The woman who knew too much

Sometimes, I feel like I’m not solid. I’m hollow; there’s nothing behind my eyes. I’m a negative of a person. It is as if I never thought anything, never wrote anything, never felt anything. All I want is blackness. Blackness and silence.

78

thelifeguardlibrarian:
The Bell Jar at 40: Sylvia Plath’s YA novel reaches middle age.

It’s always interesting when a very strange book is also an enduringly popular book. The Bell Jar has sold more than three million copies and is a mainstay of American high school English classes; it was made into a movie in 1979, and another version, starring Julia Stiles, is currently in production. Like The Catcher in the Rye, it is a touchstone for a certain kind of introspective, moody teenager—the kind of teenager who used to listen to the Cure and, later on, Tori Amos, and who these days listens to—actually I have no idea, but she definitely has a blog. (There are an amazing variety of embarrassing shrines to The Bell Jar online.) Unlike Catcher, it also has other sources of partisan support: feminists of the 1970s claimed Plath as a martyred patron saint of repressive domesticity, and mental illness advocates have found inher work easily identifiable symptoms and syndromes that were misdiagnosed and barbarically treated.

The Bell Jar at 40: Sylvia Plath’s YA novel reaches middle age.

It’s always interesting when a very strange book is also an enduringly popular book. The Bell Jar has sold more than three million copies and is a mainstay of American high school English classes; it was made into a movie in 1979, and another version, starring Julia Stiles, is currently in production. Like The Catcher in the Rye, it is a touchstone for a certain kind of introspective, moody teenager—the kind of teenager who used to listen to the Cure and, later on, Tori Amos, and who these days listens to—actually I have no idea, but she definitely has a blog. (There are an amazing variety of embarrassing shrines to The Bell Jar online.) Unlike Catcher, it also has other sources of partisan support: feminists of the 1970s claimed Plath as a martyred patron saint of repressive domesticity, and mental illness advocates have found inher work easily identifiable symptoms and syndromes that were misdiagnosed and barbarically treated.

10 months ago -

12

The woman is perfectedHer dead
Body wears the smile of accomplishment,The illusion of a Greek necessity
Flows in the scrolls of her toga,Her bare
Feet seem to be saying:We have come so far, it is over.
Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,One at each little
Pitcher of milk, now empty.She has folded
Them back into her body as petalsOf a rose close when the garden
Stiffens and odors bleedFrom the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.
The moon has nothing to be sad about,Staring from her hood of bone.
She is used to this sort of thing.Her blacks crackle and drag.
- Sylvia Plath

The woman is perfected
Her dead

Body wears the smile of accomplishment,
The illusion of a Greek necessity

Flows in the scrolls of her toga,
Her bare

Feet seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over.

Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,
One at each little

Pitcher of milk, now empty.
She has folded

Them back into her body as petals
Of a rose close when the garden

Stiffens and odors bleed
From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.

The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone.

She is used to this sort of thing.
Her blacks crackle and drag.

- Sylvia Plath