The book “The Bell Jar,” written by the famous American writer Sylvia Plath, belongs to the genre of psychological prose. The novel, which was created in the spirit of the best examples of English literature and based on real events, will amaze the reader with its sharpness and nakedness.
A Journey to the Center of the Galaxy of Yourself - that is the book written by Sylvia Plath. Her work was first published in Britain in 1963 under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas.
Esther Greenwood is its main character. Dreaming of becoming a famous writer, she unnoticed is drowning in the ocean of indifference of those around her who do not care about her. This is the usual story of the breakdown of a little man, the so-called defector, his break with himself, so personal that it concerns all the “accomplices”: Doreen, J.C., Betsy, Philomena Guiney - a carousel of faces; Boston, Massachusetts, New York - vectors. Recent tragic events are concrete slabs for a soul that is not ready to take on all the “charms” of this world.
What is important is the language, the unique author’s style of the novel “The Bell Jar,” which you will really want to read, because it has been almost completely preserved thanks to the excellent translation by Viktor Toporov. They conveyed the “biography” of the fate of another lost soul so accurately and subtly that the original itself does not lose its artistry. Sylvia Plath can be completely calm about maintaining the uniqueness of her work and the correct message to the reader.
Documentedly maintains the reader's attention throughout the entire duration of the book. The atmosphere of suffocating summer, elbow to elbow in one hotel with the telling name “Amazon”. Time is blood, the hours of decay are set by the heroine herself. Who will be better than whom? What will happen? Only by starting to read the novel can you get answers to these questions. In places, The Bell Jar, this emotional diary, resembles a train. He picks up the pace, mercilessly throwing off a smirk of boredom as he goes. The revolver of death is already loaded, put to the temple of life for human oblivion. In the furnace of events, the embers of Esther Greenwood's worries and tossing only intensify her drama. There is no crime, mysticism, or horror in the original sense. Just an enlarged pupil of primal fear. Reluctance to find yourself alone in the surrounding lava of reality. Return to the well of faith. Today, Sylvia Plath speaks with this work about loneliness, the inability to live with the only truth about ourselves in order to be able to conduct a dialogue with other people. Only after reading the book “The Bell Jar” can you find your own shadow at the bottom of the black box of doubts!
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Under a glass cover Sylvia Plath
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Title: The Bell Jar
Author: Sylvia Plath
Year: 1963
Genre: Foreign classics, Literature of the 20th century, Contemporary foreign literature
About the book “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath
The book “The Bell Jar” was published in 1963, after which it received positive and even too high reviews from critics, but this happened after the death of the author. In the United States, they initially refused to publish the book at all, as they considered it too personal.
The novel “The Bell Jar” is considered autobiographical. Sylvia Plan showed action that takes place in New York and at some points in the suburbs of Boston. The book tells the story of the life of Esther Greenwood, who turned 19 years old. The work shows only 6 months of her life.
The girl dreams of becoming a poet and traveling all over the world, for this she gets a job in a fashion magazine in order to gain experience there and get as close as possible to how to write books correctly and what is popular to talk about. In this magazine, a girl faces reality. She realizes that everything in life is far from what she thought. There are indifferent people around her who absolutely do not care about the world around her. Gradually, the girl becomes disappointed in herself and begins to suffer from depression, not understanding how to get out of this state.
The book “The Bell Jar” tells about the difficult fate of a young girl who has not yet fully found herself. She cannot return to her usual life, her outlook has changed significantly, she notices that for the first time she begins to show hysterics and succumb to her nerves. Is it possible to change under the influence of the world around you? And why not, says Sylvia Plan.
In the 50s of the 20th century, there were problems with the place of women in the modern world; most men, and the world around us as a whole, did not perceive a woman as someone who was truly worthy of attention, could work and earn money. For the main character of the book, this statement is quite complex; it is difficult for her to resist her family, society and morality. It's hard not to break down in all this whirlpool.
Sylvia Plan has experienced quite a lot in her life. Her true calling was to write poetry, but she decided not to stop there, creating the novel “The Bell Jar.” However, it is difficult for critics and ordinary people to read the book and not be reminded of the tragedy of the woman herself. But she experienced divorce, depression, and just a month after writing the novel she committed suicide. For a long time they argued about whether the work should be allowed into the public domain, since it was believed that it was pessimistic and talked about the first steps towards suicide.
Because of all the events that happened, it is quite difficult to perceive and read the novel, but it shows real changes in a person, his desire for something different, for a different life.
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Quotes from The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
I felt very quiet and very empty - like the dead center of a tornado, moving resignedly from place to place in the midst of the fury of the elements surrounding it.
