The Bell Jar – A Dark and Engaging Exploration of Depression

photo by Alan Light

I wrote a tribute to Jessica Fletcher to mark the passing of award-winning actress Angela Lansbury last week. The world will miss her!

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme. Read the rules and more teasers at The Purple Booker. Anyone can play along.

This book has been on my reading list for a long time, and I finally got around to reading The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. It is a difficult-to-read fictionalized autobiographical account of mental illness, depression, and attempted suicide. The author/main character was hospitalized for therapy, including shock therapy, after a serious suicide attempt. Sylvia Plath tells it like it is and was heralded for her fresh, unflinching look at depression in our modern society, especially in women. While the story ends with Esther Greenwood back on the road to mental health, it does foresee that one day depression will descend again, a prediction that indeed came to pass for Ms. Plath. The author was, in the end, unable to overcome the darkness, and I hope she found some peace in the world to come.

I was supposed to be having the time of my life

Sylvia Path, The Bell Jar

The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther’s breakdown with such intensity that Esther’s neurosis becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar an enduring classic.

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