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womens role in literature
womens role in literature
gender issues in literature
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Annotated Bibliography: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath Behrent, Megan. "Trapped in The Bell Jar." SOCIALISTWORKER.org 25 Mar. 2013: Web. 26 Oct. 2015. . Behrent thoroughly explains how The Bell Jar has remained relevant throughout the fifty years since its publication and how relatable The Bell Jar is for young women. Society’s prejudice towards women and the mistreatment of psychological illnesses are aspects that still haunt society today. One example that Behrent identifies is how numerous women resonate with the situation of when Esther had to get fitted for a diaphragm. The fact that Esther must break the law to gain control of her own body rings true with many women because of the shady actions women sometimes have to perform to obtain …show more content…
The word intern appeared in the middle of the nineteenth century as a transitive verb meaning “to confine” or “to detain”, as within the four walls of an asylum where people, like Esther, lived for numerous years. Eventually, the word acquired an intransitive force and became possible to speak of interning somewhere as opposed to being interned. In reference to The Bell Jar, Esther is interned three times: first, in the offices of a New York fashion magazine; second, in her home when she returns from New York; and third, in a psychiatric hospital that is subtly compared to a college, the institute responsible for assisting internships spread beyond the general confinement. Generally, only one of these internships would be considered white-collar work, but Nicholas states all three work together to provide Esther with the experience she needs to launch her literary career. To paraphrase Nicholas’ essential point, Esther’s eagerness to acquire experience through internships sent her on a rocky road that many college students face, but ultimately the experiences serve as catalysts in searching for
From the literary analysis of the novels it is evident that, both stories have similar themes and both authors used female characters to convey their feelings about feminist issues, especially in terms of loneliness and isolation. However, there are many diversities between these two stories, especially in terms of structure and style. In a nutshell, "The Bell Jar" and "The Handmaid's tale", are indeed, literary gems in the field of feminist literature that would definitely satisfy the literary thirst of their aspiring readers.
“I couldn’t stand the idea of a woman having to have a single pure life
The main character in Sylvia Plath's novel, The Bell Jar, could be the spokesperson for all of Steinem's ideas. Esther Greenwood breaks all of the traditional rules that a female in her time should have been following. Esther is a bold and independent woman. Which makes Buddy Willard, he...
Sylvia Plath wrote the semi autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, in which the main character, Esther, struggles with depression as she attempts to make herself known as a writer in the 1950’s. She is getting the opportunity to apprentice under a well-known fashion magazine editor, but still cannot find true happiness. She crumbles under her depression due to feeling that she doesn’t fit in, and eventually ends up being put into a mental hospital undergoing electroshock therapy. Still, she describes the depth of her depression as “Wherever I sat - on the deck of a ship or at a street a cafe in Paris or Bangkok - I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air” (Plath 178). The pressure to assimilate to society’s standards from her mother, friends, and romantic interests, almost pushes her over the edge and causes her to attempt suicide multiple times throughout her life. Buddy Willard, Esther’s boyfriend at a time, asks her to marry him repeatedly in which she declines. Her mother tries to get her to marry and makes her go to therapy eventually, which leads to the mental hospital. Esther resents the way of settling down and making a family, as well as going out and partying all night. She just wants to work to become a journalist or publisher. Though, part of her longs for these other lives that she imagines livings, if she were a different person or if different things happened in her life. That’s how Elly Higgenbottom came about. Elly is Esther when Esther doesn’t want to be herself to new people. Esther’s story portrays the role of women in society in the 1950’s through Esther’s family and friends pushing her to conform to the gender roles of the time.
As one of the most renowned and well-known literary critics in the world of composition, Harold Bloom has self-importantly granted himself the privilege of specifying the reasons as to why we read. From human connection to self-actualization to the acquirement of knowledge, he adheres passionately and unquestionably that “the strongest, most authentic motive for deep reading…is the search for a difficult pleasure.” Bloom, as an experienced critic, fully recognizes the task of judging a book for its merit.
