Book 13: The Bell.Jar by Sylvia Plath

It was as difficult to read this after The Autobiography of Malcolm X as I had expected. 

The first time I read this was shortly after starting at Alverno College, and this was perhaps my fifth time rereading it. After seeing Kat in 10 Things I Hate About You and Lisa Simpson read it, and many of the second wave feminist tomes I began reading referenced it, I had to see what the fuss was all about. I adored The Bell Jar in college, my friends and I thought copies should be handed out to all incoming students! The feeling of being a fish out of water in an academic setting was relatable at the time. I was also dealing with depression then and Plath's thinly veiled memoir romanticized what I was going through. 

In addition to how difficult this was to read after Malcolm X's book, it's also a very different novel after having recently read The Barbizon: The Hotel That Set Women Free by Paulina Bren. The audiobook was very enjoyable, and a chapter is devoted to Plath's time studying in Mademoiselle magazine's program at The Barbizon. Only women could stay at The Barbizon, it was made as a safe space for women to reside independently while they pursued studies or careers. This was back when it was illegal in most places for a woman to have her own apartment, thus the "hotel" name for the building worked as a legal loophole. The Bell Jar is a very different novel now that I've learned about its setting; I used to imagine Esther Greenwood in a Kubrick interpretation of Alverno College, but now "The Amazon" (Plath's renaming of The Barbizon) is like a new non-fictional character in the semi-fictional book. And although the School Sisters of St Francis worked very hard to make Alverno a safe space for women and transitioning transmen, it's a far cry from the well-funded high society "hotel" in Manhattan. Rereading the familiar The Bell Jar this time was like reading an entirely new book, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. 


https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56616095-the-bell-jar 

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