Analysis Of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar

Plath’s novel gives a unique account the hypocrisy women faced in terms of their sexual experience. Through the eyes of the main character, Ester Greenwood, the novel focuses on the struggle between what women were beginning to gain and the antiquated notions of female purity and innocence. Ultimately, The Bell Jar critiques the gendered double standard women faced regarding sex in the mid-twenty-first century in its exploration of purity, equality, and freedom.

Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar is rich with an array of motifs, all which serve to sustain the novel’s primary themes. A motif particularly prevalent within the first half of the novel involves food, specifically Esther Greenwood’s relationship with food. This peculiar relationship corroborates the book’s themes of Esther’s continuous rebirthing rituals, and of her extreme dissatisfaction. The interrelation with food functions in two distinct manners: literally and figuratively. This analysis will concentrate on the figurative role of food in The Bell Jar, and how it denotes Esther’s overall state.

Sylvia Plath was a troubled writer to say the least, not only did she endure the loss of her father a young age but she later on “attempted suicide at her home and was hospitalized, where she underwent psychiatric treatment” for her depression (Dunn). Writing primarily as a poet, she only ever wrote a single novel, The Bell Jar. This fictional autobiography “[chronicles] the circumstances of her mental collapse and subsequent suicide attempt” but from the viewpoint of the fictional protagonist, Esther Greenwood, who suffers the same loss and challenges as Plath (Allen 890). Due to the novel’s strong resemblance to Plath’s own history it was published under the pseudonym “Victoria Lucas”. In The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath expresses the

Sylvia Plath is known as a profound writer, depicted by her lasting works of literature and her suicide which put her poems and novel of debilitating depression into a new perspective. In her poem “Lady Lazarus,” written in 1962, her mental illness is portrayed in a means to convey to her readers the everyday struggle of depression, and how it affects her view of her world, herself, and even those who attempt to tackle her battle with her. This poem, among other poetry pieces and her novel The Bell Jar, identify her multiple suicide attempts, and how the art of dying is something she has become a master of. Plath’s “Lady Lazarus,” about her trap of depression and suicide attempts, is effective and thought provoking because of her allusions to WWII Nazi Germany and the feelings of oppression and Nazism that the recurring images evoke.

Sylvia Plath is the author of the Bell Jar and was an American poet, novelist, and short-story writer (JRSM. June, 2003). The Bell Jar book was published in London a month before Plath’s death in January, 1963. The book was first published under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, and then later published in Plath’s own name. Esther Greenwood is the main character in the Bell Jar. Esther suffered from mental illness and struggled against depressive environment and continuously aggravated madness that led to her suicide and death (JRSM. June, 2003). I ague that Esther’s mental illness was aggravated by her internal pressure and depressive environment in which she lived.

Sylvia Plath uses this quote in The Bell Jar to show the main character Esther Greenwood struggles. The quote states as followed,“There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room. It 's like watching Paris from an express caboose heading in the opposite direction--every second the city gets smaller and smaller, only you feel it 's really you getting smaller and smaller and lonelier and lonelier, rushing away from all those lights and excitement at about a million miles an hour”(Plath 110). Plath uses this quote to encapsulate the true feelings of the main character and her struggles with social conformity. It is obvious that Esther Greenwood is directly inspired by Plath herself. The many similarities include their pseudonyms, the absence of a father, their young age, and their high level of intelligence. The only major difference is Esther’s suicide attempt was fortunately unsuccessful while Sylvia Plath’s was unfortunately successful. Plath committed suicide at the age of thirty due to her major struggles of conforming to society. Sylvia Plath In The Bell Jar, the author, Sylvia Plath, uses metaphors, symbolism, and tone to draw attention to the main characters journey through mental illness and her struggle to relate to the feminist expectations of society.

The Bell Jar: Women Dissociated from the Norm In the modern world, women are leaders; they are entrepreneurs, CEO's, and astronauts, and anything else they want to be, but in the 1950's they were seen in a very different light. They were thought of as simple-minded people who needed to be protected. They had to dress and act a certain way, but it was during this time where women everywhere tried to change that. Looking back, many novels have ties to fighting for gender equality, one of them is The Bell Jar.

