I’m actually not entirely sure where to start with this review. I could describe Plath’s stunning prose that is so painfully real the book almost reads like a diary. I could ramble on about the themes of gender inequality that are so beautifully explored in this book. But, I think the only way to even begin to encapsulate the power behind The Bell Jar is to begin with Sylvia Plath’s suicide on February 11, 1963 when she sealed her children’s room with masking tape, turned on the gas, and stuck her head in an oven. She was thirty years old.

While a rather grim way to start this review, it is entirely necessary because Plath’s death haunts every page of this story of a woman descending into insanity. This is one of those instances where fiction and fact are so tightly interwoven that they cannot really be separated. Part of the power of The Bell Jar comes from the palpable presence of Plath’s ghost.

The Bell Jar follows Esther Greenwood, a thinly veiled depiction of Plath herself, and a bright college student in 1953. She wins a trip to New York where she encounters an entirely new set of experiences and describes the other women as almost an entirely new species. Esther – who is an endearing, self-deprecating narrator – struggles with the glitz and glam that others so eagerly seek. Her time in New York is not seamless, and several incidents, ranging from the amusing to the terrifying, start to degrade Esther’s mental condition.

It does not give too much away to say that The Bell Jar is about Esther’s declining mental health. The strength of The Bell Jar, though, is partially derived from the fact that Esther, narrating in the first-person, never comes out and says, “then I went crazy.” Instead, Plath – through Esther – provides a precise, detailed, chilling presentation of Esther’s loss of sanity by describing everything with matter-of-factness. Her psychotic “breaks” are not identified as such. Rather, Esther depicts both the real and the unreal in the exact same manner, so that there is a blurring between the two. “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…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.” While having this mental breakdown, Esther provides a deeper reflection on what it means to actually be depressed and mentally ill beyond simply “feeling sad.”

Esther is blisteringly honest, laying things out as they are. She confesses, “I felt dreadfully inadequate. The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn’t thought about it.” She doesn’t admit this as a way to earn the pity of others or as a form of self deprecation- she says it because she feels it is true. Through this style of writing Plath is able to explore several complex themes such as gender inequality and Esther’s degrading mental health. Esther makes blunt observations on the double standards women experience, such as “I couldn’t stand the idea of a woman having to have a single pure life and a man being able to have a double life, one pure and one not.”

Overall, The Bell Jar was a brilliant read. As a teenager, it felt refreshing to have such an understandable classic with a complex, relatable female character as the lead. You’re drip fed these really ominous statements and I loved the cohesion between chapters – I genuinely raced through this book and couldn’t put it down. If you’re looking for a short classic, definitely give The Bell Jar a go!