My Own Depiction of the Bell Jar: Bell Jar 5 and Bell Jar 6
“Doctor Gordon was fitting two metal plates on either side of my head. He buckled them into place with a strap that dented my forehead, and gave me a wire to bite. I shut my eyes. There was a brief silence, like an indrawn breath. Then something bent down and took hold of me and shook me like the end of the world. Whee-ee-ee-ee-ee, it shrilled, through an air crackling with blue light, and with each flash a great jolt drubbed me till I thought my bones would break and the sap fly out of me like a split plant. I wondered what terrible thing it was that I had done.“
“‘How do you feel? ‘All right.’ But I didn’t. I felt terrible. ‘Which college did you say you went to?’ I said what college it was. ‘…My mother’s knuckles were bone-white, as if the skin had worn off them in the hour of waiting. She looked past me to Doctor Gordon, and he must have nodded, or smiled, because her face relaxed. ‘A few more shock treatments, Mrs Greenwood,’ I heard Doctor Gordon say, ‘and I think you’ll notice a wonderful improvement.’
(Plath 144)
“‘I’m through with that Doctor Gordon,’ I said, after we had left Dodo and her black wagon behind the pines. ‘You can call him up and tell him I’m not coming next week.’ My mother smiled. ‘I knew my baby wasn’t like that.’I looked at her. ‘Like what?’ ‘Like those awful people. Those awful dead people at that hospital.’ She paused. ‘I knew you’d decide to be all right again.'”
(Plath 145-146)
“It would take two motions. One wrist, then the other wrist. Three motions, if you counted changing the razor from hand to hand. Then I would step into the tub and lie down. I moved in front of the medicine cabinet. If I looked in the mirror while I did it, it would be like watching somebody else, in a book or a play. But the person in the mirror was paralysed and too stupid to do a thing.”
(Plath 147-148)
