By: Emily Papleux

The emancipating yet conflicting mind of Esther Greenwood is a labyrinth of solemn memories delved into by Sylvia Plath in a twisted dissection of mental illness. This Pulitzer Prize winning novelist creates a character so understandable yet so disconnected from the world around her, that you have no other choice but to flip to the next page. Plath’s goal seemed not to appease her readers, but for them to get to a point in which they empathize with the experiences that led to Esther’s unwinding of the mind. Though it was a mere 200+ pages, I savored every page and made it last a few weeks. There’s also the matter of the fact of its apparent racism, sexual assault, and suicide attempts which should be greatly considered upon buying.

I got attached to the disgust and loneliness Esther constantly felt in her world, and more so when she had to put up with Buddy Willards clumsy and misogynistic courting of her. I thought it was the funniest thing that the first time she “saw” a man, she “felt very depressed” and tried her best to forget about the image. The metaphor of the fig tree impacted me the most. The metaphor describes fresh and ripe figs hanging from a tree. “One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was …” The figs represented all the different paths Esther could take. She was so intimidated by the amount possibilities/figs, that she found herself unable to pick one, leaving her starved. This is something almost every human being has experienced in their lifetime and made me open my eyes to the many possibilities in front of me, like Esther, especially as a graduating senior in high school.

I absolutely adored Betsy, even though her sunny disposition didn’t quite appeal to Esther. When Betsy and Esther covered the sound of each other vomiting in the taxi’s cab with coughing noises, I annotated little hearts next to the underlined paragraph. I wouldn’t say I completely disliked Doreen’s character, but her attachment to Lenny Shepherd was unsavory at the least, seeming as how they got together on intoxication, and saw less and less of Esther after that night.

There were many things Esther did that I didn’t agree with, such as leaving Doreen unconscious in a pool of her own vomit. “I decided the only thing to do was to dump her on the carpet and shut and lock my door and go back to bed” Not exactly best friend material if you ask me. And then disguising herself as someone completely different than her own being, only to push them away didn’t just add onto the plot but made me dislike her as a whole.

I give this book a 2.5/5 stars on my personal scale. At first, I was intimidated, because this book is considered a great classic, and was praised by almost everyone. I found myself liking it and flipping through pages for days and days until my fingers gave out, but then the plot seemed to slow down and take more time (in the periods in which she was held in the psychiatric ward), which my mind couldn’t adjust to. The Bell Jar is a great read for anyone who like psychological thrillers and mind-twisting genres, but isn’t sensitive to gore, sexual assault, racism, sexism, or suicide attempts.