Details:
TITLE: The Bell Jar
AUTHOR: Sylvia Plath
GENRE: Semi-Autobiography
PUBLISHER: Faber Firsts
ISBN: 9780571245642
PAGES: 234
Review:
There is something mesmerisingly mystique about The Bell Jar, as the authoress committed suicide weeks after the publication in 1963. Why, you wondered, would she do that? The gruesome answer seems to be lurking deep within the pages; it is easy and tempting to believe that, if you could finish reading the book - and somehow penetrate deep into the mental realm of Sylvia Plath - you could understand the cause(s) of her suffering, and somewhat save her.
Appalling news on the death sentences of the Rosenbergs opens the novel, planting an uncomfortable seed that seems to insinuate that death is what the authoress has in mind as an endgame. The story, serving as a semi-autobiography, details the daily encounters of the protagonist, Esther Greenwood, who seems to be the alter ego of Plath in the semi-fictitious world. Between the encounters, though, are flashbacks from the past which seem to echo with the author's background.
With what Esther is experiencing in the present, and her interval flashbacks, the novel appears to be a linear storyteller - until you catch one or two chilling sentences that are slipped in between the events. These sentences seem to be describing the events, or rather how Esther/Sylvia feels towards the events; but if you read between the lines, you would find them insights of a depressed person.
Esther/Sylvia first expressed her helplessness in the midst of a fast-paced city life, "I felt very still and empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo". The alcohol and sex, manifestations of dirty sins of the big city, seem to appall her, as she writes that she needs to cleanse herself and become pure again, "I said so myself, ... all that liquor and those sticky kisses I saw and the dirt that settled on my skin on the way back is turning into something pure. The longer I lay here in the clear hot water [in the tub] the purer I felt..."
As the story progressed, it is noticed that her depression is getting more serious as she feels emptier inside. At times her pessimism reveals itself between the lines, showing signs that she does not trust others anymore, "If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed", or signs that she reckons pain is inevitable, "...the drug would make her forget how bad the pain had been, when all the time, in some secret part of her, that long, blind, doorless and windowless corridor of pain was waiting to open up and shut her in again".
It is indeed difficult to comprehend the differences between Sylvia and Esther as it goes on - you seem to be reading about the same person. In the final chapter, the novel ends when the protagonist walks into a room for an interview to determine if she could check-out from the mental hospital. If the scene is seen as an analogy, where the interview is a series of tests in real life, and the outcome is decided by the board of interviewers, who plays the role as the higher up power, it then leaves the readers hanging in midair - they must determine what would become of Esther/Sylvia.
Discussion Question
Given the fact that Sylvia Plath ultimately killed herself weeks after the publication of the book, which could be interpreted as an outcome of the "interview" in the ending of the novel, do you think that Sylvia passed the interview test? It is easy to gravitate to the belief that she failed the test, and her depression ultimately claimed her; but could it also be as a form of emancipation from her depression?
