i kept putting off this book, because i’m not really into classics, and i thought it would be super banal, but i was pleasantly surprised at how invested i became in esther’s story. i believe the bell jar’s cultural stronghold is well deserved, as it was truly ahead of its time. it contains excellent themes of gender roles, existentialism, and psychiatric treatment (particularly the barbaric and apathetic practices of the 1950s). it’s interesting to read early “feminist” works, since we’ve come such a long way that a book like this would seem rudimentary in the grand scheme of feminist lore. i found myself relating to this book quite a lot, and it made me extremely contemplative. the beginning is pretty boring, as well as the end, but the really deep stuff lies in the middle. like most classics, this book has a handful of racist moments, and i’m glad that we live in a world that now denounces ignorance in literature. the bell jar felt almost eerie to read because of the context in relation to the life and death of sylvia plath—the book is mostly autobiographical, and she killed herself just one month after its publication. this novel helped catalyze the larger conversation surrounding mental health and feminism, which in my opinion, makes it worthy of a read and of its praise.

”I tried to smile, but my skin had gone stiff, like parchment.

Then something bent down and took hold of me and shook me like the end of the world. Whee-ee-ee-ee-ee, it shrilled, through an air crackling with blue light, and with each flash a great jolt drubbed me till I thought my bones would break and the sap fly out of me like a split plant.

I wondered what terrible thing it was that I had done.”

This reminds me of this guy that used to go around the country talking about that moment in time when he hung in the air after jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge. He knew instantly that he’d made a terrible mistake and at that moment desperately wanted to live. When I worked in San Francisco and lived in Richmond, I would sometimes take the Golden Gate Bridge to work and the Bay Bridge on the way back home, to mix things up, or vice versa. Sometimes the traffic report would push me one way or another. After being trapped for three hours waiting for a jumper on Golden Gate to decide if he was really going to do it or finally climb back down, I became paranoid as to whether there would be a jumper every time I climbed into my Jeep to head home.

I can remember people standing in groups, cupping their hands around their mouths, yelling for the man to jump. It was the indecision that was so inconvenient. I have to admit, even though it made my stomach sour, that I too wanted a resolution to this interruption in my life. I wanted to be home with my family, a good book, and a glass of wine. We are all capable of such selfish thoughts.

I felt the same way at moments in this book. I thought to myself,...Just please get it over with. I can’t take this anymore. How could I possibly think that the loss of a few hours of my life was worth all the rest of someone else’s life? Of course, I don’t believe that when it is put in those stark of terms, but the wait for something to happen was/is nauseating as well.

So Esther Greenwood has earned a scholarship to college. She is certainly smart and has come up with a snappy subject for her dissertation, if only she could get around to actually reading Finnegan’s Wake. She has a roommate, Doreen, whom she admires immensely. She seems so self-possessed and free from the burdens of expectations. ”Everything she said was like a secret voice speaking straight out of my own bones.”Esther is pretty enough, not the prettiest of girls, but pretty enough to attract the attention of boys, but of course, men prefer Doreen.
There is that aura around Doreen that makes men want to break through that cool exterior to the tiger they can sense lurks beneath.

There are hundreds of girls who would be jealous of Esther’s opportunities, but Esther will gladly trade her life for almost any life. The problem is, there is no escape from herself. There is a voice that is slowly turning all the rest of the natives in her head against her. ”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 cafe in Paris or Bangkok--I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.”

If only Esther can jump from a bridge and fall far enough, before hitting a safety net, to discover that suicide is not what she wants.

What have I done?

