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The Bell Jar (Modern Classics)

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The Bell Jar: A Novel (Perennial Classics) Hardcover – June 11, 2013

by Sylvia Plath (Author)

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A Special Hardcover Edition to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Publication of Sylvia Plath's Remarkable Novel

“It is this perfectly wrought prose and the freshness of Plath’s voice in The Bell Jar that make this book enduring in its appeal.” — USA Today

The shocking, realistic, and intensely emotional novel about a woman battling mental illness and societal pressures written by iconic American writer Sylvia Plath.

Esther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. In her acclaimed and enduring masterwork, Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that her neurosis becomes palpably real, even rational—as accessible an experience as going to the movies. A deep penetration into the darkest and most harrowing corners of the human psyche, The Bell Jar is an extraordinary accomplishment and a haunting American classic.

Amazon.com 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.

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"

From the Inside Flap

The Bell Jar is a classic of American literature, with over two million copies sold in this country. This extraordinary work chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, successful - but slowly going under, and maybe for the last time. Step by careful step, Sylvia Plath takes us with Esther through a painful month in New York as a contest-winning junior editor on a magazine, her increasingly strained relationships with her mother and the boy she dated in college, and eventually, devastatingly, into the madness itself. The reader is drawn into her breakdown with such intensity that her insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is rare in any novel. It points to the fact that The Bell Jar is a largely autobiographical work about Plath's own summer of 1953, when she was a guest editor at Mademoiselle and went through a breakdown. It reveals so much about the sources of Sylvia Plath's own tragedy that its publication was considered a landmark in literature. This special twenty-fifth anniversary edition includes a new foreword by Frances McCullough, who was the Harper & Row editor for the original edition, about the untold story of The Bell Jar's first American publication.

From the Back Cover

A Special Hardcover Edition to Commemorate the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Publication of Sylvia Plath's Remarkable Novel

Sylvia Plath's shocking, realistic, and intensely emotional novel about a woman falling into the grip of insanity

Esther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. In her acclaimed and enduring masterwork, Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that her insanity becomes palpably real, even rational—as accessible an experience as going to the movies. A deep penetration into the darkest and most harrowing corners of the human psyche, The Bell Jar is an extraordinary accomplishment and a haunting American classic.

About the Author

Sylvia Plath was born in 1932 in Massachusetts. Her books include the poetry collections The Colossus, Crossing the Water, Winter Trees, Ariel, and Collected Poems, which won the Pulitzer Prize. A complete and uncut facsimile edition of Ariel was published in 2004 with her original selection and arrangement of poems. She was married to the poet Ted Hughes, with whom she had a daughter, Frieda, and a son, Nicholas. She died in London in 1963.

Print length

320 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Harper
Publication date

June 11, 2013
Dimensions

5.38 x 1.05 x 8.25 inches
ISBN-10

0060174900
ISBN-13

978-0060174903
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper; Anniversary edition (June 11, 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0060174900
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0060174903
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.38 x 1.05 x 8.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #18,458 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #548 in Women's Friendship Fiction
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- #1,820 in Literary Fiction (Books)

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Sylvia Plath

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Sylvia Plath was born in 1932 in Massachusetts. Her books include the poetry collections The Colossus, Crossing the Water, Winter Trees, Ariel, and The Collected Poems, which won the Pulitzer Prize. Plath is credited with being a pioneer of the 20th-century style of writing called confessional poetry. Her poem "Daddy" is one of the best-known examples of this genre.

In 1963, Plath's semi-autobiographic novel The Bell Jar was published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas"; it was reissued in 1966 under her own name. A complete and uncut facsimile edition of Ariel was published in 2004 with her original selection and arrangement of poems. She was married to the poet Ted Hughes, with whom she had a daughter, Frieda, and a son, Nicholas. She died in London in 1963.

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Nicholas S Guthrie

if you are a person you should read this book

Reviewed in the United States on January 4, 2024

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This tale is very close to home for me. I find the narrator, Esther, to be as insufferable as myself when I am lost in thoughts on the fig I chose and the figs I left to rot. It’s easy to put myself in her shoes because, though scattered, her thoughts and pains are my thoughts and pains. I need a lot of self reflection and therapy after this one, but recommend it to everyone who has ever been lost in life or mourned a life they never had.

13 people found this helpful

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Brian C.

Transcends its flaws...

Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2016

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I read this book almost a year ago now and I am just now getting around to writing my review. Luckily, I took some notes but it is still not super fresh in my memory, so I apologize for that, though, perhaps, I have a little more perspective on it now (that is what I am going to claim anyway). My overall impression of the book was of a somewhat flawed novel (more on the flaws later), but also a novel that transcends its flaws, to some degree at least, through raw emotional power. It may not be polished, or accomplished, or refined enough for the likes of a Harold Bloom (I hate Harold Bloom, by the way), but it is primal, and it is beautiful in the same way that a scream is sometimes more beautiful and powerful than the most refined poetry. The novel is dark, it deals with depression and suicide, but it also has humor, and it was in some of the humor that I felt like Plath’s voice really came through most convincingly. I will simply list what I think some of the virtues and some of the flaws of the novel are.

