Join us as we delve into the powerful and haunting novel 'The Bell Jar' by Sylvia Plath. In this episode, we explore the book's frank depiction of mental illness and its impact on the protagonist, Esther Greenwood. We will examine the themes of identity, isolation, race and societal expectations as they relate to mental health, and discuss the book's relevance in today's world. This autobiographical fiction reflects Plath's own struggles with depression and offers a poignant look into the mind of a brilliant writer. Don't miss this thought-provoking conversation about one of literature's most iconic works.
TW and SPOILERS for all episodes, listen at your own discretion.
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Where to find us!
Email: jade@watermelonprose.com
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Thanks for tuning in to 'Literature Done Juicy'. Join us next time as we continue to explore the world of fiction through a refreshing lens. Until then, stay juicy!
Join us as we delve into the powerful and haunting novel 'The Bell Jar' by Sylvia Plath. In this episode, we explore the book's frank depiction of mental illness and its impact on the protagonist, Esther Greenwood. We will examine the themes of identity, isolation, race and societal expectations as they relate to mental health, and discuss the book's relevance in today's world. This autobiographical fiction reflects Plath's own struggles with depression and offers a poignant look into the mind of a brilliant writer. Don't miss this thought-provoking conversation about one of literature's most iconic works.
TW and SPOILERS for all episodes, listen at your own discretion.
Need a freelance writer or editor? Head over here
Where to find us!
Email: jade@watermelonprose.com
Literature Done Juicy Instagram
Watermelon Prose Instagram
Goodreads
Thanks for tuning in to 'Literature Done Juicy'. Join us next time as we continue to explore the world of fiction through a refreshing lens. Until then, stay juicy!
You are listening to 'Literature Done Juicy', a show that explores books in the Juiciest way possible. My name's Jade, and on this episode we'll be discussing the Cult Mental Illness Classic, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. This is episode one of our first season, which focuses specifically on dark fiction. It's our first episode ever and we'll be releasing a total of 12 episodes for this season.
We will cover a variety of topics and text to suit every listener, even if you're not a big reader. You will enjoy this podcast dripping with tidbits, facts, and all round, enjoyable inform. As this is the first ever episode for the channel, I'll tell you a little bit about myself and why I feel that I have the credentials to even talk about literature.
I have a minor in literature and I'm enrolled to complete my master's of teaching in secondary next year with my main subject being English. I have eight years experience working within the criminal justice system, and my passions lie in learning about human nature, reading and teaching. And then, although completely unrelated physical health, I am the creator of a company called Watermelon Prose, which is currently undergoing a new business strategy and brand revamp.
Watermelon Prose was an outlet for me to discuss literature, and it's now transforming into a learning space to enable consumers to gain education through fiction. The reason I decided to start a podcast is because I want to be more interactive with my followers and to create an environment for ongoing learning and conversation in a way that doesn't bore you out of your brain.
Literature can be controversial as fuck, and I'm here to explore it all. If you don't follow Watermelon Pros on Instagram, go and check it out. A website and products will be launching in the new future. Instagram really allows you to type a tiny little caption and it's. Aesthetically based. So I'm very excited to get my voice out there and start this podcast.
Why do I like reading? Well, reading takes me into other worlds and allows me to escape from my mediocre life. It allows me to learn from character successes and failures and educates me in a way that I believe no other platform or medium can. I want to share this with others that are like-minded and also help break down the barrier for those that believe they don't have the intellect all the time to read.
Everyone has time, whether it's 10 minutes or 10 hours, it's about delegating your time and throwing away that useless addictive TikTok, which we are all guilty of. Mindlessly scrolling through. So here's a brief rundown on what dark fiction is. It's concerned with themes like fear, death, and human nature, and it contains horrific elements, but falls outside or can fall outside the horror genre.
Basically, anything that feels negative or uncomfortable can. Equal dark pop culture. Examples of dark fiction include movies such as Fight Club, mm, Brad Pitt, babe, and this is due to its violent depictions and also its narrative on mental illness. Other examples would include the movie such as American Psycho and a Child Specific Examples.
