101 Books to Read Before You Die discussion

Discuss the final part and the book as a whole.

The last section of this book, Esther is getting a better treatment at a new hospital. The doctor is friendly and Esther believes that this new doctor Dr.Nolan will also do something that will break this "goodness". But she finds herself wrong on this point.
This part also shows Esther's hatred towards her mother, but where as I find Esther's mom a simple loving woman. And Esther actually shows her hatred in actions too. But she is seemingly distracted from her suicidal tendencies when Joan, her old friend, gets admitted to the hospital.

Esther gets better with better treatment and is allowed to have trips alone to city. She is so frustrated to lose her virginity and she does too.

The book ends with Joan's suicide when Joan was released from the hospital but was living with one of the nurse. This suicide makes Esther wonder, where as she is cured now, whether the madness will come again?

Esther knows, she was ill, and now she is fine. But still has a doubt that the mental illness might come again.

The book left me feeling sad and disturbed. As Esther's story is based on Plath's herself, never did I feel that Plath might have added fictional into it. Esther's thoughts are Plath's, and that makes me pity such a great Writer and Poet.

Here's my review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Ugh. I just wrote a whole bunch about this book and then my computer unexpectedly shut off. Fun times! :)

I really, really enjoyed this book. I thought Plath's description of mental illness was spot-on. Knowing the small amount of information that I know about the author, before I even read the foreword or the biographical note in my copy (I read these after the book) I could tell that much, if not most of the book was based on Plath's own life experiences. It made me really sad to think of the tortured mind in which she lived before her tragic end.

I think it's easy to see how circumstances, all coming together, could have caused Esther's breakdown. She feels that the society she lives and works in is shallow, and she wants something deeper. She experiences a near rape.

Life is changing--she is moving from the city to live with with her mother again. In chapter 7 she describes how she is no good at anything, and that the only thing she is good at is winning scholarships and prizes, but "that era was coming to an end."

She talks in chapter 10 about learning shorthand, as that was recommended as a stable and smart way to earn money, but the thought of it makes her blank. She can't imagine living a life of monotony, and all of the "sensible" choices, to her, seem like monotony.

She doesn't want to be chained to homemaking all her life, but that is the expectation placed upon her.

Most of all, she wants to write poetry, but people around her like Buddy don't understand or appreciate its significance. He is a medical student, and could probably eventually provide a comfortable, stable life for Esther, but comfort, stability, and normalcy aren't her chief concerns.

In chapter 10, she talks about reading a book and straining to find hidden or symbolic meanings..."It probably signified something else as well...I counted the letters. There were exactly a hundred of them. I thought this must be important. Why should there be a hundred letters?" These types of things are what is important to Esther, and the only thing she feels capable of/good at doing. Finding (or writing) the meaning behind things. (Which is, of course, what made Plath such a brilliant poet.)

She wants to be a great writer, but she is frustrated, either that people can't recognize her genius, or that she isn't good enough to meet her goals in life. Maybe both.

It's easy, to me, to see how someone could become suicidal when the things that are the most deeply important to them are trivialized or misunderstood by everyone around them.

Then, I can also see how maybe Esther is prone to depression and her mind isn't always fair in the way it assesses things. She describes not being able to be happy in the country OR the city. She's just unhappy no matter what. Maybe any series of pressuring events might have triggered her mental illness.

I expected Esther to kill herself. I was surprised at the ending of the book.

This was a re-read for me. But, it had been so many years since I first read it that I had forgotten most of it. Plath is an outstanding writer. I was quickly drawn into Esther's story and stayed engrossed. Plath does a nice job of showing the gradual descent from the vivacious scholarship winner to the basement hole. I also thought that she did a great job showing a mind grabbing for rationale to make sense of the depression which, in fact, was not in the least situational. Here is a bright young woman with a stable home life and opportunity who can not find any satisfaction in anything. What I thought this did not do quite as well was to give the reader an experience of the heavy blanket over Esther's mind. We hear her playing with suicide methods, striking out irrationally and kicking a dietary worker, finding fault in everyone and everything, but I never felt as if I was under the surface of what she said and did. Nonetheless, it was a great read.

Irene, I am interested in your idea that Esther's depression was not situational.

You mentioned a stable home life. I agree that she wasn't abused or coming from a dysfunctional home. It seems to me that she was looking forward and realizing that she had done well in academia, but academia wasn't real life, and she wasn't competent to survive real life.

