Show and Tell: It’s a Bell. It’s a Jar. It’s The Bell Jar!

The Bell Jar was what I read when 2008 was about to end. When I was in school I had a Plath's poem in my curriculum. Before every chapter, a short bio of the author(s) was provided. That is when I had heard first about this book. I finally found the book after so many years and read through. I am fascinated by Sylvia Plath's life and its tragic ending. The fact that this book is almost autobiographical increased the value of the book for me.

The book's ending left me a bit dissatisfied. It actually appeared that one more paragraph would have brought it to a more conclusive ending. Maybe I hoped that a few more pages would have taken me deeper into Plath's life?

Anyways there are certain parallels between Esther and me:

a. Her appetite. Esther had a healthy appetite and it is such a refreshing break from women who are too fussy about how little their tiny waists can accommodate.

b. The fact that she can't handle intimacy well. Esther's closest friend is Doreen, but in the book E is not shown to go overboard with caring for her as well. She also can't handle Doreen hanging around her too much.

c. Esther's love for hot water. I myself prefer water that is just slightly colder than scalding.

Esther constantly was seeking that the invisible bell jar surrounding her get lifted and that she get over the writer's block. One peculiar aspect of the book was the documentation of how suicidal Esther was. Can we still hold Ted Hughes responsible for the death of Plath, given that she was already going to be successful at it, given her efforts at perfecting it? Ted may have fuelled the attempt, but the seeds were already germinated.

I have myself swum the murky sea of depression. I think I first became aware of my mental state around the time I was 16, and it is a condition I still have not shared with the people around me. I know that it envelopes on its own, and goes away on its own. And when it does visit me, I do not turn into a violent, raging cow. Rather, there is a complete shut-off to the outside world.


Sample some memorable observations from her work

“… I’d discovered, after a lot of apprehension about what spoon to use, that if you do something incorrect at table with a certain arrogance, as if you knew perfectly well you were doing it properly, you can get away with it and nobody will think you are bad-mannered or poorly brought up. They will think you are original and very witty.”

“…I hate Technicolor. Everybody in a Technicolor movie seems to feel obliged to wear a lurid costume in each new scene and to stand around like a clotheshorse with a lot of very green trees or very yellow wheat or very blue ocean rolling away for miles and miles in every direction.” ///Did anybody ever recommend Bollywood movies to her?

“…Joan fascinated me. It was like observing a Martian or a particularly warty toad. Her thoughts were not my thoughts, nor her feelings my feelings, but we were close enough so that her thoughts and feelings seemed a wry, black image of my own.”

And my favourite –

“…There ought, I though, to be a ritual for being born twice – patched, retreaded and approved for the road.”

And here's where the Headmistress resides!

^WiseGuy^