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ghoulette's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
4.75
Minor: Suicide, Body horror, Blood, Vomit, Violence, Suicide attempt, Racial slurs, Medical trauma, Infidelity, Gore, Suicidal thoughts, Sexual assault, Miscarriage, Medical content, Injury/Injury detail, Eating disorder, Self harm, and Death
chrisljm's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Graphic: Blood, Fatphobia, Body shaming, Mental illness, Racism, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, and Vomit
Moderate: Death, Drug use, Forced institutionalization, Homophobia, Infidelity, Lesbophobia, Medical content, Medical trauma, Self harm, and Suicide
Minor: Child death, Racial slurs, and Sexual content
_danicortes's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
Graphic: Blood, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, and Torture
Moderate: Physical abuse, Self harm, Body shaming, Death, Medical trauma, Misogyny, and Lesbophobia
Minor: Sexual violence, Vomit, Infidelity, and Suicide
courtneyfalling's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
I finally decided to revisit this book almost eight years later because I wanted to see how my opinion might've changed after so much internal reflection and mental health advocacy. And I have... mixed feelings. It is genuinely one of the best depictions of a suicidal episode I've ever seen, in terms of how it explains social pressures and cultural influences on mental health and how it connects patriarchy and (surface-level) feminism to mental health. I'm a few months out from college graduation now, and its descriptions of how career uncertainty and dread contribute to depressive episodes are spot-on in the earlier chapters. It talks about medicine in a complicated and real way, including the biases of medical professionals and the harms of medical trauma.
But holy hell does it still have problems. I think the biggest glaring one is Sylvia Plath's racism, which she offloads onto Esther. (This is a good article for the basics of racism in The Bell Jar but there's a whole set of stuff out there at this point: https://www.wweek.com/arts/books/2017/10/04/its-time-we-had-a-talk-about-the-bell-jar-the-white-feminist-racist-literary-icon/.) The scene that occurs while Esther is in an inpatient facility is atrocious as are all the other racist comments and asides throughout the book. For this reason alone I don't plan to ever try to pick up Plath's writing again.
There's also a bunch of issues I had that, for simplicity's sake, I'll call "pacing."
The biographical notes at the end also begin to address some of the controversy this novel created in the world directly around Sylvia Plath, including how it wrecked her mental health in the process (in no small part because of the difficulties of trying to balance her career, her children, her marriage, and her own health) and how it destabilized her relationships with her family and others who she created fictionalized representations of in this novel. I feel like this is a terrifying, solid case study of autofiction ethics and what it really means to represent your closed loved ones in literature, especially such emotionally raw and representative literature. It also makes the novel's racism even more reflective on Sylvia Plath as a person and writer across all her works: there is no separating Sylvia Plath and Esther Greenwood, not really.
Anyway. Read this at your own warning. It's hard stuff.
Graphic: Blood, Death, Forced institutionalization, Medical content, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Misogyny, Racism, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, and Suicide attempt
Moderate: Racial slurs and Sexual assault
Minor: Alcohol, Infidelity, Death of parent, and Vomit
curatoriallyyours's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Graphic: Medical trauma, Mental illness, Misogyny, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Self harm, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, and Suicide attempt
Moderate: Alcohol, Blood, Chronic illness, Death, Drug abuse, Fatphobia, Forced institutionalization, Infidelity, Lesbophobia, Mental illness, Medical content, Physical abuse, and Sexism
Minor: Racial slurs, Racism, Vomit, and Forced institutionalization
mirireads's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Graphic: Blood, Mental illness, Sexual assault, and Suicide attempt
Moderate: Death of parent, Forced institutionalization, Medical content, Medical trauma, and Suicidal thoughts
Minor: Alcohol, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Grief, Infidelity, Lesbophobia, Toxic friendship, and Toxic relationship