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The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath

Start date: October 1, 2010

Finish date: November 1, 2010

Discussion: Classics Corner

Discussion leader: Sherry

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What Members Thought

Mar 13, 2010 Gaijinmama rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, classics

I have conflicting feelings about this book. On the one hand, it deserves its place as a classic if only for the author's keen sense of observation and way with words. She also had a sense of humor...Sylvia Plath, who knew!!

On the other hand, that's the tragedy. I was almost too pissed off to finish. What a horrible waste of a gifted writer who was actually an interesting person. I am left sad and angry, just absolutely furious that Plath lived at a time when a woman with her skills was not appr ...more

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Sep 23, 2010 Laura rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: health-issues, mtbr-challenge-2016, american-fiction, modern-classics, fiction-20th-century, read-2016, e-books, 1000-guardian, gutenberg, 1001-books-you-must-read-before-you

By describing the story of Esther Greenwood, certainly the author reflects her own personal history. And unforgettable and magnificent book.

Free download available at Faded Page.

From BBC Radio 4;
Sylvia Plath's haunting and only novel is fifty years old and is broadcast for the first time in celebration of the anniversary. The novel tells the story of Esther Greenwood, a talented girl with a prestigious internship on a magazine in New York in 1953. With dreams of becoming a writer and an impressi ...more

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Oct 07, 2010 Pang rated it really liked it

Shelves: recently-read, constant-reader

It's certainly not an uplifting story, but it made for a profound book.

The story was of Esther Greenwood, a young girl who had won a scholarship and was living in New York. When she came home to Boston, things were falling apart in her life as she didn't get accepted into this summer writing program. She became suicidal and tried to overdose on her mother's sleeping pills. She then was subjected to various methods of psychotherapy, including electric shock. Esther eventually got better and was a It's certainly not an uplifting story, but it made for a profound book.

The story was of Esther Greenwood, a young girl who had won a scholarship and was living in New York. When she came home to Boston, things were falling apart in her life as she didn't get accepted into this summer writing program. She became suicidal and tried to overdose on her mother's sleeping pills. She then was subjected to various methods of psychotherapy, including electric shock. Esther eventually got better and was able to go back to her life. In contrary to Esther, Plath did end her life.

Plath talked about the pressure of living in New York had on young women. The expectation that Plath had placed on herself, to get accepted into the writing program. When she got rejected, I think something inside of her just snapped. As the matter of fact, I think she was on her way well before receiving that rejection letter. She sounded very lonely in New York. That depression just took control of her. I thought she became paranoia and shut herself off from everyone by assuming the worst. "The reason I hadn't washed my clothes or my hair was because it seemed so silly... It seemed so silly to wash one day when I would only have to wash again the next. It made me tired just to think of it" (128). Esther hated Dr. Gordon "the minute I walked through the door... and I could see right away he was conceited" (129). She also became disillusioned and disconnected I thought. When she met Dr. Nolan and was given a book of matches, she "stored the toy matches in the hem of my new wool bathrobe. If Doctor Nolan asked me for the matches, I would say I'd thought they were made of candy and had eaten them" (190).

It was so sad to read and to imagine about how alone she felt.

I saw the days of the year stretching ahead like a series of bright, white boxes, and separating one box from another was sleep, like a black shade. Only for me, the long perspective of shades that set off one box from the next had suddenly snapped up, and I could see day after day after day glaring ahead of me like a white, broad, infinitely desolate avenue. (128)

If Mrs. Guinea had given me a ticket to Europe, or a round-the-world cruise, it wouldn't have made one scrap of difference to me, because 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. (185)

To the person in the bell jar, black and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream. (237)

I had a feeling that Esther would start getting better because she started to trust Dr. Nolan--probably the only person she really felt that way with. After she had her first shock therapy with Dr. Nolan, Esther "felt surprisingly at peace. The bell jar hung, suspended, a few feet above my head. I was ope to the circulating air" (215). May be this was something that Plath had hoped for herself, but she never gotten there.

One thing that I really enjoyed was Plath's reintroduction of Joan when Esther was first admitted to Caplan. She said "Sometimes I wondered if I had made Joan up. Other times I wondered if she would continue to pop in at every crisis of my life to remind me of what I had been, and what I had been through, and carry on her own separate but similar crisis under my nose" (219). When Joan was found dead, Esther was finally getting better.

Plath's writing was definitely poetic, true to her style. It took me a while to get used to it, and I'm still undecided how I really feel about it. It's still a good book. ...more

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Feb 13, 2008 Carrie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I love reading Plath when I feel dramatic and depressed.

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Mar 03, 2008 Jenn rated it liked it

The last time I read this, I was just out of high school ,moody, wrote a lot, and thought "nobody understood me". So obviously I loved this book. I need to re-read it and see if that feeling still stands. ...more

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Feb 11, 2008 Courtney rated it it was amazing

Feb 19, 2008 Ray rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Feb 26, 2008 Heather rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books, guardian-family, american-lit, 20th-century, psychological-lit, autobiographical-lit, roman-a-clef, female-authors, read-2010, own