The Picture of Sylvia Plath

One of the many great attributes of being a member of a book club is the opportunity to sit with a novel for a solid few months. There's also the access to an intellectual community and friends to nerd out about literary things with. When my book club voted to read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath in January, I prepared myself for meetings that would undoubtedly dive into the range of deeper themes in the novel: depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide, just to name a few. The book begins in New York City with protagonist Esther Greenwood, a nearly-graduated college student currently undergoing an editing internship. There is a distinct shift in the narrative that seems to occur after Esther is sexually assaulted at a party, returns home for the rest of the summer, finds out she did not get accepted into a writing class she'd placed a lot of hope in, and begins a downward spiral into extreme depression. Reading this book with other people reminded me of the relevance of mental health: that it is an oftentimes avoided but extremely important topic. Sure, some members were a bit brash and blunt in their handling of the topic at various meetings. But others were vulnerable and shared personal sentiments that I found uplifting as an individual dealing with particular aspects of mental disorder. In reading this supposed autobiography of a book, our group found it nearly impossible to not acknowledge its author and what we know of her life. What we know of her life also encompasses what we know of her death, which cannot be sugarcoated. The concept of "art for art's sake" finds opposition in the case of Esther's similarities to Sylvia, and I believe (to a certain extent) this novel must be read with Plath lingering at the back of one's mind. If not to better understand what she may have been trying to pursue in her writing of a fictional tale, then to remember her and the woman, poet, and artist she was. I won't lie and say I was absolutely blown away by this book; it's not one of my new all time favorites by any stretch. But it allowed me to engage with mature topics I don't always find in the literature I choose to read. It encouraged me to facilitate conversations hinged on subjects that do more harm than good when overlooked. And it made me think about the effects of female social norms in the 50s-60s, electroshock therapy/lobotomies, and the intense pressure many young women feel in terms of being career-successful and wife-material. I reflect on the image of the bell jar Plath waits to introduce until the second half of the book and then repeatedly utilizes until the last few pages, and I raise a glass to the importance of how this literature can speak to anyone who picks it up, no matter what they've gone through or struggled with.


Some of my favorite quotes from The Bell Jar:

"The floor seemed wonderfully solid. It was comforting to know I had fallen and could fall no farther."

"I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow, the million moving shapes and cul-de-sacs of shadow. There was shadow in bureau drawers and closets and suitcases, and shadow under houses and trees and stones, and shadow at the back of people's eyes and smiles, and shadow, miles and miles and miles of it, on the night side of the earth."

"There must be quite a few things a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them."

"I wanted to crawl in between those black lines of print the way you crawl through a fence..."

"Women-haters were like gods: invulnerable and chock-full of power."

"How could I write about life when I'd never had a love affair or a baby or even seen anybody die?"

"I would rather have anything wrong with my body than something wrong with my head..."

---