So something that's produced mainly for children. It would be the movies horror. As you can see, the media mentioned aren't necessarily horrors, and they all belong to different genres, but they all epitomize this negative, eerie, uncomfortable look into human nature. The text that we'll be discussing in this episode is The Belger by Sylvia Plath.
It's the predictable choice for the sad and hot girl readers. Basically, if you are depressed, Mentally unstable, sad, and then enjoy violence against the patriarchy, then essentially you are a sad or hot girl. People say that sad and hot girl readers need to get some help. They probably do, but don't we all?
We're all a little bit messed up. Before I go any further, I also want to just state that obviously this podcast will contain confronting themes and may also contain some spoilers. Do your own quick Google before continuing on the Beja specifically if you believe it might be uncomfortable for you or triggering for you.
The theme for this season of the podcast is dark fiction, so it's not gonna be happy, optimistic text. Here's a short synopsis for the book, which basically. A blurb, very fancy and pretentious. Esther Greenwood is a 19 year old college student, aspiring to be a writer, working as an intern at a publishing company.
She struggles with her identity and societal norm. And remember, this was based in the sixties, so women had a long way to go. Esther feels numb and then struggles with depression. When her internship ends, she then begins to attempt suicide in various. Yep. Depressing as a fuck, but also slightly relatable.
Many people feel numb and dissatisfied in life, but don't reach this horrific point of wanting to actually kill themselves or harm themselves. Sylvia Plath, the author of the Beja Suicide of One Month after the publication of the novel. What makes this sad event extremely interesting is that "The Bell Jar" is actually an autobiographical fiction, meaning it's based on.
Own life essentially, the Beja is a character study of Plath, and we will get into that later in the podcast. To begin our beja discussion, I want to probe into why the Beja is so dearly loved and how it's actually stood the test of time. The first and most important reason that I believe makes the Beja successful is a style of writing that's implemented by Plath.
She is one of the first ever female poets to write poetry in a confessional style, meaning it's poetry that reflects life experiences. However, the technique she uses in the writing of the Beja, which FY is her only fictional work, is what we call a conversational tone. It allows the reader to feel like they're being spoken to as a friend rather than being spoken at.
Esther discusses what she sees around her in her. Frank Tone, she tells you how it is, and I love that, and it's the best form of communication. There's no wishy-washy, toxic, positivity, bullshit. She's unfiltered and her frankness makes her funny. The humour cuts through the heavy, dark subject matter and then makes the novel.
All around more enjoyable. The thoughts that run through Esther's mind are intrusive ones, and these are the same thoughts and feelings that young people today experience. She has anxiety over the barriers she faces as a woman. Negative thoughts surrounding why she's feeling down all the time when she feels like she should be feeling happy due to societal pressures, and also struggles with the amount of choice that she's been given in terms of her family and career projection.
When I was in my early twenties, I'd be going at partying. I had minimal commitments and I was also studying at the same time. And I had this thought in the back of my mind that something was missing. Like how can just drinking all the time and having no responsibility be what life is all about. And I'm sure people in their early twenties are still feeling this today.
And those of us that are in our thirties, forties, fifties and beyond, all experienced this type of thought, uh, to some degree when they were younger. Speaking of regarding Nights Out, this is a line from Esther in the Beja and it's a really great one and it really demonstrates just her relatability and why the Beja is stood the test of time, and here it is.
There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends. How true is that? Just think of when you're in the club and you are in the toilet and your friends holding your hair back, and you are just puking your guts out and the bond that you get from that little moment and reflecting on relatability.
Currently, gen Zers are supposed to be the most anxious, pessimistic, and distrustful generation yet, so they could definitely relate to Esther's Frank Doomsday view of life. She's forever questioning her role in society and also society as a whole, but she actually can't be bothered to do anything about it.
And again, we've all been there. We just want to do something, we wanna get it done, but then we just think, eh, screw it. Not gonna. On a less lighter note, teenage depression rates in Australia, which is the country that I am from, are on the rise despite of the greater availability of education opportunities and overall standard of living.
