The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

The fact The Bell Jar is written from the first person point of view makes the apprehension and pain more relatable to the reader.

One word – Incongruous.

I found it difficult for me to immerse myself in the intensity of what she’s going through when she says stuff like this:

I’d hardly have time to do it and step into the tub when somebody would be pounding at the door.

FYI, she was brainstorming how to kill herself.

Synopsis

The Bell Jar is the holy grail of Sad Girl Literature. The novel is about the real-life experiences of Sylvia Plath, a hopeful writer and student in 1953, through the character Esther Greenwood. Esther dreams of being an acknowledged and accomplished writer, and this dream hangs over her like a shadow.

The novel begins with Esther’s one-month summer internship at Mademoiselle, a women’s magazine. This was a highly coveted experience, and Esther and 19 others were chosen from hundreds of girls around the country to be editors for the magazine for a month (to know more about this experience, read Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953).

Esther is just a girl who wants to have a successful career as a writer and have fun, so she comes off as conceited. In the start of the novel, she seems to have made headway on her dreams and mid-way through the novel she loses a grasp on the life she had been working to get.

Thoughts

While the story might feel like a chick-lit, it’s really not. It’s a sad girl literature as Esther struggles with suicide and depression because she may not be the writer she hopes to be. In The Bell Jar, we are observers to her comical suicidal attempts and stay in a mental home. Despite being undoubtedly brilliant, she struggles with her mental health.

For a sad girl literature, it is full of dark humour, and the fact The Bell Jar is written from the first-person point of view makes the apprehension and pain more relatable to the reader.

For context, Sad Girl Literature refers to stories about girls dealing with various mental health struggles.

Verdict

Important suggestion: You should read other works by Sylvia Plath or any of her biographies to help better understand the life the author lived and further enhance the reading experience of The Bell Jar.

Then, it will be more than a memoir of a college girl who had a mental breakdown. It’ll become the experiences of Sylvia Plath, who had a mental breakdown, among other exciting things about her.

Most fiction books about mental health experiences are centred around the illness and the main character; the main character becomes the illness, and you cannot view them outside that experience.

However, with the Bell Jar, you realise that humans are more than their illness.

I am I am I am.