The Bell Jar Essay & Criticism

The Bell Jar Critical Overview

Two years before Sylvia Plath published The Bell Jar, her collection of poetry The Colossus opened to some good reviews, particularly in the United States. That Plath published The Colossus under her own name but published The Bell Jarnn-der the pseudonym of Victoria Lucas meant the reviewers would judge the latter on its own merits. Of course, the original critics of The Bell Jar did not know that its author was the estranged wife of Ted Hughes, who was becoming a successful poet in his own right.

Some early reviews were encouraging. Robert Taubman, in a New Statesman article, called The Bell Jar "a clever first novel.... The first feminine novel ... in the Salinger mood," referring to JD. Salinger's famous novel Catcher in the Rye and some of his shorter work. Laurence Lerner in The Listener praised the book as "brilliant and moving," while Rupert Butler, in Time...
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