Many people believe this is due to modern media giving teens an unrealistic expectation of needing to be happy all of the time, and also a lack of education in terms of coping mechanisms when they're experiencing stress and mental illness in general. We are also now exposed to far greater people than we used to be due to our social media use, which is leading to a skewed view that all the rich and beautiful influences are the rule and not the exception.
When people that are trending on social media are beautiful, they're rich, they're funny, they're intelligent, they're a small percentage of the population that. All of those things at once. And then add on top of that the fakeness of social media as a whole. And it gives youth a very unrealistic and skewed view.
On top of that society think that young people as a whole have it all. They have the best of life, they're carefree, and in reality, that's not how they feel. And in reality, a lot of them aren't like that. And this is something that Esther narrates exceptionally well during her internal. . Speaking of internal monologues, Esther is suffering severely from depression like a lot of our Gen Zers and teenagers at the moment, and anyone that has personally experienced depression, anxiety, mood disorders, psych disorders, or have witnessed someone who has.
Any of these disorders will find "The Bell Jar" very, very relatable. I personally have had some exposure to depression and a few other mental health related illnesses, and when I read the Beja, I was thinking, holy shit, did I write that when I was in this head space? Some people find that reading about similar experiences are therapeutic, but then others may find it triggering, and that's just a conclusion that you'll have to come up with on your own.
I feel like a lot of people have their handheld through life, and it's up to you to decide what you want to consume as David Foster Wallace once said,
"we all suffer alone in the real world. True empathy is impossible. But if a piece of fiction can allow us imaginatively to identify with a character's pain, we might then also more easily conceive of others identifying with their own. This is nourishing redemptive. We become less alone inside".
So essentially what he's saying is, Reading fictional characters builds people's empathy. As of the 22nd of July, 2022, a national study of health and wellbeing found in Australia, two in five people had experienced a mental health disorder at some point in their life, and one in five people had experienced a mental health disorder that had lasted more than 12 months.
Cognitive behavioral therapy or C B T was only just established in the 1960s, so it wasn't widely. They implemented during PLA stints in psychiatric care, as well as Esthers throughout the novel. It is said that the earliest written accounts of depression were actually found in second Millennium BCE E in Ancient West Asia, which we now know is the Middle East, and they believe that it was caused by a demonic possession rather than obviously imbalances in the chemicals.
Zoom forward in history many years later, and we've reached the 18th and 19th century, which is actually labeled the Age of Enlightenment in regards to mental health. As some doctors suggested that aggression was at the root of the disease and prescribed exercise, diet, music, and drugs, so they were on the right path in some ways.
Other methods that were used, which weren't so great were water immersion, which is basically immersing someone in a bath underwater without drowning them, spitting on a stool. So the brain contents mashed together, , and then also lobotomies, which basically just destroyed section patient's brains. Also, in the 19th and 20th century, people started using electroconvulsive therapy, which is actually still used today, but in a more modified version, and it's a shock that's applied to the scalp to induce a seizure.
The way they implement it today is actually very safe, and it's come a long way. A BJA is. Bell shaped glass jar usually designed to cover objects or gases. It keeps what's inside sealed from the outside world. In terms of metaphors, it is used as an analogy for Esther's madness. When the jar closes on top of her, she's losing her sanity, but when it lifts, she's regaining her sense of.
Self. However, the jar is always hovering over her, representing that her depression will never actually go away, and that it will always haunt her. It gives off vibes of confinement, entrapment, and lack of hope, which is not something that we want people with mental illness to essentially have, but it's what they feel of all of the time.
As I mentioned earlier on in the podcast, Plath Suicided a month after the publication of the bja, and she did so by carbon monoxide poison.
As the Bejo is known to be basically a memoir with creative freedom. We'll take a look at the parallels between Esther and Plath. At 20 years old, Plath was diagnosed with clinical depression after her first suicide attempt.
