What's your opinion of Sylvia Plath and the Bell Jar?

[hedgehog]

I find the Bell Jar frustrating because it seems to me as if Plath fought those trying to help her (allowing of course that treatment in the 50's had uneven results). It seems like she blamed others around her for her illness instead of understanding that that need to blame others was an aspect of her illness. The illness becomes a badge of honor. I think many read her work and come away thinking of depression and suicide as a romantic reaction to a world that doesn't understand. I dislike the cult around Plath because it romanticizes a pathology.

[blueblitzkrieg]

1. I read The Bell Jar a couple years ago and remember not being impressed...

although I don't remember why! Maybe if I read it again I'd view it differently.

Something kind of interesting about her in a book I have:

"The evidence is clear that (unlike her sleeping pill overdose ten years earlier), she did not intend to die. She had scheduled an au pair to meet her at 9 AM that morning: there was no answer at the door when the Australian girl knocked and rang. The old man on ground floor who could have let her enter (and who, Plath knew, rose before nine) was unconscious from escaped carbon-monoxide fumes. Plath's note, "Please call Dr ____," which included the phone number, was thus not seen until she was dead."

Pretty tragic!

[EFerrari]

2. My .02 on Plath

(And remember that's nearly free so, fwiw.)

In the fifties, treatment for people like Plath was considerably more than uneven. It was nearly nonexistent and swathed with layers and layers o' shame.

So, it makes sense to me that if we get, from that very early novel, a romanticized view of suicide, we're probably reading right. I frequently idealize stuff I have to do to survive in some way. (Maybe read that one again :) )

Also, after Plath's death, her literary executor actually rearranged her last manuscript so the group of poems makes her seem as crazy and destructive as possible. Her own plotting was changed. If you read it, as I did, in the form she intended, it is a different book. Fragile, sure but with moments of strength, hopefulness and acceptance. Her executor was Ted Hughes. I have seen the book with his introduction and I have seen copies of her manuscript. No the same work by any means.

Finally, as far as I know, there are at least three schools or "cults" around Plath. One dismisses her as a self-indulgent selfish person. Another, romanticizes her death by poetry, degrading both Plath and her poetry. Yet another tries to put her life in its context while moving through her work. Obviously, I belong to the last.