...Review: The Bell Jar

A review of Sylvia Plath's only novel, and a reflection on life inside the bell jar.

On this beautiful, bright, sunny May day, I am going to tackle a dark subject. I don't claim to have much knowledge of it, nor presume to lecture on how it should be dealt with. I just think it needs to be talked about.
 Depression is an illness, and many more people suffer from it than we can even begin to imagine. It can come in different forms, and be triggered by different things and experiences, but it is a genuine condition and as such it deserves to treated thus. Clinical depression can make life, which is hard enough at the best of times, a living hell. I don't want to go too much into this, as I'm simply not qualified to talk about severe forms of depression, but if anyone is struggling with it, and has not yet seen anyone about it, start here: http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Depression/Pages/Introduction.aspx



Beautiful, talented and tormented: Sylvia Plath

 Anyone can suffer with depression, especially some of the more minor forms. Seasonal Affective Disorder, known appropriately as SAD, in estimated to affect approximately 7% of the population every winter. Also known colloquially as the 'winter blues', sufferers of SAD find themselves feeling negative, apathetic, sleeping more yet feeling fatigued and filled with a sense of hopelessness or impending doom during the months with less sunlight. It can also cause over-eating leading to weight gain, loss of libido and increased anxiety. The majority of humans experience some of these symptoms during winter anyway, but the effects are expotentially increased if you suffer from SAD, have recently been through a traumatic experience or are prone to depressive periods anyway. Illnesses such as glandular fever are also known to provoke episodes of depression.

 The Bell Jar is a deeply moving piece of work, one of the best books written in the first person I have ever read. It is personal, disturbing, witty and very readable. This is, of course, because it is Sylvia Plath's story. Not completely autobiographical, but close enough to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. Sylvia Plath is best known for her poetry, whose feminist, personal and pyschoanalytical slants still shock and move today. She married another celebrated poet, Ted Hughes, but their marriage soon fell apart. Living with her two children, destitute and succumbing to the depression she'd battled all her life, Plath gassed herself, aged 30.  The Bell Jar tells the story of her early years, through the thin guise of Esther Greenwood. This nineteen year old, whose academic brilliance has been rewarded through scholarships and now a placement at a New York magazine, is suffocating inside her own glass bell jar, looking out at the world, but not experiencing it. She is detached from everything around her, even as she recognises why she should be appreciating it all. Trapped at home for a year after being rejected for a writing course, she becomes lethargic and introverted. Soon she turns to death as a way out of the bell jar, but cannot bring herself to carry it through, her natural instinct to live is too strong. But by now people have noticed, and she is taken to a psychiatric hospital and subjected to electro-shock therapy. She gets a second chance, but others she knows are not so lucky.

 Plath's life story is an uncomfortable read, but a compelling one. I found myself drawn to this character, to the writer, and I empathised with her. More than I ever imagined I would. I too am struggling through a difficult part of my life right now, the academic without study, the nineteen year old bound to home in my bell jar when I should be out forging my future. Thank goodness I haven't reached the point Plath did, but there were enough similarities for my heart to go out to this character, this woman, and all who suffer with the severity she did. This is an essential read for all who are struggling with their lives, or who have someone close who is struggling with depression. It is not an easy read, but a revealing one. There is no happy ending in Plath's life, as we know, but as we reach the end of the journey reccounted in The Bell Jar, one feels there might be hope for her. For all who have struggled. The sun is shining, there are people who love you, and bell jars are only made of glass, and they CAN be broken.