- Paperback: 391 pages
- Publisher: HarperLargePrint; Lrg edition (Oct 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0060573090
- ISBN-13: 978-0060573096
- Product Dimensions: 22.8 x 15.4 x 2.7 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (141 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 3,413,440 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Bell Jar (FF Classics)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Plath was an excellent poet but is known to many for this largely autobiographical novel. The Bell Jar tells the story of a gifted young woman's mental breakdown beginning during a summer internship as a junior editor at a magazine in New York City in the early 1950s. The real Plath committed suicide in 1963 and left behind this scathingly sad, honest and perfectly- written book, which remains one of the best-told tales of a woman's descent into insanity.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Review
"An enchanting book. The author wears her scholarship with grace, and the amazing story she has to tell is recounted with humor and understanding.""-- Atlantic Monthly"
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
91 of 92 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Sylvia Plath is probably one of the most recognisable female authors and poets of modern times, she will be largely remembered for her haunting poetry of depression and mostly autobiographical novel (the first and last) the Bell Jar in which her real life persona is replaced by Esther Greenwood, a young woman who is on the verge of breaking into the writing world. In the first section of the book Esther is an intern in New York working for a prestigious fashion magazine. It is clear from the outset that she has worries as she cannot find any immediate beauty in the cosmopolitan world of NY, she merely carries on day to day but it is clear the enjoyment and excitement is gone.
As the book progresses we see her return home where she essentially suffers a nervous breakdown in which she is unable to move from her room and concludes that the everyday tasks of life are too unbearable. She then goes on the journey into a deep depression in which she clearly considers the best method for suicide, has regular visits to a psychiatrist and spends time in a mental rehabilitation unit. The one thing that this book highlights is the terrible way in which mentally ill people were treated in the 50’s and early 60’s, the method of electric shock therapy to eradicate her depressed feelings leaves her scared of any other ‘help’ she may receive, and we see how petrified she becomes when next given this ‘treatment’ albeit once more under more friendlier circumstances.
The story is a powerful evocation of Plaths own mental health issues and by writing this book she successfully suggested to a quietened nation of other mental health sufferers that it was ‘ok’ to feel this way and that it happened to the best and most promising bright young things. The way in which the Bell Jar is still seen as a core piece of literature on depression shows the values it holds even today, when rivalled against other authors memoirs such as Elizabeth Wurtzel’s ‘Prozac Nation’ and later on ‘More, now, again’ she remains the original and possibly the best writer on the issue of depression and mental health.
20 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
As a real book worm, I knew that this book was semi-autobiographical before I read it, and I had thought that Plath would struggle to remove herself enough from her situation in order to be able to write about it in a subjective way. I am pleased to say however, that I was mistaken! Plath describes excellently the plunging depths of depressive illness, even conveying to me - someone who has never suffered from depression - the true despair and suffocation that can be experienced.
The bell-jar itself is a description of how it feels to fall into a period of depression- entering into a suffocating, surreal and distorted world where only you live- unable to communicate with anybody.
One piece of symbolism I really enjoyed in the book was the notion of the fig tree, and how your life can be represented by a fig tree...so many branches representing the many paths you could take in life. The choice of; which branch will lead you to a delicious fig?...but the ever conscious notion that if you take too long to decide your path, the figs will all be rotten by the time you pick one.
I really enjoyed this book. Excellent read.
The bell-jar itself is a description of how it feels to fall into a period of depression- entering into a suffocating, surreal and distorted world where only you live- unable to communicate with anybody.
One piece of symbolism I really enjoyed in the book was the notion of the fig tree, and how your life can be represented by a fig tree...so many branches representing the many paths you could take in life. The choice of; which branch will lead you to a delicious fig?...but the ever conscious notion that if you take too long to decide your path, the figs will all be rotten by the time you pick one.
I really enjoyed this book. Excellent read.
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This novel is the retrospective viewpoint of Esther Greenwood's (a thinly disguised Plath) mental breakdown. The narrative voice is lucid, yet disembodied. As Esther says in the opening paragraphs "I knew something was wrong with me that summer"...."I was supposed to be having the time of my life". It is as if the characher is saying 'this is what happened to me but it feels as if it happened to someone else' - a totally dislocating and disembodying experience.
The novel has a poignant poetic quality and I know we shouldn't read it with the author's biography in mind, but somehow I can't separate out her poetry from her life and from the novel.
The imagery of Esther discarding her useless clothes, (which she describes as "hanging limp as fish in my closet"), to the wind, across a New York skyline, is one example of what I perceive as as a disembodied experience. This is made explicit by Esther's observation that it was like scattering "a loved one's ashes". It is almost like an out-of -body experience, as if she had already died, or some part of her that she could not come to terms with had died. The same kind of disembodied experience is framed in Esther's swimming out to sea, where she imagines her shoes will be found on the beach,pointing like a soul compass towards her destiny. This is a staging of events:
"The whole landscape - beach and headland and sea and rock - quavered in front of my eyes like a stage backcloth".
All the best poets have a melancholic frame of mind and their work is, thus, infused. Plath's work epitomises this dark, descending, cloud of depression and frames it for us in the stale air of The Bell Jar.
Wonderful stuff!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
not as good as i'd hoped !
i was expecting some kind of literary art piece and to be
honest i was disappointed, the last quarter of the book
isn't bad but through most of it i had to force myself... Read more
honest i was disappointed, the last quarter of the book
isn't bad but through most of it i had to force myself... Read more
Published 10 days ago by jenny
The Bell Jar
Normally when I finish a book I'm pretty quick to figure out what review I'll write or what rating I'll give this but I'm just kinda blind hitting this one. Read more
Published 19 days ago by Louise Johnston
Plath's Inferno
The Bell Jar was my Catcher in the Rye as a teenager. Suffering from depression myself I connected with Esther Greenwood's journey through the darkest rooms of her psyche, which at... Read more
Published 22 days ago by Jack Heslop
Don't read it if you think you might be insane...
Yes, I said "Don't read it if you think you might be insane..." but that's purely because I think I'm a bit of a hypochondriac and am pretty convinced that I will be mentally... Read more
Published 23 days ago by Mr. I. R. W. Hoey
An Incredible Journey
When I ordered The Bell Jar it felt like I was paying to be tortured. It has a reputation of being a depressing book, but one well written, so in my quest for a good book, the... Read more
Published 27 days ago by J. C. Chamberlain
Beautiful and Profound
A beautifully structured and refreshing account of a mental downward spiral. It is all very subtle and slow, as it would have been whilst she was experiencing it herself.. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Rusalka
A wonderful, classic piece of literature
I first tried to read this when I was 15 and struggled, giving up after about 60 pages. I picked it up again in my twenties and it was as if I was reading a whole new book. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Verne
Losing grip
Esther's account of a couple of years during her time as a scholarship student. By degrees, she begins to lose her grip and we travel with her on this difficult journey. Read more
Published 3 months ago by JoTownhead
Review
So I bought it and I got it reasonably quick. I mean, someone had scrawled words in it, but I only found it charming, and I had bought one which I knew was used. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Ellen
The self/reflexive nature of depression
Sylvia Plath's first novel really brings the reader and fan closer to her perspective on life, making it easy to empathize with her character and her challenges in life. Read more
Published 4 months ago by lucy.sunshine
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