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A feminist view on the bell jar sylvia plath
Sylvia plath the bell jar
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Despite her apparent disavowal of the overtly sexual Doreen, Esther’s anxieties about sex continue to manifest themselves through clothing, as evidenced by her attempt to cultivate a friendship with Betsy, a virginal young woman from Kansas. If Doreen is the quintessential “bad girl,” then Betsy, nicknamed “Pollyanna Cowgirl” by Doreen, is the quintessential “good” girl, with her “her bouncing blonde ponytail and Sweetheart-of-Sigma-Chi smile” (6). As a model young woman, Betsy “does” fashion correctly, eventually becoming a model herself: after her guest editorship, Betsy became a “cover girl,” and Esther occasionally sees her “smiling out of those ‘P.Q.’s wife wears B.H. Wragge’ ads” (6). Betsy performs—or at least appears to perform—culturally sanctioned femininity through clothing, so Esther promises herself that she will be loyal to Betsy and “her innocent friends” and abandon Doreen (22). In so doing, Esther attends the various fashion functions and luncheons organized for the young women working for the magazine, including the ill-fated Ladies’ Day luncheon where all of the young women—with the exception of Doreen, who was at Coney Island with her boyfriend gorging herself on hot dogs—become violently ill with food poisoning. Their symptoms become evident as Esther and Betsy sit together in a darkened theater, watching a Technicolor film that features two women—one “good,” the other “sexy” (and therefore bad)—who wear luridly-colored “smart suits with orange chrysanthemums the size of cabbages” and “dresses likes something out of Gone With the Wind.” As Esther realizes that “the nice girl” will end up with the “nice football hero” and the “sexy girl” will up alone, she feels herself “in terrible danger of puking” (42). She...
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“Scoops of the Month: Money-in-the-Bank Fashions.” Mademoiselle. Jan. 1952: 92-95. Print.
Smith, Caroline J. “‘The Feeding of Young Women’: Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, Mademoiselle Magazine, and the Domestic Ideal.” College Literature 37.4 (2010): 1-22. Web.
Steele, Valerie. Fifty Years of Fashion: New Look to Now. London and New Haven: Yale UP, 2000. Print.
Stetz, Margaret D. “‘A Language Spoken Everywhere’: Fashion Studies and English Studies.” Working With English 5.1 (2009): 62-72. Web.
Wagner-Martin, Linda. The Bell Jar, A Novel of the Fifties. New York: Twayne, 1992. Print.
Walker, Nancy A. Women’s Magazine, 1940-1960: Gender Roles and the Popular Press. Bedford Series in History and Culture. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998. Print.
Wilson, Elizabeth. Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity. 2nd ed. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2003. Print.
The primitive American culture during the 1950’s has damaging effects on Esther’s mental stability because she discovers that marriage halts career focus and promotes male dominance. Esther is a young woman who aspires to achieve a high standing in society by becoming a renowned writer. However, her motivation to follow her passion is stifled by the other women prevalent in the society. During her internship for the New York magazine, Esther witnesses:
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. "'The Bell Jar' by Sylvia Plath Book Summary." 2013. Cliffsnotes. 12 April 2014.
Bonds, Diane S. "The Separative Self in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar." Women's Studies 18.1 (May 1990): 49-64. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter and Deborah A. Schmitt. Vol. 111. Detroit: Gale Group, 1999. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Jan. 2014.
Sylvia Plath’s novel, “The Bell Jar”, tells a story of a young woman’s descent into mental illness. Esther Greenwood, a 19 year old girl, struggles to find meaning within her life as she sees a distorted version of the world. In Plath’s novel, different elements and themes of symbolism are used to explain the mental downfall of the book’s main character and narrator such as cutting her off from others, forcing her to delve further into her own mind, and casting an air of negativity around her. Plath uses images of rotting fig trees and veils of mist to convey the desperation she feels when confronted with issues of her future. Esther Greenwood feels that she is trapped under a bell jar, which distorts her view of the world around her.
Haney-Peritz, Janice. "Monumental Feminism and Literature's Ancestral House: Another Look at 'The Yellow Wallpaper.'" Women's Studies 12:2 (1986): 113-128.
Today we can see items of clothing that are commonly worn that have grown out of this initial innovation of freeing a woman’s body. This can be seen in clothing from the Spring 2017 New York Fashion week (see Figure 2), as the model’s bodies are freed by the more minimal use of material. The lowering of necklines and the increase in skin shown in haute couture over the decades is owed to Art Deco fashion and is symbolic of the rise of women’s rights over the years, as the physical discomfort and restrictions that the tight corsets of previous eras could be considered of women’s place in society. The new style being a stance against the oppression. It dictates that a persons own comfort and style is to the upmost importance, not to contort one’s body into something it is not meant to. Today it is shown in loose and cropped pants, shorts, low necklines, cropped tops, and various other clothing that reveals skin that was once covered. Art Deco fashion is also seen today through “chic garçonne” ideal that emerged out of early feminism that made women want to do the same things that men could, and so adopted smoking, sport, an interest in vehicles, a flirty sense of
On the twenty-first of August, our Wearable History class took a trip to downtown Bowling Green, to visit Mosaic Confinement Studio. The studio had an old-fashioned vibe, and was like a vintage-garment haven. There, we were asked to choose a piece that we thought was vintage, identify the time period it actually came from, and also take some additional notes on the style and the garment’s details. After searching through multiple racks, the first piece I found was a lace blazer. It turned out to only be vintage-inspired, so I went searching again. I came across a few other pieces, but nothing was really jumping out at me. Eventually, I came across a lavender dress that immediately made me think of Julia Roberts in “Mystic Pizza”, and I knew I found my garment.
However, Esther begins to think negatively of Buddy when she finds out that he has slept with another woman and is no longer a virgin. Esther claims that “he had been pretending… to be so innocent,” and that Buddy’s illness was “a punishment for living… [a] double life.” Esther is understandable angry because she as a female is expected to be pure and innocent whereas men can sleep with many other women without consequences. According to Kirsty Grocott of The Telegraph, Plath creates a double standard between men and women “by littering the book with brutal, ignorant or ineffectual males, men that enjoy freedoms that women can only dream of.”# Plath may have included this to demonstrate how damaging this double standard can have on young women.
Freeman S. (2004). In Style: Femininity and Fashion since the Victorian Era. Journal of Women's History; 16(4): 191–206
Sylvia Plath is a twentieth century award winning poet and novelist of The Bell Jar. Plath was born on October 23, 1932 in Jamaica Plain Massachusetts. She suffered from depression for most of her life, starting when she was eight years old after her father died. Plath’s depression is reflected in her works, as she strongly relies on her own feelings to create similar moods, tones and themes in her poems and novel, The Bell Jar.
...dia of Clothing and Fashion. Ed. Valerie Steele. Vol. 2. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2005. 88-89. U.S. History in Context. Web. 5 Mar. 2014.
Peacock, John. The Chronicle of Western Fashion: From Ancient times to the Present Day. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1991. Print.
McCann, Janet. “Sylvia Plath.” Magill’s Survey of American Literature. Ed. Frank N. Magill. Vol. 5. New York: Marshall Cavendish, 1991. 1626-39. Print.
Lawson, David "History Of Renaissance Clothing - How Today's Fashion Is Affected." 6 Jul. 2011 EzineArticles.com. 16 Nov. 2011
middle of paper ... ... It also analyzed the influences of modern dresses. As Palmer and Clark (2005) mentioned earlier, both decades are the classic era in fashion history.