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Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar Analysis

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Sylvia Plath (1932 – 1963) was an American poet, novelist, and short-story writer. She studied at Smith College and Newnham College at the University of Cambridge. She married fellow poet Ted Hughes and had two children with him. Plath was clinically depressed for most of her adult life and she died after committing suicide in 1963. She used to openly discuss her depression with the poet Robert Lowell and her suicide attempts with Anne Sexton. Both of them led her to write from a more female perspective. Her death still remains a topic of interest as she had taken a very strange route to die-she had turned on the gas and put her head in the oven. Plath was famous for writing in the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for her …show more content…

It chronicles the life of Esther Greenwood who wins a chance to be a guest student editor in a fashion magazine in New York but finally finds herself plunged into a nightmare. It reflects Plath’s own descent to a schizophrenic hell. It may be termed as a critique of psychiatry where shock therapies of Dr. Gordon do nothing more than traumatize her. Esther becomes an alienated being and her sense of alienation from the world comes from the social expectations placed on her as a young woman of 1950s America. Esther dangles between her desire to write and the pressure she feels to settle down and start a family. She longs for adventures that the society denies to her. As a result of these constraints that she feels Esther has a mental breakdown and ends up trying to commit suicide not once but several times and in one instance almost succeeding. Later on she recovers through the help, support and medications of the psychiatrist Dr. …show more content…

The Bluest Eye tells the story of an eleven year old black girl, Pecola Breedlove, desires blue eyes because she sees herself as ugly and believes that by having blue eyes she will represent the white standards of beauty and it will also ensure that she receives love, care and support from others. The Bluest Eye is thus a very powerful study of how African-American families and particularly women are affected by racism and consequent sexual and mental abuse and how these women dwindle into madness. Morrison’s work is powerfully engaged with questions of history, memory and

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