The Bell Jar: The Illustrated Edition

Product Information

The Bell Jar is an ambitious work, as I read before, but it’s not a perfect novel. There are some fissures that should prevent me from giving it a 5-star rating. Nevertheless, I changed my first rating from four to five stars; it is on my “favorites” shelf, another favorite axe, and it has rekindled my feelings for Plath. I am grateful for the story she shared. And for the fate she forged for her character. I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am. Despite the darkness in which this book is immersed, a sense of hope still lingers even after finishing this somber journey. Fig trees are on solid ground, awaiting for courage, a leap of faith, life-changing decisions – meaning, beauty, uniqueness. The silence, a limpid layer which allows to admire the now splendid azure sky, is no longer an ominous sign. As a small stone is thrown into a pond, causing violent ripples that soon vanish while the former serenity is restored, such silence is interrupted briefly by the sound of glass breaking. In the midst of too much consciousness, those small shivers are a vital part of the ritual for being born twice—patched, retreaded and approved for the road. It does not give too much away to say that The Bell Jar is about Esther’s declining mental health. The strength of The Bell Jar, though, is partially derived from the fact that Esther, narrating in the first-person, never comes out and says, “then I went crazy.” Instead, Plath – through Esther – provides a precise, detailed, chilling presentation of Esther’s loss of sanity by describing everything with matter-of-factness. Her psychotic “breaks” are not identified as such. Rather, Esther depicts both the real and the unreal in the exact same manner, so that there is a blurring between the two. 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.

Esther Greenwood, our fictional protagonist, is unfortunately only a veiled cover for Plath’s real world disease which reached its nadir in 1963 when she took her own life at the young age of thirty. It should be very telling that Plath originally released this under a pseudonym because she was afraid of the response she would receive. If you have to hide reality behind a fake name and fictionalization, then I think that proves there is something very wrong with reality.How do we separate the artist from their art if we blithely don't notice it and then excuse them with saying it was a product of their times? Reality casts a funereal pall over the proceedings, yet The Bell Jar opens jauntily enough. “It was a queer, sultry summer,” first-person narrator Esther Greenwood announces in the novel’s arresting first line, “the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs.” Esther, we soon learn, is in New York City, with a prestigious internship at a fashion magazine. There is a certain breeziness in the early going, so that it is not hard to conjure up an image from, say, The Devil Wears Prada: a tale of a young woman on the make, in the city that never sleeps. The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way. I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters.

this is often, as it was in my case, assigned reading for teenage girls, the people most likely to be willing to undergo the kind of self-centering it would take to think most of what's depicted in this book is an okay or acceptable way to be. At one point she calls indigenous Mexicans ugly and says things like "dusky as a bleached-blonde negress" Ongoing Covid restrictions, reduced air and freight capacity, high volumes and winter weather conditions are all impacting transportation and local delivery across the globe. When Esther’s friend is telling her about a guy she’s interested in, who happens to be from Peru, Esther replies with: “they're squat…they're ugly as Aztecs."

Pages

The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath’s only novel, is partially based on Plath’s own life. It has been celebrated for its darkly funny and razor sharp portrait of 1950s society, and has sold millions of copies worldwide. In the original manuscript the main character was called Victoria Lucas and at her publisher’s suggestion this was changed to Esther Greenwood. A novel about a character called Victoria Lucas published under the pen name Victoria Lucas seemed close to flat out stating that the novel was autobiographical. We do know that despite her protestations Plath was worried that the book might hurt her family and friends, hence her decision to publish under a pen name. As we move forward, however, Esther – who proves an endearing, self-deprecating narrator – struggles with the glitz and glam that others so eagerly seek. Her time in New York is not seamless, and several incidents, ranging from the amusing (there are some surprisingly funny moments) to the terrifying, starts to degrade Esther’s mental condition.