Connections
May
21
1. Knowing Sylvia Plath’s life makes the book difficult to read as a story rather than an autobiography. With that said, any possibility of hope in the end is undercut.
2. The book has interesting motifs, but they are forgotten at random times.
3. The book was intended as a pot boiler, yet is treated as heavy duty literature.
4. Does Esther care that Joan died?
5. Is anything solved in any societal way? Do “good” books have to address issues and work to answer a question?
6. Each section, seems to be a stanza in a poem. She wrote a book of poetry-prose that seems overly easy to understand.
I have more criticisms, and this book has been truly difficult as a “teaching” tool. Yet when she takes a breath and hears the “old brag” of her heart beat “I am, I am, I am,” I know this is the brag of a century of women from Gilman to Woolf.
Today, the students met in small groups with discussion leaders. Most often the topics were shallow. Then the conversation would become intense and sometimes personal. This could only happen in a smaller atmosphere, and that defines the book. It is personal and real and therefore difficult to teach in the public space of my class.
Whine, whine, whine. I’m beginning to sound a little like Esther in her first hospital.
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