“

So Mrs. Guinea had flown back to Boston and taken me out of the cramped city hospital ward, and now she was driving me to a private hospital that had grounds and golf courses and gardens, like a country club, where she would pay for me, as if I had a scholarship, until the doctors she knew of there had made me well.

My mother told me I should be grateful. She said I had used up almost all her money and if it weren’t for Mrs. Guinea she didn’t know where I’d be. I knew where I’d be though. I’d be in the big state hospital in the country, cheek by jowl to this private place.

I knew I should be grateful to Mrs. Guinea, only I couldn’t feel a thing. If Mrs. Guinea had given me a ticket to Europe, or a round‐the‐world cruise, it wouldn’t have made one scrap of difference to me, because wherever I sat‐‐on the deck of a ship or at a street cafe in Paris or Bangkok‐‐I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.”

Extract by Sylvia Plath (1963), Chapter 15, Page 458