Hey there bedlamite, I'm glad to see you smiling, does the lithium work? Great. Even the sun is shining, we can feel the first touches of spring carressing our skin. How delightful! If you behave, we can go out, out of the snowy prison of our mind to have a breath of fresh air, but at first let's see today's dose of remedy.Sylvia Plath's semi-biographical novel, The Bell Jar
was published under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas in 1963. The protagonist, Esther Greenwood is about to have the world as her oyster: she has won an internship at a prestigious magazine in New York and with it the opportunity to attend galas, receptions, fashion shows, and so on. However, she feels out of things, so she decides to go home to Boston. The first sign of her imminent madness might be when she throws out the contents of her wardrobe, piece by piece, "in the dark heart of New York", the night before she is leaving the metropolis. Arriving home, she decides to write a novel but feels literary blocked, incapable of writing. Insomnia and lack of appetite are her next symptoms, and once she even thinks of choking her own mother because she is so irritated by her continuous snoring. Soon she is assigned to Dr Gordon, whose negligence results in an error in the electroconclusive therapy applied on Esther. Gravely affected by the "shocking" experience, she starts diving deeper into her depression, and makes several suicidal attempts. She tries hanging, drowning, and cutting herself, unsuccessfully. Finally, she takes her mother's pills and a glass of water, hides in a crack opening from the cellar, and swallows the pills one by one. She passes out as the silence, "at the rim of vision, gather[s] itself, and in one sweeping tide, rush[es her] to sleep."
She wakes up to realize she has been hospitalized, but she is not happy about surviving her suicide mission. She is acting hostile towards her mother and the nurses. The wathershed might be her acquaintance's, Joan's arrival, at whom she looks with compassion and suspicion at the same time. At times she is so filled with doubt about what to think about Joan, that she fancies the girl is merely a product of her imagination. Nevertheless, thanks to the this time properly administered electroshock therapy, Esther steps on the way of recovery. Her determination to recuperate may be enhanced by Joan's sudden suicide as well. The book ends with a prosperous scene, as Esther is proceeding towards the room where the question of her release is to be discussed.
The protagonist of The Bell Jar is a young girl who suffers from clinic depression generated by disillusionment in the hopelessness of life, and indifference to the outer world. She identifies her illness as a bell jar that doesn't let her breathe fresh oxygen, so she is "stewing in [her] own sour air." She has won several scholarship, she is clever and talented but feels entrapped in a world where she can't follow all her dreams and can't become a free writer and woman.
Plath's expressive imagery brings the novel to life. Starting from the metaphor of the bell jar, which Plath effectively stretches onto both the mental and the physical world ("to the person in the bell jar, [...] the world itself is the bad dream", or the one mentioned previously, in which the psychologically pictured bell jar has a contaminating effect on air itself), the author depicts the choices of her life as a fig tree, with several, unique fruits, but she's paralyzed by her unwillingness to make a decision. The glassy texture of the bell jar appears at other times as well. For instance, in the glass-eye of a nurse, the "glassy surface of [her] brain", and the "glassy haze" that she can see the night she wants to drown herself. Another recurring metaphors of the novel are shells and pebbles, which symbolize Esther's own fragmented, shipwrecked life.
The novel was adapted into movie in 1979, and a remake is going to be released in 2012, starring Julia Stiles as Esther Greenwood. Let's hope for the best; namely, that the cure will prove to be successful and you will be perfectly healthy by then. Take care.
was published under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas in 1963. The protagonist, Esther Greenwood is about to have the world as her oyster: she has won an internship at a prestigious magazine in New York and with it the opportunity to attend galas, receptions, fashion shows, and so on. However, she feels out of things, so she decides to go home to Boston. The first sign of her imminent madness might be when she throws out the contents of her wardrobe, piece by piece, "in the dark heart of New York", the night before she is leaving the metropolis. Arriving home, she decides to write a novel but feels literary blocked, incapable of writing. Insomnia and lack of appetite are her next symptoms, and once she even thinks of choking her own mother because she is so irritated by her continuous snoring. Soon she is assigned to Dr Gordon, whose negligence results in an error in the electroconclusive therapy applied on Esther. Gravely affected by the "shocking" experience, she starts diving deeper into her depression, and makes several suicidal attempts. She tries hanging, drowning, and cutting herself, unsuccessfully. Finally, she takes her mother's pills and a glass of water, hides in a crack opening from the cellar, and swallows the pills one by one. She passes out as the silence, "at the rim of vision, gather[s] itself, and in one sweeping tide, rush[es her] to sleep."She wakes up to realize she has been hospitalized, but she is not happy about surviving her suicide mission. She is acting hostile towards her mother and the nurses. The wathershed might be her acquaintance's, Joan's arrival, at whom she looks with compassion and suspicion at the same time. At times she is so filled with doubt about what to think about Joan, that she fancies the girl is merely a product of her imagination. Nevertheless, thanks to the this time properly administered electroshock therapy, Esther steps on the way of recovery. Her determination to recuperate may be enhanced by Joan's sudden suicide as well. The book ends with a prosperous scene, as Esther is proceeding towards the room where the question of her release is to be discussed.
The protagonist of The Bell Jar is a young girl who suffers from clinic depression generated by disillusionment in the hopelessness of life, and indifference to the outer world. She identifies her illness as a bell jar that doesn't let her breathe fresh oxygen, so she is "stewing in [her] own sour air." She has won several scholarship, she is clever and talented but feels entrapped in a world where she can't follow all her dreams and can't become a free writer and woman.
Plath's expressive imagery brings the novel to life. Starting from the metaphor of the bell jar, which Plath effectively stretches onto both the mental and the physical world ("to the person in the bell jar, [...] the world itself is the bad dream", or the one mentioned previously, in which the psychologically pictured bell jar has a contaminating effect on air itself), the author depicts the choices of her life as a fig tree, with several, unique fruits, but she's paralyzed by her unwillingness to make a decision. The glassy texture of the bell jar appears at other times as well. For instance, in the glass-eye of a nurse, the "glassy surface of [her] brain", and the "glassy haze" that she can see the night she wants to drown herself. Another recurring metaphors of the novel are shells and pebbles, which symbolize Esther's own fragmented, shipwrecked life.
The novel was adapted into movie in 1979, and a remake is going to be released in 2012, starring Julia Stiles as Esther Greenwood. Let's hope for the best; namely, that the cure will prove to be successful and you will be perfectly healthy by then. Take care.
Mad Girl's Love Poem
Sylvia Plath
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
Sylvia Plath
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
You are adding to my reading list.
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