How 'The Bell Jar' is helping me through mid-first term slump

We did it. We got to reading week. But as with everything this year, it’s a little bit different. Reading week still has lectures for the lucky ones, and for the unlucky it doesn’t exist. So as we continue to balance the essays, reading and - ahem - the global pandemic, it is important to remember how far we have come since late September. Starting university after the freedom of leaving school can leave us with a feeling of joy at the new independence, but also like being trapped in a new decision, new city, and with new people. 

For this reason, however counterintuitive it sounds, I have been finding some solace in Sylvia Plath’s ‘The Bell Jar’. It explores the feelings of disillusionment of a young woman in a new city, who should be “steering New York like [her] own private car” but feels instead that she is “not steering anything, not even [herself]”. First year students every year feel disillusioned in a similar way, but with college. Not through any fault of its own, but from years of a narrative being spun that university will be the best years of your life. This unattainable fantasy of constant unbridled youthful joy is of course completely unrealistic; it is bound to be a mix of the good, the bad and the ugly.

While this narrative isn’t spun out of spite but out of excitement on the behalf of students, it also comes from the comfortable position of hindsight. As a whole I don’t doubt that I will greatly appreciate and have particular fondness for my time at college, but often in the moment the great bits can feel swamped with a feeling of disenchantment. We are “supposed to be having the time of [our] li[ves]”, and the pressure of this can be as oppressive as “sitting under the... bell jar”. Often it can feel like we are failing at doing one of the most basic things at university: enjoying it. 

Of course, this isn’t helped by COVID-19; even our hometowns became foreign back in March, and Plath’s assertion that Esther “couldn’t see the point of getting up” because “she had nothing to look forward to” became crystallised for all of us too, perhaps in a more shallow, but still debilitating way. Online learning and socialising at college is another hurdle. I know I am not alone in feeling what my mum has referred to as the ‘Zoid’ - the silent air space that hangs in the room while on a Zoom call, even if you’re enjoying it, and that really becomes a void once you have left the call for good. Laughing on a call and then realising you are on mute also has the capacity to bring forth the ‘Zoid’ mid-meeting. 

This said, I feel incredibly lucky to live in a time where I can still connect with people over the internet and keep safe, and I feel even more lucky that I have access to literature that explores issues that have been exacerbated by the pandemic. We can take some comfort at knowing that we are not alone in feeling deeply the sound of “[our] own silence” as the echo of a city once “blinking” lies distant and “flat as a poster” in lockdown.

So there you have it freshers.  Crazy as it sounds, Esther Greenwood is quite a companion to have at a time like this; in order to alleviate ‘fresher feeling’ it must first be acknowledged, and Plath allows us to do just that. She identifies a disillusionment and lethargy that has settled into many of us over the past six months, the feeling of being “very still and empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo”. This is only heightened by the reinvention of the self that occurs at college, as we look at ourselves a little more closely. While you’d think that reading about isolation and despondency wouldn’t make you feel less isolated or despondent, reading about what you’re feeling can be liberating and cathartic, and shared experience, I find, can be one of the less patronising ways to make yourself feel better. So if you’re feeling up to it, take ‘The Bell Jar’ out of the library this winter. And hell, get a copy of Hello! Magazine too.

Consider this a reflection on the things we have overcome so far, and, for anyone who is planning to go to university next September, an assertion that if you don’t always feel like one of the smiling students from the prospectus, sitting on a green, surrounded by books and friends for life, then you’re neither alone nor failing. Every year, but this year particularly, we must remember to “expect nothing”, take comfort in sharing our experience with others, and just “t[ake] a deep breath”.