Sylvia Plath’s shocking, realistic, and intensely emotional novel about a woman falling into the grip of insanity
Esther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. In her acclaimed and enduring masterwork, Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into Esther’s breakdown with such intensity that her insanity becomes … becomes palpably real, even rational—as accessible an experience as going to the movies. A deep penetration into the darkest and most harrowing corners of the human psyche, The Bell Jar is an extraordinary accomplishment and a haunting American classic.
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I read and loved Plath’s poetry in college, and finally got around to reading The Bell Jar. I liked it for all the same reasons I liked her poetry — it’s haunting and all-absorbing and touches on some unsettling truth.
The book seems to be divided into two parts — Esther’s life in New York and her mental unraveling, and then her return home and road towards recovery. These parts almost read like two separate books to me, with different moods, different tones, and enough substance to stand-alone. But that’s also what I liked about it — how like Esther, the reader is displaced and questioning, how did we get here?
I also really admired the way that Plath used point of view. Esther’s perspective is all consuming and increasingly subjective as the novel progresses, but I found myself so aligned with her thoughts, hopes, and fears. Plath was masterful at putting us inside her head.
I’d definitely recommend this book.
I read The Bell Jar in a single day while lying in a park hiding from the world (an introvert day). Watching Esther descend into mental illness is sad because it’s relatable, and reading this book makes me feel, perhaps oddly, that all is well.
There is something raw, real, and unabashedly vivid about Esther Greenwood’s experience in The Bell Jar. Known mostly for her poetry, Sylvia Plath drew upon her own life to craft this novel and her own struggle with depression comes to life on the page.
There aren’t as many novels that tackle these issues as there should be, but Plath’s incredible novel does justice to both literature and those for whom it speaks for. This isn’t just the story of a woman going mad. It is much more complex than that and Plath tells this visceral story with honesty and poise.
The Bell Jar is a one of a kind novel that everyone should read.
I’m almost ashamed to admit that I read this classic for the first time at the age of 70. While some of the idioms are out-of-date and repetitive, this slow revelation of the mind of a bipolar woman with suicidal ideation affected me deeply. Especially the externally-normal behavior of a young woman in New York, which makes me wonder how we might recognize/support/be attentive to young people with a suicidal tendency; and makes me very, very sad. I recommend this book highly.
Classic piece of semi-autobiographical fiction detailing a woman’s drive to succeed, then her imminent descent. You must read this novel if you love psych thrillers or are interested in women’s fiction. Everybody calls this pure book “pure brilliance,”…and that’s because it is.
People who have never been clinically depressed probably have difficulty figuring out what is wrong with the heroine of Plath’s 1963 novel, a girl named Esther Greenwood. In a sense, she has it all, including youth and attractiveness and enough talent to land herself in nice situations, like in an internship with a New York magazine. But with depression comes an inability to enjoy anything. She talks about the sensation she has “of being burned alive along all your nerves” which might be about electroshock therapy but could also refer to the raging overstimulation of rolling panic attacks common with depression. She spends whole weeks within a sensation she calls a bell jar or a sort of imaginary glass dome that’s had all the air pumped out, which corresponds with the constant shortness of breath of extreme anxiety. At the same time, there can be an alarming feeling of distance between oneself and the world, which she sums up by saying “The city hung in my window, flat as a poster.” There’s also a duplicity necessary to the illness, so that the person she presents to other people is kept separate from the one who is sick, who she won’t allow other people to meet, mostly because of shame at not being normal and functional. She describes this as “Year after year of doubleness.” In fact, Plath originally published the novel under the name Victoria Lucas in a literal act of duplicity and distancing from her own story. There’s a powerful feeling, too, of having done something terrible, to try to account for how dreadful the symptoms are along with the constant sense that everything is falling apart. She describes this as being one of the people who is “having to live in hell before they died, to make up.” At the same time, there’s an enormous hunger and desire for life and she insists this by saying at one point, “I’m very interested in everything.” But there’s no denying that her functionality is declining and she’s watching herself rapidly go from prestigious internships at magazines to candy-striping on the maternity ward in a hospital. Depression attacks desire and the ability to summon sufficient resolve to face the complex difficulties that present themselves in even one single day. Or as she puts it, “All sickness was sickness of the will.” A scene that points up the great irony of mental illness perfectly is when she passes out flowers to pregnant ladies on the ward. Beforehand, she takes it upon herself to trash all the tired-looking blooms, which leaves very few good ones to hand out. And when the women start to get upset with her, instead of melting down, she takes off running down the hall and out into the street. It looks like quitting, but those who’ve been in her shoes know it’s really an act of total rebellion against the thing the illness is trying to make of her: some incompetent, dysfunctional and hopeless case, incapable of even passing out a few flowers correctly.