Of course, the poignancy of reading The Bell Jar is the fact that Sylvia Plath does attempt to kill herself in 1953 in a similar way as Esther does in the book. This may be a novel, but the autobiographical elements of the book make it as real as reading a memoir or Plath’s diary. The tragedy is, of course, that Sylvia, ten years later, does successfully end her own life, so I guess we know the ending of Esther’s life as well. "Blissfully succumbed to the whirling blackness that I honestly believed was eternal oblivion."--Sylvia Plath

I kept wishing that Esther/Sylvia would work as diligently at finding a reason to live as she did scheming for a way to kill herself. I kept thinking about Anthony Bourdain, Virginia Woolf, and in particular David Foster Wallace; all had many people who admired them and loved them. We think one of the worst things on this planet is to be unloved and how being in that terrifying position would be a reason to be suicidal, but these chemical imbalances that people suffer from tilt the scales of their lives in the wrong direction. It doesn’t matter how much they are loved. I want to unroll the list of things Bourdian has loved and read them to him one by one to convince him that he has much to live for. I want to catch Woolf at the river, pull the rocks from her dress pockets and fling them into the water to sink without her. I want to cut the rope that is dangling from the rafters of Wallace’s house and watch him inhale that first precious gasp of air. I want to walk into Plath’s house in 1963 and turn off the gas and carry her out into the sunlight.

Is that what they wanted? A miraculous intervention? Did they want the universe to insist that they live?

This book is considered by many to be a masterpiece. The book is certainly unsettling, especially when the reader knows he is basically reading a 234 page suicide note. Wallace, I believe, wrote two pages. Woolf wrote a simple page, but a beautiful one. It is unclear whether Bourdain wrote a suicide note, but given his penchant for prose, I find it hard to believe that he didn’t. I can see how people who are struggling, especially those who are struggling silently, with their mental health would seek this book out. It does seem to help once people know they are not alone or even discover that their problems are not unusual. Does this book help or hinder someone’s own recovery? I don’t know the answer to that.

I do think those people who have someone in their life who is grappling with mental health issues would possibly gain some insight into their loved one’s battle with their own mind by reading this book. For those who see the very best in life, it is sometimes difficult to understand why someone would want to kill themselves. When I feel a bit blue, there is always a book to pull from a shelf to take me somewhere else long enough to let the stormy weather in my mind subside. I feel very fortunate that I have discovered such an outlet for my happiness.

The victim is not the only victim; suicides leave a lake of tears and recriminations in their wake.

If you are suffering and are contemplating suicide, please do continue to search for a reason to live. There is something out there for you. Don’t be dangling in the air before you realize that you really do want to live.

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten and an Instagram account https://www.instagram.com/jeffreykeeten/

"Me sentía muy tranquila y muy vacía, como debe de sentirse el ojo de un tornado que se mueve con ruido sordo en medio del estrépito circundante."

Hacía mucho tiempo que quería leer este libro y aunque pensé que iba a encontrarme con una novela que si bien tiene varios momentos depresivos, no los sentí tan profundos, sino que me pareció la historia de una mujer, Esther Greenwood, que simplemente no encaja en ninguna estructura, ni modelo, ni patrón característico de la sociedad y que limita todo su proceder en la vida sin poder salirse de esa campana de cristal a la que se refiere en distintos pasajes de la historia.
Es más, he leído un libro más desolador y depresivo que este, el cual recomiendo y que se llama “Huida a las tinieblas”, de Arthur Schnitzler, quien fuera gran amigo de Sigmund Freud.
De hecho, este último, gran lector, tomaba ejemplos de los libros de Schnitzler para sus escritos e investigaciones. La historia que narra Schnitzler en “Huida a las tinieblas” es acerca de Robert, un personaje muchísimo más traumado mentalmente, cuyos serios problemas emocionales lo llevarán en un tobogán al desastre total.
Volviendo a Esther, observo que su forma de vida es errática, un tanto abúlica y despreocupada. Todas las personas con las que se encuentra no la conforman, ni la ayudan ni la entienden. Especialmente su madre. La experiencia del viaje a New York le crea un vacío muy grande en el espíritu y el corazón y le produce en su vuelta a casa mayores dudas, cae en un laberinto y comienza a desdibujarse.
Lo que sí rescato como aspectos totalmente negativos y depresivos del libro son algunas frases que fui anotando.
Cito algunos ejemplos:
"Cada vez que trataba de concentrarme, mi mente se deslizaba como un patinador hacia un gran espacio vacío, y allí hacía piruetas, ausente."
"Sentí que me encogía hasta convertirme en un minúsculo punto negro pegado a aquellas mantas rojas y negras y a aquellos paneles de madera de pino. Me sentía como un agujero en el suelo."
"Yo sentí que me fundía en las sombras como el negativo de una persona a quien nunca en mi vida hubiese visto."
"Si uno no espera nada de alguien, nunca de siente desilusionado."
Es imposible dudar que la cuestión autobiográfica de la autora irrumpe de lleno en el personaje, sobre todo en el aspecto de las tendencias suicidas con la salvedad de que en ambos casos, los destinos parecen ser distintos.
Si tuviera que agregarle una banda de sonido a este libro, sería la música del disco “Closer”, del grupo Joy Division, con sus frías y sintéticas líneas de bajo.
Creo que la voz del también suicida Ian Curtis, cantando el lastimero “Love will tear us apart” sería el tema principal del sountrack.
El día que Sylvia Plath se suicidó, luego de dejarle el desayuno a sus hijos y una nota a su marido, el también escritor Ted Hughes, culminando abruptamente su vida desequilibrada, se asemeja en demasía al personaje de Esther.
Me da la sensación que este libro le sirvió a Plath como una gran preparación psicológica para ese terrible paso que dio allá por febrero de 1963, al suicidarse introduciendo su cabeza dentro del horno de su cocina.
Quedaron sus poemas, sus libros para niños, sus otras novelas, sus diarios y cartas y este libro como prueba premonitoria del trágico final y a la vez, de su entrada al recuerdo de tantos lectores que aún hoy siguen leyendo este libro tan extraño como cautivador.

