Really enjoyed this much more the 2nd time reading it

(Book 433 from 1001 books) - Victoria Lucas = The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

The Bell Jar is the only novel written by the American writer and poet Sylvia Plath.

Originally published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas" in 1963, the novel is semi-autobiographical, with the names of places and people changed.

The book is often regarded as a roman a clef since the protagonist's descent into mental illness parallels Plath's own experiences with what may have been clinical depression or bipolar II disorder. Plath died by suicide a month after its first UK publication.

The novel was published under Plath's name for the first time in 1967 and was not published in the United States until 1971, in accordance with the wishes of both Plath's husband, Ted Hughes, and her mother. The novel has been translated into nearly a dozen languages. The novel, though dark, is often read in high school English classes.

عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «حباب شیشه»؛ «شیشه»؛ نویسنده: سیلویا پلات (نشر باغ)؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز سوم ماه سپتامبر سال 2006میلادی

عنوان: شیشه؛ عنوان دیگر حباب شیشه؛ نویسنده: سیلویا پلات (پلت)؛ مترجم: گلی امامی؛ تهران، نیل، 1352؛ در 229ص؛ چاپ دیگر تهران، نقش و نگار، سال 1381؛ در 230ص؛ شابک 9646235581؛ با عنوان: حباب شیشه؛ تهران، باغ نو، 1384؛ در 225ص؛ شابک 9647425295؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده امریکا - سده 20م

داستان دختری به نام «استر گرینوود» شیفته‌ ی پسری به نام «بادی» می‌شود؛ با گذشت زمان «استر» درمی‌یابد که او هیچ شباهتی به همسر ایده‌ آل او ندارد و ناگزیر از او جدا می‌شود؛ در این هنگام، «استر» به بیماری روانی دچار و دست به خودکشی می‌زند، حال آن که مادرش او را از مرگ نجات می‌دهد و «استر» در آسایشگاه روانی بستری می‌گردد و.....؛ «حباب شیشه» رمان شبه‌ زندگی‌نامه‌ ای اثر «سیلویا پلات» شاعر «آمریکایی» است، که در سال 1963میلادی منتشر شد، و تنها رمان ایشان به شمار می‌رود؛ «سیلویا پلات» این اثر را با نام مستعار «ویکتوریا لوکاس» منتشر، و یک ماه پس از آن خودکشی کردند؛ «حباب شیشه» شباهت بسیاری با زندگی واقعی «سیلویا پلات» دارد، و چنین به نظر می‌رسد که تنها اسامی شخصیت‌ها و مکان‌ها تغییر کرده‌ اند؛ «سیلویا پلات» در این شاهکار تحسین شده و جاودان، با چنان ظرافتی خوانشگر را به دنیای ذهنی در حال نابودی «استر» میبرد، که جنون و دیوانگی این شخصیت، کاملا ملموس و حتی منطقی و عقلانی جلوه میکند؛ رمان «حباب شیشه»، کاوشی ژرف، در تاریکترین و مخوفترین گوشه و کنارهای ذهن بشر است، و پیروزی شگرف و اثر کلاسیکی جاودان به شمار میآید، اثر به زبان‌های بسیاری ترجمه شده و با وجود درونمایه ی تیره‌ اش در دبیرستان‌های کشورهای انگلیسی‌ زبان به عنوان متن درسی استفاده می‌شود...؛

از سیلویا پلات پنج دفتر شعر برجای مانده است: «بچه غول (1960میلادی)»؛ «کلوسوس و اشعار دیگر (1962میلادی)»؛ «آریل (1965میلادی)»؛ «گذر از آب (1971میلادی)»؛ «درختان زمستانی (1972میلادی)»؛ «مجموعه اشعار (1981میلادی)»؛

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 07/08/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 16/06/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

There’s only about a handful of novels (so far) that I would not be able to read at all if not for their audiobook counterparts. The Bell Jar is one such a book. In a big and meaningful way. I had tried many times to read this one and found myself either distracted, sleepy or altogether disinterested. After having it among the very first batch of books I added on GR, I totally gave up on ever reading it.

Then I got hold of the audiobook narrated by Maggie Gyllenhaal and by the time the prologue was finished, it was ON.

I still cannot say that I fell in love with the book but I can certainly see why it hit hard for a lot of people. I loved the New York part the best but found it floundered a bit after she got home, much like Esther herself I imagine.