The Bell Jar is a harrowing tale of mental illness; one that does not respect, age, intelligence or social standing, one that relentlessly grinds its victim [s] into extinction. It tells of a girl at the top of her world and the slow descent into the darkness that beckons her and never really leaves her.
It is lyrical and full of poetry, even though this is most certainly prose. You can tell that Sylvia Plath’s main love was poetry; it just flows through this with the way she phrases sentences and vignette’s of Esther’s life.
I listened to 1/2 of this on Audible [and then read the other half in the book I owned] with Maggie Gyllenhaal as the narrator and I truly enjoyed it. I just ended up having a ton of books on my plate and needed to finish the book faster than it was playing in the audiobook. I thought Maggie’s voice was perfect for Esther; as the descent begins, you can hear the changing in her voice and I know that at some point, I will go back and finish listening to her read it.
Truly a heart-tugging, thought-provoking book; the fact that Sylvia Plath never found a way to fend off her own demons and ultimately committed suicide herself, makes this book even more emotional and tragic.
Amazing
This is a very serious book about depression, and if I remember correctly suicide. Plath was an excellent conveyor of what it’s like to be clinically depressed. A very creative person who committed suicide at a young age.
Sylvia Plath was a superbly talented poet driven to suicide by an abusive, bully husband and her own deep chasms of doubt and need. Here is her only novel, a cry from the heart, an exploration of depression and desperation, and finally a triumphant creation of art. This is a classic, deservedly a favorite among poets and writers, and breathtakingly, achingly wonderful in so many sad ways. Everyone should read this book and contemplate, too, her poems and her life. / Gene Stewart
Sylvia Plath was a wonderful writer and in this book she excels as a story teller getting to grips with unpleasant and often shocking memories of her break down using humour and wit.
This is a book that has the power to delineate a message long after it was written. It haunted my teenage years and I still recall it when I am sad. Mental illness is so hard to portray and Plath does the portrayal justice.
I found my copy of The Bell Jar on a scrap heap in the basement of the halfway house where I was recovering. I wrote about it in my book “Half”. When people ask me what genre my books are, I say “The same as The Bell Jar.” I laughed out loud, and then when I learned the author’s unfortunate parallel to the lead, I got melancholy. But it’s a book that can make you laugh in the face of terrible adversity. It is my mission to write books that do the same, for I know they provide comfort.
A fantastic depiction of the spiral into mental illness.
Książka pokazująca życie Sylvii Plath na miesiąc przed jej śmiercią – jej życiowe rozterki dotyczące nie tylko życiowego celu, ale również relacji z innymi. Uderzająca osobowość sprawia, że ,,Szklany klosz” jest lekturą na jedną noc. Realizm przedstawiony w zmaganiu się bohaterki z depresją jest niespotykany. Niezwykła opowieść o zwykłym człowieku, jakby starym przyjacielu z którym rozmawia się do rana. Książka długo tkwi w sercu i nie pozwala odpocząć. Rekomenduję ją każdemu, kto potrzebuje odrobiny solidaryzacji z szarym, przytłaczającym światem.
A lead up to Sylvia Plath’s suicide. An important work by an important voice lost too soon.
A must read for anyone in a socially connected profession. It never ceases to amaze me what we do to one another….
I’ve read it twice and am now listening to the audio book. It’s that good. Plath’s descriptions of people and places and rooms are extraordinary and delicious. She writes with humor and wit and emotion.
Though the book ends on a high note, it’s devastating when one considers the bell jar descended on Sylvia Plath in the end, silencing an incredible writer.
The story of the emotional conflicts of a very brigh,talented poet, whose interpersonal relationship s, especially her marriage continued to sabotage her opinions of herself and her considerable talents. Beautifully written.