The Bell Jar

by Sylvia Plath

Look what can happen in this country, they’d say. A girl lives in some out-of-the-way town for nineteen years, so poor she can’t afford a magazine, and then she gets a scholarship to college and wins a prize here and a prize there and ends up steering New York like her own private car.

Girls like that make me sick. I’m so jealous I can’t speak. Nineteen years, and I hadn’t been out of New England

It suggested a whole life of marvelous, elaborate decadence that attracted me like a magnet.

Sweetheart-of-Sigma-Chi smile.

I began to think vodka was my drink at last. It didn’t taste like anything, but it went straight down into my stomach like a sword swallower’s sword and made me feel powerful and godlike.

After all, I wasn’t crippled in any way, I just studied too hard, I didn’t know when to stop.

The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way. I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters.

I felt like a racehorse in a world without racetracks or a champion college footballer suddenly confronted by Wall Street and a business suit, his days of glory shrunk to a little gold cup on his mantel with a date engraved on it like the date on a tombstone.

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. 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.

I thought it would be the way I’d feel if I ever visited Europe. I’d come home, and if I looked closely into the mirror I’d be able to make out a little white Alp at the back of my eye.

I would catch sight of some flawless man off in the distance, but as soon as he moved closer I immediately saw he wouldn’t do at all.

“Not bad.” I thought it was dreadful.

“Well, you were right. I am neurotic. I could never settle down in either the country or the city.”

I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.