Sylvia Plath changed American literature with her only novel, the semi-autobiographical book, The Bell Jar; she worked her way into the hearts of both Europeans and Americans, without having the opportunity to celebrate her publicity after committing suicide in 1963, the same year of the book’s release in America. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath was a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age novel about Plath’s life and the struggles that she faced. The novel is regarded as one of Plath’s best works, as
or in a complex way. In order to translate difficult emotions and concepts, Plath uses creative metaphors to make readers deconstruct and understand the emotional turmoil of Esther Greenwood; the protagonist of the semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar. This was done predominantly by either subverting pre-existing traditional metaphor or by creating
poetry was written with common themes of pregnancy, motherhood and the rejection of what society believed a women’s role was in creating the facade of a perfect family. Sylvia Plath explores such topics as personal and feminine identity, pregnancy and motherhood through her writings of confessional poetry, with the use of a conflicted tone towards the issue of women and their role in society. Sylvia Plath did not want to be the 1950’s conventional housewife. We know this because she expressed
women in society. The ultraconservative 1950’s was no exception, bringing about the promotion of women satisfied with a limited role in a male dominated society. During this time the “ideal” women was shown to be the stay at home mother, married to her all American college sweetheart, having submitted entirely to the desires and expectations of an oppressive society. The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath’s only novel focuses on the effects of these patriarchal standards on the coming of age female. Sylvia Plath
Over the course of the semester, we read many books where both men and women were both portrayed as insane. While some of these were not the main characters in every book, instability and craziness did not discriminate against gender or race. In The Bell Jar, Save Me the Waltz, and Wide Sargasso Sea, Esther Greenwood, Alabama Beggs, and Antoinette are all main characters who are mostly privileged and insane female figures in society. However, in Frankenstein, Edgar Huntly, and Hamlet, the main
Wharton, Plath and Gilman use the relationship between America’s middle-class idealization of the home and the popularity of the Gothic to distort the icon of the home, from a hub of warmth, joy and growth to a deeply disturbing brokenness that is reflective of the broken relationships within the home, challenging the false claims of the home as a safe, protected place. All three writers subtly link terror - the most important ingredient of the Gothic to acts of transgression, and show how the home