The Bell Jar

Esther Greenwood is expected to enjoy a summer in New York, but she feels a darkness that makes her world increasingly unreal. The story follows her city life, crazed men-friends, hot dinner dances, and her slow slide into breakdown. It begins with a girl from an out-of-the-way town who is poor, wins a college scholarship, and seems to steer New York like her own private car, though she cannot steer herself. The novel explores identity, pressure, and mental breakdown, tracing her growing separation from the life around her.

Why You Should Read?

• Follow Esther Greenwood as she moves through a summer in New York that feels increasingly unreal.
• Explore the pressures that make Esther's day-to-day city life shimmer and shift around her.
• Meet the crazed men-friends and hot dinner dances that fill Esther's New York days.
• Understand the slow slide into breakdown that shapes Esther's vision of herself and her world.

About the Author

Sylvia Plath lived from 1932 to 1963 and wrote poetry and prose. She helped shape confessional poetry, which used personal experience and direct address. Her books include The Colossus and Other Poems, Ariel, The Bell Jar, and The Collected Poems. Born in Jamaica Plain, Boston, Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and later at the University of Cambridge in England. At Newnham College she studied on a Fulbright. In 1956 she married a fellow poet in London. They had two children and separated in 1962. In 1982 she received a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.