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dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Self harm, Sexual content, Suicide, Blood, Suicide attempt
dark
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Just not really my type of book, hard to get into and lots of descriptions which take me out of the plot.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug abuse, Mental illness, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Vomit, Suicide attempt
Moderate: Sexual assault
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Mental illness, Misogyny, Self harm, Sexism, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, Sexual harassment
Minor: Racism, Xenophobia
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Blood, Suicide attempt
Moderate: Panic attacks/disorders, Racial slurs, Suicide, Grief, Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Abortion, Death of parent, Alcohol
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
tense
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Chronic illness, Death, Mental illness, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, Forced institutionalization, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Schizophrenia/Psychosis
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Medical content, Suicide attempt
Moderate: Racial slurs, Racism
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body shaming, Death, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Suicide attempt
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The thing about this novel is that it itself is very much an object that people prod at and assign meaning to without having read it— the book hailed as an aesthetic, THEE seminal sad girl novel and portrayed in media as essential reading for maneaters (a la 10 things I hate about you) and for the woefully artistically depressed (referenced by Lorelei Gilmore something like “you might as well just stay home and read the bell jar instead”). It’s not a man eater novel at all to me— yeah there’s maneater moments within the writing, but it’s less “girlboss girl manipulator manhater” and more of an exhaustion from dealing with men in her life, from buddy’s deceitfulness about purity to how much men and their inflated egos and senses of callous self righteousness bore her.
I found the book to feel like a trip to the dentist. Mostly you’re enduring and enduring and it’s painful but you get a few moments of relief when they spray that water thing. The bell jar first mimics that feeling of relentless shitiness and confusion, coming to a head during chapters 15ish to 19ish when Esther is literally just trying to unalive herself over and over and she’s describing the incomprehensible horrors of experiencing electroconvulsive shock therapy.
The continuous gory and graphic nature of Plath’s narrative made it difficult for me to get through the writing, and I know that was the point because depression feels endless, but I had to break from the book in November because the switch from “I’m a girl in New York going through the motions expediting the start of depresso because my work feels meaningless” (I enjoyed some of her chapters about school and thought her whole “yeah I tricked my chem prof” scheme was funny) to “I want to die I want to die I want to die” during the entire second act is such a mindfuck.
And yet, there are certain bites of prose that are so stunning even amongst the mess that is Esther’s deteriorating life — the entirety of chapter 20, the pages where she says “under the deceptively clean and level slate (snow) the topography was the same” and compares the topography to her perpetual mentally depressed state were so poetic (“To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream. I remembered everything. I remembered the cadavers and Doreen and the story of the fig tree and Marco’s diamond and the sailor on the Common and Doctor Gordon’s wall-eyed nurse and the broken thermometers and the Negro with his two kinds of beans and the twenty pounds I gained on insulin and the rock that bulged between sky and sea like a gray skull”). There are also these very specific realizations and emotions that (some of which are universal girl experiences) that Plath captures perfectly— quotes like
- “‘I don't really know,’ I heard myself say. I felt a deep shock, hearing myself say that, because the minute I said it, I knew it was true. It sounded true, and I recognized it, the way you recognize some nondescript person that's been hanging around your door for ages and then suddenly comes up and introduces himself as your real father and looks exactly like you, so you know he really is your father, and the person you thought all your life was your father is a sham.”
- “There must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them. Whenever I’m sad I’m going to die, or so nervous I can’t sleep, or in love with somebody I won’t be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: “I’ll go take a hot bath.” (Me but nap)
- “There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room. It's like watching Paris from an express caboose heading in the opposite direction--every second the city gets smaller and smaller, only you feel it's really you getting smaller and smaller and lonelier and lonelier, rushing away from all those lights and that excitement at about a million miles an hour.”
- I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor... I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose…as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness, Racism, Self harm, Sexual content, Forced institutionalization, Vomit, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt
dark
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt
Moderate: Racial slurs, Racism