There’s this bizarrely enduring idea that women can’t create “serious” art and this new cover design plays into that by being fluffier than a newborn duckling. The Guardian reports that Hannah Griffiths, Faber’s publisher of paperbacks, said the look was part of a strategy “to keep our backlist writers in the minds and hands of new readers” and that the cover was supposed to help the novel appeal to a reader “who could enjoy its brilliance without knowing anything about the poetry, or the broader context of Plath’s work.” Frankly if such a reader exists who is ignorant or intimidated by Plath’s reputation perhaps their reading privileges should be revoked, rather than slavishly pandering to them with a bright, bubbly and thoroughly ugly book cover.