Spoiler warning, kind of, since the end of the novel came as a surprise to me, at least.
So after reading The Bell Jar, here are some quick thoughts. I was both pleasantly surprised and disappointed.
Pleasantly surprised. Well, in addition to the two things I’ve quoted on here [maybe more to come, I’m not sure], I thought there were some really astute and sort of funny details in here. Esther Greenwood, despite being depressed and psycho, was sort of an upbeat character in terms of her vanity and many cheerful observations about herself. She was self-possessed. This all came as a surprise because given Sylvia Plath herself and her body of work, this sort of wide-eyed tone that shone through certain parts of the novel is so unlike much of her poetry which, while brilliant, is a whole lot of wallowing and feeling sorry for herself. Esther Greenwood’s voice was just so fun. I was also pleasantly surprised that spoiler Esther does NOT kill herself at the end. In fact, she gets better. Considering that Plath would commit suicide not long after the publication of this novel, and that all of her poetry predicts/screams “I am going to kill myself,” I thought for sure that Esther was going to descend further and further into depression, then start to get better as she does in the novel, only to experience one tiny fatal experience that would drive her even further under the bell jar. It would have been so like Plath.
Disappointment. Well, when I read novels about going insane, especially American classics, I’m usually “Bring on the crazy!” The reviews I read about this book, as well as the description of it, seemed like she was going to really go bonkers, that her “insanity” as I think critics inaccurately described the depression, was going to be really disturbing. She was just depressed. She says so herself. Additionally, I think the novel loses a lot of steam halfway through. In her time in New York, there is a sort of chilling mania behind her descriptions of things and a horrific chain of casual events such as the various Doreen escapades and Esther’s encounter with the “woman hater.” When she starts to actually “lose her mind,” the things she experiences are less interesting, her descriptions of things lose some spark [while this may be interpreted as a product of her mental illness, it reads more like Plath using up all her tricks in the first 90 pages]. Additionally, she doesn’t ever really delve into what she’s feeling when she starts to go under, other then a few nebulous and brief descriptions of being under “the bell jar.” The latter half of the novel reads entirely like exposition and so much of her voice is gone as she flatly describes what is happening to her with an undertone of Plath still thinking she’s clever with jejune and lackluster metaphors to describe the things around her. So, what critics set up to be elevated madness ended up being depression, and the second half of the novel becomes simply boring.
Those are my thoughts on The Bell Jar. Overall it is definitely worth a read. Deserves to be a classic. I don’t understand why people quote Plath so often from her journals and not from this novel or from any of her poems. Which are all brilliant. Go read Plath, and if you’re up for a not-so-uplifting read, pick up The Bell Jar.
