I finished reading the bell jar on tuesday; here are my thoughts...
The beginning of the novel was so eerily relatable which makes the suffocating ending even more scary because anyone can descend into depression like Esther did.
I found it especially relatable when she said "I never feel so much myself as when I'm in a hot bath." I am unsure why that hit so close to home.
You would think reading it is like to read the book of a mad person's thought you can't comprehend but Esther's thoughts and inner dialogue during her descent to depression are so logical and reasonable its scary.
After reading the description of the fig tree I had never felt so called out. My entire perspective of life changed within the span of a short paragraph:
βI 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.β
Plath has articulated the feminine need to accomplish everything, live many lives and how these possibilities are killed by time being lost to desicion making and the desire have all possible endings at the same time, without other oppurtunites being ruled out. She has done this better than most extremely skilled writers could do in the span of a whole series. This book felt too relatable and it terrifies me.
Before reading The Bell Jar i was confused, almost offended about how "femcels" and "girlbloggers" would worship Plath so much being an idol of the tumblr sad girl epidemic however I understand how relatable she and Esther is in the sad girl archetype aspect being so relatable to teenage girls, although I definitely do not condone almost reducing Plath's mental illnesses as she becomes a fashionable tag for posts with romanticising depression and other mental health problems. To the tumblr femcel sad girls; please seek help instead of romanticising and publicly displaying these serious issues.
Despite others claiming this to be a feminist piece of literature I do not see it in this way. I am unsure if the presentation of female madness is innate or a result of patriachal derivation forcing women to be mentally fragile and romanticise otherness. I also believe that suffering should not always be made into an art although Plath did this so gracefully in this novel and some of her poems I have read which i strongly recommend.
But overall i really loved this book. It was emotianally raw and so relatable and intense. Towards the end it becomes more and more suffocating and depressing and very triggering so I only reccomend to read if you are having a good day! :D))
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