It is just over sixty years since the death of Sylvia Plath on February 11, 1963 at the age of thirty. Less than a month earlier she had published the novel ‘The Bell Jar’ under the pen name Victoria Lucas. This rare edition, the initial print run was only 2000 copies, is currently being exhibited at the National Library of Scotland in our Pen Names exhibition which is open until the end of April 2023. Why was what would become one of the most famous novels of the 20 th century initially published under a pen name and why Victoria Lucas? E non si può non cogliere l’agghiacciante parallelo con la vicenda dei Rosenberg giustiziati sulla sedia elettrica (riguarderò il film di Lumet).

The Bell Jar’ by Victoria Lucas was not a commercial success and seemed almost certain to disappear. In the months leading up to the publication of ‘The Bell Jar’ and her death Plath had a burst of creativity and wrote a large of number of poems in a confessional style that was both new for her and highly original. When these poems were posthumously published as the collection ‘Ariel’ in 1965 they caused a sensation and after her death Plath became a famous poet. The writing is remarkably unemotional and I don't mean that as a bad thing. Esther's (or Plath's?) commentary dwells entirely on thoughts and perceptions, never feelings. Depression is so often mistaken as a form of sadness. This woman, however, is not sad. She is empty. She is a shell. She contemplates killing herself with a kind of ease that's unnerving. The book really spoke to me because of my own personal experiences with depression and suicide. It spoke to me as a woman and my views on sex and the confusion I'm sure most other girls out there face. It's amazing that this book was written and published over 30 years ago, really, when a new woman was coming out into the world. I have a feeling that this book helped women realize that they're not alone, and brought things to light that most people have commonly shoved aside; women and men. But what else is amazing is how relevant these topics still are today. Specifically with suicide, and specifically about the virtue and pureness of women compared to men. This book was written in the 60s! The NINETEEN-60s!! in. the. middle. of. the. civil. rights. movement. As we move forward, however, Esther – who proves 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 (there are some surprisingly funny moments) to the terrifying, starts to degrade Esther’s mental condition.

Heather Clark on One of the Defining Novels of the 20th Century

The Bell Jar centers on Esther Greenwood, 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. I uttered 'nothing new’ many times while reading it but considering it as a book written 50 years ago which still resonated at such an inexplicable level with me is fascinating to think of. Should I mourn at the repeated instances of histories which repeat themselves or cheer about the knowledge that there lived a girl who had a talent of telling something on behalf of most of us? I’m still contemplating about those questions but I guess they’ll lose their significance in time to come and only magical essence of Sylvia’s words shall remain with me. So I told myself I was reading too much into it and kept on reading, and by the 4th comment I was starting to lose it.

La novela o yo hemos, en cierta manera, fracasado en el intento. O bien ella no ha logrado transmitirme el horror de ese fondo del hoyo que es una depresión o yo no he sido capaz de concebir la profunda desesperación que, pienso, debe sentir la protagonista dentro de esa campana que la envuelve y que le impide relacionarse y encontrar su sitio en ese mundo de hombres en el que la mujer sigue sujeta a roles y comportamientos establecidos por ellos. Anyway. Fast forward, I'm graduating from college in two short weeks and I figured that if there ever was a time to read this finally, now would be it. The Bell Jar is supposedly one of THE books for every girlie in her twenties, and time may have passed but I still have a giant soft spot for reading about women vs the void. So here we are. So I went online and looked it up, and the only thing that turned up was a personal blog and a goodreads thread that mostly blamed the racism on “the time the novel was written in”, to which I would just like to say, and pardon my french, that’s complete and utter bullshit. I realise that we are living in the times where belief and feelings are considered much more important than science and facts, where democratic voting is wrong and illegal if the 'wrong party' (US) or Brexit or Scottish Independence (UK) don't go the way that people want. And that any dissension results in deplatforming, cancelling or immense campaigns of hatred against academic and public figures. Is this the right way to go? No dissension, no debate, facts are wrong if they don't fit feelings, and cultural icons for one movement or another can do no wrong?Esther Greenwood, our fictional protagonist, is unfortunately only a veiled cover for Plath’s real world disease which reached its nadir in 1963 when she took her own life at the young age of thirty. But it would be wrong to separate The Bell Jar from its baggage, because the novel and its context inform each other. There is a certain level of sadness here that simply cannot be escaped. Anche se non è difficile capire che per le lettrici Esther possa aver significato quello che Holden ha significato per i lettori.

Beyond that, Plath’s Esther is blisteringly honest, and not just about matters of mental health. For instance, there is a scene where Esther loses her virginity that is told with a candor that is surprising today, not to mention the date when it was first published. this is often, as it was in my case, assigned reading for teenage girls, the people most likely to be willing to undergo the kind of self-centering it would take to think most of what's depicted in this book is an okay or acceptable way to be. It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.” So I guess that is why The Bell Jar is often compared to The Catcher in the Rye, with it's discussions and writings of often controversial titles. Setting off a new generation of writers, styles, and people. Another book also came to mind as I was reading, and that was The Perks of Being a Wallflower. There are moments when I could make a few direct comparisons between the two. With Esther slowly seperating herself from socialization and sinking deeper into her own thoughts and depression. Analyzing things that go on around her and her surroundings. Very reminscent of Perks.Working as an intern for a New York fashion magazine in the summer of 1953, Esther Greenwood is on the brink of her future. Yet she is also on the edge of a darkness that makes her world increasingly unreal. Esther’s vision of the world shimmers and shifts: day-to-day living in the sultry city, her crazed men-friends, the hot dinner dances . . .

The Bell Jar reads like a very interesting diary. It feels real – as though you are experiencing the story. i did not know that if you're mentally ill you're allowed to be mean and annoying. i wish i had done things differently. A fine novel, as bitter and remorseless as her last poems -- the kind of book Salinger's Fanny might have written about herself ten years later, if she had spent those ten years in Hell." -- Robert Scholes, The New York Times Book Review.Coinvolgerla tanto da ricorrere a uno pseudonimo, il nom de plume di Victoria Lucas, tanto era forte l’autobiografismo di queste pagine: al punto che la madre ne ostacolò la pubblicazione negli States riuscendo a postporla fino al 1971. 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. How do we separate the artist from their art if we blithely don't notice it and then excuse them with saying it was a product of their times? Strangely enough, if you remember in my last review, what bothered me most about The Good Earth did not bother me in The Bell Jar. Because the Esther, the character we are following, is slowly descending into madness, time no longer matters. There are a few times I was confused about the timeline, but it did not upset me. The Bell Jar did not make me cry but I wish it did. What I'm left with now is a deep sense of unhappiness that I don't think tears can fix.