If wanting two mutually exclusive things at the same time means neurasthenia, well, okay, then I have neurasthenia. Because for the rest of my days I intend to rush from one such thing to another.
... I could swear that he considered me completely and completely crazy, because I told him that I believe in hell, and also in the fact that some people, including myself, are doomed to stay in hell during their lifetime and this sent down to them as punishment for the fact that they do not believe in the afterlife, and if you do not believe in the afterlife, then it does not await you after death. To each, so to speak, according to his faith.
I love watching people in critical situations. If I witness a traffic accident or a street fight, or if I am shown a dead baby under a glass cover in a laboratory, I look wide-eyed and try to remember this sight forever. In this way I have been able to get to know a lot of people whom I would never have known otherwise - and even if they surprise me or hurt me, I never look away and pretend that I already know what I really do. the world is just that terrible.
And if Mrs. Guinea, instead of a private clinic, had arranged for me to travel to Europe or some kind of round-the-world cruise, this would not have changed anything either, because no matter where I found myself - on the deck of a ship or in a street cafe in Paris or Bangkok, - I would still be there under the same glass bell and would only breathe air that was poisoned by me.
Sylvia Plath's novel The Bell Jar is quite difficult to read; it is largely autobiographical. It was originally published under a pseudonym; shortly after publication, Sylvia Plath committed suicide. After the death of the writer, the book began to be published under her real name. For some time they did not want to publish the novel, because they believed that it was too depressing and could have a bad impact on society, and the writer’s relatives were against it, because they considered her experiences very personal.
The book tells about several months in the life of a young girl. Esther is passionate about poetry, she wants to become a poetess and devote her whole life to creativity. She receives a prestigious scholarship and, thanks to her victory in a literary competition, gets an internship at a famous publication. The girl wants to get to know this world better, understand how books should be written, what topics are popular, and how to avoid mistakes.
At first everything seems to be successful, but gradually Esther sees that everything is not as she thought. She is influenced too much by those around her. She is unable to resist their pressure, because not everyone believes that she can be a worthy poetess. And now Esther begins to notice that she is becoming too nervous and gradually falls into deep depression. The picture of her life changes completely; instead of becoming a famous poetess, the girl ends up in a psychiatric clinic. And she, without hiding, talks about everything that happens in her mind.
On our website you can download the book “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath for free and without registration in fb2, rtf, epub, pdf, txt format, read the book online or buy the book in the online store.
Sylvia Plath
Under a glass cover
Reprinted with permission from Faber and Faber Limited and Andrew Nurnberg Literary Agency.
Series “A Real Sensation!”
© Sylvia Plath, 1963
© Russian edition AST Publishers, 2016
* * *Dedicated to Elizabeth and David
Chapter first
It was some kind of crazy, suffocating summer, the same summer when the Rosenberg couple were executed in the electric chair, and I didn’t quite understand what I was doing in New York. I have a strange attitude towards executions. The thought of electrocution makes me sick, and all the newspapers wrote about it: large headlines, like bulging eyes, stared at me at every corner and at every entrance to the subway, which stank of musty nuts. This had nothing to do with me, but I was haunted by the thought of what it would be like to be burned alive.
It seemed to me that this was probably the worst thing that could happen in this world.
New York turned out to be far from a gift. By nine in the morning, the incredible, rustic freshness with dewdrops, which incomprehensibly had penetrated the city overnight, had evaporated, like the remnants of a wondrous dream. Ghostly gray at the bottom of their granite gorges, the hot streets floated in a sunny haze, the roofs of the cars sparkled, emitting heat, and the smallest dry dust climbed into my eyes and throat.
I constantly heard about the Rosenbergs, both on the radio and in the office, until they began to haunt me relentlessly. It was like seeing a corpse for the first time in my life. Then, for weeks, the corpse's head—or what was left of it—would appear before me at breakfast while I was eating ham and eggs, and behind Buddy Willard's face, because he was the one who had given me the show. Very soon I began to imagine that I was carrying around the head of a corpse with me on a string, like some kind of black, noseless balloon that reeked of vinegar.
I felt like there was something wrong with me that summer, because all I could think about was the Rosenbergs, and how stupid I had been to buy all those uncomfortable, expensive clothes that were sadly hanging in my closet. like a fish on a dry wilt. And how all the little successes I had enjoyed in college fizzled out at Madison Avenue's pompous façades of polished marble and sparkling glass.
But I should have enjoyed life.
But I was supposed to be the envy of thousands of other college girls like me across America, who wanted nothing more than to saunter around in the same size thirty-seven patent leather shoes that I bought at Bloomingdale's one lunchtime in complete with black patent leather belt and black patent leather handbag. And when my photograph appeared in the magazine where we, twelve girls, worked, everyone would have decided that I had plunged into a whirlwind of pleasure. After all, in the photo I was sipping a martini in a low-cut dress, the faux brocade bodice of which flowed into lush clouds of white tulle, sitting in one of the fashionable bars in the company of similar young people with the faces of one hundred percent Americans, who were either hired or somewhere They borrowed it for a photo shoot.