La novela o yo hemos, en cierta manera, fracasado en el intento. O bien ella no ha logrado transmitirme el horror de ese fondo del hoyo que es una depresión o yo no he sido capaz de concebir la profunda desesperación que, pienso, debe sentir la protagonista dentro de esa campana que la envuelve y que le impide relacionarse y encontrar su sitio en ese mundo de hombres en el que la mujer sigue sujeta a roles y comportamientos establecidos por ellos.

En realidad, no sé si hay que buscar razones, no sé hasta qué punto la depresión es consecuencia de las circunstancias que rodean al sujeto o solo bastan las circunstancias internas. Lo que sí sé es que esa enfermedad determina completamente la relación que el individuo establece con esas circunstancias. Y esto es lo que más me ha gustado de la novela, la forma tan honesta -se supone que es autobiográfica- en la que describe sus relaciones con las amigas, con los hombres, cercanos o desconocidos, con su madre y, por encima de todo, consigo misma, su insatisfacción personal, su bajísima autoestima, su ansiedad por abarcarlo todo o, al menos, abarcar en su totalidad algo importante. Si hubiera que buscar una de esas razones, que quizás no sean suficientes para explicar nada, estarían perfectamente descritas y resumidas en una de las famosas citas de la autora:

n   "Quizás cuando sintamos que queremos tenerlo todo, será porque estamos en peligro de estar cerca de no querer nada." n

I don’t know why I have this 4 stars in 2018. I finally had to skim through it this time and I don’t even remember reading it before

New all time fave

Claustrophobic, alienating and surprisingly modern
She stared at her reflection in the glossed shop windows as if to make sure, moment by moment, that she continued to exist.

Having it all in New York
I was supposed to be having the time of my life.
Esther Greenwood seemingly has it all, straight A’s, youth, benefactors and a summer internship at a fancy New York based magazine.
And yet she is depressed.

The lifestyle at the magazine, with interviews with famous people, caviar, avocado and crab meat filled buffets and movie premieres, reminded me both of the YouTubers and Instagrammers of present day and the opulence of The Great Gatsby.
The musings about wanting to do everything perfectly, but not really knowing what she wants to do, feel very modern and millenial like. Also the thought of all her possible futures, as ripe figs at the end of a branching tree flowing from where she was now, and the terror of choosing one and losing the rest, feels very modern.

Esther in New York is not necessarily a kind person in my view (in that sense well reflecting the cruelty of youth): leaving a guy standing because he’s to short and having her friend sleep in a pool of vomit and puking in a taxi. Also all the focus on accomplishments and Ivy League education made her less than sympathetic. Her friends are admittingly not the best to be hanging around: the diamond and the confrontation with Marco confused me quite a bit, but also lead to a shift from New York to home and hospitalization.

Losing oneself at home
The more hopeless you were, the further away they hid you.
So much sexism comes back in the The Bell Jar, making you understand very well why Esther doesn’t want to ever marry. Her mother tries to come closer to Esther but in the end she just loses all grip (I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full).

A need for inaction, being done with everything and a wish for abnegation or self destruction follows. Especially moving is a scene where she just wants to disappear beyond reach of anyone she knows (I wanted to be where nobody I knew could ever come) by crawling into a dark space.
The all absorbing obsession with possible ways to kill herself, tracts at impersonal asylums, shock therapy and the pressure to feel better but simultaneously feeling like everything is forever the same, are told in a haunting, breathless manner by Sylvia Plath.

Reminiscent works and concluding thoughts
This novel is classic for good reason and while reading it reminded me of quite a lot of other later literary works. The Girl I Left Behind came to mind when Esther visited her hopeful fiance who has tuberculosis. Norwegian Wood in that sense also popped up in my mind, not just because of the clinic at the mountain scenes but also due to emptiness and uncertainty of being young and a student. In that sense this novel also made me think of the work of Sally Rooney, with seemingly successful young people being unhappy. The suicidal thoughts of Esther made me think of one of the storylines in The Hours.
And finally the scenes in asylums made me think of the horror writing of Stephen King in The Institute.

Reading The Bell Jar is like getting a glimpse of what is under the pavement of everyday life, and in the end Plath keeps the fate of Esther ambiguously powerful. The eloquent way the author captures the alienation depression brings about in small, piercing sentences from Esther, will stay with me for quite some time:
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.

