The Bell Jar Quotes

Find the perfect quote to float your boat. Shmoop breaks down key quotations from The Bell Jar.

Women and Femininity Quotes

This hotel – the Amazon – was for women only, and they were mostly girls my age with wealthy parents [...] and they were all going to posh secretarial schools like Katy Gibbs, where the...

Family Quotes

My mother spoke German during her childhood in America and was stoned for it during the First World War by the children at school. My German-speaking father, dead since I was nine, came from some m...

Sex Quotes

"Leggo you b****!" Lenny stooped, and Doreen went flying up on to his shoulder [...] (2.26)

Society and Class Quotes

It was a queer sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York. (1.1)

Madness Quotes

[The Rosenbergs' execution] had nothing to do with me, but I couldn't help wondering what it would be like, being burned alive along your nerves. I thought it must be the worst thing in the world....

Identity Quotes

I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullaballoo. (1.9)

Transformation Quotes

[L]ater, when I was all right again, I brought [the gifts] out, and I still have them around the house [...] last week I cut the plastic starfish off the sunglasses case for the baby to play with....

Literature and Writing Quotes

The idea of being electrocuted makes me sick, and that's all there is to read about in the papers – goggle-eyed headlines staring up at me on every street corner, and at the fusty, peanut-sme...