The Bell Jar

by Sylvia Plath, copyright 1971 by Harper & Row, New York, NY. First published in Great Britain in 1963 under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas.

I began this book with some trepidation, knowing it was an autobiographical novel by a woman who later committed suicide. Strangely enough, though, I didn’t find it as depressing as I did frustrating, because I kept trying to think of some way to help her out of her distorted view of the world, the “bell jar” from which she didn’t know how to escape.

Ms. Plath’s character, Esther Greenwood of Boston, is an acute observer of people, not a unique characteristic of a writer. She is also naïve, extremely timid in unfamiliar situations, and self-conscious to the extreme. At times she writes of the situations caused by her naiveté and timidity with humor, as in the incident with the fingerbowl. Other times she is so dismayed she literally runs away from the situation, which encourages her to go deeper inside herself. And the deeper inside she gets, the more miserable she is. She wants to explain to others how she feels, at the same time refusing to.

For a book about depression, a quarter of which describes the ways Esther tries to kill herself, there’s still something surprisingly light about it, as if she is a passive observer standing on the outside looking in, unable to control what is going on inside herself. In one chapter she is trying to slit her wrists; in another she goes to the emergency room because she’s hemorrhaging and doesn’t want to bleed to death.

If nothing else, the book gave me partial insight into those who suffer from depression, and how they are victims not only of their mental condition but of the judgment and misunderstanding of others. I would read it again to catch details I missed before.