The Bell Jar
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Sylvia Plath’s only novel, The Bell Jar, was published in England in 1963, but wasn’t published in the United States until 1971. The first three covers sported the author name Victoria Lucas, a pseudonym Plath wrote under for a time. In the 1966 version done by Faber and Faber
Publishing, Plath’s real name is displayed. The color scheme between the 30 editions was quite prevalent: 20 out of 30, or 67% used a sort of mauve. Mauve is a pale purple color, or a mix of purple and gray. In some covers, the purple is more prevalent, in others it is mostly gray and then purple lettering, or sometimes the purple would have a more magenta or pink tint. I think this was an excellent choice for most of the covers to use because mauve displays the novel quite perfectly. The hint of purple shows femininity, but the gray contrast shows the deep darkness that the novel carries.
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A large idea across all of the editions is to have an image of a woman, but to cut it off or in some way hide it before we are able to see her face. This is the depiction in 13 of the covers, whether it is only half a face such as the 1966 paperback, or the other 1966 edition with a woman full-frontal but a large magenta bubble gum bubble covers half of her face, both blonde. The Swedish edition in 1975 is a brunette with the woman turned away about 120 degrees, so all we see is the left side of her hair. The 1999 edition also has a part of the girl’s head cut off, but this girl is very young and lays in bed. I like the idea of the Polish version because it is a woman facing the front, but there is a puzzle breaking up her face into pieces, and this holds the context of the story very well. The Turkish edition is weirdest, it’s a mannequin thing with a whole bunch of plastic surgery like where would that even come from? Other covers have just a piece of the girl, like her shoes or an arm holding lights or her back while she holds an umbrella. I also like the Hebrew, Bantam Books, and Harper editions that have roses, and that is something I’d like to incorporate into my piece.
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I cannot believe that after fifty years of beautiful covers, ranging from weird to dark to aesthetic, Faber and Faber publishes the 2013 edition depicting the novel as chick lit. Chick lit! This novel is dark and painful and full of sorrow and a bunch of heavy stuff, and all that the fiftieth edition puts on the cover is a woman fixing her lipstick? No no no! Plath wrote this novel just months before she killed herself. I don’t believe for a second that at this time, Plath was fixing her makeup or attempting to write a beach novel. I just think that the 2013 edition lacks some major respect for such amazing writing. This cover has no correlation with any other in the past five decades except for the fact that there’s a woman on the cover.
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Good observation here re: color scheme. Think about the relevance of this mauve / purple color scheme to the era in which Plath’s novel first appeared, too. For instance: purple was originally the color that was associated with the “women’s lib” (second wave feminist) movement, which kicked off during this same time period. Look, for instance, at the coloring used on this well-known icon from the 1960s women’s lib movement.
Great reading of the graphic details here. What do you think is indicated by a) the use of roses (feminine imagery? Or something more complicated than that?) and b) the covering / interruption of the figure’s face?
Also: have you come across any editions that feature Plath‘s face, in particular, on the cover?