A review by biblio_creep
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

5.0

Book Review | THE BELL JAR by SYLVIA PLATH 
 
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5/5 ⭐’s | PUB DATE:  14 January 1963 
 
Read if you're looking for: 
  • The quintessential sad, white girl novel
  • An unreliable narrator
  • Deep exploration of depression, mental illness, & women's roles in society
  • Gorgeous descriptions of what it feels like to be depressed & disconnected
  • Depiction of various mental health treatments of the 1960's, including electroshock therapy

Surprising to no one, I loved this book. Any well-written, sad girl novel will get me; I'm basic like that. In this semi-autobiographical novel we follow 19-year-old Esther Greenwood, who is invited to NYC for a summer internship with several other young women. In the city Esther is unmotivated and is failing to show up at work. She goes through several experiences that emphasize her disconnection from others and her feeling of being trapped by society's expectations of her. After the internship concludes, she was hoping to attend a prestigious writing course but finds that she wasn't accepted. She returns to her mother's house for the rest of the summer, where her mental health deteriorates more and more, with her entering a kind of hallucinatory state, until she is finally institutionalized for treatment. The second half shows us Esther's experiences in treatment for depression, culminating in an ambiguous ending.
 
Sylvia Plath was primarily a poet, and it shows. The writing in this novel is simply gorgeous. It really portrays the feelings of severe depression and anxiety in a way that is so full of truth. You really feel Esther's experience of floating through life, disassociated and melancholy.
 
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.)
  
The novel also focuses heavily on themes of women's oppression in 1950's and 1960's. Esther frequently states that she does not want to get married or have kids, even saying that the idea of having kids disgusts her. She wants to have adventures and do great things in her life. However, she is engaged to be married to a man whom she doesn't love, and who expects her to become a homemaker. Esther seemingly doesn't know how to extricate herself from the situation, and continues on the path laid out for her, sometimes engaging in ineffectual, passive-aggressive protests.
 
I knew that in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet...
 
I've never read anything that more accurately describes my personal experience of mental illness, especially my worst period in my 20's. While Esther may not be the nicest, I found the way she is portrayed to be very, very accurate and very, very relatable. I could go on and on about this book, but I'll stop here. This book has the most beautiful, poetic prose that depicts the angst and melancholy of being young and afloat, not knowing what to do with yourself. Most likely due to the time it was written, however, the book does contain some racist and homophobic comments, and also talks a lot about suicide, so check the content warnings before reading. I recommend this to anyone who loves sad girl literary fiction, or works by such writers as Virginia Woolf, Ottessa Moshfegh, Melissa Broder, or Lily King.
 
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 on 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.
 
CW:  Suicide attempt, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Racism, Racial slurs, Sexual assault, Homophobia, Vomit, Death of parent