I purchased The Bell Jar when I was in ninth grade and boy am I glad I didn't try to read it then. I'm also glad I didn't try to read it three years late when it was on my list of books to read at 17. And I'm also glad I didn't try to read it the next year when I was 18. Because, friends, 20 is the perfect age to read The Bell Jar. At least it was for me. At 14, 17, and even 18 I know I would have read The Bell Jar in a very different way then how I read it on the plane back from New York a week ago. I just don't think I would have had a) the emotional maturity to understand Esther Greenwood or b) the background knowledge of the time period to kind of get what was going on here.
The book reminded me so much of conversations with friends my freshman year of college. Conversations about feeling so trapped, as Esther is, by pregnancy and motherhood, or what we should do. But I feel this book has new sort of resonance now. Women have so many options now that I feel like it becomes a horrible thing if you do want to stay at home and be a mother. Where is the line drawn? Can you be a feminist and be a stay-at-home mom? In my opinion, you can, but that is a conversation you can have with me a coffee shop sometime.
Esther's journey through the novel is terrifying and beautiful. Terrifying because her fall to depression and insanity is so rational, so clear. She is thinking so clearly, that it could happen to anyone. But it is beautiful because of the way Plath uses language. When describing Doreen, a really annoying girl in the novel, she says, "Everything she said was like a secret voice speaking straight out of my own bones" (7). That is beauty. I'll be honest though, I kind of struggled with the book at the very beginning. I thought that Esther was a little annoying and kind of juvenile. Which is why I'm glad I waited to read this book until now, because I have a feeling that at 14 I would have idolized her. And that would not have been so great. The book reads very quickly though, and I was able to pull myself out of the beginning slump fairly easily. I pushed on mostly because of Plath's use of language and because I felt like I should probably read this book at some point. And I think you should probably read it too. Nothing like peer pressure.
This novel earned an A.
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