The Bell Jar: Are you trapped too?
A conglomeration of dead flora, pressed firmly in edge cutting rectangular seams, binded by a glass jar prima facie, is what one may call it. Bleakly, akin to the white of a dentist’s appointment, it stains itself in a grinning ochre, as the velocity of the wind coupled with the hue of the leaves outside, bear a dramatising transformation. There’s always so much to say, and yet the pity little to understand in the expanse of its grandeur. Without any further turns in the maze of words, it is “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath, an edition of which has been sauteéd to a turmeric yellow by my room’s wall clock, for it has been staying in the motel of my study table’s drawer, since January. You perhaps would ponder, so as to how a book titled along the lines of a bell jar, qualifies as a non-amorphous ‘product’. The answer, is surprisingly lies behind the very connotation of a product, in the contemporary world.
Capitalism, being the perilous plague it is, has led us all to vehemently associate a product to the manifestation of worth, that being money; cheques, cash, cards, and everything that may find its resort in between. The rustling sound of the word product would evoke the image of homogeneous commodities with meticulously tailored sides placed linearly on a shelf like the armymen of a redundant regiment, maybe of scrolling incessantly on markets that are constrained to the four edges of one’s merciless mobile screen or perhaps of wobbling eyes as one exchanges vividly coloured paper sheets at the counter of an odd supermarket. In the midst of all of this albeit, what were the implications of the question, so asked, in the very first place. Why does a meek book raise eyebrows upon being christened as a product, or at least I would like to opine myself that it does.
In stark disjunction to what the aforementioned thoughts could materialise out to be, the book is indeed a product, under my possession by the virtue of money, a sum of three hundred Indian rupees to be more precise. However, from the standpoint of utility as a yardstick, this so-called product is fundamentally of no use. It cannot be devoured as a delectable meal, used in broadcasting the latest set of headlines or metamorphosed into a pillow for that matter. This furthermore prompts the question, what precisely is it good for. Unconventionally, being at bay from the mainstream, the book serves the purpose of entertainment, entertainment which is veiled under lexicon, punctuation and paragraph breaks, invariably being the haven for many, and hellish for some. The author of this book is no less than a seamstress, her ivory needle has made an impressionable remark embroidering all hues of humanity; from the ultramarine of a relinquished love, to the grey of a university student life and even the belligerent black of eccentric executions. Thereafter, this essay explores the crucialness of “The Bell Jar” as a prudent product.
A feeble paperback it is, with the weight of a hundred feathers in hand and a thousand at heart; it sits solemnly with a calm cover painted in red, not the red one is washed over with, on their cheeks when they see a hibiscus grove, howbeit a red which stabs them into shards, a reprimanding red. At the centre of the desolated cover, is the silhouette of an uncanny woman, presumably the protagonist, who is enclosed in an eerie glass jar, as though she is the scapegoat of a scathing scientist, unknowingly about to get slain by the same. In proximity with the illustration, is bold text which reads ‘The Bell Jar ~ Sylvia Plath’, in a wistful white ink, a shade which is more unlively than the heinous hemlock that grows on graves. Consequent to abrupt attempts of reading and re-reading it a multitude of times, distraught marks have been indented over it like the tremors of a gruelling earthquake, known to perish life. A callous comparison of its godforsaken current state to how it originally once was, would reveal a distorted outlook towards the condition of the novel, much like the turbulent life of Esther Greenwood [the protagonist].
Unbeknownst to the readers, this edition, does not encompass a foreword at its inception, rather it commences squarely, laying the stage for the tragedy to unfold blatantly in the language of confessional literature. From the very initial sentence of the work, “It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York” uptil the concluding line, “The eyes and the faces all turned themselves towards me, and guiding myself by them, as by a magical thread, I stepped into the room” one is bewitched by the prowess of Plath’s pen. It is an itinerary carved through the thick and thin of what essentially life could turn to be, a blessing, a debacle, perhaps both, all witnessed through the eyes of Esther.
Although the book may be termed as ‘fiction’ by critics, it would perpetually be unethical to call it so, for how the readers begin to lead the life of the protagonist impromptu, without their realisation, it is in fact the incarnation of life in its most bitter and sour form, enjoyable as a novel nonetheless. Their flesh flakes and the skin of Esther is on them, and they too are encapsulated in a glass jar. A suicidal student consumed by boredom isn’t the most appealing plotline, yet the readers are caught in a frenzy of grey moral-grounds, dilemmatic decisions and an existential crisis, an unprecedented beauty of a book! In summation, “The Bell Jar” does quality as a worthy product, even though its story may not be the most ‘rainbows and sunshine‘ yet it hits home, much deeper than a scintillating sword. Penultimately, it becomes righteously important to let it breathe some air for it I’d December now, twelve months of agony binded in a bell jar!
By: Keshav Bhatia
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