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Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (1963)
Poet Sylvia Plath's only novel, The Bell Jar, is a semiautobiographical work originally published in the United Kingdom in 1963, under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. In 1967 the book was published with Plath's name, but it was not released in the United States until 1971. The Bell Jar documents a young woman's mental decline, her stay at an institution where she receives electroconvulsive therapy, and her feelings of being stifled under a bell jar -- unable to breathe. A month after the book's initial publication, Plath committed suicide. Her tempestuous relationship with her husband, British poet Ted Hughes, has often been cited as the major cause of Plath's death. However, Plath had been clinically depressed for most of her life and had attempted suicide before her relationship with Hughes. |