The Bell Jar

>everyone talks about how awesome this is
>everyone
>white girls aged 15-25

Prose isn't really its selling point
>>9867565
Except it is good

>>9867561
Who talks about how awesome it is? This is not really highly regarded by anyone other than high school English teachers and their students

There are some evocative gems scattered about here and there. Too bad I can't remember anything in particular... There was a description of Esther having to do with the eye of a tornado or something that I found pretty powerful. The image of a bell jar itself is a good example of this too, I'd say. It's definitely more psychologically driven than prose driven though.

>"ugh so there I was in New York, making friends and working a totes awesome job, but like, ughh I don't know, I just couldn't decide whether I wanted to be a brain surgeon or an astronaut so I kinda just became neither, like I know right!, haha anyway so I'm like super down right now because...ugh don't worry...but I'm kinda gonna have to kill myself urrrghh annoying right anyway k bye!"

What did womanhood mean by this?

>>9867561
>everybody talks about how awesome this is
wtf where dumb ass idiot legit like 18 year old girls that go to BYU say it's awesome and that's it

Its a very confessional writing style, I personally felt moved by the story.

>>9867738
If I'm remembering the story correctly, the whole stint in New York was a program she got involved in as resume padder, pretty much. She wanted to write poetry, not articles about popular fashion and make up. As for womanhood, a theme that showed up over and over was how, being a woman in that time, these artistic goals would disappear if the woman actually did womanly things, like get married, have children, and keep house. Being a "woman" prohibits her from doing what she actually wants to do.

>>9867712

it has its moments and i'm not the nabokovian type who hates a book for not having lush prose, but what hurts is that she often attempts to write great prose using weak comparisons and metaphors. i thought it'd be better if she'd kept it simple rather than ornamenting for the sake of ornamenting. there's this incidental contrast between artsy pretensions and pretty banal (although interesting/captivating nonetheless) narrating.

>>9867769
>She wanted to write poetry, not articles about popular fashion and make up.

Oh my god, like, poor her!

>>9867775
You've obviously never had a job that keeps you from doing the things you actually want to do.

>>9867773
Yea I think it might be because there isn't very good flow, as far as the prose is concerned. There are paragraphs that are banal and then a paragraph of pure imagery and metaphor out of nowhere, then back to some banal stuff. It makes it pretty choppy, but maybe that's for a certain effect, who knows.

>>9867561
> he hasn't reached the tree branch metaphor yet

Keep going, OP.

>>9867561
Not every book has to have sublime prose. It has to fit the setting, time, characters and tone. It was from the perspective of a young girl, do you expect McElroy levels of style?

>>9867561
I never read it but I like that fig tree quote.

>>9868344
sorry but what girl says or thinks of things such as "I thought of crawling in
between the bed sheets and trying to sleep, but that appealed to me about as much as
stuffing a dirty, scrawled-over letter into a fresh, clean envelope."

>>9868526
a you a girl? no. then shut the fuck up.

>>9868565
bahahah how do you even know I am not

>>9867565
I can understand not liking the book but going into it with prejudices isn't going to help

>>9868565
why am I even responding to someone who tells me to shut the fuck up for having an opinion. get off of /lit/ please

File: sylvia_plath_e1444395971213.jpg (50KB, 450x451px) Image search: [Google]

50KB, 450x451px

>>9867561
You're confusing a good book with a masterpiece. It's a good read, but not as good as you had probably purported it to be.

Plath's prose isn't the main reason why people read that book.