The Bell Jar

Esther Greenwood is at college and is fighting two battles, one against her own desire for perfection in all things - grades, boyfriend, looks, career - and the other against remorseless mental illness. As her depression deepens she finds herself encased in it, bell-jarred away from the rest of the world. This is the story 'The Bell Jar' is Sylvia Plath's account of a young woman's breakdown. Renowned for its intensity and its vivid prose, the novel follows her attempted suicide, hospitalization and recovery. Esther Greenwood, a talented college student, finds herself estranged from her family and resigned to a conventional lifestyle and descends into depression and mental illness SUMMARY: The Bell Jar is Sylvia Plath's only novel. Renowned for its intensity and outstandingly vivid prose, it broke existing boundaries between fiction and reality and helped to make Plath an enduring feminist icon. It was published under a pseudonym a few weeks before the author's suicide. This extraordinary work--echoing Plath's own experiences as a rising writer/editor in the early 1950s--chronicles the nervous breakdown of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, successful, but slowly going under, and maybe for the last time 'The Bell Jar' is Sylvia Plath's account of a young woman's breakdown. Renowned for its intensity and its vivid prose, the novel follows her attempted suicide, hospitilisation and recovery