I felt myself melting into the shadows like the negative of a person I’d never seen before in my life.

I felt like a hole in the ground

4.5

I understand suicide newly after reading The Bell Jar. Plath illustrated a perpetual loop of living, which vacillated from one extreme to another. She’d make obsessive effort towards something, even if inconsequential to her life, and became ruthless towards others in this pursuit. Then came the pain and exhaustion from the effort, the rage and resentment with which she pushed the world away to have no responsibilities, that primal resentment that comes from the rage at your mother for birthing you, for putting you here and making you do all the work of living.

Finally, her obsessive thinking lead to planning her own suicide, from big picture to details, giving her purpose and drive. She’d escape the loop, only to be engulfed again in a sudden wave. One of the most beautiful passages was when she stood at her father’s grave, and I thought she was finally surrendering to her sorrow, finally letting it wash her clean. Then her mind raced off to a suicide method, just like a good OCD thought will.

I’ve always said I’ve learned more about life from fiction than nonfiction. Although I read and enjoy more nonfiction now than I used to, I still think that’s true. Fiction is for the empathic, who learn by invitation to inhabit an individual, a society, a time and/or a place. For me, there’s no learning as deep.

I tend to prefer emotional inhabitance of the most intimate kind, where I am transformed by the understanding of a human being different from me, yet with aspects of overlap. I’ve never seriously considered suicide, but I’ve often wished the world would stop, and I’m aquainted with OCD. I know there isn’t one answer to why someone would choose to end their life: Tove Ditlevsen’s Copenhagen Trilogy was a gorgeous work of autobiographical fiction about another female writer who went that way, and although there was overlap between these women, there were also clear differences. But for 10 years I’ve wondered why someone I knew, who seemed to have so many internal resources, took his own life, and Plath’s sharing of her inner dynamics pointed me to a truth about him formerly unknown.

Apart from that? It’s a good book. I thought it might feel too young, that I may have missed my time with it. It didn’t. I didn’t. It was the right time.

Review Are those with depression and cultural icons to be excused moral standards? I had a PM slagging me off completely about this review. Essentially it came down to how dare I criticise a feminist cultural icon who suffered from mental illness and accuse her of racism, anti-Semitism and homophobia. And if she really was why has no one else pointed it out? That I am biased as fuck etc. Actually others have pointed it out. That was the point of my review, separating the artist from their work. But now it is also, why are differing views not allowed?

I realise that we are living in the times where belief and feelings are considered much more important than science and facts, where democratic voting is wrong and illegal if the 'wrong party' (US) or Brexit or Scottish Independence (UK) don't go the way that people want. And that any dissension results in deplatforming, cancelling or immense campaigns of hatred against academic and public figures. Is this the right way to go? No dissension, no debate, facts are wrong if they don't fit feelings, and cultural icons for one movement or another can do no wrong?
__________

How do we separate the artist from their art if we blithely don't notice it and then excuse them with saying it was a product of their times?

It often wasn't. Dickens is excused his anti-Semitism but Disraeli was a two-time Prime Minister and was born Jewish. Oscar Wilde despite his poem in Reading Jail angry at being castigated for being a homosexual, still threw himself behind the anti-Dreyfusards who blamed Drefus for a murder he didn't commit but was blamed because he was Jewish. He was in the minority in the UK and lost his best friend over this. And then you have Roald Dahl, Agatha Christie, Ernest Hemingway, Jack London - the White supremacist who advocated genocide of the 'lesser races' but is a school favourite - and all the other racist, anti-Semitic often misogynist authors whose art is praised and characters white-washed ('white' washed indeed!)  

With Plath, whose book The Bell Jar I read in my teens, when I read this article today, July 6th, 2022, it absolutely shocked me The Oxford Blue How could I not have noticed or forgotten? Am I so inured and hardened to White supremacist thinking - everyone else is 'other', and when I read I am reading as if was/am just white not 'other' Jews can be white or can be other, depends on the views of the writer, not me, that when reading a much-lauded 'great' author my eyes are blinded?

*"[W]e cannot discuss Sylvia Plath without approaching the subject of her blatant racism and disrespect for Black people and Jewish people."

*"Her poems crassly compare her suffering to that of the Holocaust and beyond her fiction, Plath’s diaries dating back to her high school years show a history of hateful and disrespectful white supremacist thinking."

