The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath, 1963
A gifted student's slide into depression, told with a comedian's timing and unnerving exactness about what it feels like to stop feeling.
Sylvia Plath
It appeared in January 1963 under the pen name 'Victoria Lucas'; Plath's own name went on it only after her death the following month.
Feels like madness, dread and wonder.
Every life you might have lived, hanging ripe and out of reach.
I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. Books by Sylvia Plath
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