Да ви се е случвало да хванете настинка, въпреки че сте си слагали шапката и сте си носили вълнените чорапи? Да сте били убедени, че сте направили всичко както трябва в дадена ситуация и все пак съдбата да ви е погодила гадничък номер? Предполагам, че да. Тогава съвсем спокойно депресията би могла да ви дебне зад ъгъла, нищо, че животът ви си изглежда привидно нормален към момента. Спокойно, няма да можете да направите нищо (или както казва баща ми: „Корабът потъва по график“) – просто това е пътят, който трябва да извървите.

„Стъкленият похлупак“ е като разходка из обраслата с трънак градина на нечий ум. Мъчителна е и те изподрасква целия. Естър Грийнуд не е от протагонистите, с които читателите се отъждествяват. Хората обикновено прилепват към своите малки частици ежедневие и ги наричат „щастие“. Когато се наситят на това щастие, то се превръща в бреме и монотонност. Тогава започват да си търсят друго щастие. Естър по някакъв почти свръхестествен начин изглежда прескача тези фази и достига до момента, в който се пита „А от тук нататък какво?“. За нея метафората със смокиновото дърво е едновременно възможно бъдеще и сюрреалистично преживяно минало. Тя иска да опита от всичко, но и има усещането, че всичко може би ще има един и същ вкус, ще донесе все същите обикновени човешки емоции – без значение дали е на пътешествие из Европа, в някое кафене в Париж или някъде из Банкок. Защото „everything people did seemed so silly, because they only died in the end“. Защо да правиш каквото и да е, след като накрая просто ще си отидеш?

Въпреки болезнената тематика на романа, Силвия Плат описва апатията на Естър, като използва подбран с вкус язвителен тон, изискано чувство за хумор и доста автоирония (аз през цялото време не спрях да си мисля, че всяко усещане на Естър е всъщност нещо, изпитано от Силвия, макар романът да е само отчасти автобиографичен). 50-те години на миналия век в САЩ са време на „врява и безумство“, белязано от Студената война, икономически растеж, сексуални табута, строго разграничение на ролите на мъжа и жената, стремеж към образа на перфектната домакиня, ерата на Елвис Пресли, Мерилин Монро и pin-up гърлите. Време на оформяне на калъпи. Някъде прочетох, че на Естър ѝ липсвала емоционалност и всички описания в романа били доста клинични. Аз смятам, че това е вследствие на изпепелена прекомерна емоционалност. Нещо като burnout на чувствата – изпитваш толкова много чувства и за толкова много неща, че накрая се изчерпваш и оставаш неспособен да продължиш да изпитваш.

В крайна сметка има нещо неестествено. Още през Просвещението фокусът се премества върху отделния индивид и всеки следващ период се старае да подготвя по-осъвременена версия на изначалния манифест на хуманизма. Въпреки тези опити обаче, преди едва 50-60 години в най-напредналата страна на света няма кой да чуе вика за душевна помощ на една млада жена. Да, тогава, разбира се, ги е имало лоботомията и електрошока, но те са сериозна стъпка назад в традицията на човеколюбието. „Стъкленият похлупак“ е търсене на смисъла на живота. Отказ от конформизма и обезверяване пред перспективата за наложени модели. Човек, който е имал смелостта да си зададе въпроса „Защо трябва да правя като всички останали?“, заслужава уважение. Заслужава и отговори. Най-вече заслужава да ги открие по своя начин.

The Bell Jar first came to my attention via TV and films. I feel I can remember more than one sitcom where a character (usually a girl in high school) signified her sadness by reading The Bell Jar. Their problems were typically trivial, resolved by the end of the episode, their mental health perfectly sound. I don't think is an unfair portrayal of many people who read this book, but the laughter and eye rolls from the 'seen it all before' adults did give me a false impression of the book itself. That it was lightweight.

There are people who declare they had the flu, when in reality they most likely had a cold. Certain people seem to do similar things with words like depression or phrases like panic attack. You've probably met them! They don't seem to comprehend the difference between feeling anxious in a stressful situation (which is typically healthy and normal) and having an actual anxiety disorder. They casually say they are having a panic attack, but they aren't - if they actually did have one, perhaps they would speak with a touch more care. Anyway, that's the type of person* I associated this book with. But while it may be popular with a reader who merely has a cold, the book is definitely influenza.

