I am, I am, I am."
As it is International Women's Day, I guess it is fitting to feature the only novel written by American poet Sylvia Plath. I have long been fascinated by the poetry and the life of Sylvia Plath ever since I read her poem, Mad Girl's Love Song. A chance coincidence made me pick up the similarly titled biography of her life before Ted Hughes and threw me back into her genius and the intense emotional highs and plunging lows that characterised her life. Re-reading The Bell Jar was then the natural next step in my private study of Plath. I was struck by the brutal honesty of a young woman struggling to carve out an identity for herself while grappling with societal expectations of womanhood and domestication, and her eventual breakdown.
This book rewards multiple readings, but the the lines written spoke particularly to me this time, especially as I am nearing the end of my twenties as a (rather) newly single female who is trying to establish my own independence and peace with myself.
"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig-tree in the story.
From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and off-beat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.
I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig-tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."
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