I have the habit of reading more than one book at a time — sometimes five or six. Occasionally, I chance upon books that overlap each other greatly in philosophy or premise. The reading then becomes both an exciting and enlightening pursuit, to actively seek a common thread between two or more texts.
Sylvia Plath’s writing has served as an excellent exercise in this pursuit. If you pick up Sylvia Plath’s unabridged journals at the same time as her fictional masterpiece The Bell Jar, spotting commonalities between the two texts will be an easy feat.
My experience with Plath took a studious turn somewhere in my reading, for as much as I was drawn to the pathos and tragedy, I was equally steeped in the study of the process of an author’s drawing from her life itself. Hence, Esther — the protagonist of The Bell Jar — in my mind’s eye was always Sylvia Plath. Her face danced in front of my eyes all the time, so much so that at one point I couldn’t tell fact from fiction. If there were no journals as a point of reference, I would have merely conjectured the extent to which she actually lived that fiction.
Here’s one instance where Plath elucidates her thoughts on marriage:
I am afraid that the physical sensuousness of marriage will lull and soothe to inactive lethargy my desire to work outside the realm of my mate – might make me “lose myself in him,” as I said before, and thereby lose the need to write as I would lose the need to escape. Very simple.
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
And here goes Esther’s:
That’s one of the reasons I never wanted to get married. The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.
The Bell Jar
It leaves me with little doubt that Esther’s experiences were those of Plath’s. When I imagine later developments in Esther’s life as I am wont to do, I can’t help but flinch because it immediately brings to mind those of Plath’s own.
But I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure at all. How did I know that someday–at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere—the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn’t descend again?
The Bell Jar
And yet, Esther’s struggles were not Plath’s alone. Her fear of a looming catastrophe was not her’s alone. I believe Esther is symbolic of one’s own fight to get out of bed each morning, to keep going, to restrain from ending it all; it is symbolic of the pain, fear and hopelessness that antagonizes us to ourselves.
To, and of Sylvia Plath herself, I have many questions to ask:
Was she any wiser for her choices?
Would she have grown wiser if she had lived?
Or had her wisdom run its course?
The Bell Jar is Sylvia Plath’s semi-autobiographical novel. It is also her only one, originally published under a pseudonym. Sylvia Plath committed suicide one month after the book was first published.
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