The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath)

I seem to be going through a feminist literature stage at the moment. Just finished "The Bell Jar". INCREDIBLE book. Definately jumped into my top 5. It's just so beautifully descriptive, raw, real, honest. More melancholy than sad. Too bad it's her only novel. Why are talented people so often plagued with "the bell jar" I wonder... Anyway, here's a wee extract that spoke to me:


"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story.

From every tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attilla and a pack of other lovers with queer names and off-beat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were man more figs I couldn't quite make out.

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig-tree starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs becan to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet"

-p.81