The Bell Jar

3.5 - My rating is not based solely on how much I enjoyed the book because if it were, I would probably make it lower. I did not like it.

I love reading sad books and the idea of reading about her “decent into madness” intrigued me. I've heard so much about The Bell Jar and about how painfully accurate Plath's depiction of mental illness is, so I guess I was kind of hoping that I would find some parts of myself tucked away in the book and that it would be close to my heart. I was wrong. I felt disappointed at best, and at worst, like I finally aught to kill myself because that's supposedly the only thing that makes mental illness real. Disliking the book this much makes me feel like I have some sort of internalized phobia.

First of all, I just really did not like Esther :/ it feels awfully insensitive to say because I know this book is semi-autobiographical and Plath really did struggle, but Esther was insufferable. I mean, mann, I did not like her even before her breakdown but at least once she became depressed I felt a bit more empathy.

I get it. Being a women in the 1950s was hard and not everyone wants to get married or have a baby but why is that a reason to look down on those who do? In fact she looks down on nearly every single women/female companion in this book, it's ridiculous. In her eyes everyone is either boring, shallow, stupid or inferior. Even her mother! I could not understand for the life of me why she hated her mother so much. Even when she TRIED, nothing she did was ever good enough.

On top of that, I don't think having depression is an excuse to be racist or act like you are superior to other classes or ethnicities. I'm not even exaggerating, it made me feel like the book was set in the 30s. People continually defend the racist elements of this book as a product of the time blah blah blah and yes, I agree that those terms were common usage, but my annoyance came with her comparisons. Why is it every time she described herself as ugly, there just had to be a reference to some ethnicity. I do not think those descriptions were justified in the context or even good.

For example, there's a part where she writes

“I noticed a big smudgy-eyed Chinese women staring idiotically into my face. It was only me of course. I was appalled to see how wrinkled and used-up I looked.”

or when Doreen mentions that a guy is from Peru, Esther says “they're ugly as Aztecs.”

Like??? It left a bitter taste in my mouth. There was literally no need for it either. Comments like those would come out of nowhere and irked me. You can write a book where the character calls someone a Nigger a million times for all I care but don't go and expect me to sympathize.

Of course, the poignancy of The Bell Jar comes from the fact that Sylvia Plath successfully commits suicide a decade later, but even Esther's view of depression frustrated me too. Countless times she undermines the plight of other women in the ward because no one else could possiblyyyyy be struggling. Of course we're all more privy to our own struggles, but at some point you have to realize other people are hiding their issues just as well as you. Should I stop taking medication so I'll finally descend into madness and kill myself to prove I'm as sick as you? Of course not, that's ridiculous, yet time after time the book could not seem to get away from this proverbial hierarchy where Esther was judge, jury and executioner.

And it frustrates me because Sylvia Plath is an excellent writer and I did enjoy her prose. There were parts of the book that were lovely to read like her visit to her father's grave or her walk along the beach. I just wish more of the book could have been like that but evidently I wouldn't have complained this much if it was.

This is a hard book to read, partly for the confused start, but also the very real ending. A deep insight into clinical depression.

I have to admit that in reading this book I really struggled to enjoy it - and not because it of the nature of the book, but because it felt like I was bouncing around inside of Sylvia Plath's head in a random jumbled up, non linear fashion.

In fact, I'd say the first third of the book is almost entirely that. The mini stories that occur don't really finish, and as we were journeying through one recounted story, I'd find we'd quickly make a sharp turn and begin a new journey.

The middle third starts to become a bit more pieced together but the book was struggling to win me over. Esther Greenwood (which I'd read earlier The Bell Jar was semi-autobiographical) wanted to kill herself. The way that this third goes on read almost childish and, for my shame, I was beginning to hope the character “just get on with it”.

It was also that the first section of the book painted an extremely successful character and the character in the second part was very much the opposite end of the spectrum and the different was jarring and hard to consolidate (as a reader).

Suffice to say, she does indeed attempt suicide. For the final third of the book she is institutionalised and undergoes therapy but also electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). The ECT isn't glorified nor is it vilified which was interesting and challenging (particularly with the story being semi-autobiographical).

The last third takes its time and walks gently through the journey that she takes during her institutionalised. None of this part of the book is glamourised and she doesn't make some magical recovery.

It's slow, gentle and unsure. Even as Esther finally reaches her board review to see if she can leave the institution, she herself is unconvinced that anything has changed, but something is certainly at rest in her.

The last part of the book definitely calls for reflection and helped to give me an insight into those who struggle with existing. There's rarely some grand purpose that drives them to death by suicide, and indeed in Esther's case there's nothing that particularly explain why she wanted to end her life.

There's a moment with her medical supervisor where Esther says that she hates her mother. This is after their last encounter - and her mother isn't bad in the slightest, it's that her mother wants to know what she had done wrong to have not been able to help protect her daughter from these feelings. The supervisor (slash therapist) says, “I believe you do”. She doesn't try to sympathies or give Esther another point of view. This line surprised me, in a believable way.

And as the book ends, Esther is reunited with her mother, and her mother, naively says she just wants to forget about it all and move forward from this, healthier time. To which Esther writes that her mother may want to forget and that perhaps Esther might forget those feelings:

> Maybe forgetfulness, like a kind snow, should numb and cover them. But they were part of me. They were my landscape.

Having dealings with depression myself, and shock grief of the worst kind, it really doesn't go away, and it isn't forgotten. It's as Plath writes: it becomes part of your landscape.

—

This is a hard book to read, partly for the confused start, but also the very real ending. Made harder by knowing that Sylvia Plath died by suicide the same year of this book's release.

Plath described the book (to her mother) as:

> a pot boiler really, but I think it will show how isolated a person feels when he is suffering a breakdown.

Indeed that's the experience of the last third of the book.