*"The viciousness of her comments about Jewish and Black people and the insensitive comparisons of her own struggles to those of the victims of the Holocaust show her to be completely out of touch with the era of progressive and civil rights activism" in which she lived and obviously didn't agree with.

As another article says, you cannot understand Plath if you don't understand her very Germanic upbringing by the German father she loved and whose death she was never able to get over. In her diary, in 1958, she wrote of her father, "He … heiled Hitler in the privacy of his home."

Or maybe I didn't notice because I only read The Bell Jar and not Plath's poetry, I certainly would have picked it up from

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak
I thought every German was you. And the language obscene.
An Engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a jew.
A jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen
I began to talk like a jew
I think I may well be a jew.

I don't say I wouldn't read these authors or even enjoy their works - I love Oscar Wilde and certain Roald Dahl books - but I think knowing who an author was, the kind of views they held obviously informs their works, and that is important even if I decide to separate art from the artist.

This is, by far, the most disappointed I’ve ever been when it came to a book.
Not just with the book itself, but with how many people decided to ignore the racism taking place in it.
I’ve had this novel praised to me so many times that I idolized it for years before I even bought it. I was so scared that I wouldn’t like it that I kept waiting to be in “the right mind-set” before I decided to finally pick it up.
About a quarter into the book I had already encountered not one, but 3 racist comments made by Esther (the main character). And I was so surprised that no one ever mentioned this to me that I had to stop reading, go on goodreads and look at the reviews to see if anyone was addressing it, and nothing.
So I told myself I was reading too much into it and kept on reading, and by the 4th comment I was starting to lose it.
So I went online and looked it up, and the only thing that turned up was a personal blog and a goodreads thread that mostly blamed the racism on “the time the novel was written in”, to which I would just like to say, and pardon my french, that’s complete and utter bullshit.
This book was written in the 60s! The NINETEEN-60s!! in. the. middle. of. the. civil. rights. movement.
And I’m not saying racism didn’t exist back then, hell, that’s what the whole movement was about. And I get that people weren’t “woke”, and that using certain slang was normal back then, BUT I could name at least a dozen writers who didn’t feel the need to be racist while writing from (what we all know is) their personal pov. Hell, I could name novels published in the 19th fucking century that advocated against racism. Sylvia could’ve at least picked up ONE of those during her lifetime, jfc.
I’m not just speaking about the 5+ times she used the n word, it’s not my place to say whether that was wrong or not. I’m talking about the explicit racist comments (against more races than one, if I may add) that made me want to drench this book in gasoline, light it on fire then flush it down the fucking toilet:
•tIn one part, Esther Greenwood describes her reflection as "a big, smudgy-eyed Chinese woman staring idiotically into my face,"
•tIn another she says: “the face in the mirror looks like a sick Indian"
•tAt one point she calls indigenous Mexicans ugly and says things like "dusky as a bleached-blonde negress"
•tIn a scene where Esther is being served dinner while in the mental health institute. The man serving her is described as a stupid, laughing, indolent Black man with huge, rolling eyes, a racist trope made popular with books like "The Story of Little Black Sambo," which was published in 1898. During this scene, the man commits the “offense” of serving two types of beans for dinner, and Esther punishes him for it by kicking him.
•tWhen Esther’s friend is telling her about a guy she’s interested in, who happens to be from Peru, Esther replies with: “they're squat…they're ugly as Aztecs."



All of that being said, I think I should mention that:
a/ the writing was actually pretty decent
b/ I am not going to ignore the awareness it brought around mental health for so many years. But, if that’s the only reason you’re reading this, then I suggest you check out Girl, Interrupted instead, it’s equally as representative (if not more/better) of mental health, based on Susanna Kaysen’s real life (it’s more of a memoir-ish type), it includes plenty of documents and notes from her time in a mental health institute, and, most importantly, it isn’t problematic.