One flaw, I think, is Plath’s over-reliance on metaphor. Plath often attempts to come up with a powerful metaphor to describe the state of mind of her protagonist. Her metaphors are sometimes powerful and beautiful but I think she uses them too much. I think there are generally more powerful ways to convey a character’s state of mind. For example, in The Catcher in the Rye - a novel I may be referencing a lot since there are a lot of similarities between the two novels and because I think Salinger’s novel is ultimately more successful - there is a scene where Holden is quite depressed and he is riding in a Taxi cab. He reaches back into his hair and feels that some of the dampness in his air has turned to ice. This physical description is actually a more powerful way to convey Holden’s depression than a metaphor (rather than saying “I felt a loneliness as deep as the ocean”, etc.). Tone of voice can also convey a great deal. If the novel is narrated in an hysterical tone of voice, or one of the characters takes on an hysterical tone of voice, it often draws the reader right into the state of mind of the character rather than using a metaphor to describe it from the outside.

I will say that sometimes Plath's metaphors are right on the money. In one scene Esther is waiting in a waiting room to see Buddy Willard, who is a boy that she has been dating, and it is clear he is much more enthused about the relationship than she is. While she is waiting she sees a fountain and “The fountain spurted a few inches into the air from a rough length of pipe, threw up its hands, collapsed and drowned its ragged ribble in a stone basin of yellowing water.” I like this metaphor for two reasons. First, she is describing an actual physical object in the environment so its use as a metaphor here is disguised. Second, even though it is an actual object in the room it perfectly describes her feelings for Buddy Willard, it is an objective correlate in T.S. Eliot’s terms. She is trying to be excited about seeing Buddy but all she can muster is a spurt that winds up just dribbling down and drowning in its own depths. Plath is also sometimes able to convey mood powerfully without relying on metaphors: in her descriptions of her hot baths, for instance, I think we get a better feeling for her depression than in her metaphors.

Another flaw is: I do not think that the character of Esther Greenwood is as well developed as Holden Caulfield. What was Esther like before her episode of depression? Throughout the novel she can sometimes be quite cruel. Is that a result of the distorting effects of the bell jar or was that always a part of her personality? We learn that she is ambitious, and a good student, and we pick up bits and pieces here and there, but the character is vague, and her voice as a narrator is too literary to reveal much about her character. Holden does not narrate in the voice of a writer but Esther does. It feels like it is written in third-person, by Sylvia Plath, even though it is written in first-person, and is supposed to be the first-person narration of Esther Greenwood the character. When Esther says, at the very beginning of the book, “By nine in the morning the fake, country-wet freshness that somehow seeped in overnight evaporated like the tail end of a sweet dream” (1) it does not feel like a character speaking to us, it feels like a writing exercise. It is a well written sentence but it is not in the voice of the character. It is generic literary language, as is the line “Slowly I swam up from the bottom of a black sleep” (50). Compare this to a writer like Celine whose narrators speak in colloquial language mos of the time but can also utter a passage of the most beautiful poetry without it seeming like a literary device; it feels like it comes from the character and is something they would actually say.

The book is quite powerful in places. There is a scene where she is out with a man and he attempts to rape her. It was a frightening scene that I thought did a great job of conveying her helplessness and fear. I have often pondered the difference between seeing violence in a movie or reading about violence in a piece of literature and seeing violence in real life. A lot of the writers I like have a fairly violent aesthetic. Cormac McCarthy, for example. Violence in the works of Cormac McCarthy conveys some kind of aesthetic emotion that is difficult to describe but it is very different from the feeling one has when one sees violence in real life. I have been in a few situations in my life where violence suddenly erupted without warning and the adrenaline starts flowing immediately. It is not an aesthetic or contemplative emotion at all. I thought the scene where the man attempts to rape Esther succeeded in conveying the kind of emotion one feels when violence is actually witnessed. It made the reader feel, to some degree, what it would feel like to actually be in a situation, rather than contemplating it from an aesthetic distance.

I thought Plath’s use of foreshadowing was also a mixed bag. Foreshadowing is a great way to draw the reader in and keep their attention and their interest. I will say, I never had trouble remaining interested in Plath’s novel, but there were some foreshadows that failed to pay off. Very early in the book Esther makes reference to a corpose that Buddy makes her see. I was sort of expecting a pay off, and while Esther does eventually narrate the scene, it does not have a huge impact. On the other hand, there is some brilliant foreshadowing in the opening when Esther is contemplating the execution of the Rosenbergs when Esther can’t help wondering what it would be like to be burned alive “along all your nerves”, which foreshadows her own electroshock therapy.

