ylvia Plath was born in Boston of 1932 to two teachers. Her father immigrated directly from Poland; Merely eight years of age at the time of his death, it was a major source of inspiration for her poetry as it left her with feelings of wrath and confusion. She attended Smith College and excelled, until she suffered a breakdown in the summer of 1953, later expressed in her first and only novel The Bell Jar. Around this time she won an award from Mademoiselle, she worked for the magazine 's college board until suffering an emotional breakdown leading her to her first suicide attempt, hospitalization, electroshock therapy, and various other forms of treatment. She was later able to receive her MA form Newnham College in Cambridge, England where …show more content…
Plath expresses her frustration in being unable to track her father’s lineage due instilling feelings of anger and resentment (Perkins 1519). Inability to gain a connection reinstated confusion and hopelessness she felt towards her father. Plath begins to develop Holocaust imagery with the next stanza “An engine, an engine chuffing me off like a Jew”, referencing the trains the Germans used to transport Jews and like to concentration camps. Plath metaphorically compares her relationship with her father to the juxtaposition of Hitler and the Jews. Shedistinctly refers to her father as Hitler with the line “With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. And your neat mustache and your Aryan eye, bright blue” It is not difficult to draw the connection she is trying to make between her Father and Hitler. The use of the nonsensical phrase “gobbledygook” further develops the idea first mentioned in line 30 that Plath did not understand German and the confusion it caused her. The following stanza begins, “Not God but a Swastika” The Swastika being a direct symbol of hatred, the emotion that drove Plath (Perkins 1520). This juxtaposition destroys the idea of hope and God, she felt towards her father in line 8 (Perkins 1520). The line “So black no sky could squeak through” paints the image that the sky has been taken over by something so evil there is no hope left (Perkins
Sylvia Plath Research Paper Title 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
Weaknesses of Esther and Plath Exposed in The Bell Jar The glass of which a bell jar is constructed is thick and suffocating, intending to preserve its ornamental contents but instead traps in it stale air. The thickness of the bell jar glass prevents the prisoner from clearly seeing through distortion. Sylvia Plath writes with extreme conviction, as The Bell Jar is essentially her autobiography. The fitting title symbolizes not only her suffocation and mental illness, but also the internal
The Bell Jar is arguably one of the hallmarks of twentieth-century feminist literature. By illuminating the plight of the self-proclaimed neurotic Ester, Plath’s novel explores a poignantly crafted world of several complex and realistic women. However, the story’s feminist message leaves the modern reader in want of more than the “white feminism” that Plath serves. The only remarkably marginalized characteristics of Ester are that she is a woman and mentally-ill; otherwise, she is white, middle-class
Women in The Handmaid's Tale and The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath's renowned autobiographical legend "The Bell Jar" and Margaret Atwood's fictional masterpiece "The handmaid's tale" are the two emotional feminist stories, which basically involve the women's struggle. Narrated with a touching tone and filled with an intense feminist voice, both novels explore the conflict of their respective protagonists in a male dominated society. In spite of several extraordinary similarities in terms of influential
existence and that of the world around them. This realization begins with the disillusionment with one’s environment, continues with the questioning of one’s life’s worth, and concludes with the acceptance of a new worldview. The novel The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath is an example of one of the many famous works that chronicle paradigm-shifting psychological journeys. Plath’s main character, Esther Greenwood, begins the book by facing her disenchantment with the cosmopolitan life that she once admired
of which proved fatal for Sylvia Plath. Plath was born in the seaside town of Winthrop, Massachusetts during the year of 1932. In her first eight years of life, Plath was troubled with the birth of a new sibling, the death of a parent, and the start of a war. These eight years were the calm before the stormy life of Sylvia Plath. As an only child, Plath felt threatened by the new baby in the family. Her new sibling, Warren, sparked a disdain for children that Plath would harbor for the rest of her
Analysis of The Bell Jar The ultraconservative air of the 1950's breeds the Betty Crocker kind of woman, satisfied with her limited role in a male-dominated society, one who simply submits to the desires and expectations of the opposite sex. The Bell Jar, by Syliva Plath explores the effects of society's traditional standards on a young woman coming of age. The main character, Esther Greenwood, a nineteen year-old college student, receives messages about a woman's place in society throughout
CHAPTER-4 THE REPRODUCTION OF MOTHERING The issues regarding the psychological aspect of motherhood and mothering have been the concern of feminists and woman liberationists ever since the first female voice has been raised against the oppression and suppression of women, or maybe even earlier. As has been already discussed in the first two chapters of this thesis, from nearly a century and a half, various theories have been scripted to resolve the issue of gender dichotomy. But one may say that
CHAPTER-4 THE REPRODUCTION OF MOTHERING The issues regarding the psychological aspect of motherhood and mothering have been the concern of feminists and woman liberationists ever since the first female voice has been raised against the oppression and suppression of women, or maybe even earlier. As has been already discussed in the first two chapters of this thesis, from nearly a century and a half, various theories have been scripted to resolve the issue of gender dichotomy. But one may say that