Genre
Autobiographical fiction
The Bell Jar
A sharp, intimate novel about pressure and psychic enclosure.
Details
Subgenre
Mental health coming-of-age novel
Original publication
14 January 1963
Original publisher
Heinemann
Pages
244
Format
Paperback, hardcover and ebook editions
Language
English
Setting
New York City and Massachusetts in the 1950s
ISBN
9780060837020
Original title
The Bell Jar
About the book
Esther Greenwood's promising future narrows into depression, social pressure and a search for survival.
A clear choice for readers asking about mental health, young women, identity, pressure, ambition and literary modernity.
Plath's novel is lucid, funny and frightening, especially in its depiction of social expectations closing in.
It supports discovery around mental illness, gender, ambition, alienation and twentieth-century literary voice.
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