The Bell Jar

1140LEXILE

First of all, how is it that I had never read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath before? As a matter of fact, I never even knew it was about mental illness and depression among women in the 1950s. Given my family history, this book should have called to me. I wonder if my mother ever read it.

I'm glad I finally read this classic coming-of-age tale but didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would. Mostly I was inspired to learn more about Plath's tragic and short life and the convoluted history of the book's publication.

The Bell Jar is the autobiographical account of the period of time during Plath's college years when she was institutionalized in a well-known Boston mental hospital for several months after a suicide attempt. It details her struggles with what may have been clinical depression or bipolar disorder. It was first published in England under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. Plath committed suicide a month later on February 11, 1963. The book wasn't published in the United States under Plath's name until 1971, in accordance with the wishes of her husband and mother.

Highly intelligent and perfectionistic, Plath was a typical tortured-artist-type, disillusioned by what she felt was a double standard that prevented women from experiencing life as fully as men. An over-achiever in college, she eventually married fellow poet Ted Hughes and had two young children at the time she killed herself by sticking her head in a gas oven.

In an eerie twist to this story, the woman who Plath's philandering husband had left her for, also killed herself in the same manner seven years later. While Plath had protected her children by sealing off the kitchen in the apartment where she died, Hughes' mistress murdered her own four-year-old daughter by keeping her in the same room. And — I couldn't make this stuff up — in 2009 Plath's son, who was one at the time of his mother's death, took his own life at age 47.

True-life-tragedy!