why did she kick that black man and then call him a negro????? bc Sylvia used the word negro so many times i was like damn did i accidentally pick up a stephen king novel?? anyways liked the topics of the madonna complex even though that term wasn’t coined then. i just found this book boring ngl

Some of you may ask "What were you thinking, Mizuki? Why did you give The Bell Jar only two stars? Isn't this book like, a classic?"

I am aware of the fact that Sylvia Plath is a famous poet and The Bell Jar is considered a classic, and I do agree that the writing is poetic and beautiful, the story is also very honest and realistic as well. In fact, Plath's writing and the first half of the book deserve four full stars; but sadly...everything took a nosedive when the heroine suffers a mental breakdown with depression.

Here're a few things I'd like to clarify:

(1) I understand how sucky and painful it is for a person to suffer depression and become mentally ill.

(2) I understand how depressing it is to lose the scholarship you had dreamed of for the longest of time and realize that you are in fact not as special and extraordinary as you had always believed yourself to be.

(3) I understand how depressing and suppressing it is for young women of the 1950s to have no way out aside from getting married, having kids and being housewives.

(4) I do feel sorry that the main character embarrassed herself in New York when she was surrounded by people from the NY fashion scene and she didn't have a clue about how she was supposed to behave around people from the well respected circles. No one should be humiliated like this.

(5) I do feel bad that the MC was later assaulted and beat by a guy, it's a horrible experience. But strangely enough, the MC seemed to burst this experience aside without further mention, whilst she kept moaning and whining about minor things.

Still all the great writing and my understanding cannot cover for the insufferable main character, her constant whining and moaning, her complaining about everything and everyone around her.

If The Bell Jar is a Young Adult novel, I would have long called the MC out on being such an ungrateful spoiled brat. My stomach was turning over and over with distaste when I read that the Mc's mother single-handedly raised her daughter after her husband passing away, still the MC hated her mother. Nothing the mother did and said could please her, NOTHING.

Let's give you one more example:

The MC's mother went to the asylum to visit her daughter, she brought her roses because it was her birthday; the mother kept begging her daughter to tell her what she had done so wrong in her childhood which caused her to end up in an asylum. The MC's reaction to this is: "I hate her."

Bitch, please.

I'm not saying the MC's mother is the Perfect Mom, she had her own shortcoming and she doesn't seem to understand what's going on in her daughter's mind. But hey, if you had to insist on hating your mother so much, at least give me some reasons, some explanation, some examples to see why your hatred is justified. Damn it!

Not to mention said MC also thought poorly of her female companies/friends and her suitor. In her eyes, those who were in the same age group with her were all boring, shallow, stupid and inferior than her, and God forbid that those girls she met in New York be richer and more worldly than her! It's just unacceptable!

