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 began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.” 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. 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 Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. “ I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. In nearly the beginning of the novel she describes choices before her as fig tree leaves in a fig tree that is her life.

Plath excellently uses metaphor in her writing as is evident from the title of the book itself which refers to how she’s in a bell jar that makes her feel trapped and distorted. The novel can be triggering for individuals experiencing mental health issues at places but one cannot deny the fact that Sylvia Plath shows her dry and dark sense of humor by speaking of superficial parties in the fashion industry. Projecting her thoughts, attitudes and inclinations through Esther Greenwood, the main character of the novel, she establishes that she is no less than a feminist icon, who, although in a state of mental breakdown, tries to liberate herself from notions of what a woman should and should not be.

In her only novel The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath, the celebrated American poet and author, takes the route of making it semi-autobiographical originally under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas.

The bell jar author