The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

Khadeja Adil GP111 Book Review

 Title:
The Bell Jar

Author:
Sylvia Plath
About Publisher:
ILQA publications

Copyright Date:
2014
Summary

Essentially, details the main character/narrator’s [Esther Greenwood] descent

into madness and depression, and her deep sense of cynicism and resentment
towards the society she is present in.
Setting
Where did it happen?
The Bell Jar opens in the summer of 1953.
Esther Greenwood is a bright nineteen-year-old
working as an editorial intern at a popular
women's magazine in New York City.
How about when??
Around 1950s in America, when gender roles
and traditional values on the nuclear family
were a lot more rigid.
 ● Women and Femininity
● Family
● Society and Class

Main Themes
● Madness
● Identity
● Transformation
● Literature and Writing
 In The Bell Jar, the main character uses the bell jar
as the primary metaphor for feelings of
confinement and entrapment. She feels that she's
stuck in her own head, spinning around the same
thoughts of self-doubt and dejection, over and over
again, with no hope of escape. But she also uses the
bell jar as a metaphor for society at large, for the
Title significance

way that people can be trapped inside stale social

conventions and expectations.
 Review

The book is depressing.