Don't get me wrong, many of these girls are in fact vain and unlikable, but it doesn't look like they are all out to get the MC's blood. For God's sake!

The great writing also cannot cover for the author's fault in engaging her main character with the readers. As beautiful the writing is and as realistic, vividly written and interesting the story (especially the MC's job in New York and the vanity of the NY fashion scene) is, I still cannot overlook the lack of feeling in the writing and the lack of reasons and explanation beyond characters' personalities and actions. For example, can we manage to see the reason why the MC hated her mother so very much? Nap.

I do think it's a painfully honest and realistically, poetically written book, the feeling of pain, emptiness and alienation is beautifully expressed through the writing; and I suspect something has been lost in translation (I read the Chinese version of the book), but in the end I'm still disappointed, I especially don't enjoy how the story goes once the MC got a mental breakdown, after the breakdown, The Bell Jar loses much of its charm in my eyes and things get very, very sandy and boring. What a pity.

Plus I honestly don't feel very sympathetic after finished reading the MC's story. Her story to me is more like a story about a girl who thinks she's SO SPECIAL because she's such a straight-A ideal student and she's so much SMARTER and BETTER than anyone her age; but then she goes to New York and realizes she isn't so very special because there are larger fishes in the sea and she meets a bunch of girls who are all from much richer families than hers. Her self-confidence goes to the toilet and eventually she gets a mental breakdown because she's so unhappy with her life. Full stop.

It's not a YA, but sadly the story and its MC made me feel like I'm reading one.

I only had to read it once. I never read it for or with pleasure. I prefer childbirth.

n  ”It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.”n

When Esther Greenwood wins an internship at a New York fashion magazine in 1953, she is elated, believing she will finally realise her dream to become a writer. But in between the cocktail parties and piles of manuscripts, Esther's life begins to slide out of control. She finds herself spiralling into depression and eventually a suicide attempt, as she grapples with difficult relationships and a society which refuses to take women's aspirations seriously.

Where do I even begin to review this magnificent book. I feel it has come to me at a point in my life that I needed it most. We follow the life of young Esther who at a certain point in the narrative ends up going into a deep depression and is admitted to a psychiatric clinic. Plath herself had attempted suicide in 1952. It is because of this combination of autobiographical references, the topic of depression and the author's ability and sensitivity to express what she was going through that make this one of the most beautiful, complex, sensitive, deep, dense books, sad and hard to read.

Esther Greenwood, our fictional protagonist, is unfortunately only a veiled cover for Plath’s real world disease which reached its nadir in 1963 when she took her own life at the young age of thirty.

Plath’s prose is incredibly beautiful. If you did not already know, you can tell with ease that this writing is very personal. As much as it was meant to be shared, it also seems like a form of release. Plath deals with the anxieties of adulthood, the female psyche, and the grotesque reality of psychiatric treatments against a 50s backdrop. Themes like this are heavy. They linger. This is what makes The Bell Jar such a success. This is how the book manages to find a place between our hands, hearts, and heads.

What it has to say about what women expect of themselves, and what society expects of women, is as sharply relevant today as it has always been.

It's not a book for everyone, it's not for anytime, but at the same time it's a book for everyone and for life.

n  ”To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream.”n

n  

How did I know that someday - at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere - the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn't descend again?

n
What makes this book so endlessly fascinating is the way Plath layers up meanings: the bell jar is a symbol for her mental illness but it's also an image for the deadening effect of trying to live as a woman with any kind of authenticity under the constraints of patriarchy.

Pressured by the media epitomized by Mademoiselle, by the expectations of a mother who wants her to learn shorthand so she can be a secretary and take down men's letters, and bludgeoned by sexual codes and double standards, Esther's breakdown is almost a fleeing that any sane woman would make. Except there, too, Esther is terrorized and patronized by a sleazy male doctor whose rough electric shock treatment traumatizes her further.

Although this is a novel which clearly draws on Plath's experiences, to see this as autobiography does a disservice to a fiction which is more analytically clear-eyed about power and gender than it is often given credit for. There are few writers so able to combine such harrowing material with dark, dark humour.