However, many professionals now believe she may have had bipolar type two. Similarly, Esther attempts to take her own life by overdosing on painkillers. In the novel, she hides in a crawl space of her mother's home and leaves a note saying, I've gone for a long. Here's a quick rundown of clinical depression.
It's a mental health disorder that is characterized by a depressed mood consistently and over time, and or a loss or interest in activities, both causing a significant impairment in daily life. Bipolar two on the other hand, is characterized by depressive and hypomanic states. It involves least one depressive episode, lasting two weeks minimum, and then one hypomanic episode lasting at least four.
Both Plath and Esther were exposed to electroconvulsive therapy in the novel and in real life. They both attended asylum and were both riders that were unsuccessful in their Harvard applications. Other similarities include Esther's partner buddy. He fails to understand Esther's poetry and has very commercial ideas about what a woman should be or do.
Many people believe that Buddy is most likely a representation of Plath's own husband, Ted. However, he has refuted the. Ted was also a well-known poet and the couple had two children called Nicholas Hughes and Frida Hughes. The family itself holds a sad and chilling legacy. I know I'm driving a little bit away from the book, but I find this very interesting, although it's very morbid.
So six years after Plus's death. Ted's lover, Asiah Weevil killed herself and murdered her young daughter in the same way that Plath had suicided. Then in 2009, Plath's own son Nicholas Hughes, who at the time was a prevalent and successful fisheries biologist, sadly suicided by hanging another literary family with similar sad outcomes, was the Hemingway family.
Ernest Hemingway died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head at the age of 61. Later on in 1996, his granddaughter, Margot Hemingway, overdosed on. And she was the fifth person in the family to die from suicide. People are attracted to the voyeurism that unusual death provides. It's a topic that really deserves its own podcast as it's extremely fascinating.
On that lovely note, let's get into how sexuality and violence is intrinsically "The Bell Jar". Esther finds herself with Lenny Shepherd and Doreen. They have a foreplay, which is very suggestive of rape. Later on in the novel, Marco, which is another character, attempts to rape Esther. Esther then loses her virginity to Irwin, and during the sex suffers from bleeding.
All of this exposure to sex is tied into violence, and the violence is used to obtain power in a way. The Beja shows that violence is a consequence of sexual relationships for women when they have sex with men. It displays that even women who initiate or want a sexual relationship with a man are still considered inferior to men once they have sex with them.
"The Bell Jar" was published in 1963, which was a few years after the women's Right Movement in the us. The movement had a goal to give women freedom and equality, and their main focus points were the following, to create an equal opportunity for women in terms of education. Two, legal equality. For instance, at the time a woman could be fired when she filed pregnant and usually would be fired when she failed pregnant, and banks often refuse unmarried women credit.
Three, addressing domestic violence and marital rape. Rape, um, in marriage was not considered rape at all. Four. Challenging the outdated view that women's role was solely in the home. Women's rights is a topic that has been slightly done to death, but this is because it is important. In today's society, there is still a stigma between women and how many sexual partners they have, but is this conducive for everyone?
No. Women's inequality still occurs, but in comparison to what people were going through in the 1960s, there's different issues and different sever.
Now let's get on to problematic themes that can be found within "he Bell Jar", yes gender and power imbalance weren't the only issues. The main one that screams out is the racism, Esther, and subsequently Plath uses against people of colour.
There are outright forms of racism, which is when Esther kicks a black man who served her two types of beans at dinner. No idea why the fuck anyone would be mad about two types of beans, but apparently it's highly offensive. And when she also. All Mexicans ugly reading these lines, which included racism, made me feel uncomfortable and it didn't age very well.
I guess the question of the day would be, should the Beja be shunned for its problematic content? And I'm personally gonna say no. I believe that the Beja specifically provides a rare insight into the mind of an extremely successful, yet mentally unwell woman. And this is something that's extreme. Rare to find.
It's also important to value classic literature. Valuing classic literature doesn't mean to ignore the problematic content. You need to identify it, criticize it, critique it, but don't burn the book cause of it. There's this whole stigma about reading books written by problematic authors, and to me it's.
