be I said I didn’t know.“Oh, sure you know,” the photographer said.“She wants,” said Jay Cee wittily, “to be everything.”“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.”“The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way. I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters.”This book is also well known for focusing on depression. Plath makes you understand the illness completely through Esther's eyes, to the point that that it's difficult to determine what is actually wrong with her. Anyone who has never suffered from depression or any great life-changing event may not get the point. They cannot fathom the meaning because they have no frame of reference. The point is that when you're in the throes of depression, no fortune, trip around the world, award, love, gorgeous weather, or satisfying work looks remotely bright. Life looks black, hopeless, and utterly without meaning. “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.”“How did I know that someday— at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere— the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn’t descend again?”To dismiss Sylvia Plath's book as worthless because it doesn't have a plot is really an unfair criticism. It's not the most engaging or exciting book I've ever read, I'll admit that. Actually, some parts of the book were a little boring. The repeated suicide attempts and the monotony of life in the asylums are not particularly gripping, but I understand their necessity to the story. I also wasn't a fan of those long descriptive passages that I didn't feel added to the story.In the end, The Bell Jar is a remarkable work - not merely just important, but also a good read. If you haven't read it yet, you should. “I would rather have anything wrong with my body than something wrong with my head.”“If you expect nothing from anybody, you’re never disappointed.” “I also hate people to ask cheerfully how you are when they know you're feeling like hell and expect you to say 'Fine.'”“My mother said the cure for thinking too much about yourself was helping somebody who was worse off than you.”
—Desislava
On February 11, 1963, Sylvia Plath turned on the gas and stuck her head in an oven. This information is oddly missing from the back cover of The Bell Jar, which gives only her date of death, as though she'd gone quietly at the end of a long, untroubled life. I found this omission glaring, because Plath's death haunts every page of this beautifully written semi-autobiographical story of a woman going insane. Indeed, there were times I felt her sitting on my shoulder as a ghostly angel. The Bell Jar starts in New York City, "the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs." The narrator, Esther Greenwood, has a prestigious internship with a fashion magazine. The book starts as she breezily recounts this time, and its hard not to conjure up an image of The Devil Wears Prada: beautiful young woman on the make, martini in one hand, a pashmina shawl in the other, propped up on tall stilleto heels. As the book moves forward, the reader is introduced to a quirky, self-deprecating young woman. The farther into the story, the quirkiness turns to something darker. The power in this book is the fact that Esther, narrating in the first-person, never comes out and says, "then I went crazy." Indeed, except for a brief reference Esther makes to her future as a sane, married woman (if only...), events unfold in real time, with Esther as unsure about her present and future as the reader. The mid-section of this book is Esther's scrupulously detailed breakdown: a succession of doctors; a mother who doesn't understand and wants her to snap out of it; life in an asylum; electro-shock therapy; insulin therapy; a "Negro" nurse's aid who feeds her two types of beans. Plath is blisteringly honest. She details the loss of her virginity with candor that is surprising even today, not to mention the date when it was first published. The book carries a lot of reverberations. It is poignant, honest, unflinching. It also clings to a shred of hope. Of course, the reader knows that there was no hope, and in the end, the demons won. I would suggest this book, and highly; I would not suggest reading it on Christmas Eve, as I inexplicably chose to do.
—Matt
