The Bell Jar
Esther Greenwood's descent into depression, told with Plath's terrifying precision. Published under a pseudonym in 1963, a month before Plath's death, it named what had no name for a generation of women. The bell jar metaphor (suffocating inside your own transparent enclosure) has entered the common language of mental illness.
Esther is “insufferable and snobbish” to a substantial minority, which matters more than usual in a book that is two hundred and fifty pages of her company. The racial descriptions have not aged, and readers who love everything else say so plainly rather than filing them under period. The fragmented timeline is “a pain to follow” unless you are tracking her state instead of the calendar. Critics in 1963 found the register too clinical, “cold, unfriendly humor” that “lacks the weight and complexity sufficient to the subject.” Modern readers add that the feminism is that of one educated white woman in 1953. “It hurt to get through it, and I think it’s self-indulgent.”
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
