Despite its reputation, Sylvia Plath’s ‘The Bell Jar’ is a life-affirming story of hope

On the page, “The Bell Jar” tells the story of Esther Greenwood, a high-achieving college student from Massachusetts who has been selected to spend a summer in New York City working at the prestigious “Ladies Day” magazine. Esther is confronted with the artifice and isolation of city life, the inevitability of a motherhood she is not sure she wants, and increasingly debilitating depression. The book is named for a bell jar, a thick glass container used to create a vacuum and protect fragile items — a metaphor for Esther’s feelings of confinement. Upon returning to her small suburban town, she succumbs to her struggle with mental health. “The Bell Jar” culminates with Ether’s suicide attempt and then life-saving shock therapy at a mental institution.

Off the page, “The Bell Jar” is really Sylvia Plath’s story. Originally published in 1963 under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas (to spare her mother’s feelings), “The Bell Jar” would not make it to U.S. bookshelves until 1971, after Plath’s own suicide.

When you read or reread this book today, you should remind yourself just how courageous and groundbreaking Plath’s depiction of depression and anxiety were at the time. “The Bell Jar” brought a vivid and eerily rational description of exactly what mental health struggles feel like into the general discussion. Decades later, few have even come close to encapsulating what it’s like to walk through life struggling in this way.

More than 60 years since “The Bell Jar” was published, mental health has become a serious, widespread issue in the U.S. People are hurting. According to Mental Health America, a leading nonprofit dedicated to mental health advocacy and education, nearly 21% of adults said they’ve experienced a mental illness — that is more than 50 million Americans.

If you’re lucky enough not to feel seen by Plath’s sharp and visceral writing, this book can help you understand those who do struggle with mental health. “The Bell Jar” is an invaluable tool for empathy.

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Contextually, it would be easy to believe “The Bell Jar” is a contemporary novel. Critics like to call “The Bell Jar” “ahead of its time,” but really it is timeless: both strikingly modern and a clear product of 1950’s American malaise. Groundbreaking depiction of mental health struggles aside, “The Bell Jar” offers clear evidence that the desire for gender parity, the isolation of city living, the struggle to find one’s own identity, and the tenuous balance between “traditional” womanhood and career success are all nothing new.

Take this famous moment:

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet, and another fig was a brilliant professor. […] I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

Plath’s book has an accurate reputation for being dark and tragic, but it is much more hopeful than that public recollection suggests. For one, “The Bell Jar” is really funny. A two-page description of Esther finishing a bowl of caviar meant for the entire luncheon reads like a good comedy skit. That famous fig metaphor actually ends like this: “It occurred to me that my vision of the fig tree and all the fat figs that withered and fell to earth might well have arisen from the profound void of an empty stomach.”

Most readers know what will become of Plath before they even open her book. They know that she will ultimately succumb to her suicidal depression — the stifling bell jar closed over her own mind — and die one month after the publication of “The Bell Jar.” But Plath’s fate doesn’t undermine her book. Ultimately, “The Bell Jar” ends on a defiantly optimist note. Esther’s bell jar is lifted, and she is alive — her life is uncertain and imperfect, but her plans are “flamboyant.” Despite Plath’s fate off the page, “The Bell Jar” reassures reader the bell jar can be lifted. It’s a story about overcoming — a story about living.

This is an excerpt from the December 3 edition of the “Ali Velshi Banned Book Club.” Keep listening and learning along with Velshi on his “Banned Book Club” podcast.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or chat live at 988lifeline.org. You can also visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional support.