Reviews

Esther Greenwood is in New York on an internship for a women’s magazine, she’s broken out of her small hometown, made it to university and she has the interest of a well to do college student whose set to be a doctor. While to outsiders everything appears to be perfect for Esther, inside she’s slowly succumbing to a deep depression. She feels no joy, no love for writing, no enthusiasm for her internship. Esther can’t seem to make up her mind as to which direction her life will go and in the 50’s there were so few options for women. When she returns home to find she didn’t make the summer writing program she applied to it sends her off the deep end and into a stay at the asylum.

This book made me so uncomfortable in how realistically Plath was able to write about depression and it makes sense as she based this book around her own life. I could feel myself sinking into that familiar fog, where you feel nothing and everything all at once so all you can do is freeze. At the time the choices for women were so limited and all roads eventually pointed to marriage and a family, which would end any career dreams they had.

I found myself thinking about how now we can “have it all” but in so many ways we still can’t AND we still face the pressures of marriage & babies in the modern day. If you don’t get married and have kids something is wrong, if you have kids there’s always questions about when you’ll have more, if you have kids and go back to work you’re a bad mom, if you stay home with the kids then you’re taking the “easy” way out.

The fig analogy broke my heart as I’ve felt the same way many times. Everything is just within my grasp but I still can’t decide. But I also found it inspiring to remember I don’t have to have everything figured out and there’s still so much time to chase my dreams.

Content Warnings

emilyada11's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Content Warnings

aker_br's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

hikikomorka's review

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3.0

3.5

_isthisliving's review against another edition

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5.0

I can still feel the headache this book gave me

hauntingcare's review against another edition

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« I felt dreadfully inadequate. The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn’t thought about it. »

depending on which author you read from, depression can feel icy blue, grimy yellow - here, it is grey and dull. it is slow-moving and uneventful, discouraging and exhausting in its routine. there is no moral to this story ; we're all standing under our own individual bell jar.

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