I’d avoided reading this long enough, so was glad to embark on a summer buddy read of this 20th century classic… though reading this in the depth of a mad heatwave was also an interesting experience…
The book came out in 1963 in the UK, and as Plath was to kill herself later that year, the two events have become inextricably linked in popular imagination. Though there’s an important link between this piecemeal auto-fiction and her own tragic story, I think it’s also important to not fully mythologise the work.
Esther Greenwood is having a hard time. She’s listless and depressed and she needs to lock in during her NYC internship. Instead, she stays in bed and ambles about without too much purpose or confidence, making complex friendships and obsessing over her future. Her mental health declines during the summer back in the suburbs, and she ends up in an institution under the supervision of her rather hapless mother. Electric shock therapy, talk therapy, and ultimately, community, put her on some sort of road to recovery, though she finds the whole experience deeply traumatising. We follow her in moments that are both troubling and sometimes darkly comic.
There’s a lot of young person’s angst in Esther and we also get a glimpse of the vain, conceited, classist, and racist society she’s living in. It’s a sad indictment of the 1960s, which a lot of us have come to align with progressive politics. But it’s also part of Esther’s legacy to belong to such a sick, tortured society: part of what is making her ill, perhaps?
The imagery of the bell jar itself is so compelling: being stuck under it in your own stale air. Gives you the chills when Esther describes it, and in general, this book is a visceral depiction of declining and seesawing mental health. The unlikeable paranoia of Esther is a less commonly depicted symptom.
Poetic language, imagery, and themes abound. There’s a mixture of levity and density that’s part of its enduring quality.
Read if you want to see what it’s all about.
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