The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

The most disturbing thing about this book was when I read the introduction. The ending, contrary to what I expected, is happy. The last lines show that Esther has been cured, and she feels as if she's being reborn. However, when I read the introduction, I learned that the author, Sylvia Plath committed suicide shortly after this book was published. That really puts a damper on any hopeful spirit that may have been born with the ending. Although the book is not autobiographical, it is a novel, I assume a lot of it is based on her life. She too had a mental breakdown and was well enough to complete and publish a novel inspired by it. But the convenient and inspiring ending is false. It's the most fictional part of the whole book because the real woman who really had these thoughts and feelings didn't get better. She killed herself.

Otherwise, the story went in a traditional and understandable arc. She keeps getting crazier and crazier until she is taken to a psychiatrist, Dr. Gordon, who she loathes. He gives her a shock treatment which goes awry, causes pain, and traumatizes her. Her attempts and thoughts of suicide are constant, and her reason why she wants to end her life is the strangest part. She doesn't want people to know that she's lost her mind, that she can't read or write any more. Finally, she makes an almost successful attempt at killing herself by hiding in their cellar and taking a bunch of sleeping pills. When she's found, she's barely alive and admitted into a mental hospital which is not much to her liking. A wealthy sponsor sends her to another, better institution where she has a female psychiatrist who Esther actually likes. This femal doctor, Dr. Nolan, helps her recover and administers successful shock treatments. In fact, her first shock treatment with Dr. Nolan is one of my favorite parts of the book because it's such a relief. It goes:

"All the heat and fear had purged itself. I felt surprisingly at peace. The bell jar hung, suspended, a few feet above my head. I was open to the circulating air."

That passage is so refreshing after watching this girl stew in her destructive, incomprehensible, and disturbed thoughts for so long. She keeps getting worse and worse until she starts trying to kill herself and then finally the bell jar is lifted a bit! This isn't her first mention of that metaphor. The first time she said it, I was terribly relieved that Plath had deigned to explain to us the reason behind the title of the book. It's relatively annoying when authors choose a name that requires analyzing. I feel that it's a bit affected... Anyhow, the first mention that we have of the bell jar is when she's driving to her new, private mental institution and she can feel that her mother and brother are blocking the doors of the car so that she does not jump off the bridge that they are driving across. I wonder if they were actually doing that or she was just imagining it. Either way, it's pretty horrible.

"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. Blue sky opened its dome above the river, and the river was dotted with sails. I readied myself, but immediately my mother and my brother each laid one hand on a door handle. The tires hummed briefly over the grill of the bridge. Water, sails, blue sky and suspended gulls flashed by like an improbable postcard, and we were across. I sank back in the gray, plush seat and closed my eyes. The air of the bell jar wadded round me and I couldn't stir."

Her writing is so very good. The entire book is excellent. It's such an injustice that brilliant people suffer so much. It's so depressing that Sylvia Plath couldn't live a long and happy life when her writing was so incredible.