The Bell Jar has been on my TBR list for two whole years. It was a classic I was always promising myself I’d get around to but kept putting off because of its undeniably dark subject matter. I finally read it in December and have been taking a few months to collect my thoughts on it, which I will now present here. If you haven’t read the book anytime between its publication in 1963 and today, I’ll quickly give you an overview.
The Bell Jar tells the story of Esther, an undergrad finishing up a dream internship in New York, only to return home from this high and realize she didn’t get into the writing workshop of her choice. Since it’s the last month of summer before her final year of college, she explores ways to fill the time—her options varying from taking a typing course (as her mother wants) to getting an early start on her final thesis. However, the longer she takes to decide on a project, the faster we see her sink into a depression that she cannot understand or take control of.
Throughout Esther’s tryst with depression, we are right by her side as she makes decisions we are unable to root for—hurting the people she loves, acting against common sense, not taking her recovery seriously, and sabotaging her path to wellness. It’s no wonder, then, that readers of this book, including me, find her unlikable—an imperfect, mentally ill person who does not realize her privilege and whose self-sabotaging behavior is unworthy of our pity or empathy.
Which leads me to a second book I read that was all the rage in 2024 but one I just could not get behind. Miranda July’s All Fours deals with an unnamed protagonist who takes an unplanned detour from a road trip to New York to stay at a motel close to her house, without informing her husband or child of this change in plans. Nothing she does in the next two weeks feels okay to the reader. She spends $20,000 decorating a motel room that she is only going to spend two weeks in, just to get closer to the wife of a guy she glanced at in a gas station. She begins an emotional and indescribably pseudo-sexual affair with said man, engaging in ‘activities’ that made even the blood under my skin shudder. She obsesses over this man, stalks his friends and family, and risks being discovered and potentially ending her marriage. While her antics seem unhinged, what feels crazier is her ability to never see beyond her personal narrative.

We never understand why the protagonist is obsessing over this man in a way that could potentially ruin her life. We never understand why she is no longer in love with or attracted to her husband. We never understand if she truly cares about the effects of her actions on her otherwise stable life. Esther in The Bell Jar, who couldn’t help hurting the people around her (and often sometimes enjoyed it) , was still cognizant of their pain nonetheless. This is unlike the unnamed protagonist of All Fours who never acknowledges the thoughts of her ‘affair partner,’ his wife, her husband, her child, or the other 10–15 people she encounters on this self-destructive journey. Miranda’s unnamed protagonist lives within her own experience in a made-up world where the consequences don’t ripple beyond her personal sanctum.
Why were these women acting this way?
Neither of these novels provides a singular reason for their protagonist’s erratic behavior. It is insinuated that Esther was troubled by her boyfriend’s sexual past and that leaving her New York internship without finding another job may have triggered her mental breakdown. It’s also mentioned in several places that Esther might be undergoing a self-esteem crisis—where, after a lifetime of being lauded for her good grades and academic success, she felt she had reached a peak from which she could never return. Similarly, the unnamed protagonist in All Fours has a past trauma of almost losing her child, the guilt of being affected by this trauma despite her child now being healthy, and hidden menopause-related hormonal changes. She is also understood to be a multi-hyphenate artist who has not created anything of note for a while, which might be both a cause and consequence of her mental situation.
Without a clearly defined origin story or a glimpse of what their personalities were like before their mental crises, we are faced with women we find incredibly hard to sympathize with. We see them hurting the people around them with little to no acknowledgment of their actions and find ourselves internally yelling at them to get a grip. I felt suffocated when trapped in their minds and wanted out as soon as possible. But what if that was the whole point?
Mental illness is not likable to us. Depression is a lying monster that forces people to believe they are the scum of the earth and that living is a gift reserved for better people. So when you suffer from a disease that is consistently berating you, it’s hard to focus on the feelings of others and on fitting the perfect Tumblr sad-girl aesthetic that the likes of Bella Swan have popularized.
The protagonists are unlikable because mental illness is unlikable, uncomfortable, and disconcerting. I am not condoning the behavior of Esther, who hurt her mother and friends on the road to recovery. I will also never support how the woman in All Fours blew up her life for no good reason and still faced no consequences. But without works of fiction like this—where, within the safety and plausible deniability of fiction, women can finally be open and honest about what’s in their hearts—these conversations wouldn’t happen. It may come across as ‘unlikable’ to me or provocative, sensational, and inappropriate to others, but it will hopefully help us identify cries for help among our own friends and family.
Every time we are frustrated with a friend’s inexplicable personality change, their tendency to consistently cancel plans , self-retreat, or sabotage their lives, we will recognize them in these novels and give them the support we can—despite how frustrating it may seem. In the end, I feel for Sylvia Plath, who immortalized her helplessness through this work and who succumbed to her mental illness, never receiving the happy ending Esther did. I also feel for Miranda July, who may not need my pity but definitely has my concern after I did a deep dive and realized how truly close to life this book actually is. I hope these protagonists, their authors, and everyone suffering from depression feel seen and find the happy ending they deserve.
The Bell Jar was initially not met with success and only gained its current cult classic status after her husband, Ted Hughes, advocated for an American publication. This is why I feel, that despite my personal feelings, All Fours, a book that has shocked audiences with its bold scenes and its polarizing discussions (including several in my own book club), will likely become a classic of sorts in the future, irrespective of how poorly parts of it may age.
As for me, I’m glad to have read these books once so that I could understand depression better and be part of important discourses around these books. There’s no part of these books I’ll ever re-read or subsequent screen adaptations I will ever watch, but I understand their place in society and that’s more than enough for me.