Sylvia Plath

Esther Greenwood, a talented and successful writer, finally succumbs to madness when the world around her begins to falter

The Bell Jar

lucy p

What I couldn't stand was Buddy's pretending I was so sexy and he was so pure, when all the time he'd been having an afrair with that tarty waitress and must have felt like laughing in my face.

I thought how strange it had never occured to me before that I was only purely happy until I was nine years old.

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the fgs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet. 

I thought a spectacular change would come over me the day I crossed the boundary line. I thought it would be the way I’d feel if I ever visited Europe. I’d come home, and if I looked closely into the mirror I'd be able to make out a little white Alp at the back of my eye. 

He was lying on his back, his hands under his head, stating at the ceiling. The starched white sleeves of his shirt, rolled up to the elbows, glimmered eerily in the half dark and his tan skin seemed almost black. I thought he must be the most beautiful man Id ever seen.

And then I wondered if as soon as he came to like me he would sink into ordinariness, and if as soon as he came to love me I would find fault after fault, the way I did with Buddy Willard and the boys before him.

I liked Teresa. She had a gentle, intuitive touch. I thought it must be because she was Italian.

The only reason I remembered this play was because it had a mad person in it, and everything I had ever read about mad people stuck in my mind, while everything else flew out. 

The only trouble was, Church, even the Catholic Church, didn't take up the whole of your life. No matter how much you knelt and prayed, you still had to eat three meals a day and have a job and live in the word. 

The Bell Jar quotes

Join the club