Women And Women In The Bell Jar By Sylvia Plath

As the author of the book The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath’s writing can be associated with her real-life struggles. Living as a woman in the 50’s, Sylvia’s realities helped her paint a truthful picture of what it was like to be a woman with depression during this time. Although her openness to express her real-life struggle through text was remarkable, this topic of mental health and depression was unheard of at the time. Esther Greenwood, the main focus throughout The Bell Jar, resembled the life of Plath for her unsteady and rebellious characteristics that often break the social conceptions of what it meant to be a woman with depression. On page 96, Esther stands on top of a mountain with a colorful stream of consciousness that is detailed and fervent as she considers skiing down the mountain. Plath uses imagery and figurative language to convey her feelings of being out of control and absolutely isolated, revealing how women during this time period were forced to keep their true thoughts and emotions to themselves regardless of their mental condition.

Mrs Willard suggest that “[a man is] an arrow into the future and [a woman is] the place the arrow shoots off from”, both of these quotations are later commented on by Esther, ”The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be a place an arrow shoots of from.” There are more women in the novel following these traditions, such as Esther’s mother who married her father directly after college “and from that day on [she] never had a minute’s peace.” As Linda W. Wagner states, “The Bell Jar must be read as (…) a testimony to the repressive cultural mold that trapped many mid-century women, forcing them outside what should have been their rightful, productive lives.” Throughout the novel, it becomes clear this life is not what Esther wishes for herself, Mrs Willard symbolises one of the kinds of women Esther can chose to be, she represents

Esther Greenwood is the main character in Sylvia Plath’s, The Bell Jar. Esther is an extremely talented woman who goes through a complex life in the 1950s. The baseline and plot of the story is linear. Its structure is the progress of the narrator as she moves forward in time; this includes flashbacks and memories in the story. At a young age she loses her father and in result there is no insurance left for her and her mother.

Ever since her suicide Sylvia Plath has become a well-known female author, her most famous piece of work being The Bell Jar. While the book has rose in popularity many argue that the sum of the reputation that the book holds is because of the story behind the author, and her own suicide. Yet, those who argue this fail to see how Plath is a revolutionary author for her time, through this piece of writing. The success of The Bell Jar is not held accountable to Plath’s suicide but on her actual writing, and how she speaks out on topics that authors of her time don’t usually write about such as having a feminist standpoint and on reaching insanity.

he Bell Jar, written by Sylvia Plath, is a dark and emotional semi-autobiography novel (“Poet: Sylvia Plath”). Although it may appear to be a dark oriented story, there are moments in the book where it can be humorous. Taking another perspective on the book, The Bell Jar could be viewed as a dark comedy as readers witness the events right through the protagonist’s eyes. Plath incorporates subtle instances of dark comedic elements into the book through the protagonist’s satirical outlook of the environment around her. Thus giving the protagonist a more realistic and compelling character which keeps the reader intrigued throughout the book.

The Bell Jar, written by Sylvia Plath, is a fictionalized memoir centered around main character, Esther Greenwood. Esther is a young woman from Boston who is extremely intelligent and funds her education through several scholarships. As she continuously draws nearer to the end of her education, Esther begins to realize the constraints put on women in the society she was born into. Women of this time were expected to get married and have children while also giving up their aspirations of a career to become a housewife. Esther, an avid writer at heart, wants to have a career in writing rather than raising a family. Through Esther Greenwood’s societal revelations, Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar demonstrates an urge to break free of pattern of

People’s lives are influenced and structured by the trials and triumphs in their personal life, their relationships with others and their surroundings. In the Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath explores the role of women in society in 1950s New York City through her relationships and interactions. Esther Greenwood is the major character and is therefore central to the novel. The book is considered to be a “roman a` clef” portraying the painful summer of Sylvia Plath’s psychotic breakdown in 1953, and contains “thinly disguised portraits of her family and friends”. (O’ Reilly, 2)

On January 14th of 1963, Sylvia Plath had finally completed The Bell Jar after approximately two years of writing. This novel could have been considered a partial autobiography, because the main character Esther Greenwood eerily represents Sylvia Plath. There are a number of references to Plath’s real life throughout the book, too many for it to be considered a mere coincidence. Within the story, Esther Greenwood considers and attempts suicide quite frequently. Could this novel have been foreshadowing Sylvia’s death, which took place a little less than a month after?

The Bell Jar "place[s] [the] turbulent months[of an adolescent’s life] in[to] mature perspective" (Hall, 30). In The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath uses parallelism, stream of consciousness, the motif of renewal and rebirth, symbolism of the boundary-driven entrapped mentally ill, and auto-biographical details to epitomize the mental downfall of protagonist, Esther Greenwood. Plath also explores the idea of how grave these timeless and poignant issues can affect a fragile, aspiring woman during an unforgiving period for women.

In Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, Plath depicts the various aspects of Esther Greenwood’s life in a way that shows her slow descent into madness. This book is closely based upon Plath’s real life experiences. She lost her father at age eight, and was thrown into an upper class lifestyle for her remaining childhood years with her grandparents and mother. After attending the University of Cambridge, Plath became a writer. Plath generally addressed darker themes in her works such as mental illness and suicide. Plath was clinically depressed for most of her life and underwent shock therapy multiple times, as was common during her lifetime. She married another poet named Ted Hughes, but they ultimately separated a few years before her death, leaving her to take care of their children. In the late 1950’s, Plath began to write The Bell Jar. By 1961, she had twelve chapters written and in 1963, the book was finished. That same year, on February 11th, 1963, Sylvia Plath committed suicide at age thirty (Lois, A). The Bell Jar took place in the same time period as when Plath was alive, and Esther is based on Plath herself. Esther Greenwood is an upper middle class woman in her 20s who is staying in New York for a writing program in which she is partaking. Esther, despite having a life that others may envy, cannot seem to find happiness or satisfaction with her life. She feels numb to the things going on around her and trapped in a life she doesn’t want. Esther is caught between the man who wants to marry her and a desire to write, a desire to travel, and so many other things she can see herself doing in her future. Esther absolutely does not want to marry Buddy, the man wanting to marry her, and avoids him as much as she can. When her writing program ends, she goes back home to her mother. Esther learns she did not make it into the next writing program, and she feels any future career in writing fall apart. This further affects her already unstable mental health, and she eventually acts upon her feelings and attempts to kill herself multiple times. She finds that her body has a strong desire for her to live, despite her mind not wanting to. She takes sleeping pills to “trick” her body so that it will be unable to save

Identity is fragile and is a characteristic that every person must discover without hiding behind inexperience’s and excluding themselves from the outside world of reality or else their own personal bell jar will suffocate them alive. The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel written by Sylvia Plath portrays how a young woman with too many identities and unrealistic expectations overwhelms herself to the point that she contemplates and attempts suicide multiple times. Esther Greenwood, a young college student struggles to find her identity as she hides behind her good grades and scholarships, denies rejection, tries to seek a man only for intimacy, and all while trying to become a famous poet. Unbeknownst to Esther, the absence of her true identity presents the majority of her problems in her life, in her developing poetry and writing career, and more importantly, her sanity. Esther focuses too much of her energy on what she does not like about her life instead of the positive things her life possesses, causing the bell jar to shut out reality completely.

The bell Jar by Sylvia Plath is a bildungsroman fictional novel, and documents a first person account of Esther Greenwood’s struggle with depression from her late teens to early twenty’s. During Esther’s final path of destruction, her encounter with Marco leads her to one of many revelations about societies expectations for women and this reality along with many other factors sends Esther to her near demise.

The Bell Jar conforms very closely to Plath’s events in life. This is such that the protagonist’s descent into mental illness parallels with Plath’s possible clinical depression. A month after The Bell Jar’s first UK publication, Plath committed suicide. In her famous and persevering masterwork, Sylvia Plath has successfully and intelligently draws the reader into Esther’s breakdown with such force that her insanity becomes palpably real, even discerning. A deep penetration into the darkest and most agonizing corners of the human psychology. The Bell Jar is an extraordinary accomplishment and a haunting American

In The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath there were many prominent female characters that Esther came into contact with that had an affect on her life. The individual women all behaved quite differently and gave Esther a different, and at times confusing, sense of what it was to be a woman. They spanned from Doreen, the sensual and experienced friend who had little concern with conforming to rules, to Mrs. Willard, the stereotypical housewife who willingly became a floormat to be walked all over by her husband. Throughout the novel, Esther compared herself to these different women and often found that she didn’t fit in with any of them. She felt as if she must become a certain type of woman but wasn’t attracted to the lifestyles of any of the women that she met, making it hard for her to find her own identity. The restrictions that were placed on Esther as a woman and the ways in which she was expected to conform to society fueled her depression and made it hard for her to discover and accept her identity.

Sylvia Plath's novel The Bell Jar is set in 1950's America. Esther Greenwood, the protagonist, is a young woman working in New York City where she has to meet high expectations. She is able to experience a life that many women only dream about having. Esther seems to live in an unreal world which deeply affects her and leads her to attempt suicide as a means of escaping society’s bondage and expectations. Esther’s social situation makes it impossible for her to fit in and she therefore experiences several depressing episodes. The novel portrays a character who struggles with normative gender identity. Esther lives in a largely patriarchal society in which women’s lives are governed by certain standards that stifle a woman’s dream of being ambitious. The societal norms that seek to guide females negatively affects Esther’s psychological state of mind as these rules she can neither accept nor deny.