The Bell

“In a society that tries to standardize thinking, individuality is not highly prized” - Alex Grey, American visionary artist and author. Written in 1963 by Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar is a stunningly intricate novel that tells the story of Esther Greenwood, a 19-year-old woman who has just been awarded an internship at Ladies Day Magazine in New York city. Although her life seems beautiful and full of opportunities, Esther comes to despise it as she slowly loses her mind upon returning from New…

The idea of maintaining an idealistic image of what a woman should be can be daunting for many women. In the novel written by Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar is a feminist classic as it entails the struggle that the main character, Esther Greenwood, faces as she battles relationships, motherhood and the ideal image of women brought to her by the magazine internship she works at, all while slowly losing her sanity. Esther unravels and begins to show signs of her mental illness early on. High-class…

The “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath is a novel about a girl named Esther Greenwood. The novels setting first begins in New York City. There Esther and eleven other girls works for a fashion magazine. A flash back to college is seen when Esther tell about how when she dated a man like her age named Buddy Willard. Esther believed that Buddy and his family was great but later she feels betrayed by Buddy when Esther ask and Buddy says yes, this scares Esther since she has never been intimate with…

has its roots in the invention of the device that would change the communications history of modern man. In 1876 the Bell Telephone and New England Telephone and Telegraph Companies were created. They became known as the Bell System and were a monopoly for telecommunications in the United States. In 1885 the American Telephone and Telegraph Company was formed as a subsidiary of the Bell System to build and operate a long distance network. Its name was changed to AT&T Corp. in 1994. By 1913 AT&T…

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and Thelma and Louise (1999) are both similar in that they are both strong feminist texts, addressing and discussing the issues of women’s rights in early and modern society. To represent this issue, as well as others within the text, both employ the use of characterisation, the development of the protagonists, and themes. Characters in the two texts play an important role in expressing the limited freedoms and rights of women and the societal conventions they are…

Sylvia Plath, knowledgeable beyond her years, had many complications with her mental health as she grew up. This poem in particular was introduced to the public through a biographical introduction of her novel “The Bell Jar”. Through the villanelle structure, Mad Girl’s Love Song uses seemingly endless repetition, dark personification, and references to mythological creatures to touch base with the complications of the human mind, the toxicity of mental illnesses and disorders, and beyond…

experiences as muses for her writings. In the novel The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath portrays mental illness and feminism through Esther. During the 1950’s in America, women were not educated and not expected to go to college. They were not prepared to support themselves and could rely on marriage and children as a predestined fate. Plath and Esther defied these stereotypical views when Plath attended Smith College and exceeded expectations(“Bell”). In The Bell Jar, Esther also pursues her writing…

Jay Scott published his article the “Jarring approach to Bell Jar” in The Globe and Mail; Toronto, Ont. His article begins with an introduction to Plath’s life before he begins to talk about Larry Peerce’s film interpretation of her novel The Bell Jar. Sylvia Plath’s novel The Bell Jar can be described as one of the most depressing books ever written. Unfortunately for Plath, the novel has part of her story that is roman-a-clef, meaning they are based on her actual life. In 1950 Plath started…

In the late nineteen-fifties, women were pressured into conforming to specific criteria which corresponded to their roles as members of the female gender. Sylvia Plath discusses such roles throughout her literary works. In Sylvia Plath’s novel The Bell Jar, she employs imagistic motifs in order to confront the issues that…

symbolism of the bell jar poignantly struck me. Bell jars are inverted glass jars used to display a specimen of curiosity in an unchanging, oppressive environment. For Esther, her madness is a bell jar. She feels like she is a foreign, rare creature people talk about, but never understand. I felt the same. People would always talk about me, as if I were some role model others should emulate, but never get close enough to learn the reality of my life. Similarly, Ester feels like the bell jar…