read the bell jar

It started off slow for me,i didnt really enjoy it but since i had to study her and liked alot of her poetry i wanted to read her only novel. However, the aspect of the depression/treatment/how people viewed her was quite interesting,not much has changed from those times.I know the book is fiction but some of it was based on plaths own experiences. I could relate to what Esther was feeling like…that kinda scared me!

I did it. I read it… Neither a bad book, nor one of my favorites

uh uh uh… im on page 170. That is, 70 more pages and c’est fini. The thing is that I dont know if I really want to keep reading. It kind of bores me. This girl is crazy and I cant stand the idea of suicide. Hm… I might go to the library tomorrow or the book shop and get a new one!

1/3 of the way though! I’ll probably finish it this weekend…

That morning I had made a start.

I had locked myself in the bathroom, and run a tub full of warm water, and taken out a Gillette blade.

When they asked some old Roman philosopher or other how he wanted to die, he said he would open his veins in a warm bath. I thought it would be easy, lying in a tub and seeing the redness flower from my wrists, flush after flush through the clear water, till I sank to sleep under a surface as gaudy as poppies.

But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defenseless that I couldn’t do it. It was 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 at.

Normally I’m not that into the darker, more angsty stuff. However, I found myself reading this passage over and over again when I came across it. I’m not sure why.

Other than Esther “climbing to freedom” when she’s fitted for a diaphragm, there is only one other part that sticks out to me.

There must be quite a few things that a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them. Whenever I’m sad I’m going to die, or so nervous I can’t sleep, or in love with somebody I won’t be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then say: “I’ll go take a hot bath.”

...

I never feel so much myself as when I’m in a hot bath.

I suppose you can really take the two passages as one, if you believe suicide to be one of the many “cures” a hot bath can offer. (I don’t, for the record. No need to contact the police just yet.)

snore

Sylvia Plath is so overrated.

it’s interesting in a way. especially how plath feels that a bell jar is hanging right above her head all the time and can come down and trap her at any moment. Very interesting, a novel about a major depressive disorder.

I’ve been meaning to read this book for, like, 4 years and I finally finished it today. Sylvia Plath was an amazing writer. Her poems are pretty great too.

The Bell Jar is one of my favorite novels. The first time I read it in eighth grade, I could really identify with Esther. I’ve read it several more times since then and still love it. It’s incredibly well-written. I also love Sylvia Plath’s poetry, but not like I love this book. I wish she’d lived to write more prose. I wrote a seventeen-page paper on Plath’s work for AP English Language a few years ago, and it was the only time I’ve ever ENJOYED writing a paper.

Probably the best book I’ve read in 2006. I must admit that I’m more fascinated by Sylvia Plath’s life than by her poetry. But I loved this book. It was as if I was reading my own thoughts sometimes. Funny, sensitive, illuminating. Highly recommended.