I found it a strange book to read. I related to it in many, many ways, even though so much of doesn't fit with my actual experience of my own mind. Perhaps that is why it has resonated with so many people over such a long period of time -- you can find familiar parts of yourself or it articulates something you have felt but hadn't known how to express. This may also be why many people actively dislike it, but that's just a theory!

What's especially interesting (and sad) about it is I think that for the most part, it is still so relevant. The doctor might not smoke in your hospital room anymore, and there are more treatment options available, but so much of felt like it could have been written recently, especially the emotional side of it.

I thought a lot about this review and ultimately struggled with what exactly to say. It's such a known book that there seems little point in typing out yet another review! I would suggest thinking carefully about reading it if you are currently working through mental health issues, though I also think each person is different. What some might find triggering, another might find cathartic.

*Also, I just wanted to note that I am aware that depression etc is complex, that some people are able to function seemingly as normal with it, so appear fine etc. I'm more referring to that melodramatic but very surface type of thing that is usually temporary and easily resolved. Still, as this book makes clear, it isn't always as trivial as it may seem.

---I'm leaving this earlier note here at the end of the review, since it was my initial reaction.---
I will probably attempt to write a review later this evening. Usually I write my reviews fairly quickly after finishing the book, to capture my immediate thoughts. I don't over think it or spend too much time on them, otherwise they could all to easily end up taking up large chunks of my reading time! But I'm not sure what to say about this one just yet.

Many writers pull from their own life experiences to create their works, and many people believe that you cannot write about life unless you have lived it to the fullest. Sylvia Plath understood first hand when it came to how people feel under the pressure from the society. Plath is intensively expressive in her novel and wishes to show the reader the torment she and others like her have gone through. Plath did not hold back when she wrote her novel The Bell Jar but instead let every emotion flow from her soul onto the pages. Her own experiences and every obstacle she faced gave her the voice to write such an accurate view of her character's feelings. A great deal of novel concerns the expectations that others have for Esther with regards to behaviour and her future, as well as the expectation that Esther has for others. Esther feels that people around her are causing her to break down, she decides that if she was untouched and confined, she would be normal again. Isn't that's how we feel most of the time?

Fuck you and that fig tree

"I was supposed to be having the time of my life."

This is a powerful and beautifully sad novel. I vaguely remember it from college, but I found it much more meaningful on this reread.

The Bell Jar is the story of Esther Greenwood, a young woman who is struggling with depression and mental illness. She's always gotten good grades at school and has won scholarships, but now she's feeling pressured to choose a career or get married. Esther realizes she doesn't want to do either, so she decides to kill herself.

"I felt dull and flat and full of shattered visions."

The novel is structured in flashbacks, and Esther tells us stories from her life in the 1950s. Some of these situations are so amusing that I laughed out loud; others are so sad that it was heartbreaking to remember that this novel was semi-autiobiographical.

The truth is that Sylvia Plath killed herself in February 1963, just a month after this book was published in England. Sylvia writes beautifully, and her descriptions of depression and angst were both poetic and realistic. What I most appreciated about this book was how it seemed like a feminist essay, because Esther felt so suffocated with the few choices allowed to women.

"The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way."

I was also impressed with how relevant this book felt, despite being more than 50 years old. As Frances McCullough wrote in the Foreword: "The issues haven't changed ... The big questions: how to sort out your life, how to work out what you want, how to deal with men and sex, how to be true to yourself and how to figure out what that means — those things are the same today."

I decided to pick up The Bell Jar after reading a heartfelt essay about it in Ann Hood's bookish memoir Morningstar. Hood wrote about how much Sylvia Plath's novel meant to her, and now I understand exactly what she meant. Highly recommended.

Favorite Quotes
"I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo."

"All my life I'd told myself studying and reading and writing and working like mad was what I wanted to do, and it actually seemed to be true, I did everything well enough and got all A's, and by the time I made it to college nobody could stop me."

"I'd discovered, after a lot of extreme apprehension about what spoons to use, that if you do something incorrect at table with a certain arrogance, as if you knew perfectly well you were doing it properly, you can get away with it and nobody will think you are bad-mannered or poorly brought up. They will think you are original and very witty."

