‘The Bell Jar’ (1963) By (Victoria Lucas) Sylvia Plath
A Masterpiece
“I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow, the million moving shapes and cul-de-sacs of shadow. There was shadow in bureau drawers and closets and suitcases, and shadow under houses and trees and stones, and shadow at the back of people’s eyes and smiles, and shadow, miles and miles and miles of it, on the night side of the earth.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
So I finally got around to reading the only novel written by Sylvia Plath in her short life under the pseudonym of “Victoria Lucas”. It was received with critical indifference.
Plath had married Ted Hughes in 1957 and had a daughter — Frieda — with Hughes born on April 1, 1960, and then in October, she published The Colossus her first collection of poetry. In February 1961, Plath’s second pregnancy ended in miscarriage; and then in August, she finished her semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar.
Beginning in October 1962, Plath experienced a great burst of creativity and composed most of the poems on which her reputation now rests, writing at least 26 of her posthumous collection Ariel during the final months of her life. However, for me, it is her quite unexpected brilliant novel which was published shortly before her suicide in 1963 that places her in the pantheon of…