She couldn't cook. She mentioned her cooking friend being practical, implying that Esther herself was not practical. She couldn't do much of anything "real life" worthy, but she excelled in school and the problem was that school would be coming to an end. In chapter 7, she says, "The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn't thought about it." I think forseeing the end of her school career forced her to think about these things and she felt hopeless about her future.

She didn't get into the writing school that she wanted, and her mother wanted her to learn shorthand, which she saw as being in servitude to men. So even though her mother was not abusive in any way, moving home to live with her mother put Esther in a situation where she was living under a cloud of expectations that she felt she couldn't live up to. That's where I think a situation contributed to the problem, at least somewhat. It seems like if she could have gotten into the writing school or into a different situation where she could follow her passion and excel, or be encouraged and have people legitimize her passion instead of dismissing it, she might have been satisfied.

I do agree that things spiraled down to the point where her mind truly betrayed her and she did things like kick the dietary worker...she had a lot of senseless reactions to things.

This story reminds me of Holden Caulfield in "Catcher in the Rye," if you're familiar with it. It's like the main character does a lot of senseless lashing out and doesn't always see things clearly, but at the same time, you can relate to him/her and see that they kind of have some reasonable points to make about life, people and society.

I thought I saw her starting to decline when she was still in NYC, before she learned that she had not gotten the spot in the writing program. She already seemed to be losing interest in engaging in social events and starting to with draw. Although she was facing a significant cross road in her life, the situation was common to most young middle class girls. Many young women dealt with the apprehension about their future, learning domestic skills, the tension between marriage and professional/personal ambition, not enough information about sex and relationships and so on. But, the anxieties of adult life, the disappointments of losing an academic opportunity, the resistance to a parent's promptings, none of this is sufficient to cause the level of depression Esther endured. Rather, I suspect that severe mental health issues surface in late adolescence or early adulthood. She would have felt this depression no matter what the externals of her life at that time. Had she been top of her graduating class and anticipating a career in a Fortune 500 company, she would have attributed her symptoms to the extreme pressure. Had she been working at an unskilled job, she would have attributed them to her pointless life.

I also think that my reading of this novel is highly influenced by the commonly held belief that it is largely autobiographical. I know that Plath suffered from severe depression her entire adult life. Marriage, professional success, nothing except medical intervention gave any relief. And, ultimately, even that was insufficient. So, I am assuming that Esther is a fictional version of Sylvia who had organic depression.

Very interesting points...thanks for sharing.

I have a couple of dumb questions:

1) I didn't really understand the title.I mean yes, she mentioned feeling like she was in a bell jar in the more pressing moments of depression, but what IS a bell jar? Meaning bell-shaped? The fact that it's glass and everyone can see her, but she's trapped? Airless?

2) I've never heard of anyone bleeding to that extent from their first sexual encounter. I'm assuming it's possible, since Plath wrote about it (maybe she even experienced it). What causes that level of physical trauma? I didn't get the impression that Irwin was unduly violent with her in any way.

3) I didn't fully "get" the scene where she goes to the (I guess pregnancy) doctor. She was just pretending to be pregnant to get medication? Or she was going to get the birth control? She mentions the birth control later, so I assume that this is what it was. I may not have read that chapter very thoroughly.

And my goodness, the guy that just about rapes her! She talks about knowing he hates women, but she goes with him anyway. Does she just feel she doesn't deserve any better? Or she's merely curious?

Lots to chew on in this one, for sure!

I assumed that her experience with that man who virtually rapes her was a sign of her own self-loathing which was a manifestation of her depression.
Also, I wondered if the amount of bleeding was a sign of her delusion from her depression; everything looked so much more dramatic, so much worse than a normal person would have viewed it.

Alana, I think you're right, that a bell jar is a type of enclosure for protecting or forcing plants, also called a cloche.

I wondered if she kind of made up the bleeding in her head, but her friend saw it too, so I assume it was genuine. Although that was the same friend who was also in the institution, so who knows.

Of course, she might have had some secondary complication.

Finished this one and agree with most of the comments above. I absolutely loved this one- totally different from what I was expecting, and one I will need to mull over the next few days.

I, too couldn't figure out the bleeding incident. The Dr. says something like she's a one in a million case, but I couldn't figure out what that meant- in fact, I even went back to re-read thinking I must've passed over what had actually happened.

I assumed she went to the pregnancy Dr to get fitted for a diaphragm. She mentioned getting "fitted" and there were allusions to birth control, so I assume that's what it was for.

My Review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...