The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Goodreads Book Review:

A view from beneath the Bell Jar....ghostly and exquisite.  Protruding in escape from illusion, Plath is unmatched in depth of process and stride. A poet within the prose....a life within the poem, within death. 

I first read the paperback edition of this book back in 2015 and was instantly taken with Plath; her vision was something that I had never had before- her sight a veil beyond what I have ever been able to see. I was horrified with a force that struck at me, clung to me...and evolved into a respect that I still cannot explain. Sylvia Plath visited her way into my soul. 

I recently picked this book back up this week after my friend, Jimbo, read and reviewed it and found similar parallels. We have discussed a few of her poems on our poetry blog, Read Good Poetry, the last couple years and are currently in the process of a slightly more in-depth study of the poetry included in her book of poems, Ariel. I would highly recommend this book as a companion read with The Bell Jar. 

The Audible version of The Bell Jar as narrated by Maggie Gyllenhaal is also fantastic. Maggie does a wonderful job following the tone and structure of the story. I really enjoyed it, but would recommend first time readers to The Bell Jar to see Plath's words in hard copy format first or to follow along with the hardcopy version in conjunction with the audiobook at the same time (I love to read one chapter in hard copy form and then relisten to it on audio directly after!) because her words are too powerful just to see once...they must be felt time and time again...and often will- with or without your permission as a reader. They tend to haunt you until you are ready to really see them- ready to lift the lid of the jar for just a single breath. 

A few passages that I have gone back to from my first reading and from the reading this past week:

“I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow, the million moving shapes and cul-de-sacs of shadow. There was shadow in bureau drawers and closets and suitcases, and shadow under houses and trees and stones, and shadow at the back of people's eyes and smiles, and shadow, miles and miles and miles of it, on the night side of the earth.”

― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“I wanted to crawl in between those black lines of print, the way you crawl through a fence, and go to sleep under that beautiful big green fig-tree.”

― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defenseless that I couldn't do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get.”

― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“I felt myself melting into the shadows like the negative of a person I'd never seen before in my life.”

― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“All the heat and fear had purged itself. I felt surprisingly at peace. The bell jar hung suspended a few feet above my head. I was open to the circulating air. ”

― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“Maybe forgetfulness, like a kind snow, should numb and cover them. But they were a part of me. They were my landscape.”

― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“The only reason I remembered this play was because it had a mad person in it, and everything I had ever read about mad people stuck in my mind, while everything else flew out.”

― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream.”

― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence.”

― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“But I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure at all. How did I know that someday―at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere―the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn't descend again?”

― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar