It's 1953. The Rosenbergs are being electrocuted. Ester, an academic high-flyer (even good a chemistry) wants to be a literary professor. She has various potential role models - prim, permissive, mother-figure. She's won an internship at a NY woman's magazine. Men ask her out. Many boys already have, but they don't often ask again. Buddy, a med student, has been friends with her for a while. He invites her to see a birth.
She discovers he's not a virgin. She tries to lose her virginity to another man but he's too nice. She decides against an academic career, wonders what would be wrong with marrying an undemanding, cute, mechanic. She wonders about touring Europe and reading Finnegan's Wake. Gradually she becomes suicidal, researching and calculating (how many pills? Which floor is it best to jump from? She practises with razors). She tries to out-trick her self-preservation instincts. She's sent to a male psychiatrist, has ECT, tries to kill herself (sleeping pill overdose), goes into a clinic where a female psychiatrist gets her to have ECT. She gets to know some of the patients, learns how to be allowed to go to the shops, what a move to another ward means. She analyses conversations as they happen, imagines that people are testing her and that there are conspiracies. She has a diaphragm put in on the advice of the doctor.
She picks a 26 y.o. math prof, a womenizer. She hemorrhages bady when losing her virginity with him. Joan (a fellow patient and an ex of Buddy) is found hanging dead in the woods. Buddy visits Ester, and dumps her. At the end she's waiting to have an interview to see if she's ready to leave.
I read it years ago. I'd forgotten that the Bell Jar distorts as well as stifles. I'd forgotten how much was set in the hospital. It's episodic, the story told out of chronological order. The episodes/flashbacks are complete anecdotes. I like the style - it's lean and crisp, with many metaphors/similes - vodka goes down "like a sword swallower's sword".
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