To some, The Bell Jar would need no introduction, to this day it stands as a highly revered book amongst feminists and something like a keynote speaker to those who have suffered from depression. To others it may be a book that had to be read during school literature studies, one which suck in their minds long after the final exams, but to more still it remains an undiscovered gem, perhaps heard of, but never explored.
I bought it and read it for the first time yesterday. Yes, just in one day – it is short and shockingly to the point. It's a book that has been on my list for a very long time, having been talked about with great passion by many people who interest me I thought it would be good to try it out.
The Bell Jar was written by Sylvia Plath, most noted for her poetry and held today as an important feminist icon or as some say - martyr. It is likely that the first drafts were done in about 1959 and the fellowship she received in 1961 allowed her to complete the novel. The book was first published shortly after her death in 1963 under the pseudonym of Victoria Lucas; it was only in 1966 in England and as late as 1971 in America that the book appeared with her real name. It was her first and last novel, and is largely an autobiographical work, the main character an image of herself and the events that take place on paper matched almost one for one with the story of her own life.
~*~ SPOILERS WILL FOLLOW ~*~
Characters and Plot
The entire book is written in the first person, told from the point of view of the main character, Ester Greenwood. This is an image of Sylvia at the age of just 19, both in physical appearance and mental state. From the outset we are let straight into Esters head, her every thought about her surroundings described for us, as we begin to get a feel for her life so far.
The book is far more about the state of Esters emotions, her thoughts and feelings and view of the world than it is about the story. Although there are many characters that appear throughout the books pages, even those that seem quite important ultimately prove to be of little significance. It is her story, those around her affect its path and her life, but only fleetingly, and then she is left with nothing but the way they made her feel.
Beginning in New York, where Ester is spending the summer as an assistant to a fashion magazine, the words on the page quickly let us into her head. As the winner of a competition to come and live in The Big Apple, she feels she should be lucky, but instead she just feels far removed from all the excited girls around her, dull and empty. Although she seems to have a friend, Doreen, their disparate natures are soon made apparent. As all Esters other friends have grown up and moved on to men, parties and drinking she feels as though she still wishes to spent the days outside, and her evenings studying toward something greater. As she sits, looking in from the outside, there is never a sense of longing, a wish to be like that, but rather a curious non-comprehension at their behaviour.
It is during this time in New York – also the first major parallel between the story and Plath's real life – that Ester really begins to feel that something is wrong. All her plans which she had so carefully laid out seem to be slipping away, that which she was so certain of becomes an unknown. She describes herself as:
"sitting in the crotch of a 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 one of them, but choosing one meant loosing 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."
We are also introduced to Buddy Willard, her first boyfriend. The relationship tells us a lot about Esters attitude toward men and toward sex. Although she has never even had a lasting relationship, the idea of being a wife and homemaker, of having children and being happy in the shadow of a man make Ester both angry and confused as she sees it portrayed as the natural way. Societies accepted restrictions on women weigh on her as she struggles to find her place.
Buddy is someone she had admired from afar, but never thought she would actually meet, and it is only when he approaches her that they have any real contact. However as she begins to learn more about him she realizes that he is not all she thought and, like all the others boys and many friends as well, she becomes disappointed in his nature and wishes to have no more to do with him.
The second part of the book begins when Esters summer is over. Her plan had been to go to a college writing course, as she wishes to become a poet. But on the way home, her mother informs her that she was not accepted for the course. And here is where the real slide into depression comes. Although Esters thoughts often criticises herself, men, society and cultural expectations, like the author, she never blames her mental state on any of these. Instead she simply holds the terror of mental illness as something she has and must therefore suffer from.
Cancelling all her long held plans and with the thought of being stuck at home with her mother, Esters mind begins to come unstuck. She tries to start writing a novel, but decides that she cannot write as she has no real life experiences. As the days pass her thoughts turn more and more to ones of death and all her actions become linked to those.
