The Bell Jar

Pages: 268 📖

Year Published: 1963 🕰️

Days to Complete: 10

Author:

Slyvia Plath was born in Boston in 1932 and despite her sad death by suicide at the age of 30, she was very accomplished. She attended both Smith College and the University of Cambridge and after marrying Ted Hughes, bounced between living in the US and England. She had two children with Hughes but they divorced one year prior to her death. Plath is most known for her poetry, The Bell Jar, her only novel, and her journals.

Learn More about Sylvia Plath

Three words to describe this read:

Consequential- In retrospect, it's hard to imagine getting from the beginning of the story to the end, but everything happens as a result of the worst case scenario of something else.

Depressing- *SPOILER* The main character, Esther, is depressed. While that obviously makes for a sad story, it is interesting to have this first-person perspective on the condition and how it was (inefficiently) handled in the 1960s.

Disjointed- I found that the story seemed to skip from time to time and left me wondering if I had an abridge version (which I did not). Looking back, I realize that was likely a stylistic choice by Plath to demonstrate the confusing moments of a mental illness.

Quote:

"I reckon a good poem lasts a whole lot longer than a hundred of those people put together."

I often consider what I do, hospitality and writing, unimportant compared to the medical industry. This quote flipped the script and compared the longevity of good writing compared to the longevity of people.