Sylvia Plath – The Bell Jar (1963)
Novel – 230 pages – my copy (paperback) found and read whilst in work
- 2 nods out of 5 -
Sylvia Plath killed herself after numerous attempts. The Bell Jar, her one and only novel, charts the life of a woman who attempts to kill herself numerous times. If not already apparent and clear, The Bell Jar is not a happy and easy read.
The central character, Esther Greenwood is an obvious loose representation of Plath herself; we read of her descent into despair of the modern world. Such is the close proximity, the book could read more as memoir. The poet and novelist are known to share a love relationship with themselves and their own creations, and Plath is keen to take this to the next level: rather than a story, the pages in the novel take on the form of awkward confession, of explicit masturbation of Plath on Plath.
There is a great deal of self pity, of Esther’s and Sylvia’s eclipse in the real world: ‘I felt like a racehorse in a world without race-tracks 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.’
The book becomes all the more interesting the greater the insanity, with Plath’s prose becoming – for the only time – lively; there is experimentation with the inner voice(s). Yet sadly, this is not taken further; and this is the main frustration with The Bell Jar. It could have become a female counterweight to Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. But where the reader roots for Holden Caulfield; they merely deride Esther Greenwood.
The Bell Jar is not a good novel. It is debatable if it is an honest novel. However, it is Plath’s only novel, and as such, it continues to garner attention.