One is often enticed to read a novel because of the way in which the characters are viewed and the way in which characters view their surroundings. In the novel The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, Esther Greenwood is a character whose "heightened and highly emotional response to events, actions and sentiments" (Assignment sheet) intrigue the reader. One of her character traits is extreme paranoia that is shown in different situations throughout the novel. As a result of this, she allows herself to be easily let down, as she believes that all events that are unsatisfactory are directed towards her. Finally, it is clear that she attempts to escape this notion by imagining an idyllic yet impossible life that she

Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 28 Sept. 2014. According to Bonds, Esther fails to establish an autonomous, or separate self, and ultimately resorts to “culturally-ingrained stereotypes of women.” Bonds notes that in the first part of Plath’s novel, both the commitment to the separative self and the effect of that commitment are woven into the text though pervasive imagery of dismemberment.

Often times in life, the pressure from peers and the status of which one must live up to tends to corrode one’s character. The dawn of the twentieth century saw much change in the legal progressions of women, as they finally gained their rights. Although having reached such accomplishments, women still did not maintain equality in societal expectations. The Bell Jar, first published under the pseudonym “Victoria Lucas”, persists as a confessional novel that embodies Sylvia Plath’s struggles with society and the circumstances that eventually led to her tragic suicide in 1963. Writing The Bell Jar required Plath to contend with her inner demons, much of which sprung from the harsh relationships with the people whom with she surrounded herself.

“The Bell Jar,” one of Sylvia Plath’s most famous novels, portrays a young woman’s battle with mental illness. Set in the 1950s, the narrator, Esther Greenwood, describes her gradual downward spiral. When analyzing the novel, there any several factors that clearly contributed to her mental breakdown. Some of these factors include gender stereotypes, societal norms and self degradation. Esther Greenwood is an exceedingly intelligent and opinionated young woman.

Mental illness is one of the most sought-after themes that has often been explored and represented in literature over a remarkably wide variety of writings. The various factors that threaten a character’s sanity can range from all those traumatic occurrences and events, or a combination of a number of long and short-term factors that may trigger the character’s decline into pressure, from several vast and impersonal sources. Also, very rarely does this threatened character succeed or emerge from the suffering undefeated and empowered, if not engulfed by it. Esther Greenwood is portrayed as one such character in Sylvia Plath’s widely renowned autobiographical novel ‘The Bell Jar’. The novel is a searing portrayal of a woman’s descent into desolation and depression. Depression as we understand it, is a chronic illness characterized by feelings of sadness and loss of interest in previously enjoyed activities, which may lead to several emotional and physical problems and nonetheless, require a long term treatment when it comes to recovery. (Major Depressive Disorder; MDD, APA, DSM-5). The Bell Jar is viewed as a piece of literature that aims to humanize the people suffering from a mental illness, rather than stigmatize them. It brings out the real facade of depression and the oppressing hopelessness and loss of identity that comes along with it. Corrosive feelings of worthlessness, self-loathing along with suicidal ideas and overall impaired functioning is an indication of major

The works of Sylvia Plath have always been at least slightly controversial; most of them have themes of feminism, suicide, or depression. Plath was born in 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts, and by the age of twelve she was reported to have had an IQ of about 160 (Kelly). Growing up in an age in which women were expected to be nothing more than conservative housemaids, Plath stood defiant against the views of society, choosing to expose any misogynistic prejudices or hateful prospects against mental illness through her writings (Allen).

Sylvia Plath uses many literary devices to convey her purpose in The Bell Jar such as symbolism. The Bell Jar itself is used as symbolic representation of the emotional state Esther is in. The glass jar distorts her image of the world as she feels trapped under the glass. It represents mental illness; a confining jar that descends over her mind and doesn’t allow her to live and think freely. Symbols of life and death pervade The Bell Jar. Esther experiences psychological distress which is a major motif in the novel. The death of Esther’s father and the relationship with her mother is a possible reason for her illness. Sylvia Plath expresses the difficulties Esther faces and parallels her struggle with depression and illustrates it using various symbols such as a fig tree, mirrors, beating heart and a bell jar throughout the novel.

In all aspects of the lives we live, normal can not ever be defined as a single idea. If normal is such a thing at all, it is a subjective opinion and can only be defined on an individual level. Everything we interpret is relative to our upbringing and our environment. Not one person had the same upbringing or lived in the same environment as another person for even siblings who have lived together their whole lives have different nurturing experiences. The differentiation between normal and abnormal is a topic of much debate. The meaning of normality varies in many ways such as by person, time, place, situation, culture and set of values. Normality is usually seen as good and desirable by society and what society thinks while abnormality may be seen as bad or undesirable (Boundless).