by Isabelle King (Y12)
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath follows a woman, Esther, in her mid-twenties, who struggles with depression and feelings of alienation. The story follows her through multiple timelines in her life, involving changing environments and differing perspectives on intimacy. Through it, we gain an insight into the tumultuous relationship that women have with sexual intimacy and the difficult balance between external validation and finding validation from oneself. It reveals the trying situations that life throws us in, and yet is still speckled with glimmers of hope and self-reflection.
I read this book twice: at thirteen and then again, recently, at seventeen, and found that with age, my perspective on this book’s message has shifted. When I first read it, I falsely believed Esther to be quite daft and oversensitive as a character. This time around, however, I found the deeper depth that Sylvia Plath intended, as I was able to view Esther’s trials from a more critical standpoint. I believe that with this book, Sylvia Plath was able to realistically convey the struggle with mental health in a way that feels relatable and easy to access, particularly to a person who has not struggled immensely with it and might not understand the deeper complexities of a person’s mental spiral.
However, the Bell Jar has received many critical reviews for its racist language, such as the review by week¹ where the author states that, “Probably the most glaring examples of racism comes during a scene where Esther is being served dinner while in the mental health institute. The man serving her is described as a stupid, laughing, indolent Black man with huge, rolling eyes, a racist trope made popular with books like “The Story of Little Black Sambo,” which was published in 1898.” This is unacceptable language, but unfortunately mirrors the attitudes that white Americans held towards African-American people in 1963, which is when this book was published. This is not an excuse for blatantly racist language, but we also need to take into account the historical nature of this book’s context, being that racism was still widely accepted at the time.
Nonetheless, if this is a sensitive topic for you, I would advise against reading this book, as many other excellent and insightful books cover similar themes of feminism and mental spiralling. The main benefit of reading The Bell Jar would be that it is so well-known and therefore widely discussed. Moreover, the book has a lot to offer in its poetic nature and its psychological depth, so if you want a read that is challenging in its nature, and that makes you think about the societal pressures put on women, then I would highly recommend The Bell Jar.
A next suggested read for someone who enjoyed The Bell Jar is ‘Girl Interrupted’, by Susanna Kaysen. It is on a similar vein of internal suffering and mental health awareness. However, this book is a direct memoir of Kaysen’s experience as a patient in a psychiatric hospital. The Bell Jar has a considerable amount of real-life influence, being that it is loosely based on Sylvia Plath’s own life, but is ultimately still fictional, which makes the books differ significantly in the descriptive and narrative functions.
In my opinion, the most noticeable difference in the message of these books is that in The Bell Jar, Esther is read as having a startling amount of clarity for someone in that mental state, whereas the characters in Girl Interrupted give insight into hysteria and the line between sanity and insanity. Because of this key difference, these books are quite separate in subject, and yet are both excellent representations of how completely mental health conditions can swallow people’s ability to function daily.
Overall, I would highly recommend both of these books, either separately or as part of a broader collection of books that educate on mental health awareness.
Sources:
¹Contreras, Crystal. “It’s Time We Had A Talk About “The Bell Jar,” the White Feminist, Racist Literary Icon.” Willamette Week, 4 October 2017, https://www.wweek.com/arts/books/2017/10/04/its-time-we-had-a-talk-about-the-bell-jar-the-white-feminist-racist-literary-icon/. Accessed 7 November 2025.
Cover image of The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath © [Faber & Faber]. Used here under fair use for review purposes.