The Bell Jar

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Published in 1963, Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar" holds up to this day as a tale of a depressed young woman losing her place in society. Esther Greenwood is a promising young writer who gains a prestigious internship to write for a trendy magazine in New York City. Her life should be la creme de la creme but none of the dinners, luncheons, outings or encounters with other people seem to spark her interest. She goes to some weird parties and follows her friends around for no real reason as she doesn't enjoy anything. Her return home is also disappointing as she is rejected from a writing program she hoped to attend.

From here on out we see her spiral into a depression. While her mother doesn't seem to know what to do, the peak of mental health treatment in the 1960's sends her through a course of electro shock therapy. These so called treatments do much more harm than good, and Esther continues to bounce around treatment centers.

Though her apathetic gaze we see her losing more and more control. Those who care for her; her mother, a patron for her writing, and a terrible boyfriend recovering from TB (tuberculosis) are seemingly at a lose. What can they actually do for Esther? The reader is left wondering if she can recover from her illness.

This novel is semi autobiogaphical, so much that Sylvia Plath wrote it under a pseudonym. The novel was only published under her real name 3 years after her death by suicide.

Honestly I read this book thinking it would be the typical classic that seems stuck in the past. I was sadly wrong. It reads like a lot of these sad millenial novels coming out in the past few years, like "my year of rest and relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh '', but way better. I guess that a well written depressive episode is timeless. I appreciate the honesty that Plath shows, but in some ways its too real.

I hoped Esther would get better, but in the end you see how her disinterest for life caused by her depression causes her to experience life as spectator instead of an active player.

I think this book can be reread for years to come, since there will sadly be many people affected by depression, whether directly or indirectly. But, by reading about the lives of Esther and Sylvia, we hopefully can be more understanding than the other characters in this story.

Bottom line: If you're 16 and angsty this could be a good book to read.

9/10