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The Bell Jar and the chick-lit treatment

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bookshelfThe new cover of Sylvia Plath’s Bell Jar is being wildly criticised for a variety of reasons.

‘Silly’,‘hideous’ and ‘an insult to women everywhere’ –  Faber’s new cover for Sylvia Plath’s Bell Jar has sparked controversy and no small amount of ire.

Many feel the cover  – depicting a woman applying make-up – does not accurately reflect the content of the book, which follows the protagonist, Esther Greenwood, as she grapples with mental health issues.

Others interpret this as an attempt to place The Bell Jar in the ‘chick-lit’ category.

Not everyone, however, dislikes the new cover.

In a letter to the Guardian, one reader pointed out it refers to a scene in the book where Esther, ‘struggling with depression…bursts into tears. She takes out her mirror and repairs her makeup “with a small heart”.’

And Kirsty Grocot robustly defends the cover, arguing that it ‘captures the essence of the protagonist’s predicament perfectly’.

Several other works have also received the ‘chick-litification’ treatment.

Wuthering Heights was remarketed with artwork resembling that of the Twilight series and bearing the by-line, ‘love never dies’.

The recent new cover for Anne of Green Gables caused a stir as the eponymous redheaded heroine was replaced by a blonde with ‘come-hither eyes’.

This story has spawned some tongue in cheek spoofs – offering yet more inappropriate covers of the Bell Jar, or ‘chick-lit’ reworking of other classics.

And contemporary female authors also face a battle to ensure that their own books aren’t automatically given ‘chick-lit’ covers.

Lionel Shriver described how her fourth novel, ‘Game Control’, had initially been given a pastel cover of a ‘winsome young lass’ in a hat, in a field.

This despite the fact that the book’s protagonist is a man and the plot about a plan to kill two billion people.  

It doesn’t bode well when people think things need to be light and fluffy in order to appeal to women and the trend of placing an increasing amount of women’s books in the ‘chick-lit’ section is worrying.

In doing so, novels by women are being trivialised and lose potential readers.

On a separate note, the very category of ‘chick-lit’ is problematic.

As Lucy Uprichard points out, we have no equivalent term for men’s books – however light and ‘half-baked’ they are.

Yet for all the many problems with ‘chick-lit’ and the rebranding of classics, there remains one nagging question.

If this new cover leads to more women picking up and reading the Bell Jar, can that be a bad thing?

  1. Argh! What have they DONE to Wuthering Heights?! Suppose it’s just a mercy they didn’t have Heathcliff on the cover as a nineteenth century Christian Grey.

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