Problematic in itself. It's very difficult and even impossible to uphold people from the past to our values in the present. If you do that, you're basically gonna throw away every western classical novel that was ever published. Historical context is important. Problematic to me equals Let's have a discussion.
If you're one of those people that don't like to read books written by controversial authors, I've got some recommendations that have similar vibes to "The Bell Jar" and they're actually written by people of colour.
So the first one is The Bluest Eye by Tony Morrison, the second is Veronica Decides To Die by Pauelo Koelo and the third one is A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara.
Jumping back into present time, there is actually a huge Monday phenomena that has occurred cause of "The Bell Jar" and this is its glamorization in popular culture. Jumping forward to modern times, there is a current phenomena that's occurring cause of "The Bell Jar" and this is due to its glamorization in popular culture, the most notable reference of "The Bell Jar" in popular culture would include Lisa Simpson holding a copy of the novel and then also cat from 10 things. I heard about you on a couch reading an obvious prop version of the book. Now, what do these two characters have in common? They're both intelligent, socially awkward, strong-willed, pessimistic, and they're outcast. They're the other girl. The other girl is someone that is highly, highly glamorized on social media. For those of you that are on TikTok and Tumblr, I'm sure you may or may not heard of the following hashtags, and one of them that stands out is one that's called Coquettes, which essentially means a flirty girl wanting to gain the attention of men.
There's also the hashtag dollette, which is a hyper feminist aesthetic. Similar to coquette, but is more of a nymphette, and yes, that's a Lolita reference, that has taken her power back. You're probably asking yourself, Jade, what the hell does this have to do with "The Bell Jar"? If you search those hashtags, or if you search the hashtag "The Bell Jar" you'll find countless posts combining the following;
Lana Del Rey, posts about suicide self-harm, references to the Virgin Suicides Black Swan and Girl Interrupted General pictures of sad women, quotes that talk about all of the above nineties grunge celebrities, so such as Angelina Jolie, Winona Rider, Kate Moss. And here's a good example of a quote that's tied into all of these hashtag.
My mother always told me to wear pretty panties in case I got hit by a. Lovely. I know these apps and hashtags are being utilized by young girls and they're also used for just glamorizing mental illness, death eating disorders, suicide body image, and drug use. Yeah. Making them seem like the best things in the world.
I remember back when I was in high school, I frothed. Tumblr and I would re-blog extremely skinny girls salads, drugs, depressive quotes. I was basically using these hashtags that hadn't existed at the time, such as dollette and coquette and worshiping these people that had problematic outlooks and viewpoint. I was also a huge fan of Lana Del Rey, and I still am admittedly, so use that, how you will.
Okay, so let's get into a quick wrap up of what we've just covered. Dark fiction, it encompasses all genres, contains themes of fear, the unknown death, and makes the reader feel uncomfortable. Sylvia Plath uses a confessional tone in her poetry and utilizes a no bullshit, straightforward narration through her protagonist, Esther, aka Plath. Esther struggles with mental illness and the struggle is extremely realistic. This allows the reader to gain an understanding of someone else's mind. Both Sylvia Plus's family are Hemingway, have an eerie and macabre lineage. The text came out around the same time as the women rights Movement in the United States, and some of the issues reflect this movement.
Sex and violence are intertwined and they make a power imbalance between the sexes. The beja does hold a controversial and outdated viewpoint, specifically in regards to race. Retroactively expecting a text, however, from the past to uphold your values currently is unrealistic and frankly, an impossible standard to hold a novel.
Two. And lastly, "The Bell Jar" has inspired negative aesthetics, perpetuated predominantly by teenage girls, referring specifically to hashtags found on TikTok and Tumblr, like Dollette and "The Bell Jar" in general.
And that's all we have today. Learnt something new. Subscribe to the podcast and rate and review and follow all of our socials in the description box for more refreshing content.
The next episode's focus is depictions of mental illness in fiction, and this is where we'll discuss multiple texts which encapsulate this theme, not something that you wanna miss. Stay juicy and I look forward to chatting you to you next time. See ya.