The Bell Jar proved to be a contentious book for our group. Half the group thought it was dull, depressing, and unlikeable and the other half thought it moving, fascinating, and brilliant. Two more members were so put off by the terribly badly conceived chick lit cover that they refused to read it at all.
The Bell Jar gives a wonderful window into 1950s life and healthcare. We all enjoyed the descriptions of New York and the ‘Mad Men’ glamour that typified Esther’s New York stay. But many people found Esther very unsympathetic at this point and consequently found it hard to care about her through the rest of the novel. Was this ennui-plagued young woman the ‘real’ Esther or was she already depressed in New York?
We were all fascinated and horrified by the description of 1950s mental health services and the way in which even mental hospitals were run on class lines. The novel really conveys the boredom that defined most women’s lives and how limited their horizons were and suggests this led to many women’s depression. We could feel how stifled they were and it made us reflect on how we now have so much more freedom and higher expectations for our lives.
The book can be summed up partly by L.P. Hartley’s famous quote “the past is a different country, they do things differently there”. The book’s setting and characters are familiar and seem only slightly removed from our current lives but the societal expectations, unspoken rules and innate sexism make it a very different country indeed. It is this friction between the familiar and unfamiliar that makes it a challenging read and unsettling read.
We all agreed it was beautifully written with wonderful imagery and descriptive passages. Esther’s descent into mental illness is so well portrayed and so horrific that it makes for very difficult reading – this is not a book for everyone.
