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Biographical essays of sylvia plath
The bell jar sylvia plath stream of consciousness
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I enjoy English above all other subjects because of the complete escapism it can offer. I am always amazed at the extent words can affect our emotions; making us laugh or cry, uniting people and dividing them. Our world would be nothing without words. This is why I have chosen to study English Language and Literature at University.
My fascination with the way we speak and write dictates a substantial part of my academic and private life; I have always made sure to surround myself with literature, whilst studying the English language is a more recent discovery of enjoyment. My passion for reading has led me to a wide range of literature, from classics such as Dickens and Burnett enjoyed in my youth, to more modernist authors such as Tennessee Williams and Angela Carter. Currently, I am engrossed in the workings of Sylvia Plath; her detached style of poetry full of ambiguity is both exciting and a challenge to study. I have also read her novel 'The Bell Jar' which has enriched my understanding of her poems by giving a unique insight into Plath's frame of mind. I feel this variety has g...
In American society, the common stereotype is that the father has the role of the dominant figure in the household. Sylvia Plath and Sharon Olds may come across as two seemingly different poets, however, they are really quite similar, especially in their driving forces behind their writing styles in poetry. The lives of Plath and Olds are both expressive of the realities of a father-dominated family, in which both of these poets lost their fathers at a young age. This is significant because both poets have faced a similar traumatic event that has had everlasting effects on their adult womanhood, which is reflected in their writings. For both these woman, their accesses to father-daughter relationships were denied based on life circumstances. Ironically, their fathers were their muses for writing and are what made them the women they are today.
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath: 1950-1962. 430 Ed. Karen V. Kukil. Transcribed from the original manuscripts at Smith College. New York: Anchor, 2000.
Pollitt, Katha. "A Note of Triumph [The Collected Poems]". Critical Essays on Sylvia Plath. Ed. Linda W. Wagner. Boston: G. K. Hall & Company, 1984. 67 - 72.
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.
Two of the most popular poets of the 19th and 20th centuries are Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath, respectively. These women were born nearly one hundred years apart, but their writing is strikingly similar, especially through the use of the speaker. In fact, in Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy”, she writes about her father and compares him to domineering figures, such as Adolf Hitler, a teacher, and a vampire; and in Emily Dickinson’s poem “She dealt her pretty words like blades—“, she talks about bullies and how they affect a person’s life—another domineering figure. Despite being born in different centuries, Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath are parallel in a multitude of ways, such as their choice in story, their choice for themes, and their choice of and as a narrator.
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.
Education is something I believe in. When it comes to school all I think of is being a future student of Old Dominion University. Ever since the 7th grade ,when I joined the avid program, I have had the dream to go to college. Teachers at Windsor Oaks Elementary school showed me how fun learning is. Plaza middle school instilled in me that knowledge is key to everything. Green Run High School is helping on my way to success. Education is not just the kind of things I do at school, but instead it is learning new things everyday. I am passionate about becoming smarter and gaining wisdom. Growing up, my parents always applauded my hard work ethic in school because they have realized the immense impact that education has. Education has allowed people to thrive more than anything else. Without
"About." Personal Blog, n.d. Web. 15 Nov. 2015. [When finding an explanation for the similarities between the writers, it is important to play close attention to biographies. In case the psychoeconomic factors that Ruonco describes are true, then biography constitutes most of the development of the Sylvia Plath affliction. Moreover, the biography provides an insight into the views of the author for a better and more accurate understanding of her poetry. Furthermore, it is imperative to use her auto-statement since she referres to her "muse" as something out of her control which can be traced to Kaufman's
Plath and Sexton's lifetimes spanned a period of remarkable change in the social role of women in America, and both are obviously feminist poets caught somewhere between the submissive pasts of their mothers and the liberated futures awaiting their daughters. With few established female poets to emulate, Plath and Sexton broke new ground with their intensely personal, confessional poetry. Their anger and frustration with female subjugation, as well as their agonizing personal struggles and triumphs appear undisguised in their works, but the fact that both Sexton and Plath committed suicide inevitably colors what the reader gleans from their poems. However, although their poems, such as Plath's "Daddy" and Sexton's "Little Girl, My String Bean, My Lovely Woman," deal with the authors' private experiences, they retain elements of universality; their language cuts through a layer of individual perspective to reach a current of raw emotion common to all human, but especially female, understanding.
Sylvia Plath was a troubled writer to say the least, not only did she endure the loss of her father a young age but she later on “attempted suicide at her home and was hospitalized, where she underwent psychiatric treatment” for her depression (Dunn). Writing primarily as a poet, she only ever wrote a single novel, The Bell Jar. This fictional autobiography “[chronicles] the circumstances of her mental collapse and subsequent suicide attempt” but from the viewpoint of the fictional protagonist, Esther Greenwood, who suffers the same loss and challenges as Plath (Allen 890). Due to the novel’s strong resemblance to Plath’s own history it was published under the pseudonym “Victoria Lucas”. In The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath expresses the themes of alienation and societal pressure on women in the 1950s through symbolism, an unconventional protagonist, and imagery.
Giles, Richard F. “Sylvia Plath.” Magill’s Critical Survey of Poetry. Ed. Frank N. Magill, b. 1875. Pasadena: Salem Press, 1992.
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
Plath, Sylvia. “Mad Girl’s Love Song.” Perrine’s Literature Structure, Sound & Sense. Ed. Thomas R. Arp and Greg Johnson. 11th ed. Wadsworth Cengage Learning 2012. 1003-1004. Print.
The Troubled Consciousness of Sylvia Plath as seen in “The Arrival of the Bee Box”
I want to take this occasion to address one of the most prominent criticisms of the humanities today. I am not referring to criticism of more recent vintage, which takes to task the humanities for a supposed excess of political correctness; this complaint we can set aside as the ideologically motivated lament that it surely is. Rather, I’m speaking of the more long-standing critique that takes the humanities to task for its inconsequence, its uselessness. The presumption that underwrites this critique is simple: its claim is that we do not learn anything by attending to the objects of humanities research. These objects – a poem, a film or play, a piece of music, or what have you – do not furnish our minds with information we can use. No special knowledge is required to enjoy these objects, and no useable knowledge is furnished through their study.