Reluctant to get out of bed in the morning, despite many nights of insomnia, she hides herself away, likening he feel of the mattress and pillows on top of her to that of being buried. A day at the beach, arranged by her mother to try and cheer her up, ends with her trying to drown herself by swimming out as far as possible, wanting to lie at the bottom with the bones of all the life before her. As well as insomnia, she finds herself unable to eat, read or write.
It is the last of these that worries her the most and prompts her mother into action – she is sent to a psychiatrist. At first, Ester is somewhat encouraged by this, imagining someone she can talk to and will help her to be able to do things again. Instead she is introduced to Doctor Gordon, who she doesn't like from the start. She spends their first session telling him everything, waiting for an answer, and all she receives at the end is "Okay, well, see you next week". After only two sessions, he decided to send her for electroconvulsive therapy.
At his private hospital Ester undergoes the treatment, and finds it to be worse than death. Upon stepping out of the hospital later that day she informs her mother that she is never going back there, to which her mother smiles at her and says "I knew my baby wasn't like that. Like those awful people. Those awful dead people at that hospital. I knew you'd decide to be alright again." To anyone who has experienced some type of mental illness, the irony, frustration and anger held in words like that – despite all good intentions - will be all too familiar.
After the unsuccessful therapy, Ester tries to make amends with her dead father by visiting his gravesite, but this just steers her thoughts back to those of death. After many minor attempts at suicide by drowning, hanging and slitting her wrists, it is now that Esters first serious attempt to take her life unfolds. Exactly as the books author did, Esters hides herself away and swallows over 40 sleeping pills.
Although she is only discovered days later, the attempt was unsuccessful and once she has recovered the third part of the book begins, chronicling Esters time at another private mental asylum. Terrified of more electroshock therapy, all Esters previous fears and confusion return in full force. However this time she is assigned to Doctor Nolan – a woman psychiatrist – which immediately puts Esters mind more at rest. At the hospital Ester also meets one of her old friends, Joan, who ran away from home after reading about Esters suicide attempt in the papers and now wishes to follow suit.
There is also the culmination of Esters worries about sex as she finally looses her virginity to a stranger she decided would be good for the job as well as being fitted with an IUD as she is terrified by the idea of motherhood. She divides the world into just two types of people – those who have had sex and those who have not. Throughout the story she has wondered if her virginity was not part of the problem, if perhaps she got that out the way she would be open to a whole new her and things would be better. Of course it is not so, and ends up with a trip to the emergency room.
As the book follows Esters trails during her stay in the hospital the reader becomes more and more aware of how easy it can be for the mind to slip, for insanity and depression to take over and make perfect sense. And as she once again undergoes the electro therapy she so feared as well as insulin therapy, her sense of despair seeps off the pages. The one thing many people did not like about the book was its ending. It is ambiguous. It does not tell us what becomes of Ester, nor how we should feel about it. The ending is left up to the reader, perhaps to say that as in life, the end is up to no one but oneself.
Final Word
The title of the book refers to Plath's recurring metaphor for depression that is used in the book. When a rich poet who had originally given Ester her scholarship to college provides the funds for her to be in a private asylum instead of the state one, Ester thinks:
"I knew I should be grateful to Mrs Guinea, only I couldn't feel a thing. If Mrs Guinea had given me a ticket to Europe, or a round-the-world cruise, it wouldn't have made one scrap of difference to me, because wherever I sat – on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok – I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air."
Although there are moments of hope hidden within the pages and flashes of black humour, this book is so honest, so true and so personal, that with knowledge of how it ended in real life there is little room for doubt about what happens to Ester in the end. It is a story of despair, one that perhaps awakens in you your own sense of being closed off, surrounded by an impenetrable bell jar, lost in the noisy confusion of the world. For those not so deeply affected by its truth, it still remains an eye-opener to the nature of depression and its effects on the sufferer, while at the same time being an interesting and absorbing character study.
The books prose is vivid and intense, the ideas laid bare in a straightforward way, just how one would think them. As though they fell straight from the brain that originated them onto the page with no literary devices to obscure the meaning. Like all books that seem to hold a timeless appeal it carries within it something for everyone, its myriad themes spanning across decades and cultures to connect, in some way, with each mind that reads it.