Read Yes
Length 244
Quick Review A young woman’s coming of age story as she grapples with working, the big city, friendship, sexuality, mental illness, and growing up female.
Literally anyone who has any knowledge of remarkable literary works knows about Sylvia Plath’s oven incident, as well as her writing. The Bell Jar is such a widely referenced book, it’s surprising how few people have actually read it. I, myself, thought it would an incredibly dense and arduous book to work through. It always seems the shorter the book the more wearisome the syntax. I am ashamed to say I made it to 25 without having ever attempted to read it. It has sat on my must read list for a decade without once glancing at a copy in a bookstore. With pen in hand, a quiet room, a cup of tea, I sat down with the most serious of intentions to delve into this onerous work.
Never have I been so wrong.
I read it in a day, an afternoon actually.
Esther Greenwood is a young and talented girl exploring the world around her as well as herself. The Bell Jar is known as a book about depression, but it is more than that. It is a book about self discovery and coming of age. It is intrinsically feminist without meaning to be. Though many decades ago, the trials Esther experiences are so in tune with the trials girls go through today: self confidence, body image, boys, sex, dating, career, education, and mental health.
The female version of The Catcher in the Rye, I’m beyond disappointed this novel has not made it onto the required reading lists for high schoolers. Though complexly nuanced, it is no more taboo than a swearing, hormonal teenage boy.
Plath is an incredible talent (Ariel at a later date; I must read it first), who has been turned into a compounded punch line of the crazy writer. She is best remembered for her clinical depression and infamous suicide than her startling talent as a poet and novelist.
Memorable Quotes
“If you expect nothing from somebody, you are never disappointed.”
“The silence depressed me. It wasn’t the silence of silence. It was my own silence.”
“The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn’t thought about it.”
“There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends.”
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Title: The Bell Jar
Author: Sylvia Plath
Copyright: 2006
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
ISBN: 9780061148514
