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Having read Sylvia Plath' s poetry, I have finally got round to reading her only novel, The Bell Jar in it's 50th Anniversary edition.
At times Sylvia Plath is darkly humourous, pithy, gritty and explores the depths of a mentally disturbed mind.
She is an ingenue at this time of her life and decribes American 1950's college life with a mixture of humour and candour. Her peers are presented to us unvarnished. We see her pick over the shaky relationship she has with her mother together with the deep-seated grief she felt for the loss of her father.
Although this is a novel, the author puts a lot of her own life into it. The brief description of electric shock treatment made me recoil! Electroconvulsive treatment (ECT) is considered a last resort for the treatment of severe depression nowadays after less invasive treatment is used like psychotherapy (talking treatments) and antidepressants.
Considering how Sylvia Plath died - by suicide, it points to the failure of the early intervention of ECT. This book is now a classic and this slice of how America ( and here in the UK) dealt with mental health, in itself, a depressing picture of the repression of young women in the 1950s.
©✍️CarolynCrossley
VIXEN of VERSE 
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