Reviews with content warning for Vomit - The Bell Jar

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

froggybooks's review

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dark emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character

4.75

Content Warnings

perksofbeingemily's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective medium-paced

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

3.5

Content Warnings

venice_the_vampire's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional medium-paced

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

4.0

i really appreciated and related to the idea of always being the perfect student but not being considered useful or smart in any way outside of that and having no idea what to when when you get out of school. i also found the insight onto how being a mentally ill woman in my grand & great-grandmothers time was, especially considering my own family history. it may not be my favorite book, but i still appreciate it for what it is.

Content Warnings

akmatz's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense fast-paced

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

4.25

Excellent work of character creation, and displays the confinement of 1950 society as well as traditional female roles.

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