mea culpa, mea culpa (The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath)

Member Name: demosthenes

Product:	The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Date:	31/10/01 (429 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: short, gripping, funny and tragic

Disadvantages: none

This novel was passed on to me by my beloved, who had told me how brilliant it was, but I had not believed her. Mea culpa, indeed. My perception of this novel was that it was for girls, but what I realised is that if that was true, then Catcher in the Rye is for boys. I’m sorry, I really am – I realise now what a silly, stereotypical notion it was.

I do think, in fact, that Esther Greenwood’s story and Holden Caulfield’s story make a fascinating pigeon pair. Both are about the teenage to early adult mind, and although one is told by and about a girl, and the other a boy, both hold true for everyone.

The novel begins in New York city, where Esther is one of twelve girls who have won a month’s internship at a NYC ladies’ fashion magazine. She is torn, in her allegiance, between naughty Doreen, whose exploits outside of the conventional excite Esther, and Betsy, who is a good girl who only wants the best for Esther. The girls spend their days at the magazine, under the thumb of one of the editors, and their nights in the city, either taking part in all the organised social events, as Betsy does, or finding their own fun, as Doreen does. Esther likes her editor, JC, and initially enjoys the work she is given. But, gradually, things begin to go, well, fig shaped.

Esther has a dream which sums up her predicament in the book, and is representative of the kind of 20s angst that young people have to go through today. 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. She is paralysed by choice, and as she tries to decide, the figs wither and rot and fall from the tree. This is the beginning of her breakdown.

As the time in New York draws to a close (and it is very entertainingly told by Plath), Esther begins to have to face the watershed of decision in her life
. She cannot commit herself to being the kind of girl that either Doreen or Betsy is, and ends up on the roof of her hotel releasing all her clothes to the wind, a metaphor for the way her identity is simultaneously being stripped from her, and the way in which she is letting it disintegrate. JC gives Esther a good talking to, and this has the opposite result to the motivation that JC probably thought she would create by trying to force Esther to declare a vocation for herself and start acting towards achieving it. Esther returns home to her mother, with only a shirt and a green skirt that are unwashed, and sinks into a depression.

At this point the novel almost changes character completely – it goes from being quite light-hearted and entertaining to being disturbing and mordant. But, Plath’s writing skill wins through, and the novel maintains, especially by the end, its wholeness. In fact, I think Plath does something quite brilliant, which is to drag her readers through a kind of echo of what Esther goes through: the feeling of being under the bell jar, constricted, suffocated. The book never becomes boring, it just changes.

Esther is a loveable character, in a similar way to Holden Caulfield. I am surprised, having now read it, that this book is not more popular and more highly regarded, but then I remember my attitude towards it before reading it, which I must have got from somewhere, and I begin to think that it is criminally undervalued. I thank my beloved for making me read it, and I urge you to do the same.

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