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Sylvia Plath

The Bell Jar: A Novel (Perennial Classics) Paperback – February 2, 2000

by Sylvia Plath (Author)

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The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under--maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experiece as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.

Print length

288 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Publication date

February 2, 2000
Dimensions

5.31 x 0.65 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

0060930187
ISBN-13

978-0060930189
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Esther Greenwood's account of her years in the bell jar is as clear and readable as it is witty and disturbing....[This] is not a potboiler, nor a series of ungrateful caricatures: it is literature." -- New York Times

"The first-person narrative fixes us there, in the doctor's office, in the asylum, in the madness, with no reassuring vacations when we can keep company with the sane and listen to their lectures." -- Book World

"The narrator simply describes herself as feeling very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel. The in-between moment is just what Miss Plath's poetry does catch brilliantly--the moment poised on the edge of chaos." -- Christian Science Monitor

About the Author

Sylvia Plath was born in 1932 in Massachusetts. Her books include the poetry collections The Colossus, Crossing the Water, Winter Trees, Ariel, and Collected Poems, which won the Pulitzer Prize. A complete and uncut facsimile edition of Ariel was published in 2004 with her original selection and arrangement of poems. She was married to the poet Ted Hughes, with whom she had a daughter, Frieda, and a son, Nicholas. She died in London in 1963.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Reprint edition (February 2, 2000)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0060930187
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0060930189
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.31 x 0.65 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,164,677 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5,475 in Classic American Literature
- #26,636 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
- #28,976 in Classic Literature & Fiction

Customer Reviews:
7,009 ratings

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5 star		75%
4 star		14%
3 star		7%
2 star		2%
1 star		2%

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Top reviews from the United States

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chelsjoy16

Genuinely confused why this is a classic...

Reviewed in the United States on September 16, 2018

Verified Purchase

I am truly amazed at how many people seem to like this “novel”. I forced myself to keep reading, thinking there must be something wonderful coming to justify all of the accolades! But nothing ever came.
The ‘story’ is all over the place, there is no continuity or reasoning behind any of it. It’s just a bunch of unrelated anecdotes that are left unfinished. There is no character development, and as someone who struggles with mental illness I can not understand why this is supposed to be “a powerful novel” relating to mental illness. If anything, it barely brushed the subject. Yes, Esther ends up in a mental hospital - but there is NO development or indication how she got there, or her journey with the illness.
All in all, I’m severely disappointed, and irritated that I spent money and time on this book.

85 people found this helpful

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dominique

The book itself is amazing, but buy it somewhere else!

Reviewed in the United States on March 27, 2019

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I absolutely love this book, but if you’re going to buy it, i don’t recommend this seller. i saw one spelling error (pictured first,), and then began to notice many more.

1st pic is supposed to have a space, 2nd pic is supposed to be “noise.”

there are more errors, but i didn’t feel sharing them was necessary.

55 people found this helpful

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Thomas Moody

Indistinct but yet tortuous journey into the mentally ill mind.

Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2017

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Yes, indeed, this is an intensely harrowing but still subtle odyssey through the battle with mental illness. Sylvia Plath’s timeless epic still rings true today…Esther Greenwood, our fictional protagonist, is unfortunately only a veiled cover for Plath’s real world disease which reached its nadir in 1963 when she took her own life at the young age of thirty. And it’s this volume, her only full length novel, that explicitly but also with a seamless literary touch, conjures the deep emotional and physical conflicts borne from this terrible affliction. Within, we follow Esther on a slow slide into insanity with such nuance and foreboding that the reader is almost compelled to believe that it is all true. And given Plath’s heartbreaking outcome, the literary debate lingers on as to if this is, in fact, that shrouded memoir.

The story opens with Esther in New York, during the summer of her collegiate years, working and modeling for a prestigious NY magazine. Through many obscure and complex observations, we slowly get a picture of her; Boston suburbanite, Smith college-type on scholarship, the world literally at her feet. But it is, still at these beginning stages, the random comment or action that begins to creep in to her personality that makes the reader aware that something is not quite right. Sure enough, as we move on, Esther becomes more and more un-hinged, doing things far outside of her personality.

Soon we reach a point where she attempts suicide and discusses suicide as the answer to get her out from “under the Bell Jar.” The literary ease with which we go from NY magazine model to suicide victim is stark…I found myself having to put the book down occasionally to internalize what I’d just read. This is really an amazing ability that Plath had…flowing from one emotion to the other without noticing until the full force of Esther’s actions take hold. Where the first third of the novel is fairly light, the last two thirds are riveting, very difficult to put down. It’s very hard to understand how Plath had difficulty getting this work published…only under a pseudonym in 1963 London and not until 1971 in the U.S. after it had been turned down, harshly, by publisher Harper & Row. Today it is printed and re-printed in many languages and enjoys its well-deserved place among the literary classics.

To summarize, if one decides to delve into the classics, you can’t go wrong with this work. Dark, even frightful at times but always flowing and well written, The Bell Jar is both a stark referendum on mental illness and an amazing reading experience.

52 people found this helpful

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Annie

A great talent lost.

Reviewed in the United States on March 16, 2015

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Every now and again a book comes along that truly impacts on one and once read will never be forgotten.
The autobiographical novel by Sylvia Plath, describing her painful ordeal when she becomes mentally ill is such a book.
This could have been a thoroughly depressing and self centred story in the hands of another and many may assume this when reading the blurb.
However do not be put off, because The Bell Jar is anything BUT depressing.
Plath writes with great humour and I laughed out loud more than once.
She also writes with the intelligence and skill of someone twice her age.
Her battle with mental illness (Bipolar Disorder) and her eventual recovery is written so honestly, so brilliantly I was more than impressed.
Of course there is sadness in the aftermath of the book because we know she actually took her own life at aged thirty, the same year The Bell Jar was published.
The world is a little worse off with the loss of this wonderful talent.
Anyone who has any inkling of how The Black Dog can grab you by the scruff of the neck from out of the blue will appreciate this book and anyone who simply enjoys outstanding literature will be equally impressed.
A great talent.

