Ok I'm going to start this with my predominate thought throughout the novel...
How did anyone who read this novel before Sylvia Plath decided to stick her head in an oven NOT KNOW she was going to commit suicide?
Being her only novel, it is an absolutely amazing one and by far one of the favorite ones I read this year. But I can't help but reiterate that my primary thought throughout the majority if it was okay, she is having a major love affair with the idea of killing herself. Like this wasn't just thoughts for a novel because it is all too real and too romanticized. She wants this. She needs this.
Start with a girl, Esther Greenwood, who pretty much anyone can identify with, especially someone in my position. She gets an amazing internship through a very prominent magazine in NYC for the summer and these amazing opportunities and bonuses. She is basically living the high-life however she doesn't seem to want any of it. She is not stimulated by the glitz and glamour the way other girls are. If anything they seem to just overwhelm her, though she plays it off sarcastically and by telling amusing stories of events and adventures of other girls in her internship.
During all this time she seems to only be excited for the possibility of a writing course she applied for with a world famous author. However, when she returns back to her home in Boston she finds out she is not accepted and has to begin to make new plans for her future. But as time progresses she seems to become overwhelmed if not depressed by the choices she has available.
"If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell"
So begins the time of no sleep and sleep deprivation driving her crazy, leading to the visit to a psychiatrist. Very typical for the time he is a male doctor whom, from her perspective, seems unable to relate and immediately suggests electro shock therapy.
"To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream"
Her mental state continues to worsen, dragging her deeper and deeper into dark thoughts of depression and then eventual suicidal thoughts. The thoroughness of the thoughts she has (written by Sylvia Plath) are actually frightening because somehow she, being the supposed crazy person, makes them make sense. Her final attempt sends her to a new mental hospital where she is given better care and is finally able to express some of her greatest fears.
Throughout the novel she constantly discusses a past boyfriend Buddy, who considers himself her fiance. However through series of different memories and contact with him reveal that she resents him and his family and wants nothing to do with him. And it is better understood when you realize what she fears the most. She fears the sexual role of a woman in society. Being placed in this role with pressure to become a wife and pregnant and have kids. During one such recollection she reflects back that Buddy has said that he has had sex with another woman before. Esther then becomes obsessed with the notion that she also needs to have sex with someone else so that Buddy can not hold this power over her of being more sexually experienced than her. She seems to resent the notion that men don't have to live with the consequences of sex the way a woman does if she were to become pregnant. It is only after her doctor introduces her to a form of birth control that she feels released from the societal pressures of having to be a wife and have kids.
This novel just really got to me on so many levels. I couldn't put it down. For a student getting ready to leave college, isn't the possibilities out there that are the scariest thing? This fear that you'll overreach and never achieve what you wanted. At least for myself this was a familiar feeling. It is terrifying trying so hard to go after something that might possible end in failure. And in her case the main thing that she was excited for, the writing course, did slip from her grasp as well as all the plans she had made for the next year. It would be so easy to just say "I give up" and slip into a depression of perpetual failure.
This novel also continued to speak to the feminist in me, bringing up so many points of fear that every woman can relate to. I don't want to direct this only to women, as if a guy couldn't possibly understand what Esther Greenwood was feeling, but it does take a woman to understand that fear. It is embedded in this patriarchal society that we are not the equivalent of a man even more so during the time this novel was written. And it is true that women are the ones who really have to fear the idea of pregnancy. For Esther, she was overwhelmed so much by possibilities, but she seemed to be just as overwhelmed at the forced nature of becoming Buddy's wife and feeling inferior to him for the rest of hers.
"But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defenseless I couldn't do it. It's as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get to."
But the suicidal thoughts and attempts were by far the most shocking. It was the depth, the complexity in which she thought and reasoned through these thoughts that made this novel so captivating. It wasn't what you've ever read or seen before in a TV show or a movie. It wasn't like she said she wanted to die and then put some plan into action. She really explains her thoughts and why her life needed to end. Why she felt so trapped under this bell jar of unhappiness, trapped in her negative thoughts, unable to breathe.
That is what was so terrifying as a reader. She actually made suicide make SENSE. I don't consider myself a very depressed person. Even in my current state of uncertainty for what comes next after college I feel excited more than anything. However, when I read this novel I couldn't help but find my mind wandering to that dark corner of my mind, the one that so many people suppress. Somehow, Sylvia Plath's words brought those deepest, darkest thoughts to the forefront and for me, made me face them.
Unlike her, however, I am not suicidal and even Esther Greenwood survived, overcoming her darkest demons. However, Sylvia did not. It now seems more evident, at least to me, that this book was possibly meant to be a cathartic release, but in the end become her suicide note.
I guess for some the idea of reading a novel like this would be scary because lets face it, suicide is not exactly a fun topic. However, the novel seemed to have a bright light at the end of the tunnel. The outcome was exactly the opposite of how the entire novel seemed to be going. I think it gives hope, for those who are going through the toughest of times.
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