The Bell Jar

This book wasn't depressing at all! Sure, I mean, there were a couple of suicide attempts, several rounds in many many many hospitals, talk about slitting her wrists but depressing?? Nah........

However depressing it may have been, boring it most certainly was not! Sylvia Plath perfectly explored and portrayed the feelings of a perfectly normal person who happened to want to end her life, and it's no wonder: the story's mainly autobiographical. Esther Greenwood has apparently, to the outside world looking in, got the perfect life. She's at a good college, doing all the things she wants to do, she's got a lover, and, most importantly, she's come from somewhere in the middle of nowhere to New York. Whilst in New York for a month, she is supposed to be working for a high profile ladies magazine. Instead, she mostly spends the time with her friend Doreen meeting lads, getting thoroughly drunk and going back to their houses (hint hint). It is at this point, the first time this happens, when we start to realize that something is not quite right with Esther Greenwood, that she isn't quite "normal".

When she relates what has been going on with her and her sweetheart, we see the extent of her village's isolation from society, as the boys she meets are one and the same: cocky, annoying and convinced that they know best. Buddy Willard is training to be a doctor, and he frequently invites Esther over to Yale to watch him practice and she keeps asking him to show her something exciting. And so one day, he shows her a birth. Just watching this traumatic yet wonderful event freezes something between the two and makes her see Buddy  as a hypocrite instead of this beautiful god she saw him as before. There is one hilarious part of the book where Buddy Willard writes to her to ask for her hand, and she writes back furiously, saying she could never marry him as she didn't want her children to have a hypocrite for a father, and that she was engaged to a simultaneous interpreter.

The book also reveals certain taboos in society surrounding suicides, or mentally ill people. We see this in detail in the hospitals Esther visits after her attempted suicide; the nurses are rude and belittling. She is treated like a child who is not responsible enough to look after a piece of string on her own, as though she needs constant supervision. This doesn't change until she gets into a better hospital for less serious cases, and meets a doctor who really seems to understand her situation and treats her like a proper adult. This is a fantastic book and deserves more recognition than it is given normally! Next I'll be reading The Slap by Christos Tsolkas, so watch out for more updates!