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The symbolism of the bell jar literary article
Themes in bell jar by sylvia plath
Themes in the bell jar by sylvia plath
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deprived of what she enjoys doing for the sake of having a family. For someone who desperately attempts to oppose against female stereotypes, this only fuels her more. This can also give possible background to her illness later on. “To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream.” I chose this quote because it sums up and ends the madness that Esther had experienced throughout the novel. Esther tries to conclude the crazy experiences she had endured by saying to the person in the bell jar that she was once confined it, madness is but a bad dream and can be difficult to wake up form but soon their madness with be just a past dream. This does not develop much in the text, but expresses Esther’s
In the documents it also states, “…but the chances are that she, her husband and her children will suffer psychological damage, and she will be basically an unhappy women.” Her opinion on this statement is that a women’s family wouldn’t suffer of psychological because women is not the only parent in a family. The father in the family should also be involved with their kids.
life of the women near her, she just chose a route to flee, without thinking of her future.
her will to survive by responding to the negativity that surrounded the lives of females, especially the
People's lives are shaped through their success and failure in their personal relationships with each other. The author Sylvia Plath demonstrates this in the novel, The Bell Jar. This is the direct result of the loss of support from a loved one, the lack of support and encouragement, and lack of self confidence and insecurity in Esther's life in the The Bell Jar. It was shaped through her success and failures in her personal relationships between others and herself.
Her detrimental relationship with her mother turned into a psychosomatic disease, which later affected her life and the people in it.... ... middle of paper ... ... 12 Nov. 2013. http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?sid=8255d75b-58ea-4383-be87-4f5601606c51%40sessionmgr13&vid=1&hid=26&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=lfh&AN=17088173>.
The Bell Jar is occupied with several female characters that all represent an assortment of female stereotypes. There are college students who wish to fully experience the city of New York, patients in a mental institution, and psychiatrists who could potentially serve as role models throughout the novel. Esther often finds herself lacking self-confidence due to the fact that she is constantly comparing herself to these individuals. Esther is shown as being stubborn because she rejects the womanhood that is presented to her. Instead, she spends her time worrying about what she thinks it is to be a woman. Sylvia Plath’s novel, The Bell Jar, diagrams the repressed role women endured due to the restrictions and expectations of societal norms.
...en as a realization that she cannot survive in a society that puts such restrictions on women, thus committing suicide, or so we are led to believe. Or it could be viewed as an act of tremendous courage, removing herself from a world that cannot hold her to societal expectations or rules.
The women's movement was in full swing in America in the sixties. These were the women who were escaping from their kitchens, burning their bras, and working in careers that were traditionally male-oriented, while at the same time demanding payment equal to men's salaries. In her essay: What Would It Be Like if Women Win, Gloria Steinem has many thoughts on the ways feminism could change this country and what the society would be like if her changes were made. An interesting change she is looking to make involves sexual hypocrisy: "No more sex arranged on the barter system, with women pretending interest, and men never sure whether they are loved for themselves or for the security few women can get any other way" (Steinem, Takin' it to the Streets, 476). This new attitude can be found in much of the literature of the sixties. Specifically, in two of the books we have read, women authors have projected this concept of a "new sexual women" into their characters.
Whenever I imagine a bell jar, the bell jar from Beauty and the Beast comes to mind. The beast’s whole life was entrapped because of the rose in the bell jar. As the rose petals dropped, Beast’s chance at becoming a human again, dwindled. The bell jar, an airtight cage, slowly suffocated the rose and him. You could say the same for Ester Greenwood from The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, the bell jar represents suffocation from her mental illness, slowly engulfing her sanity and the air she breathes. The bell jar also represents her losing a connection to reality and to people around her. The protagonist is trapped in the walls of glass, it slowly suffocated her sense of reality and sense of belonging in her world. Ester Greenwood, the protagonist
Through an overwhelming sense of symbolism, the author demonstrates both the separation and pressures that Esther Greenwood goes through. The reoccurring image of a bell jar haunts Esther throughout her story representing both her mental illness and her alienation from the society surrounding her. As Dunn states “a glass ‘bell jar’ is used to cover and protect laboratory materials. Significantly, a bell jar also allows objects to remain in view.” Much like a scientific specimen, Esther is readily visible to those around her both observation and study. The jar in this case represents her mental instability, which causes her to be isolated from the rest of society and treated abnormally. Furthermore, “Plath [uses] the bell jar to indicate the circumference of the world of pain and mental suffering Esther Greenwood, the heroine, lives in” (Evans 105). The heroine herself admit...
She was number one in her class and was eager and wanted to be the best at everything she did. She was competitive and everyone wanted to take her out but couldn’t because she was so smart and an amazing doctor. She played the role so well but she played into the stereotype of Asian women who should be submissive but could not be. Men loved her for her brain and the slim petite body she has. Asians are not always looked at sexually in roles but instead, they are the smart, conservative, and submission ones that should know their place as a wife and in society. She got married to a fellow doctor but because she didn’t want kids and only wanted to focus on her career, which is very important, her marriage falls
...which were dead in mothers’ belly, were placed in the bottle. To Esther, this image always linked to abnormal growth, suffocation and death: “The air of the bell jar wadded round me and I couldn’t sir” (p.178). The latter part in the novel, Esther experienced a serious of symbolic events, and she began all over again and was ready to new life. However, what waited for her was still the contradiction that the society put on women, and the value of women could not be totally reflected as before. It could be predicted that in such society-value was distorted like the bell jar, Esther would be probable to fall into the “crisis of roles” and lost the courage for living again. The novel did not describe Esther’s “new born”, anyhow, the “new born” of the author-Sylvia Plath did not last for a long time.
Esther experiences an immense amount of pressure and confusion about where to focus her life’s purpose and how to be successful in multiple fields and aspects of her life. Her confusion is confessed symbolically through the fig-tree metaphor “I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose” (Plath 77). Esther is torn between choosing a direction in life she wants for herself and what society and the people closest to her are pressuring her to pursue. Much like Holden, Esther cannot tolerate the exceeding expectations she feels society is placing on her. By chapter 10, Esther is void of caring for her own aesthetics, as she had maintained early in the novel. The immense pressure leads to Esther’s mental and physical exhaustion, beginning of her lack of self care which is where the rapid decline of her mental health begins. This pivotal moment is signified when she admits that she had not felt like washing the lines of dried blood that marks her cheeks (Plath
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.
be due to unhappy love affairs in her youth, or to the ill health she