The Bell Jar Is Not Ju

When I first read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, I was 19. I thought I was reading someone else’s story — turns out, I was reading mine. Esther Greenwood’s descent into depression didn’t feel dramatic. It felt familiar. It felt like the pressure to smile at the right time, to be brilliant but never threatening, to “have it all” but want nothing too loudly. Plath didn’t just write about mental illness or womanhood. She wrote about the weight of being expected to be everything — perfect student, perfect daughter, perfect woman — and still feeling like nothing. It still shocks me how many women I meet who’ve read this book and quietly say, “It felt like she was writing about me.” #Entertainment #Books #Feminism