'These hoes will do anything to make Plath a little lesbian'

It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me.

If there’s a hill I’m willing to die on, it’s that The Bell Jar is a Sapphic text.

Now there’s not enough evidence to claim Sylvia Plath herself as queer (despite being a Smithie and her poem about another woman literally called “Lesbos”), but her famous piece of autofiction is one of the first queer books I ever read, though I didn’t fully understand it that way my first time around—I wasn’t aware of my queerness in high school—still, I identified strongly with Esther Greenwood, a career-focused writer entering into sexual situations with men based on obligation, curiosity, and a perceived lack of other options. (Cher Horowitz’s disinterest in high school boys rang for me the same way in Clueless, as did The Bell Jar-reading Raincoats fan Kat Stratford in 10 Things I Hate About You.)

In The Bell Jar, Esther reflects deeply on herself and her relationships with other women—her schoolmates, mother, and peers who spend the summer in glorified internships at Ladies’ Day Magazine. Confronted with the real world of the McCarthy Era, which feels like an endless maze of smoke and mirrors, Esther descends into a biopolar depression, which leads her to Bellevue, where she encounters her old friend, Joan. “It was as if we had been forced together by some overwhelming circumstance, like war or plague, and shared a world of our own,” Esther narrates. 

With her athletic build and free spirit, Joan serves as the subtextual lesbian character that has sparked debate since the book's publication in 1963, just one month after Sylvia Plath's death. As Sylvia left us pre-emptively (and her cruel husband Ted Hughes burned several of her journals), we may never know if she intended for Joan to be interpreted as queer (since, arguably, Esther finding her in bed with another woman could be seen as platonic), nor if Esther’s simultaneous disgust and fascination with Joan reflected internalized homophobia. If only she’d been able to wait for Adrienne Rich’s Compulsive Heterosexuality, or at the very least Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, first published one week after Sylvia’s suicide.

These Sapphic implications were somewhat overlooked until a 1979 film adaptation, in which director Larry Peerce made explicit what Plath had kept coded. The movie version of The Bell Jar featured Marilyn Hassett as Esther, an adventurous yet unstable young woman who initiates a threesome with a female friend before backing out. Joan (Donna Mitchell) is a recurring touchy-feely friend with short hair (!!!) who confesses her love for Esther before proposing a suicide pact. Although that bit doesn’t occur in the novel, Joan’s suicide does. Plath writes about Esther’s internal monologue during Joan’s funeral: “I wondered what I thought I was burying.” The film has Joan hang herself right after Esther’s rejection—a moment right out of The Children’s Hour, released 18 years prior, and the pulps before that.