The Bell Jar Review

Writing in the first person, Plath offers genuine insight into Esther's most intimate thoughts, which immediately draws the reader into her journey, inviting her to experience the intensity and power of Esther's confusion, frustration, paranoia, and fear. She becomes engrossed with the idea of suicide; it is her oasis in life. Esther cannot keep the airless bell jar of depression and despair from descending over her. It has to be read with an open mind and a genuine interest in Plath’s writings.

Esther imagines herself in a fig tree: all around her, she sees figs that represent the various things she could do with her life, such as become a writer, or an editor, or marry Buddy, and so on. Despite its power, it is not a book for all. The honesty of the emotions presented within The Bell Jar will move the reader with a poignancy which will long be remembered. ied with the way society works and she no longer seems herself fitting in anywhere. She is paralysed by choice, and as she tries to decide, the figs wither and rot and fall from the tree. Gordon, who performs terrifying electroshock therapy on her, “I thought my bones would break and the snap and fly out of me like a split plant”, Esther now sees nothing about life that she like’s, she begins to suffocate behind the glass bell jar. It is not the most uplifting of books to read as Plath’s uncanny knack to make us feel what Esther is going through can be quite depressing.

Suddenly, Esther finds herself in a nightmare.

The Bell Jar is more than a confessional novel, it is a comic but painful statement of what happens to a woman's aspirations in a society that refuses to take them seriously, a society that expects electroshock to cure the despair of a sensitive, questioning young artist whose search for identity becomes a terrifying descent toward madness. Unable to sleep write or concentrate; she can see no point in life.