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.