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Title: Spark Notes The Bell Jar
ISBN: 1586634747
Author:
Sylvia Plath
SparkNotes Editors
Publicate Date: 2002-07-15
Publish: 2002-07-15
List Price: $4.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $7.50
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $7.50
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1: The most famous book you've never read
How did I go 34 years without picking up and reading this gem? I'll tell you...It is not included on any public school reading list that I have ever seen and every college literature course that I took (just for fun) never examined Sylvia Plath's writing. Instead I had the misfortune of several lit. courses that focused on less talented modern poets/writers.
In 1963, this book would have been shocking. The main theme is mental disturbia, suicide, losing virginity, (an all out attack on the quiet suburban status quo.)
As I read this book with the jaded perspective of a modern day American citizen, I couldn't shake the overwhelming feeling of innocence this 40 year old story emits.
This book is like a three year old child attempting to shock her parents with something "provocative" but falling short of the parental outrage so desired and ending up with parental amusement.
It is only a sign of the times. In 1963 this story of Esther Greenwood most likely provided the 1-2 punch. (Only a feeling on my part, as I was not around in those days.)
Don't think I am putting this book down in my review. I enjoyed every minute I spent reading this story. There was a time that I would read a book in two days. I haven't done that in several years. Too busy, too tired, too distracted.
I couldn't stop reading the Bell Jar. My laundry, dishes, and vacuuming took a hit on this one. I was tempted to take it to work with me. Thankfully it was not a 1000 page book. I am back to full capacity once again.
I suggest you read this classic and keep one thing in mind, Sylvia Plath based this on her own crack-up in college. It is a heavy thought to me,the reader, knowing that she eventually lost her battle to her mental demons years later while living with her two young children.
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2: Started out great
I thought the beginning was excellent; I really liked the first paragraph. Very tight writing, but then it started to falter. I know it's due to the emotional unraveling of Esther, but it just fell apart for me. Still worth reading.
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3: how did I miss this one??
As many other reviewers have stated, this book is filled with poetry. When I finished reading the last line, I flipped right to the first page and re-read it. I have only done that a few times in my life (most recently with "The Terror" by Dan Simmons). In High School I was required to Read "Catcher in the Rye" several times. Never once was this book even suggested. I have always enjoyed CITR, and have read it many times both for pleasure and requirement. I had heard of Plath, but had no idea that she wrote such a book. I only recently heard about it from my Mental-Floss mag. I am so glad that I read it, a classic, a gem!
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4: Believe the Hype
Sylvia Plath has in many circles been something of the poster child for modern nihilism, almost to the point of a cultural in-joke (see Fight Club), but the first thing I was struck with was how witty and humorous The Bell Jar starts. For example, this passage:
"I'd discovered, after a lot of extreme apprehension about what spoons to use, that if you do something incorrect at table with a certain arrogance, as if you knew perfectly well you were doing it properly, you can get away with it and nobody will think you are bad mannered or poorly brought up. They will think you are original and very witty."
Second, it didn't take long to figure out how much modern "chick lit" owes to Plath. Before shopaholics and Prada-wearing Devils, Plath had already been there and done that, all the way down to the poor girl working in the NYC fashion magazine angle.
Third, I was touched by the humanity that Plath brings to some tricky subjects: coming of age, sexuality, career-setting, societal pressure, care for the mentally ill, homosexuality, and social shallowness, just to name a few. Her descriptions of Esther Greenwood's trip into madness isn't like watching a specimen under her famous bell jar; you get the feeling that you're watching a living, breathing human being who is trying to find a way out of the mental and emotional box canyons in which she feels trapped.
I felt myself connected to Esther in ways that I didn't feel in that other work of 60's young adult angst, The Catcher in the Rye. Where Esther Greenwood is smart, creative, troubled, and desperate, Holden Caulfield is merely smug, whiny, spoiled, and self-obsessed. It's not hard to see why Caulfield resonated with many 60's social elites, since they share some of the same characteristics. In my opinion, Sallinger and Plath shouldn't even share shelf space--The Bell Jar is a deeper, more emotionally involved, and ultimately better written work.
Plath's first calling was as a poet; The Bell Jar was the only novel she ever published. Her poet's background served her well, as her prose flows along the pages. I think the book starts a bit better than it ends, but her writing style throughout is a wonder.
As for The Bell Jar being a scathing commentary on her personal acquaintances, I didn't get that vibe. It's hard to know what those personal relationships were like, but I got these sense of a person writing about what she knew (Plath had her own mental breakdown in 1953). I can see where some of those people would have been offended, but The Bell Jar was supposed to be the first half of a two volume work, the other half of which was never produced due to Plath's untimely death.
Lastly, it's good to remember that The Bell Jar was written in the early sixties and largely prefigures the feminist movement. It's often waved around as a feminist novel, and it certainly takes up some of those themes, but The Bell Jar predates political feminism, and in one of the more poignant passages, foresees the arguments of feminism and their ultimate rejection. Part of the passage is:
"Of course, the famous woman poet at my college lived with another woman--a stumpy old Classical scholar with a cropped Dutch cut. And when I told the poet I might well get married and have a pack of children someday, she stared at me in horror. `But what about your career?' she had cried.
My head ached. Why did I attract these weird old women? There was the famous poet, and Philomena Guinea, and Jay Cee, and the Christian Scientist lady and lord knows who, and they all wanted to adopt me in some way, and, for the price of their care and influence, have me resemble them."
In the end, The Bell Jar is a remarkable work--not merely just important, but also a good read. If you haven't read it yet, you should. It's amazing to think what Plath might have written had she lived longer.
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5: "To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream."
Admitting that you love this book is a bit like doing same about a train wreck, in this case the tragedy being Sylvia Plath's startling real-life spiral towards suicide. Well, then...guilty as charged. I enjoyed this book from its beginning "It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs..." through to the bitter end. Early on, she declares, (p 2) "I was supposed to be having the time of my life." Esther Greenwood and eleven other young ladies (p 3) "had all won a fashion magazine contest, by writing essays and stories and poems and fashion blurbs, and as prizes they gave us jobs in New York for a month, expenses paid, and piles and piles of free bonuses, like ballet tickets and passes to fashion shows..." Unfortunately, instead of elation and excitement at such an opportunity, of it, she writes (p 3) "I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo."
The Bell Jar follows her experiences as an intern in NYC during the early 1950s, college life (dating, avoiding her TB afflicted boyfriend, trying to lose her virginity), and mental decline, including time spent in a psych ward for electroshock therapy. This semi-autobiographical novel, filled with telling statements about her mental state; (p 71) "I was only truly happy until I was nine years old," (p 15) "I felt like a hole in the ground," (p 57) "I felt dull and flat and full of shattered visions," (p 81) "I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterwards you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state," (p 109) "A summer calm laid its soothing hand over everything, like death," and (p 151) "If you were going to kill yourself, how would you do it?" is a terrific, telling trip down lunacy lane. Also good: Girl Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, and A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar.
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