All in all, I thought Plath’s novel was quite satisfying and powerful despite its flaws. I would liken it to blues music. I am not a music historian, and I actually know very little about the history of the blues, but the analogy to me is this: the blues musicians did not possess all the musical training or sophistication of the great composers. They were not composing music that was as complex or refined as Mozart or Beethoven. But, they managed to express themselves very powerfully with the means at their disposal. In some ways, more powerfully than the more refined composers. They were expressing real suffering, without filter, and people respond to it on a gut level. I think Plath’s novel is like blues music in that way. While there are some flaws in her technique no one can doubt that she is expressing something real and that connects with people. Which is why I think this novel is still so popular in spite of naysayers like Harold Bloom. Critics often attempt to tell artists how they should go about expressing themselves, as if they were trying to channel the waters of a flood, but water has a tendency to follow its own will and explode wherever it wants, and I think we should be grateful for that.

62 people found this helpful

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Ricky 419

Should be required reading for all English literature students

Reviewed in the United States on January 9, 2024

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Above all, the raw honesty, but also the humour, the gentle acceptance of the world as it is, and the insightful reportage of the world of inpatient in psychotherapy are all present in good measure here.

4 people found this helpful

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Anne Pantano

A descent into deoression

Reviewed in the United States on December 20, 2023

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Esther, a gifted young woman starts to lose her grip on reality as she tries to succeed in the stifling male dominated world of the mid 1950s. Failures start to pile up and take their toll on her sanity. Can she fight her visions of herself as a failure and begin to build her life out of mental institutions.

4 people found this helpful

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Sam Weller

‘This is (not) the light of the mind’

Reviewed in the United States on March 12, 2022

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For years I avoided Sylvia Plath, especially “The Bell Jar”. I did not want to dwell in a world that I had known only to well with family and friends. Looking for some poetry to read, I decided after all this time to pick up “Ariel”. The initial poems of the collection left me wanting more and then I became fixated on a few that kept running through my head like a broken record.
Next, I decided to read her novel. But, I found it’s relentless and myopic focus hard to internalize, for how can any have hope of recovery in world so limited and narrow minded as to regard every sorrow, every grief, and every dissatisfaction as part of the big “I”. To recover from depression or manic obsessions, one must acknowledge the collective unconscious presence of consciousness. It’s an essential step and platform from which to discover a self free to be happy in sad times, to be hopeful in times filled wit despair, most importantly to feel connected in times of despondent loneliness. There is a thin line between the choice to live and the the choice to die. Sometimes that choice can turned from negative to positive based upon the light of the mind. When turned off, the life goes black. When turned on, life can be full of light. There is a reality that no matter how hard you try for others, the choice might be disappointing to you. Regardless, the the ability to choose, or to be reminded of the choice is in itself the stuff of being a part of the active collective (un)conscious.
“The Bell Jar” left me feeling depleted. There was little or no hope there, as there sadly was not in this great poet’s life. Her life wasn’t an act of unbridled narcissism. It was encased in a state of nihilism, where she where she wanted to happy-but her choices were limited. Often when a person is gifted and intellectually blessed, they are able to counter every effort of recovery by using those gifted aspects of their personality with authoritative negativity. In the end game, the down to earth choices to live or to die are measured against seemingly impossible odds which churn in their mind like a summer tornado, until that person becomes aware of the fragile nature of the “superior mind”. The discovery often comes too late. And the gradients of choice cannot be absorbed into a digestive tract that is healthy and fruitful in the final analysis. Or, it can work; that’s the beauty of choice.

19 people found this helpful

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Pagana

Quality

Reviewed in the United States on January 9, 2024

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Arrived on time & in good condition

Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2024

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This has been on my TR list for years, I knew the emotions behind this story warranted this to only be read at the right time. There’s strong feelings behind Esther’s life experiences as a woman during a time period where women have one purpose …. Get married and bear children. The mental conflict of thinking you are broken for not wanting this and society perceptions of a woman battling depression and feeling so alone in this.
While not your typical “happy” read I’m glad I read this.

One person found this helpful

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priscila

Bueno

Reviewed in Mexico on December 31, 2023

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Llegó a tiempo y en perfectas condiciones.

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Lívia

muito bom

Reviewed in Brazil on December 1, 2023

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chegou em ótimo estado e super rápido

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Giorgia

Tutto perfetto

Reviewed in Italy on February 8, 2024

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Non mi sento di dare una recensione alla scrittura del libro nel dettaglio perché non ne ho la competenza. Nel complesso un bellissimo libro pieno di introspezione, se vi piace il genere lo consiglio.

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ac

great book

Reviewed in Germany on January 29, 2024

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delivery was fast and the boom is very good, i recommend it

Eduardo Grau

Regalo perfecto

Reviewed in Spain on December 29, 2023

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