And, for Plath, the rhythm of life and freedom is also counted via the feet of iambic poetry: 'I took a deep breath and listened to the old beat of my heart. I am, I am, I am.'
_________________________
Update: July 2019 (original review below)

Given how much I love Plath's poetry and journals, it's been nagging me that this novel of hers didn't work that well for me - it felt flat and 'told' in a monotone, so unlike Plath's usual visceral, high-octane words. Rather than re-reading I listened to the audiobook and wow!, Maggie Gyllenhaal's reading clicked immediately. She captures all the nuances of Esther's voice: the monotone, yes, but also the acid-bite of her wit, the self-deprecating sharpness, the fear of electric shock treatments, the always-on voice of internal censure and criticism, the solipsism - that ended up making this one of the most horrific exposures of patriarchy, the quest for culturally-constructed female perfectionism, and the struggle for self-identity that I've read. Of course, given this novel's placement in the calendar of Plath's life and death, it's impossible to read it 'innocently' - but yes, I *knew* this would be a book for me if only I could find a way in.
--------------------------------------------

n  

I am I am I am

n
As much as I love Plath, her poetry and her journals, this novel has never worked for me. I first read it as a teenager, and it was my first introduction to Plath’s writing and, even then, I was underwhelmed. I wondered if re-reading it now in the light of her poetry would change my response – but no, this still feels weak and slightly unfinished or unrealised.

Drawing on Plath’s internship at a NY magazine and her subsequent breakdown, we can certainly see the themes of her writings beneath the contours of the story: the tension between what a woman is supposed socially and culturally to be and her internal realities; ambition and writing; the power plays of sex and desire; the ego vs. the ‘nice’ girl. And from the start there’s something subtly ‘off’ about Esther’s voice, a casual, nagging, wrongness that alerts us to the fact that this is not going to follow traditional paths or end happily.

All the same, for a writer with such a powerful, bruising, harsh and dynamic style of wordcraft, even in her journals, this feels a little bland. It’s always worth a read especially if poetry, Plath’s true medium, isn’t your thing but it’s not a text that showcases Plath at her exciting, energetic, painful and corrosive best.

“Doctor Gordon was unlocking the closet. He dragged out a table on wheels with a machine on it and rolled it behind the head of the bed. The nurse started swabbing my temples with a smelly grease.

As she leaned over to reach the side of my head nearest the wall, her fat breast muffled my face like a cloud or a pillow. A vague, medicinal stench emanated from her flesh.

‘Don’t worry,’ the nurse grinned down at me. ‘Their first time everybody’s scared to death.’

I tried to smile but my skin had gone stiff, like parchment…Dr. Gordon was fitting two metal plates on either side of my head. He buckled them into place with a strap that dented my forehead, and gave me a wire to bite.

I shut my eyes.

There was a brief silence, like an indrawn breath.

Then something bent down and took hold of me and shook me like the end of the world. Whee-ee-ee-ee, it shrilled, through an air crackling with blue light, and with each flash a great jolt drubbed me till I thought my bones would break and the sap fly out of me like a split plant.

I wondered what terrible thing it was that I had done…”
-tSylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

In the early morning hours of February 11, 1963, Sylvia Plath sealed her children’s room with masking tape, turned on the gas, and stuck her head in an oven. She was thirty years old.

This is a rather grim way to start a discussion of The Bell Jar, but utterly necessary, because Plath’s death haunts every page of this wonderfully-realized story of a woman descending into insanity. This is one of those instances where fiction and fact are so tightly interwoven that they cannot really be separated. That is, part of the power of The Bell Jar comes from the palpable presence of Plath’s ghost.

Reality casts a funereal pall over the proceedings, yet The Bell Jar opens jauntily enough. “It was a queer, sultry summer,” first-person narrator Esther Greenwood announces in the novel’s arresting first line, “the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs.” Esther, we soon learn, is in New York City, with a prestigious internship at a fashion magazine. There is a certain breeziness in the early going, so that it is not hard to conjure up an image from, say, The Devil Wears Prada: a tale of a young woman on the make, in the city that never sleeps.

