She too was born in New England and briefly took a break from college to look after her mental health, a period she describes as “a time of darkness, despair, disillusion-so black only as the inferno of the human mind can be.” The Bell Jar’s subject matter was once deemed so unseemly that in 1977 a court granted an Indiana school board’s wish to include it on a list of banned books. The book is semi-autobiographical in that the events loosely draw from Plath’s early life. I am, I am, I am,” has become a self-empowerment slogan commonly embroidered on Etsy merchandise and completely divorced from the dark passage in the book it comes from when Esther attends her friend’s funeral. One of the most commonly quoted lines, “I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. This has largely been facilitated by mass marketing and the tight embrace of popular culture which have both worked to transform The Bell Jar’s protagonist, Esther Greenwood, from a troubled woman into a relatable heroine. Sylvia Plath’s first and only novel has become a defining work of the feminist canon, achieving a kind of cultural longevity unparalleled by other books.
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