"I hate handing over money to people for doing what I could just as easily do myself, it makes me nervous."

"I thought how strange it had never occurred to me before that I was only purely happy until I was nine years old."

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

"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."

"I didn't want my picture taken because I was going to cry. I didn't know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of my throat and I'd cry for a week. I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full."

"Every morning a snowy avalanche of manuscripts swelled the dust-gray piles in the office of the Fiction Editor. Secretly, in studies and attics and schoolrooms all over America, people must be writing."

"I decided to junk the whole honors program and become an ordinary English major. I went to look up the requirements of an ordinary English major at my college. There were lots of requirements, and I didn't have half of them. One of the requirements was a course in the eighteenth century. I hated the very idea of the eighteenth century, with all those smug men writing tight little couplets and being so dead keen on reason. So I'd skipped it."

"The reason I hadn't washed my clothes or my hair was because it seemed so silly ... It seemed silly to wash one day when I would only have to wash again the next. It made me tired just to think of it. I wanted to do everything once and for all and be through with it."

"The more hopeless you were, the further away they hid you."

"Lately I had considered going into the Catholic Church myself. I knew that Catholics thought killing yourself was an awful sin. But perhaps, if this was so, they might have a good way to persuade me out of it. Of course, I didn't believe in life after death or the virgin birth or the Inquisition or the infallibility of that little monkey-faced Pope or anything, but I didn't have to let the priest see this, I could just concentrate on my sin, and he would help me repent. The only trouble was, Church, even the Catholic Church, didn't take up the whole of your life. No matter how much you knelt and prayed, you still had to eat three meals a day and have a job and live in the world."

"I also hate people to ask cheerfully how you are when they know you're feeling like hell and expect you to say 'Fine.'"

"What I hate is the thought of being under a man's thumb ... 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."

"I couldn't feel a thing ... 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."

Cóż.. ekspozycja nie była najlepsza, te początkowe strony wydawały się zmierzać donikąd.

Jak się później okazało, miało to oczywiście swój sens. Patrząc na datę publikacji tej książki, nie da się zaprzeczyć jej niezwykłości.

Oczywiście najbardziej zachwycam się aspektem historii psychiatrii i to jakie metody leczenia zostały nam przedstawione. Ciekawostka jest taka, że nadal używa się terapii elektrowstrząsowej!

Ocena: 4,0.

‘‘Θα ήμουν πάντα καθισμένη κάτω από τον ίδιο γυάλινο κώδωνα, βράζοντας μέσα στην ίδια την ξινή μου ανάσα’’.

Ο «γυάλινος κώδων» ένα αμιγώς αυτοβιογραφικό μυθιστόρημα για την συμβολική και ουσιαστική διαδικασία που οδηγεί την ψυχή στα σκοτεινά, υγρά, υπόγεια και πέτρινα μονοπάτια της αυτοκαταστροφής.

‘‘Γι αυτόν που βρίσκεται μέσα στο γυάλινο κώδωνα, άδειος και ακινητοποιημένος σαν νεκρό μωρό, ο ίδιος κόσμος είναι το κακό όνειρο”

Η Σύλβια Πλαθ περιγράφει διεξοδικά, χαρίζοντας βαριά ταύτιση και διαδραστική σκοτεινιά θλίψης, όλα τα απροσμέτρητα βάθη των καταθλιπτικών ασθενειών.

Η γραφή της υπερχειλίζει, σκορπίζοντας το γλυκό δηλητήριο της διχασμένης ψυχής της, μεταφέροντας όλη την απελπισία και την ασφυξία που βίωσε.

Δημιουργεί ένα υλικό ανάγνωσης με ψιθυριστά μηνύματα που προκαλούν αμηχανία, ενόχληση και τρομακτικό συσχετισμό.
Αυτή η φρικιαστική αίσθηση που σου δημιουργεί μια ευφυής πένα, αυτή η απαίσια πιθανότητα συσχετισμού ότι ίσως, μπορεί, ενδέχεται, ή τουλάχιστον θα μπορούσε, αυτή η απεικόνιση των διαταραγμένων πτυχών μιας προσωπικότητας να είναι η δική μου.... η δική σου.. η ψυχή μας.

