Sylvia Plath s Literary Escape - 1203 Words

Sylvia Plath’s Literary Escape Sylvia Plath wrote The Bell Jar to liberate her from her past. This novel is the autobiographical tale of a young Sylvia Plath. Through Esther Greenwood, Sylvia manages to narrate almost exactly her life story. This narration includes her college days, her stay at the all-women’s college, her friendships with Doreen and Buddy Willard, her stay at a mental institution after a suicide attempt and even her deflowering. Sylvia penned the story in England under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas (Kehoe, para 16). Sylvia used a pseudonym because all though she changed all the characters’ names, the detail she put into her novel was borderline ferocious. The following essay will analyze why Sylvia wrote The Bell Jar, the†¦show more content†¦Sylvia’s character Esther Greenwood acts as an alter ego for Sylvia. The personalities share in the same life events such as their time in college and their stay in New York at an all-girls hotel. The two women even share in the graver events such as their sexual life and eventually their suicide attempts. Even the people in Sylvia’s life and the character’s in Esther’s fictional life resembled one another. Esther’s mother, Mrs. Greenwood, and Sylvia’s own mother shared in the same mindset. Both had definite beliefs about a woman’s role in the world which neither Esther nor Sylvia reciprocated no matter how hard they tried. Another person in Sylvia’s life transformed into a character is the deceased father of Esther. Sylvia’s own father had died. In the novel, Esther attempts suicide by over-dosing in a crawl space (Plath, 169). In Sylvia’s real life, she overdoses the pills in a cellar (Materer, 22). Both personalities are admitted into a psychiatric facility where they receive electroshock therapy and both leave the psychiatric facility with board approval. The differences in the two people lie in their concluding attitudes about life. Esther Greenwood does survive at the conclusion of the novel, while Sylvia, on February 11, 1963 puts her head in the oven at her flat in London and turns on the gas killing herself (Ames,15). Perhaps, one of Sylvia’s last harrowing sentences in The Bell Jar was how sheShow MoreRelatedThe Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath1211 Words   |  5 PagesSylvia Plath Research Paper Title The Bell Jar place[s] [the] turbulent months[of an adolescent’s life] in[to] mature perspective (Hall, 30). In The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath uses parallelism, stream of consciousness, the motif of renewal and rebirth, symbolism of the boundary-driven entrapped mentally ill, and auto-biographical details to epitomize the mental downfall of protagonist, Esther Greenwood. Plath also explores the idea of how grave these timeless and poignant issues can affect a fragileRead More Virgin In A Tree1276 Words   |  6 Pages This poem was written in 1958, after Sylvia Plath left her job at Smith College to write for a living. It was during this time she found writing extremely difficult and resorted to set themes and deliberate exercises in style, in her efforts to find a release. The poem is based on a drawing quot;The Virgin in a Treequot; by Paul Klee. Sylvia Plath expresses her feelings about the concept of virginity, virgins etc. She holds their morals and values accountable, for wh at they believe to be rightRead MoreEssay on The Dark Life and Confessional Poetry of Sylvia Plath2207 Words   |  9 Pagespoetry—established their poetry in a single, unified voice that accentuated intimate human topics such as death, sexuality, and family. An important contributor to contemporary and confessional poetry was Sylvia Plath, who employed personal aspects of her life into her style of confessional poetry. Plath suffered from a deep depression that influenced her to often write in a dark, melancholy style. This depression included two suicide attempts of which she wrote before succeeding in suicide at the ageRead MoreAnalysis Of The Poem The Bell Jar 1536 Words   |  7 Pagesnormality varies in many ways such as by person, time, place, situation, culture and set of values. Normality is usually seen as good and desirable by society and what society thinks while abnormality may be seen as bad or undesirable (Boundless). Sylvia Plath, the author of The Bell Jar, writes in a very simple and ordinary but exceptionally unique way. She put her whole young genuine heart and soul into this semi-autobiography. Her first person point of view allows the reader to really engage withRead MoreAnalysis Of Hughes s Poem Light Of This 1977 Words   |  8 Pages However, the ambiguity of Hughes s poetry may be derived not so much from a desire to obscure truthful representation, but from the inherently traumatic impact of this act of writing. In light of this, Hughes s fragmentary syntax and the episodic construction of the Birthday Letters sequence, may well be understood as a literal manifestation of his attempt to pull together a scattered, dispersed, or lost series of recollections (Freeman, 30); the trauma of which constantly resists any easy assimilationRead More`` Let Me Live, Love, And Say It Well Good Sentences `` Good Sentence ``2052 Words   |  9 Pagesâ€Å"Let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences† (Plath). Sylvia Plath is a confessional poet who is often the subject of her poetry. Throughout the majority of her life Sylvia Plath simply wished to live an ordinary life. However, Plath endured many tragedies during her life that influenced her stylistic approach to poetry; often based off her emotions. In her p oems, Plath acquires her central source of influence from her personal life and employs a variety of techniques to brand her messageRead MoreSylvia Plath And Anne Sexton1782 Words   |  8 PagesConfessional poets in the 1950’s and 1960’s shaped confessional poetry into a type of writing that forever changed American literature. With controversial subjects at the time such as death, trauma, depression and how relationships impacted people, confessional poetry carved a gateway for private subjects and feelings to be expressed through autobiographical writing. The inspiration behind confessional poetry was the therapy it brought to the writer, being able to take personal experiences and thoughtsRead MorePoem Analysis of Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath3011 Words   |  13 Pagesof being equally gripping and repulsive. Although suicide is seen as overtly morbid, gruesome and disturbing, it has made many people famous. Sylvia Plath, the illustrious 20th century poetess, is o ne of them. Sylvia Plath was born on October 27th, 1932 of two parents in a middleclass household in Boston. At a very young age, she demonstrated great literary talent and a hardworking attitude, publishing her first poem at the age of eight and maintaining a straight A record throughout all of her studiesRead MoreKate Chopins Writing Career and Influence on Society Essay1091 Words   |  5 Pagesa place in society, love, and individuality. Kate impressively portrayed Edna as a free spirited woman who openly was searching for her own happiness. The public at this time believed that portraying a woman in this way was an abomination to the literary world. The continuous bad publicity of her second novel made it exceptionally hard for her to publish more stories. Kate continued writing stories after The Awakening was published. They were not revealed to the society since no publisher would publishRead MoreEssay on Female Protagonists in Womens Literature2419 Words   |  10 Pagesexcess, the lan guages designed to consume them (Yaeger 11). She applies this theory to Charlotte Brontes heroines, but it is also applicable to other literary works such as The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing, The Lais of Marie de France, The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu, Lillian Hellmans plays, and the poetry of Sappho and Sylvia Plath. Yaeger discusses several qualities of the honey-mad woman, and applies them to the female protagonists in Brontes writing. [b]y consuming not