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Sep. 26th, 2003 11:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
violachicI know that Sylvia Plath is supposed to be a young, angsty girl's hero, the kind of writer almost every adolescent and post-adolescent female seems to cling to. I also know that Sylvia Plath's brand of brooding is sort of supposed to become cliched or passe (pardon the lack of accents over the "e"s, but I have no idea how to make my computer do that) by the time you hit your early-mid twenties. However, in a recent reread of The Bell Jar (because, you know, I need some inspiration to be truly depressed, since I'm not depressed enough as it is), this particular passage stuck out. It reminds me of a conversation I had with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mccleark sometime in the last couple weeks, where I expressed some frustrations about where to go or not to go with my life. At the time, I had said how I feel as if parts of me fit into a lot of spaces, but there is no one space where I fit completely and comfortably. But I think this is actually a much better analogy. I also like it, because I know I'm not the only one who feels this way. I mean, this book was written in 1962, I believe, and, over the last forty years, obviously millions of young women have come to identify with the character of Esther Greenwood. But at any rate, this is what I'm mulling over these days.
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 African and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat 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, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.
Heh. Depressed enough yet? Want that esspresso double bitter? I've got a clove, if you feel you need it.....
mccleark sometime in the last couple weeks, where I expressed some frustrations about where to go or not to go with my life. At the time, I had said how I feel as if parts of me fit into a lot of spaces, but there is no one space where I fit completely and comfortably. But I think this is actually a much better analogy. I also like it, because I know I'm not the only one who feels this way. I mean, this book was written in 1962, I believe, and, over the last forty years, obviously millions of young women have come to identify with the character of Esther Greenwood. But at any rate, this is what I'm mulling over these days.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 African and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat 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, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.
Heh. Depressed enough yet? Want that esspresso double bitter? I've got a clove, if you feel you need it.....