Περιγραφές τόσο απλές, αλληγορικές, οικίες, κυνικές και ειλικρινείς μέσα απο ένα διορατικό και εξοικειωμένο με την καθημερινότητα όλων μας γυναικείο χαρακτήρα. Εγκλωβισμένο σε ένα αδιέδοξο ματαιότητας, ώστε ο αναγνώστης με δυσκολία μπορεί να ανακάμψει απο τις διαστρεβλωμένες προβολές θανάτου.

Όλη η ιστορία είναι μια ισχυρή υποκίνηση άρρωστης ελπίδας, ένα μελαγχολικό πλαίσιο σκέψης, μια διαυγή κραυγή που πνίγεται στα γυάλινα σπειροειδή τοιχώματα του κώδωνα χωρίς οξυγόνο.
Ένα μουντό φθινόπωρο με καταχνιά που κρύβει τον ήλιο, το σύννεφο της κατάθλιψης που ξεσπάει την ασταμάτητη μπόρα του και σε μουσκεύει μέχρι να πνιγεί ένας απο τους εαυτούς σου.
Αυτός που θα επιζήσει δεν είναι απαραίτητα ο δικός σου, δεν είναι ο εαυτός που θέλεις να είσαι.

Η πυξίδα της ψυχής δείχνει προς το πεπρωμένο σου και σίγουρα δεν σου εξασφαλίζει διέξοδο απο την τρομερή δυαδικότητα που σε συνθλίβει.
Κάποιος έχει προκύψει απο μέσα σου και έχει πάρει τον έλεγχο της ζωής και του θανάτου σου, αλλά όποιος κι αν είναι αυτός, σίγουρα δεν είναι ο ίδιος.

Η συγγραφέας με λυρισμό και ποιητικό λόγο ξετυλίγει το μαγικό νήμα της ψυχικής αρρώστειας που την καταδυναστεύει.
Παρακολουθούμε μια αναπαράσταση συνθηκών της ίδιας της ζωής της που επικρατούν στο μυθιστόρημα (διπολική διαταραχή,προβλήματα εγκατάλειψης, καταθλιπτική συμπεριφορά) και τη φρίκη που έχει αισθανθεί αλλά την αποδέχεται.
Την αγαπάει αυτή τη φρίκη ως επίφοβο, αναπόσπαστο κομμάτι της ζωής της.
Μέσα απο αυτή την αποδοχή ίσως καταφέρει να απελευθερωθεί απο τους διπλούς δαίμονες.
Ίσως αν τους αγαπήσει να την αφήσουν να ξαναγεννηθεί ή να της πιστώσουν μια λυτρωτική αναγέννηση.

Τίποτα δεν είναι σίγουρο.


«Μα δεν ήμουν σίγουρη. Καθόλου σίγουρη. Πως ήξερα ότι κάποια μέρα, στο κολέγιο στην Ευρώπη, κάπου, οπουδήποτε, ο γυάλινος κώδωνας, με τις ασφυκτικές του παραμορφώσεις, δεν θα με έκλεινε ξανά μέσα του» ;

“Φαίνεται, δυστυχώς, πως δεν είχε άδικο!
Λίγους μόνο μήνες μετά από την έκδοση ετούτου του μοναδικού της μυθιστορήματος, στην Ευρώπη όπως προέβλεψε, συγκεκριμένα στο Λονδίνο, στις 11 Φεβρουαρίου 1963, άρρωστη και οικονομικά αδύναμη, η Πλαθ έφτιαξε το γάλα και το φαγητό για τα παιδιά της, έβαλε το κεφάλι της μέσα στο φούρνο και εισπνέοντας φυσικό αέριο, έφυγε για την αθανασία”.

3.5 ⭐️ rounded up to 4 ⭐️

The Bell Jar was a bit of a head scratcher for me. It was not what I had expected based on its renown in the literary canon of feminism. I experienced it as a rather depressing novel about a young woman's struggle with mental health, with only a slight undertone of feminism.

What was perhaps the most disturbing, yet realistic aspect of the story was that the protagonist, Esther Greenwood, despite crying out for help on countless occasions and exhibiting clear signs of depression was not taken seriously by her mother or doctors until it was nearly too late to save her. Eerily, this is something that sadly still happens to this day even when people show clear signs of mental distress.

