Skip to main content

The Bell Jar, Annotated

Last summer I found this interesting website called Book Drum. On it, people more or less bring the books to life through annotations. Naturally when I saw The Bell Jar was included, my interest was piqued. This would have been a dream project for me to do but now that its done, and done well by Siân Cleaver, I can move on to something else I suppose.

The Bookmarks section is the meatiest, in which Cleaver explores and illustrates many of the commercial aspects and non-fiction events, people, places, etc. that Plath wove like a tapestry in the novel. The entire site is informative and I hope you enjoy Cleaver's work. My particular favorite is the YouTube video of Art Ford (the inspiration for Lenny Shepherd).

I meant all fall to post this link but with "Last Letter" and other posts and the end of the year, this one kept getting bumped. However, with the below information to present to you too, I am almost glad that it did!

In addition to this website, I recently found a older Barbizon Hotel booklet/brochure... It is eleven pages long and features photographs & captions of the Barbizon from circa 1936, or, about 17 years before Plath was a resident there in June 1953. How much change would have been made to the hotel in that period? It is probable that we will never know, but for what it is worth I imagine these images would have been familiar to Plath.

The hotel was 24 stories and had, at the time of the publication, 700 rooms. The hotel boasted also a recital room, library, indoor swimming pool, restaurant, coffee shop, and louge, among others. Plath was in room 1511.

The first picture here is the lobby.



In the center of the picture is a stairway that leads to a mezzanine. At some point later, the Barbizon lobby was completely remodeled as can be seen in this image.

The second picture here is of the coffee shop Plath places a memorable scene with Hilda, the hat maker.



Before the hotel closed, I had the opportunity to have a coffee in the coffee shop. It was neither tasty nor cheap. Like Esther, I found the coffee "over-stewed" and "so bitter it made my nose curl..."

The third picture is a bedroom.



It appears tiny, but I imagine this would have been the approximate size room Plath had during her residence there (I imagine that to fit 700 rooms in a 24 story building the bedrooms need to be this small). The impression I have always had of the hotel room Plath places Esther Greenwood in in The Bell Jar was much bigger; but I am not certain if familiarity with modern hotel room sizes taints my imagination. Nevertheless, to quote Plath herself, "it is good to have the place in mind."

Popular posts from this blog

Sylvia Plath's Gravestone Vandalized

The following news story appeared online this morning: HEPTONSTALL, ENGLAND (APFS) - The small village of Heptonstall is once again in the news because of the grave site of American poet Sylvia Plath. The headstone controversy rose to a fever pitch in 1989 when Plath's grave was left unmarked for a long period of time after vandals repeatedly chiseled her married surname Hughes off the stone marker. Author Nick Hornby commented, "I like Plath, but the controversy reaching its fever pitch in the 80s had nothing to do with my book title choice." Today, however, it was discovered that the grave was defaced but in quite an unlikely fashion. This time, Plath's headstone has had slashed-off her maiden name "Plath," so the stone now reads "Sylvia Hughes." A statement posted on Twitter from @masculinistsfortedhughes (Masculinists for Ted Hughes) has claimed responsibility saying that, "We did this because as Ted Hughes' first wife, Sylvia de

Famous Quotes of Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath inspires us all in various and wonderful ways. She is in many respects a form of comfort to us, which is something that Esther Greenwood expresses in The Bell Jar , about a bath: "There must be quite a few things a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them. Whenever I'm sad I'm going to die, or so nervous I can't sleep, or in love with somebody I won't be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: 'I'll go take a hot bath.'" We read and remember Sylvia Plath for many reasons, many of them deeply personal and private. But we commemorate her, too, in very public ways, as Anna of the long-standing Tumblr Loving Sylvia Plath , has been tracking, in the form of tattoos. (Anna's on Instagram with it too, as SylviaPlathInk .) The above bath quote is among Sylvia Plath's most famous. It often appears here and there and it is stripped of its context. But I think most people will know it is from her nove

Sylvia Plath and McLean Hospital

In August when I was in the final preparations for the tour of Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar sites, I found that I had long been mistaken about a couple of things. This is my coming clean. It was my intention in this blog post to discuss just McLean, but I found myself deeply immersed in other aspects of Plath's recovery. The other thing I was mistaken about will be discussed in a separate blog post. I suppose I need to state from the outset that I am drawing conclusions from Plath's actual experiences from what she wrote in The Bell Jar and vice versa, taking information from the novel that is presently unconfirmed or murky and applying it to Plath's biography. There is enough in The Bell Jar , I think, based on real life to make these decisions. At the same time, I like to think that I know enough to distinguish where things are authentic and where details were clearly made up, slightly fudged, or out of chronological order. McLean Hospital was Plath's third and last