The Bell Jar

“I wanted to tell her that if only something were wrong with my body it would be fine, I would rather have anything wrong with my body than something wrong with my head”
I think I practically highlighted and marked up the entire book. Plath was so spot on in her depictions of life with depression and how much it affects you that I could not put this book down. I never had to read this in high school, and I'm almost glad I didn't because I didn't really experience major depression until I was in college, and I don't think I would have appreciated this enough. Plath's descriptions of living in a “bell jar” really resonated with me and I thought it was a very accurate way to try to describe depression. Depression is a very hard thing to understand unless you've experienced it yourself. It's kind of taboo to even admit to experiencing depression because then you risk being seen as whiny and someone who just wants pity and attention from everyone. That's how I used to see it before experiencing it myself. Until you go through it personally, it's hard not to dismiss it as something silly and someone being desperate for attention. And that's just in the current day and age! Plath's experiences back in the 50s and 60s must have been so much worse. Her own mother didn't really understand at all either:
“I knew my baby wasn't like that. Like those awful people. Those awful dead people at that hospital.” She paused. “I knew you'd decide to be all right again.”
It's heartbreaking to see how misunderstood depression was back then. My parents were a major source of support to me when I was struggling and I can't imagine not being able to rely on them because they thought I was “choosing” to be sick. Having no one to empathize with her and truly understand how she was feeling must have been so horrible and I really can't imagine how awful it must have felt. However, Plath chronicling her experiences through her novel has hopefully helped to shed light on the true nature of depression. It's not a choice, it's an awful illness that can have a severe impact on your life, and Plath did an amazing job of representing this in her novel. Everyone should read this book so they can truly get a glimpse into what it's really like to have depression and how misunderstood it really is.
“The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way.”
Also very worthy of mention is Plath's discussion of sexism and gender issues. Plath was rightly frustrated with the standards of her time that limited her freedom and enabled men to get away with doing so much more than women. I really appreciated Plath's frank discussion of how stupid it was that men were able to get away with so much more and how she decided she wasn't going to get married just because she was supposed to. Plath's way of describing things really shed light on how ridiculous the double standards of her time really were. I loved how she called BS on the norms of her time, saying things like,”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.” She was so amazing for calling attention to these issues, especially back when it was far less acceptable to do so, and I really appreciate her honesty and frankness. Even today, it's still sort of applicable, and it's just very refreshing to read a classic novel that doesn't shy away from these issues and instead highlights how stupid they really are.