The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath


Review by Elleanore G. Vance

As Jeeves might have said, I am quite fond of closing myself away with an "improving book", and The Bell Jar seemed to fit that ticket. After I watched a Ted-ed video on YouTube (link below), I knew I needed to at least make the attempt.

I want to warn you straight away that if you srtuggle with your own mental health, and especially suicidal thoughts/tendencies/ ideation, please steer clear, or have someone you trust on stand-by for help when you reach difficult parts.

Our story begins with Esther in New York. She has won a scholarship and is spending the summer as an intern for a ladies magazine. Its all fun and games until she goes to a party where she is sexually assaulted. She leaves New York immediately.

Once home, we follow Esther as she struggles with what I personally recognize as PTSD (including but not limited to):
* inability to sleep
*Depression
*inability to eat
*suicide attempts
*inability to write

When Esther confides in her mother, she is taken to an analyst. This analyst prescribes electroshock "therapy".  After enduring a single electroshock session, Esther refuses to return to that "doctor", and mother pronounces her cured.

Only she isn't. It takes another analyst, a woman this time, to get to "the root" of the problem and give Esther her Happy Ever After.

This book is full of "women's history", the stuff so many of us either have forgotten or never knew to begin with. We learn what women had to go through for any type of birth control before "The Pill", and before Roe. We are reminded as we should be, of the horrors that were called medicine, and hiw little it took to earn this horrid maltreatment.

Esther's guilt, shame and fear surrounding her assault is heartbreaking. This book serves as a yardstick, showing us just how little actual progress we have made in our fight for equality.

⭐⭐⭐3/5

https://youtu.be/wCWl8ZIgCHk



3.15.23
https://consortiumofsevenyearfour.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-bell-jar-by-sylvia-plath-review-by.html

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