As we move forward, however, Esther – who proves an endearing, self-deprecating narrator – struggles with the glitz and glam that others so eagerly seek. Her time in New York is not seamless, and several incidents, ranging from the amusing (there are some surprisingly funny moments) to the terrifying, starts to degrade Esther’s mental condition.

It does not give too much away to say that The Bell Jar is about Esther’s declining mental health. The strength of The Bell Jar, though, is partially derived from the fact that Esther, narrating in the first-person, never comes out and says, “then I went crazy.” Instead, Plath – through Esther – provides a precise, detailed, chilling presentation of Esther’s loss of sanity by describing everything with matter-of-factness. Her psychotic “breaks” are not identified as such. Rather, Esther depicts both the real and the unreal in the exact same manner, so that there is a blurring between the two.

Years ago, as a young defense attorney, I worked the mental health beat, representing indigent clients contesting their civil commitments. Quite unexpectedly, I found it one of the more fascinating and rewarding things I’ve ever done. It was a job you could never plan for, and which could be funny, heartbreaking, and terrifying, all in the space of a few rapidly oscillating minutes in a confined space.

That period gave me a profound awe for the human brain. You are always told how remarkable is the mind, but sometimes you need to see something in relief to see it at all. Thus, in observing the functioning of “non-normal” brain chemistry, I saw the power firsthand. I met with people whose view of the universe was completely at odds with the reality I perceived, and yet they could hold onto this alternate-reality for years, spinning these amazing webs from which they could not break (and of which I sometimes became a part). For these people, it was impossible to detach delusion from non-delusion. The former became as strong as the latter, until the two became the identical sides of the same coin.

That’s what makes the mid-section of The Bell Jar so compelling. It contains Esther's scrupulously-detailed breakdown: a succession of doctors; a mother who doesn't understand and wants her to snap out of it; life in an asylum; electro-shock therapy; insulin therapy; and a black nurse’s aide who feeds her two types of beans, which is the kind of detail that had me nodding my head in recognition. (So much of great fiction is in small, perfect details).

Beyond that, Plath’s Esther is blisteringly honest, and not just about matters of mental health. For instance, there is a scene where Esther loses her virginity that is told with a candor that is surprising today, not to mention the date when it was first published.

As to publication, The Bell Jar became available in Britain – under a pseudonym – in 1963. Just a few months later, Plath took her own life, simultaneously cutting short a promising career, while launching a certain mythos. The novel did not arrive in America for several more years. When it did, it became an instant bestseller, and eventually, a classic. However, like John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces, it is a strange classic, inextricably bound up in the death of its creator.

Regardless of its baggage, The Bell Jar could stand on its own. It is poignant, honest, unflinching. The prose is beautiful, touched with poetry. The ending is unforgettable.

But it would be wrong to separate The Bell Jar from its baggage, because the novel and its context inform each other. There is a certain level of sadness here that simply cannot be escaped.

Yet Plath imbues The Bell Jar with glints and glimmers of hope. There is a brief reference to Esther’s future, a future free of hospitals and distortions and demons. It is clear that Esther – and by extension Plath – had some optimism for what lay ahead.

We know, of course, that Plath never reached that better day, but we can wish, even believe, that somehow Esther did.

Warning: this review contains major spoilers for the movie Melancholia

The paradox at the heart of The Bell Jar is that Esther, the narrator, comes across as an engaging and indeed admirable person. She's smart, funny, perceptive and seems to have everything going for her. But she feels less and less connected with life, and in the end just wants to kill herself. Evidently, there must be something wrong with her. Perhaps she would have been okay if only she'd been prescribed the appropriate kind of pills?

I thought of The Bell Jar earlier this week when we watched the new von Trier movie, Melancholia. The central character, Justine, who's brilliantly interpreted by Kirsten Dunst, has a fair amount in common with Esther. She's beautiful, successful in her work, and just about to marry a charming man who adores her. We meet her on her way to a fabulous wedding, joking and laughing with her soon-to-be-husband in a white stretch limo which amusingly gets stuck on a narrow road.

