i won't finish the bell jar

fig tree this fig tree that...

to my sylvia and esther defenders, put your pitchforks down and hear me out. at least until the end of my essay <3 i beg.

i tried you know, i really did years ago actually, during a time when i was in the absolute throes of my depression. i needed someone who understood the deep dark depths of my mind. i wanted to read about someone who lost it all and just hasn’t found a way out yet. just like every mentally ill person, i was recommended to read the bell jar after a few google searches about books of mentally ill women. i wanted to relate to someone so badly because i felt so alone at the time. so hollow you could hear the rattling echo of my beating heart against my rib cage. that’s all i had to tell myself i was a person.

i ordered it immediately, amazon one-day delivery—lovely! a lot of my time in my haze of depression is a blur, so i’ll fast forward to parts i can conceive, so keep up. about a day or so later after my order i sat outside, smoking a badly rolled joint. i saw an amazon worker coming up, sylvia’s here, i thought. most things didn’t put a fire in my heart like books do, i can escape my reality and dive into someone else’s for a moment, even if it is so deeply similar to my depression experience. the amazon worker handed me my package, i smiled, a half smile because i think i had forgotten what it was like to interact with others, a result of my mental illness and a global pandemic at the time. i flick my jay and run upstairs cracking open the first page.

it takes me some time to get through books, and my attention span is so futile these days. alas, i try my best because i know the joys of reading, even if the fog of my depression hasn’t lifted just yet. then i get to a point in the book, early on i might add, where she’s blatantly racist. oh! so no one was gonna mention that part of the story?! sure it was the ‘60s when she wrote it, and time period matters and racist white women were definitely not covert. it was still so shocking to me though. Esther describes herself as a “big smudgy-eyed chinese woman staring idiotically into my face” when she looks into her own reflection. well damn?! there’s bigger issues at play than that rampant mental illness miss Esther. She of course doesn’t stop there, she finds indigenous people “ugly” and uses descriptors like “dusky as bleached-blonde negress”. Girl what?????? At this point, I had to close my book and reflect. Do white women so deeply relate to this book or something, not much due to her ultimate demise and deterioration of her mind, but her ease in being so racist?

Now, before you start screaming, no I don’t believe you too are a racist because you enjoy the bell jar. it is a classic for a reason. however, why is it that the bell jar so loved in one aspect (ie. that damn fig tree) but no one discusses how deeply racist Esther is. to me, it makes the book a hard read because all i wanted was a story to relate to, not a story that puts down marginalized folks. Sure, time period matters, but since it’s fiction, it’s your world, Sylvia, but i guess the bell jar wasn’t meant for little “negresses” like me.