The Bell Jar - Illustrations of Sylvia Plath's novel

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The Bell Jar

Chapters of a girl's depression

Sylvia Plath’s autobiographically inspired novel shows a path to a failed suicide attempt and then draws the recovery of the protagonist, a teenage girl. The novel paints the world of Esther, who is an intern at a magazine for “young ladies”, with strikingly powerful, vibrant colours, in which traditional feminine attributes and values play an important role. This very colourfully pictured world is dimmed, grayed-out by the depression depicted by the bell jar metaphor. My non-objective series of illustrations follow this process. On the way to suicide, the bell jar increasingly obscures the world represented with vibrant colours, and then, recovering, the bell jar gradually rises, illuminating the experiences of the protagonist. Representing this, the dimming of the colours can be perceivable in the first three images and in two videos, while the next three images and one video show us the release of colours as the liberation of the mind.

Concept, Graphic Design, Animation: Anna Hajdu

Sound Design: Mihály Hajdu

The Makeup Kit

"I still have the makeup kit they gave me, fitted out for a person with brown eyes and brown hair: an oblong of brown mascara with a tiny brush, and a round basin of blue eyeshadow just big enough to dab the tip of your finger in, and three lipsticks ranging from red to pink, all cased in the same little gilt box with a mirror on one side."

Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar, Chapter One

Terrible but wise

"Then she slipped a suit jacket over her lilac blouse, pinned a hat of imitation lilacs on the top of her head, powdered her nose briefly and adjusted her thick spectacles. She looked terrible, but very wise. As she left the office, she patted my shoulder with one lilac-gloved hand.

»Don't let the wicked city get you down.«"

Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar, Chapter Four

Poison

"I had a vision of the celestially white kitchens of Ladies' Day stretching into infinity. I saw avocado pear after avocado pear being stuffed with crabmeat and mayonnaise and photographed under brilliant lights. I saw the delicate, pink-mottled claw meat poking seductively through its blanket of mayonnaise and the bland yellow pear cup with its rim of alligator-green cradling the whole mess. Poison."

Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar, Chapter Four

Raw, red screen of tiny vessels

"I feigned sleep until my mother left for school, but even my eyelids didn't shut out the light. They hung the raw, red screen of their tiny vessels in front of me like a wound. I crawled between the mattress and the padded bedstead and let the mattress fall across me like a tombstone. It felt dark and safe under there, but the mattress was not heavy enough."

Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar, Chapter Ten

My own sweet shadow

"Cobwebs touched my face with the softness of moths. Wrapping my black coat round me like my own sweet shadow, I unscrewed the bottle of pills and started taking them swiftly, between gulps of water, one by one by one.

At first nothing happened, but as I approached the bottom of the bottle, red and blue lights began to flash before my eyes. The bottle slid from my fingers and I lay down.

The silence drew off, baring the pebbles and shells and all the tatty wreckage of my life. Then, at the rim of vision, it gathered itself, and in one sweeping tide, rushed me to sleep."

Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar, Chapter Thirteen

Making friends

"A new woman had moved into the room next to mine.

I thought she must be the only person in the building who was newer than I was, so she wouldn't know how really bad I was, the way the rest did. I thought I might go in and make friends.

The woman was lying on her bed in a purple dress that fastened at the neck with a cameo brooch and reached midway between her knees and her shoes. She had rusty hair knotted in a schoolmarmish bun, and thin, silver-rimmed spectacles attached to her breast pocket with a black elastic."

Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar, Chapter Fifteen

Breakfast

"(…) I shoved my feet into my slippers, dragging my blanket with me, for the morning was bright, but very cold, and crossed quickly to the kitchen. The pink-uniformed maid was filling a row of blue china coffee pitchers from a great, battered kettle on the stove.

I looked with love at the lineup of waiting trays-the white paper napkins, folded in their crisp, isosceles triangles, each under the anchor of its silver fork, the pale domes of soft-boiled eggs in the blue egg cups, the scalloped glass shells of orange marmalade. All I had to do was reach out and claim my tray, and the world would be perfectly normal."

Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar, Chapter Seventeen

Fresh air

"Behind Doctor Nolan I could see the body of a woman wearing a rumpled black-and-white checked robe and flung out on a cot as if dropped from a great height. But before I could take in any more, Doctor Nolan led me through a door into fresh, blue-skied air.

All the heat and fear had purged itself. I felt surprisingly at peace. The bell jar hung, suspended, a few feet above my head. I was open to the circulating air."

Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar, Chapter Eighteen

The old brag of the heart

"There would be a black, six-foot-deep gap hacked in the hard ground. That shadow would marry this shadow, and the peculiar, yellowish soil of our locality seal the wound in the whiteness, and yet another snowfall erase the traces of newness in Joan's grave.

I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart.

I am, I am, I am."

Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar, Chapter Twenty