What I enjoyed most about The Bell Jar, apart from this true-to-life unravelling of Esther's mental health was the colorful, at times poetic prose that Plath used in her description of auxilliary characters and scenes in New York and Boston, in which the narrative unfolds.

However, there were a few aspects of the story which somewhat diminished my enthusiasm for The Bell Jar. I found the development of some of the male characters quite flat and one-dimensional, almost bordering on unbelievable. This may arguably be a reflection of Esther's warped state of mind linked to her depression, which is further constrained by her naivete and limited life experience. Many of the unfortunate situations she finds herself in with various men, seem to arise at least partially due to her innocence and unsophistication, as opposed to the male patriarchy and sexism. Indeed, Esther's interactions with some male characters (Marco and Prof. Irwin in particular) seemed unnatural and weakly credible. I found it perplexing that Esther, despite instinctually having misgivings about these male characters, recklessly overrode her gut instincts which ultimately led her to be exposed to harm. Another quibble that I have with The Bell Jar is Plath's use of openly racist jargon when describing various characters and also Esther's antagonistic interaction with a Black orderly when she was in hospital. Admittedly, this may reflect the pre-Civil Rights era in which The Bell Jar was written, when racial slurs were acceptable in mainstream American society.

In summary, I would recommend The Bell Jar to anyone who is open-minded and interested in expanding their literary horizons. My only word of caution is that this is not a light "happy go-lucky" read. So, I would suggest reading The Bell Jar when you are in a suitable mood.

This book thoroughly confused me. It started off great! It grabbed me right away - I loved that Esther was living in New York and it seemed all lovely and glamorous. I read half of the book in almost one sitting.

It was at this halfway point that things got weird. She went home to her mother and quite suddenly she was receiving shock therapy. Soon after that she was trying to kill herself and then she was in an asylum! I understood that in New York she hadn't had any good friends and she was unsure of what she wanted to do with her life, but there were no signs of depression.

The Bell Jar reads like two different books; one without an ending and one without a beginning. And once the second book started it became very dull and dreadfully depressing. I had to stop reading for a bit so I could get away from the terrible feeling that was seeping into my skin.

I could not understand why Esther had even started seeing a psychiatrist, let alone why she was put in an insane asylum. She seemed to be bored of her own depression. Like she couldn't even bother to kill herself because she was so indecisive about how to do it and the time never seemed to be right. And then there's this ridiculous moment where she feels she absolutely needs to lose her virginity and it's like, wait, what? Like she put her mental health problems on hold for a minute so she could get her cherry popped. And boy did it ever pop. She bleeds so much she has to go the hospital and the doctor says "I can fix that" and suddenly she's back at the asylum and we never really find out what happened.

I'm not really sure if the lack of detail was supposed to symbolize her mind going, but it just became rather annoying for me. It's not that I disliked Esther, I just was very bored and confused by her. I finished the book and felt like I had wasted the past two days of my life. There isn't anything to take away from this book but dissatisfaction and a bad feeling.

I feel the way about The Bell Jar that other readers feel about Catcher in the Rye. Rather than J.D. Salinger's anti-hero Holden Caulfield labeling everything in sight as "phony", my preference is Sylvia Plath's thinly veiled account of her summer in New York, interning as a guest editor at Mademoiselle and her descent into depression and the mental health system that fall, with Plath's vivacious wit plunging me into the almost sheer terror of looming adulthood.

Published in England in January 1963 under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas," The Bell Jar was the first novel by the poet and also her last. Plath, whose marriage to poet Ted Hughes had dissolved, was living in a bare London flat with two children and no telephone in one of the coldest British winters on record. Anxiety over her future and overwork had contributed to Plath's suicide attempt in 1953. Ten years later, in February 1963, a kitchen oven finished the job; Plath was dead at thirty.

Hughes had assured Plath's mother Aurelia that The Bell Jar would remain unpublished in America during Mrs. Plath's lifetime to spare her the pain of her daughter's brutally honest critiques, but the demand for Plath's work had spiked with the rise of women's liberation. When Random House planned to exploit a provision in the copyright laws of the time and publish the novel, Hughes agreed to release The Bell Jar in America through his publisher Harper & Row in 1971. It remained on the New York Times bestseller list for six months.

