Beyond the Bell Jar: A Comparison Between Sylvia Plath’s Life and Fiction (original) (raw)
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The Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real in Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar”
This is a narrative analysis of Sylvia Plath’s novel, The Bell Jar (1963). We set up the time line of events (the story) and then map the plot or plots that may explain “what may have happened”. The detailed listings of characters, their emblematic activities (masterplots), emblems and enigmas help us learn what has been going on. The list of traumas Esther Greenwood, the heroine and narrator of the novel has gone through mark how Esther’s recollection of her past gains significance. Story, plot, character, symbolism and the network of symbolic oppositions unveil how death and life, father and mother figures generate an interface that ruins Esther’s life so as to rebuild it again. This descent into personal hell and into archaic terrors of the human psyche is completed by an ascent into Lacan’s Symbolic Order where the horror of the flesh and that of the archaic is converted into a(n electro) shocking narrative that carries both character and reader beyond good and evil, to the uncanny realm that looks so strange yet feels so familiar to all of us. This paper attempts to provide a “narrative morphology” with the help of which readers of Sylvia Plath’s novel can walk and/or struggle through this narrative rites of passage the reading of which feels like attending a late twentieth century ritual dense with fashion, media, sexuality, mediocrity and psychiatry.
A Gendered Approach to Ontological Insecurity and Alienation in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar
Many scholars and critics regard The Bell Jar more as an autobiographical work than as a fictive piece. But The Bell Jar is much more than that. The Bell Jar depicts an artist's suffering. It is a book that needs to be suffered and felt in order to understand first hand, the degree and intensity of suffering, a creative and a sensitive mind undergoes-a mind that is lucid and acutely and painfully conscious of its being and the implications of 'being' as a continually painful and traumatic action in progress. This paper analyses how the novel presents the American woman's boundary situation which forces her to live the feminine mystique and doesn't allow her a subjective expression or any individuality. 2. Non-normative Behaviour Esther is not normal as per prescriptive societal standards. She has a brilliant academic track record, studies too hard, plans for a serious career ahead instead of a secretary's job (as was the expected career trajectory for women in the America of the post-World Wars) and a house to manage, is uninterested in fashion, enjoys food and more or less keeps to herself. She is a cynic, needs intellectual
The Manifestation of Alienation in Sylvia Plath's the Bell Jar
The Study of Alienation in Sylvia Palth's The Bell Jar, 2019
This study argues that the male-dominated society alienates the protagonist of The Bell Jar, Esther, as she tries to develop her female identity in the patriarchal American society. The American society obligated women to be submissive to their husbands. Women were expected to satisfy their husband's sexual desires and become mothers. Secondly, the paper sheds light on other reasons behind the protagonist's alienation like being different from her society in general and mother in particular. She alienates herself from the conventional thinking among American women who believe in "idle talk," where they lack the choice to change anything concerning the world. Esther does not desire to live within the confinements of the societal gender roles; therefore, she dissociates herself from her family and environment. Thirdly, the study illustrates how the psychological trauma, inner absence, and depression alienate the protagonist. She misses her deceased father. What is more, his absence ushers her miserableness, depression and madness. Additionally, the meaninglessness in her life makes her unable to enjoy her life to the fullest. Thus, this state makes her sadder, depressed, and more alienated.
2016
Throughout this paper it is my intention to explore the following question: How does Esther Greenwood, Sylvia Plath’s protagonist in The Bell Jar, deteriorate as a result of the loss of her father, societal pressures and expectations and her inability to compromise and find some mutually acceptable role for herself? The Bell Jar is possible to be examined from multiple and intertwined layers of psychological distress of Esther Greenwood, which frequents and leaves her as if being trapped in a jar; also because of her feelings of intolerance against female stereotypes around her and causes her to reject all of those role models in order to thrive to demonstrate her own way of being a woman against the social and gender norms of US society in the 1950s, which were accustomed to be brutal and harsh against anything different; a general attitude of the social sphere and role model considerations of the time which is un-prepared at all to accommodate any feminist and/or sexually independ...
University center of Abdelhafid Boussof MILA, 2024
This paper examines existentialism in the postwar American novel, and then critically analyzes Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar using a feminist existentialist approach. The paper moves from existentialism in the 1960s literature, in general, to give context to the novel and feminist existentialism in specific. The paper delves into the intersection of existentialism and feminism in the novel due to the presence of themes of existential angst and the struggles of living in the postwar American patriarchal society.
Esther Greenwood’s Distaste of Life as Seen in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar
NOBEL: Journal of Literature and Language Teaching, 2017
This study attempts to analyze the causes and the effect of Esther Greenwood’s distasteful feelings. The aims of this study are to understand what makes Esther has distaste of life including toward men, her friends, her mother and the general social’s perspectives. It also explains the effect of Esther’s distaste. This study uses descriptive qualitative method. Things that will be done are describing the causes and effect of Esther’s distaste using Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis. After analyzing the data, the result shows that Esther Greenwood has distaste for her life because of her unconscious mind. She got a lot of influences from her bad experiences including the time she spent with her ex-boyfriend, her mother, her friends, and also her opposite views toward the social perspectives. Then, the effect of Esther’s distaste is that she tends to use defense mechanisms such as denial, fantasy, reaction formation, rationalization, repression, displacements, sublimation, undoing, and a...
Psychological Study of Sylvia Plath’s Poetry
Literature and Psychology explores the relationships between text and reader as well as relationships within the text, with particular emphasis on emotion/affect. One central thematic focus of the course, in addition to affect, will be trauma–an experience of maximal affect and long term disruption. Whether we read to escape, to discover or even to fulfill requirements, we have a purpose, a motive, and more than likely some expectations. Moreover, we have a number of years of existence during which time we have adopted a large variety of rules, and we are likely to apply those rules to any new system we encounter. Generally speaking ,Sylvia Plath is one of those feminists who have sought to represent the suffering of women in a particular world. Focusing on feminist issues through the lens of her own experience, she was equally driven by a desire to achieve this while coping with a desperate lack of self-confidence and low self-esteem. The loss of her father at an early age contributed to her fears of abandonment and insecurity. The point that will receive much emphasis throughout the present paper is her psychological state and its drastic consequences. Nearly all her poems convey a sense of melancholy, gloom and death. In a case like this, poetry is a kind of temporary bulwark against mounting despair and pain.