Look how things can turn out in our country, they would say. A girl has been living in a crappy little town for nineteen years, and she doesn’t even have enough money to buy a magazine. And then suddenly she gets a scholarship to college, wins prizes here and there, and now she's running New York like her own limousine.
But I didn’t control anything, not even myself. I just rushed from the hotel to work, then to parties, and from there to the hotel and back to work again, like a stupefied trolleybus. It seems that I should have been in joyful excitement, like most of my fellow friends, but I could not bring myself to react in any way. I felt motionless and empty, like the eye of a tornado moving forward dejectedly in the midst of the surrounding fury of the elements.
There were twelve of us girls at the hotel. We all won a fashion magazine competition by writing essays, stories, poems and advertising texts, and as a prize we received a month-long internship in New York with full board and a bunch of different bonuses like ballet tickets, passes to fashion shows, haircut coupons and haircuts in a famous expensive salon, as well as the opportunity to meet people who have achieved success in the field that interests us, and receive advice on improving our own appearance.
I still have a set of cosmetics that was given to me, intended for a girl with brown eyes and brown hair. A tube of brown mascara with a tiny brush, a round jar of blue eye shadow so large that only the very tip of a finger could fit in it, and three types of lipstick - from red to pink. All this is in a gilded box with a mirror inside. I also had a white plastic sunglasses case decorated with colored shells, glitter, and a green plastic starfish sewn on top.
I understood that these gifts were free advertising for sponsoring companies, but I could not be cynical about them. I loved receiving all these things raining down on us. Then I hid them for quite a long time, but after a while, when I came to my senses again, I pulled them out, and they are still lying around my house. I sometimes use lipstick, and last week I cut a plastic starfish off my glasses case and gave it to my child.
So, there were twelve girls living in the hotel, we lived in the same wing, on the same floor, in identical single rooms, located one behind the other along the corridor, and it all resembled our dorm in college. This was not a hotel in the full sense of the word, where men and women live on the same floor.
The hotel, called the Amazon, was a women's-only hotel, and it was mostly populated by women my age, daughters of wealthy parents who wanted to make sure their girls would live where men couldn't get to them and seduce them. They were all going to attend elite secretarial courses, like the Katie Gibbs school, where you had to wear hats, stockings and gloves to classes. Or they had just graduated from such elite courses and worked as secretaries for big bosses, moving in the New York “society” in anticipation of marrying one of the promising young people.
All these girls seemed terribly boring to me. I saw them in the rooftop solarium, yawning, painting their nails, trying to maintain their Bermuda tan, and terribly bored. I got into a conversation with one of them - she was also tired of yachts, flying on private jets, skiing for Christmas in Switzerland and boyfriends from Brazil.
Girls like these just make me sick. I envy them so much that I am speechless. I'm nineteen years old, and I've been in New England all these years, not counting this trip to New York. It was my first big chance, but I just sat there and let it slip through my fingers like water.
I think one of the reasons for my troubles was Doreen.
I've never met girls like her before. Doreen came from an elite women's college somewhere in the South. She was a bright blonde with fluffy hair like cotton candy, blue eyes like transparent agates - hard and shiny, and a constant grin on her lips. Not contemptuous, but rather cheerful and mysterious, as if all the people around her were not brilliant, and she could happily make fun of them if she wanted.
Doreen immediately singled me out from the other girls. It made me feel much smarter than everyone else, and she was actually surprisingly funny. She always sat next to me during classes, and when we met celebrities, she whispered caustic, sarcastic remarks in a low voice in my ear.
She said that in their college they pay close attention to fashion, that all the girls had handbags from the same material as dresses, so every time they changed clothes, they were supposed to change their handbag. These details made a vivid impression on me. They hinted at a gorgeous, sophisticated decadence that I had always been drawn to like a magnet.
The only thing Doreen always teased me about was my desire to always complete a task on time.
- And why are you working so hard? - she wondered, lounging on my bed in a peach-colored silk robe and trimming her long, tobacco-yellow nails with a file while I typed a draft of an interview with a fashionable writer.
One more thing: we all wore starched cotton nightgowns and quilted robes, or sometimes terry bathrobes that could pass for beach robes. But Doreen wore long, toe-length nylon lace translucent robes or flesh-colored robes that hugged her as if electrified. She gave off a peculiar, slightly sweaty aroma that reminded me of the spicy smell of broken fern leaves crushed between my fingers.