A notable image that readers of the twentieth-century literature easily recognize is a bell jar. A bell jar is an unbreakable, stiff glass container that confines objects within its inescapable walls. It metaphorically represents the suffocating and an airless enclosure of conformism prevalent during the 1950’s American society. More specifically, American societal standards approve men to have the dominant role as they are encouraged to attend college in order to pursue professional careers. They are given the responsibility of financially supporting their families. In contrast, a women’s life in the 1950’s is centralized around family life and domestic duties only. They are encouraged to remain at home, raise children and care for their husbands. Women are perceived as highly dependent on their husbands and their ability to receive education is regarded as a low priority. Thus, the social conventions and expectations of women during the 1950’s displayed in The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath correlate to Esther Greenwood’s downward spiral of her mental state. Throughout the course of her journey, Esther becomes increasingly depressed because of her inability to conform to the gender roles of the women, which mainly revolved around marriage, maternity and domesticity.
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 envisions in remote circumstances. It is clear that Plath's creation is a Novel of Sensibility as her writing not only possesses all of the qualities associated with this genre, it also effectively takes the reader into the story with the protagonist.
The Bell Jar was an exceptional novel that can be used to view the ideas of gender roles. Ester, who despised marriage and focused on education, went through multiple events that pushed her to subvert and conform to society’s expectations. Women’s literature—such as this work—of the nineteenth century provided confirmation of society’s emphasis on “The Cult of Womanhood and Domesticity”. Plath’s life mirrors Ester’s and ultimately brought awareness to the oppression of women.
There is no shortage of media encouraging adolescents to ‘be themselves’, promoting self-worth regardless as to what others think. While many may be fed this message throughout music and film, rarely ever is it conveyed to actually have a lasting effect on one’s personal views quite like Sylvia Plath’s “Initiation”. Although formulaic, Plath’s uniquely optimistic short story warns against an obsession with belonging, and explores the importance of individuality through the protagonist Millicent Arnold’s gradual character development, from a self-conscious teenage girl to a stronger and more confident individual.
One’s identity is the most important lesson to be learned. It is vital part of life knowing who you are in order to live a fulfilled life. Without knowing your identity, and the way you perceive life, it is difficult for others to understand you, along with a struggle to live a happy life. In Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar,” Esther Greenwood struggles to find her own identity, and in the process, she develops a mental illness which helps her discover the person she is on the inside.
Esther’s psychological transformation from a perfectly healthy person ends up suffering from depression. Her influences around her have negatively shown Esther a negative path to take. The events during the 1950s such as the Rosenbergs executions have only made the transformation even powerful. Sylvia Plath’s life could be compared to the Bell Jar because she was in the same situation as Esther. Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis and psycho dynamic has addressed depression through the main character Esther.
Imagine life as a woman in the 1950s: struggling with the idea that men are superior to women, and stuck in a life filled with empty opportunities. Esther Greenwood, protagonist from the novel The Bell Jar, contemplated this problem as she began learning the typical customs expected of women during the 1950s. Pressured by both her mother and society to accept a future devoid of genuine happiness and adventure, Esther lost control of her own life and spiraled downward into a continuous cycle of denial and depression. During the 1950s, a typical family consisted of a working father, a stay-at-home mother, and respectful children, all living together in a safe, suburban neighborhood. Author Sylvia
Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar (1971) is a thinly veiled autobiography. Having been riddled by depression herself, Plath has us follow her protagonist Esther’s journey of self-discovery in order to assert her views on the intersection of mental illness and traditional femininity. In the novel, blood serves to mark transitions in Esther’s life. Time after time, blood intersects with largely feminine milestones and the shifts in her mental health as she witnesses births, is sexually exploited, and must confront her own sexuality. Esther struggles to fit in to the narrow feminine role and views the world through a predisposition for depressive thoughts. The “traditional” era in which she exists enforces very binary gender roles and places her purity
Before visiting New York and getting thrown into the real world Esther had been very successful academically:
The poetry of Sylvia Plath can be interpreted psychoanalytically. Sigmund Freud believed that the majority of all art was a controlled expression of the unconscious. However, this does not mean that the creation of art is effortless; on the contrary it requires a high degree of sophistication. Works of art like dreams have both a manifest content (what is on the surface) and latent content (the true meaning). Both dreams and art use symbolism and metaphor and thus need to be interpreted to understand the latent content. It is important to maintain that analyzing Plaths poetry is not the same as analyzing Plath; her works stand by themselves and create their own fictional world. In the poems Lady Lazarus, Daddy and Electra on Azalea Path the psychoanalytic motifs of sadomasochism, regression and oral fixation, reperesnet the desire to return to the incestuous love object.