All the same, it soon becomes clear that Justine isn't enjoying things. Her sister Claire, played by Charlotte Gainsbourgh, keeps telling her to be sensible. Claire's fears are well-grounded. As the evening progresses, Justine behaves more and more erratically. She walks out of her own reception, gratuitously insults the boss who's just given her an unexpected promotion, has random sex with a stranger. Her new husband abandons her as a bad job before the marriage is even a day old. But Justine doesn't seem to care at all.

What she's really worried about, we discover, is the mysterious blue planet Melancholia, which is heading towards Earth at an enormous speed. It becomes larger every day. Claire is worried about it too, and sneaks off every now and then to look things up on the Web. Her husband reassures her that scientists have done the calculations. It seems scary, but Melancholia is going to miss us. We'll be fine.

Justine knows it won't be fine. She's had a dream where various signs appear. At the end, Melancholia collides with the Earth, destroying both worlds. The prophetic signs have begun to turn up, and she is certain her dream will become reality. The knowledge paralyses her. After the disastrous wedding reception, she moves in with Claire, who does her best to look after her. Justine is clinically depressed. She can't even summon up the willpower to get into her bath, despite Claire's coaxing. Claire makes her favourite meat-loaf. Justine, weeping, says it tastes of ashes.

Melancholia comes ever closer, and is now a monstrous shape in the sky. It's finally obvious to everyone that things are not going to work out. Claire goes to look for her husband, hoping he'll once again find words of reassurance, and discovers he's taken an overdose. She is beside herself with fear and grief and runs around hyperventilating, clutching her small son to her. But, to her surprise, Justine has lost her lethargic air. She's full of a grim new energy.

With impact now just hours away, Claire does her best to summon up some dignity. She suggests to Justine that they should go out on the terrace with a couple of glasses of wine and wait peacefully for the end.

"So we should have a glass of wine?" asks Justine.

"Yes," says Claire, completely helpless.

"How about some music? Beethoven's Ninth? Perhaps some candles?" continues Justine remorselessly.

"I just want to do this right," whispers Claire.

"You know what I think of your plan?" says Justine. "I think it's a piece of shit."

Needless to say, there is no huge blue planet on a collision course with Earth. And if Esther had only been given the right kind of pills, she would have been fine.

My dad went mad in the early seventies when my mom filed for divorce and took up with another man after 12 yrs of marriage. He ended up in a place called Glenn Eden here in Michigan and went through a dozen or more electric shock treatments, I remember visiting him through a window from outside the place. He eventually recovered and remarried, led a normal life, but this book was kind of frightening to me, remembering that time, the atmosphere of such a place, and the stigma of mental illness.
I myself suffer and am on meds, but never have I felt suicidal, I just don’t understand that frame of mind.
Esther (Sylvia), I identified with her on some of her feelings, she was quite humorous, and I am sure that in the 50’s, it was very hard to live with such terrible depression. The writing was so good, I was feeling her. Hard to read knowing what eventually happened to her, but I’m glad I finally did read it. I’m sure many of us at times feel we are stuck under the bell jar.

nI think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? ...we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.
— Franz Kafka; January 27, 1904

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor… and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was... (Chapter 7)

There is a lulling silence engulfing this entire book, and if it weren’t for the darkening clouds approaching, an infinite palette brimming with all the shades of creation, one may never guess that it is the calm before the storm. Amid the impending commotion, the ancient state of confusion hovering over this land, a tree has already started to sense the chaos. A fig tree is losing its branches, one by one, as the storm unleashes its fury and time passes us by. The house does no longer provides shelter; its white walls won’t stop the cold, we see the ceiling yet we’ll feel the rain. Crystals are besieging us. The captives in the world of glass feel it all.

n  n

My first encounter with Sylvia Plath’s work was Ariel. It was a good read but it didn’t leave me memorable impressions. Later I understood how excruciatingly personal her poetry was, thus missing a plethora of subtle vocals, strong undertones, harrowing melodies. After reading about her life and watching a biopic, the connection was absolutely different regarding, for instance, the same two poems I had read months ago. There may be a lack of lyrical substance, of the mellifluous quality in language worthy of all praises, but to me, the beauty of her verse lies on her honest display of emotions through complex and raw imagery. I find that openness refreshing. How unsafe it is to be on the brink of vulnerability, with a bunch of emotions for one person or a whole world to see. And yet, how brave; giving free expression to such feelings, turning them into creative energy. How invigorating. Even when no one is listening to anyone. Not even the ones who complain about how deaf the world is.