Ever since I was small I’ve been fascinated by death, er no, I mean it in the simplest way of fascination, it has nothing to do with my wistful nature or maybe a little, I am a happy being by the definitions of most authentic lexica, death just fascinates me for being death alone, a halt to everything, a standstill after a long, tiring journey(only if one wishes to make it long, to tire is inevitable though) a cool ,soggy evening after the long sunny day, a calm tame brook after the violent storm, a long anticipated friend, after an unfriendly hullabaloo of life, Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.as puts Plath:
The one pure sensation that one gets after reading words that hurt like hell, is of apology maybe, Sylvia must have been in innermost pain to inscribe her feelings on paper, Bell Jar might not be structurally flawless, it has its imperfections all the same, her protagonist is only twenty and is supposed to have the time of her life, the striking resemblance of Esther Greenwood with Sylvia is undoubtable.
“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”
Plath has stripped her emotions bare for blind world to view, isn’t it very apprehensive for a being to show places of such sheer darkness and weakness to lay open for world to see. And yet, how brave;. She molds them, carves something too refined and remarkable out of them, her own thoughts overpower her, make her defenseless and she roars, roars in agony of her own creation. The hell of her thoughts that led her to madness and then a mindless death.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
I felt like a culprit for some sin unknown to me, throughout the journey along her, Sylvia Plath's death haunts every page as despair vanquishes life, “The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence” she could’ve been saved, if only there had been a listener to her heart’s miseries, she could’ve lived longer only if there had been someone to seize her obstinately from that leapt she fated for herself!

I'm really struggling with writing a review for this one, given the unique nature of the book and the sad reality that surrounds it. Every book is a testament of its author in one way or another, but with this semi-fictional autobiography it's difficult not to equate the book with its tragic author, making the reviewing of it an exercise in the kind of delicacy I'm not very well versed in. A delicacy that, frankly, I don't really enjoy employing.

So what is one to do when he didn't really like "The Bell Jar"? Tread very carefully through the thorny bushes, knowing many in the Goodreads populace have a special place in their heart for this sensitive book. I decided on a respectful three-star rating even though my less delicate self would probably give it only two. It gets three because of its importance, because of its needing to be heard, but my heart of hearts doesn't care all that much about importance. It cares about being lifted up while this story mainly seemed to try and drag it down.

I called this book an "autobiography", but with the important difference that autobiographies put the emphasis on a life fully lived, while in this book life seems pretty empty and the story was mostly about reasons for and ways of ending it. This book reads very much like a cry for help, and cries for help don't generally make for pleasant reading. The fact I felt useless as I heard that cry, the dread that comes with seeing a person consumed by fires I can't put out and other such merry sentiments make it hard for me to say I enjoyed this book. Everybody who reads this classic also knows about the tragic fate of the author, making the cry for help all the more chilling and making it akin to the reading of an elaborate suicide note. In short: I'd be surprised if this makes it on any "best beach reads" lists. I realise that even if this isn't a pleasant read that doesn't mean that it's not a good read, or a meaningful one, so let me elaborate on my mediocre rating for a book so highly praised by many others.

I normally don't go for books dealing with depression, telling of a darkness with which I'm unfamiliar and quite uncomfortable, but reading is also about getting outside of your comfort zone. Also, I've got a severe gender inequality problem going on in my 2016 reading list and this book, hailed as an important womanly novel, caught my attention through promises of profundity and humor. The profound is there, in the intentions of the author to tell this deeply personal story, but I found most of the observations made in the book surprisingly superficial. The humor, while there in the earlier parts, felt like vinegar to a thirsty mouth. A perfectly enjoyable riff on the tipping system in New York in one of the earlier chapters gets a bitter taste by the end of the book, becoming a denouncement of one of the many things that are wrong with this world.

Despite the lack of living up to what was promised, not all was bad with this book. Plath had the gift of prose, with elegant metaphors and the creation of immersive settings, evoking indelible images like of Esther sitting in the breezeway trying to write a book or a pair of boots pointing to the ocean. She's got a poetic stroke that mixes very well with her cynical side, resulting in a reading experience that was artistically and aesthetically pleasing. It's sad that this first novel is also her last, because the markings of true talents, with a lot of potential to be further developed, were clearly visible.

I'm sad for Sylvia Plath and for everyone who shared and shares her plight. I have a great yet tender respect for her, writing this book, which must have cost her a tremendous effort given all the dark clouds in her heavy mind, trapped under a bell jar. But it was not for nothing, because as she was heaving up the bell jar with every word she wrote, trudging along with it in order to be heard, she created something that would make her message heard, then, now and far into the future. Go on, Sylvia Plath, and rest in peace. Your bell will keep resounding, maybe not on sunlit beaches, but definitely in your readers' hearts.