Identity in Sylvia Plaths The Bell Jar Essay -- Plath Bell Jar Essays

Identity in The Bell Jar A nose out of individuality is essential for surviving the numerous emotional and physical obstacles encountered in daily life. A unique identity is perhaps one of the unaccompanied true characteristics that defines an individual and is definitely a key principle for apprehension and responding to ones atmosphere. In the Bell Jar, Esther battles not only a deteriorating mental stability, entirely also a lack of a sense of individuality. Esther is a young, smooth and intelligent woman who feels oppressed by the obvious social restrictions pose upon women, and the pressure she feels regarding her future. Undoubtedly these emotional burdens result not only in Esthers social and intellectual isolation, but also her impending mental breakdown. Clearly, Esther is late troubled by the hypocritical and often vicious world embrace her, and feels overwhelmed and powerless to break free of her inner world of alienation. Instead of heavily establishing a genuin e sense of self, Esther adopts and scrutinizes the images and personalities of the women in her life, which neither fit nor take a hop her legitimate character. Throughout the novel Esther is faced with numerous possibilities regarding her future aspirations. Although she is an exceedingly perceptive and bright woman, Esther has no sense of imminent direction, and instead imagines herself get and achieving an abundance of successes simultaneously. Upon meeting her boss, Jay Cee, Esther is immediately impressed with her flourishing balance of a career and marriage, and begins to imagine herself attaining similar achievements I tried to imagine what it would be like if I were Cee...Cee, the famous editor, in an office full of p... ... The womanly Identity. Twentieth Anniversary Edition. New York Norton, 1983. Nizer, Louis. The Implosion Conspiracy. New York Doubelday, 1973. Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. 1963. capital of the United Kingdom Faber, 1966. ---. The Journals of Sy lvia Plath. Ed. Ted Hughes and Frances McCullough. 1982. London Anchor-Doubleday, 1998. Radosh, Ronald, and Joyce Milton, eds. The Rosenberg File A Search for the Truth. 1983. New Haven Yale UP, 1997. Rich, Adrienne. Compulsory directness and Lesbian Existence. Signs Journal of Women in Culture and Society 5 (1980) 631-60. Rep. In Adrienne Richs Poetry and Prose. Ed. Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi and Albert Gelpi. New York Norton, 1993. 203-24. Stevenson, Anne. Bitter Fame A Life of Sylvia Plath. London Viking-Penguin, 1989. Wagner-Martin, Linda. Sylvia Plath A Biography. New York Simon, 1987.