Under these circumstances, I decided to revisit her poetry someday. The thing that triggered this series of fortunate events was a review by a friend, which made me want to give Plath’s writing another try, because I had sensed many times that she was an author I would certainly love – inexplicable hunches. Therefore, I dived into her only novel, The Bell Jar, first published in 1963 under the pseudonym “Victoria Lucas” and under her name in 1967. It tells the story of Esther Greenwood, the young heiress of several of Plath’s life experiences.

n  The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn't thought about it.n

I dreaded this review; I knew that from this novel would emerge a personal journal barely touching upon the merits of the book. I postponed the process many times since I didn’t want to deal with it, the easiest path evoking an infantile self-preservation, considering the world as an enormous rug where one can hide every unpleasant feeling, all the mirrors whose reflections we don’t dare to acknowledge.

n  I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this 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 losing 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.n

In this novel, I found indecision under the apposite metaphor of a fig tree; undying portions of time where absence is a unilateral reality, and the inability to fit the standards to which a woman is supposed to belong – a perpetual rift between professional development and motherhood. The disparities between the world of a man and the encapsulated universe of a woman in mid-20th-century America. Or any place, any time.

n  I couldn’t stand the idea of a woman having to have a single pure life and a man being able to have a double life, one pure and one not.n

Such differences constitute a theme that is deeply explored in this book, and from all perspectives, such as work and sexuality.

n  Whether she knew it or not, Philomena Guinea was buying my freedom. “What I hate is the thought of being under a man’s thumb,” I had told Doctor Nolan. “A man doesn’t have a worry in the world, while I’ve got a baby hanging over my head like a big stick, to keep me in line.”n

While fighting against her demons, we find in Esther a powerful and perceptive character, full of conviction and harboring a strong yearning for independence, a situation that naturally didn’t involve the oppressive presence of a man absorbing her individuality like an unwavering sponge. However, the way her mind worked was much more profound than a trendy dislike composed of empty words. It was a search for identity in a society ruled by men and in which she felt inadequate most of the time. Through the character’s reflections, we witness her longing for liberation from the ties of the expected.

n  The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way. I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters.n

It is certainly striking that this novel, which deals with complex themes under such a stifling atmosphere, could also make me smile. Esther has a unique sense of humor and some of her comments regarding a vast array of things were rather amusing. Under the night that never seemed to end, trying to illuminate the long corridors of her mind, accompanied by voices, electricity and despair, she made me her confident and brought me smiles to pass the time.

The Bell Jar is an ambitious work, as I read before, but it’s not a perfect novel. There are some fissures that should prevent me from giving it a 5-star rating. Nevertheless, I changed my first rating from four to five stars; it is on my “favorites” shelf, another favorite axe, and it has rekindled my feelings for Plath. I am grateful for the story she shared. And for the fate she forged for her character. n  I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.n Despite the darkness in which this book is immersed, a sense of hope still lingers even after finishing this somber journey. Fig trees are on solid ground, awaiting for courage, a leap of faith, life-changing decisions – meaning, beauty, uniqueness. The silence, a limpid layer which allows to admire the now splendid azure sky, is no longer an ominous sign. As a small stone is thrown into a pond, causing violent ripples that soon vanish while the former serenity is restored, such silence is interrupted briefly by the sound of glass breaking. In the midst of too much consciousness, those small shivers are a vital part of the n  ritual for being born twice—patched, retreaded and approved for the road.n

n  n

Feb 02, 17
* Also on my blog.
** Photo credit: Bell jar / via Pinterest
Fig Tree (ficus)- Masai Mara, Kenya / Elsen Karstad
Broken window / via karasoft.info