Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar" as a Feminist Critique of the Patriarchal American Society in the 1950s

Seminar paper from the year 2022 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Leipzig (Institut für Amerikanistik), course: Postmodernism: Context, Texts, and Issues, language: English, abstract: In 1963, Sylvia Plath, who is mostly celebrated for her works of poetry, published her only novel "The Bell Jar". Plath-s novel is usually regarded as a semi-autobiographical novel that chronicles a young woman-s fall into depression and her recovery journey. This term paper investigates how the novel can be analyzed as a feminist text that critiques the conservative gender expectations of American women in the 1950s. Therefore, this analysis compares the traditional gender roles of the 1950s with the novel-s construction of society and establishes a relationship between the oppressive social dynamics and the protagonist-s mental illness.