134 people found this helpful

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Felicia

Unforgettable ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Reviewed in the United States on January 12, 2019

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"Wherever I sat—on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok—I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air."

The Bell Jar has been on my tbr since before the term tbr even existed. That being said, I'm so thankful that I didn't read it sooner, that I read it now, at this exact particular time in my life. My younger self would not have had the life experience to understand this story on such a profound level.

Plath's writing is beyond reproach. I found myself reading many passages over and over again so that I could completely absorb and digest the feelings they invoked in me.

"I wondered why I couldn’t go the whole way doing what I should any more. This made me sad and tired. Then I wondered why I couldn’t go the whole way doing what I shouldn’t..."

This story is without any doubt the single greatest fictional achievement in capturing the mind of a person drowning in depression. It's not endless crying or any of the other dramatics displayed in the movies.

It's quiet.
It's subtle.
It's stealthy.
Until it's not.

"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 at."

This was a Traveling Friends group read and I couldn't be more thankful for the ladies that shared this read with me. Not one of us was left unscathed by this story.

22 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

caz2🛍

Uplifting no; disturbing yes.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 19, 2018

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This is a hard book to review. I'd wanted to read it for ages but shied away because of my own mental health problems. Seeing the film Sylvia on tv recently and documentary curiosity finally got the better of me and I ordered the kindle version.
Uplifting it certainly isn't and disturbing, I found it so in places but I did read it in a couple of days as I felt I needed to get to the end.
Honestly it left me cold. Had Sylvia Plath lived would she be the icon she has become in death? I'm not sure. She could certainly write and of course Esther really is mostly living Sylvias own life experiences. They say write what you know and Sylvia Plath certainly did that.
I wish I could give this book a more positive review and it may be cool to idolize Sylvia Plath but it wasn't really for me nor do I consider it suitable reading for young vulnerable people struggling with mental health issues.
I'll go back to my chick lit and period dramas and keep MYSELF relatively sane.

73 people found this helpful

Kindle Customer

Girls just want to have fun

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 4, 2017

Verified Purchase

A precious record of an era. The neat suited, fine gloved , high heeled and hatted fashion victims who aspired as much to the perfect family scenario as to a n office based career, give way unexpectedly to young women in psychiatric limbo fighting ultimately for their lives. Anyone familiar with the author's biography will recognise many of the characters for it is a pretty true bill account of her own experience but beautifully voiced as an innocent abroad albeit a bold sometimes precocious one. Even under treatment for her peculiar psychosis she retains that bright wit and gives a classic account of the doctor patient interdependence and the chasm between them while passively dismantling the whole Freudian development based psychology cum early brain science that she was pitted against. She seems to recover parallel to rather than through treatment and at the end , what many see as an optimistic finale could be read as a detached .almost querulous approach to the next day and the next... But ultimately Plath's underrated humour shines thru this startling account of 1950s 'normality'.

23 people found this helpful

R. Mills

Beautifully written

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 8, 2019

Verified Purchase

I decided to read this wonderful book after coming across Plath's unkempt and neglected grave in Heptonstall churchyard, and I was immediately drawn in . This is prose writing at it's absolute best, and however distressing the content of the book may be , you can't fail to be impressed by the masterful use of English by this unbelievably gifted young woman. I went on to read Sylvia's journal, and at that point it became obvious that you can substitute the name Esther for Sylvia - they are one and the same. I've felt compelled to read much of the other prose and poetry she wrote in her tragically short life and can totally understand why she's regarded as one of the greatest writers of twentieth century literature.

10 people found this helpful

Tavleen Kaur (Travelling Through Words)

An Unforgettable Book

Reviewed in India on December 21, 2019

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The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath is based on the author's own struggles with mental illness. The protagonist is Esther Greenwood, a college student working in a magazine and staying in New York when the book begins.

I felt like Esther was the personification of the darkest, most depressed and insecure part of all of us. She had a tendency of getting fixated on things. It was almost as if she was observing everything from outside her body.

The narration is amazing. Beautifully written heartbreaking passages. The author talks about incredibly hard-hitting and relatable things. I had to stop several times in the book just to process it and take a breath.

The ending was anticlimactic and I feel like it didn't tie-up with the first half of the book.

This book scared me. This book wrapped me up in its arms.

The Bell Jar was even better than I expected. I have no doubt that I'm going to always remember it. This book is very sad and that should be taken into account before someone reads it.

29 people found this helpful

Bang2write

after the multiple failures of her loved ones to understand what she was going through

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 8, 2016

Verified Purchase

THE BELL JAR offers a unique insight into the unravelling of a fragile mind. It is a breathlessly authentic and ultimately readable ride into the darkest places someone can go. The book is made all the more distressing by the fact the main character of Esther seems so obviously Plath herself; we are the ultimate voyeurs as she cuts herself off from everyone around her. With hindsight we can guess at how Plath's own suicide came about, after the multiple failures of her loved ones to understand what she was going through; plus the system's own failure to treat her and many others like her via ECT, insulin shock therapy, lobotomies and more barbaric practices. But perhaps most striking is Plath herself: her seemingly paradoxical thoughts are so well drawn. Her desire to be heard, yet also to hide; her desire to be comforted, yet also shook up; plus her cries for help, versus her spite and even cruelty illustrate how misunderstood depression is, even four decades later. This is required reading for anyone who's ever had to suffer from mental health difficulties, or known someone who has - basically, every one of us.

25 people found this helpful

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