Essay Comparing A Room Of One's Own And The Bell Jar

Identity is often a cornerstone in a many important works of literature. The struggle of a protagonist to reconcile with their identity and the expectations or restrictions that accompany this struggle often mirrors real life endeavors and makes important critiques on social structure. The essay A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf makes an influential claim that a woman’s identity as lesser than a man’s in society prevents her from the opportunity to fill her role as a writer while the novel The Bell Jar written by Sylvia Plath describes a woman’s struggle to reconcile with her expectations as a woman in the 1950s. Both pieces make a statement about the impact of identity and its influence on the women faced with the consequences of these societal expectations. The essay, A Room of One’s Own makes a claim that the identity of a woman is what holds her back in society, even though according to Woolf, a woman has the ability to write more intelligently, as “women have come to have the habit of writing naturally”. The issue, Woolf argues, is that most women throughout history are not awarded the tools in which is necessary to write well, because women were not expected to do anything but serve the family, let alone write. Woolf argues that in order for a woman to overcome this identity of lesser-than, she must have at least 500 pounds a year and

The many authors in A Room of One’s Own are plagued with the same demons that Edith faces in The Bell Jar. The confusion of identity is an important factor in all of these players lives and the dissatisfaction they feel, as well as the repercussions that come from this utter lack of self-realization. Both pieces show how important it is to understand your own identity, without the identity that is assigned to you by society the minute you are