Aurelia Plath related her version of events with a book of her daughter's correspondence, Letters Home, in 1975.

Plath's anti-heroine Esther Greenwood is nudged out onto a big river in a basket and I felt like I was holding on with her, ready to tip over and drown at any turn. Esther attempts to navigate her way into adulthood and Plath conveys how dangerous it was to be a young woman in the 1950s. Regardless of our differences, I found myself able to relate to Esther's perils. This is a world where one missed assignment, one social faux pas or one dangerous encounter with the opposite sex could spin a life of promise into tragedy. The pressures are enormous and the consequences real, without any embellishment or drama on the author's part.



Sylvia Plath interviewing Elizabeth Bowen in New York. June 1953.

From a great opening paragraph --

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York. I'm stupid about executions. The idea of being electrocuted makes me sick, and that's all there was to read about in the papers--goggle-eyed headlines staring up at me on every corner and at the fusty, peanut-smelling mouth of every subway. It had nothing to do with me, but I couldn't help wondering what it would be like, being burned alive all along your nerves.

-- to an expertly timed final page, Plath's wit and sensuality knocked me over throughout the book.

When we came out of the sunnily lit interior of the Ladies' Day offices, the streets were gray and fuming with rain. It wasn't the nice kind of rain that rinses you clean, but the sort of rain I imagine they must have in Brazil. It flew straight down from the sky in drops the size of coffee saucers and hit the hot sidewalks with a hiss that sent clouds of steam writhing up from the gleaming, dark concrete.

Esther's fear and looming anxiety over the future waiting for her is palpable.

For the first time in my life, sitting there in the soundproof heart of the UN building between Constantin who could play tennis as well as simultaneously interpret and the Russian girl who knew so many idioms, I felt dreadfully inadequate. The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along. I simply hadn't thought about it. The one thing I was good at was winning scholarships and prizes, and that era was coming to an end.

Certain folks in the book club or discussion group might consider The Bell Jar a sad or depressing read. Not me. Plath's writing has an vitality and clarity that propelled me through in under a day, but more importantly, reminded me of what it is to feel alive. So many of the people Esther comes into contact with seem to be dying in front of her in one way or another. Esther dreams of escape from that sort of life, She doesn't want to be the spot an arrow shoots off from. She wants to be the arrow.



Lisa Simpson was spotted reading Plath in The Simpsons, Season 20: Episode 11, "How the Test Was Won".



Rory Gilmore entered her Plath phase early, in Gilmore Girls, Season 1: Episode 12, "Double Date".



Gwyneth Paltrow played Plath in a 2001 feature film. Maggie Gyllenhaal seemed to be playing a pulp version of Plath in Secretary, released the following year.



Alvy Singer threw Plath a backhanded compliment in Annie Hall (1977). Considering what happens in his relationships, Alvy's understanding of women bears scrutiny.

4.5*

When we are young we used to think that we are unbreakable, more, that we are immortal. That whatever we touch it’ll turn into gold, that we can change the world. And then … life just happens to us.

They say about this book as a feminist manifesto. I understand why but completely do not care about this tag. The only thing I'm interested in is Esther and her desperate fight for remaining on surface, her attempt to get out of bell jar. I can easily see her when dressed up with her best clothes attends to trendy places trying to gain some of the glamour of New York. I see her gradually unstucking from reality, losing her courage and self-confidence to final breakdown. I see her bleak odyssey through hospitals undergoing treatment.

I second her struggles because I can understand her fear. Fear of unwanted pregnancy, boring marriage, unexpected motherhood, get stuck in a small town with tedious job. I understand her fear of life because every morning I repeat to myself, and can imagine others doing the same, into the battle. Because I understand how hard it is to face up to these expectations to be a good daughter, student, mother, wife. Because I understand the need to be someone else though we only just have an inkling of whom what significantly describes the scene of the dream of a fig tree.

Maybe this novel is not especially innovative but tragic fate of the author strongly affected it . How did I know that someday - at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere - the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn't descend again ? Exactly, how should we know ? That’s why I keep my finger crossed for every Esther of this world.