Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar: A Feministic Reading

Abstract

At the time when Sylvia Plath was at her most productive artistically, sea changes were underway in America and the entire western world. Following the changed socio-economic dispensation in the aftermath of the intense activity of the Second World War, there was a revival in women’s demands for a better social status and this came to be known as the Second Feministic Movement. As a symptom and result of this, women’s authorship flowered and struggled at the same time, the aim being to present the world view of women for women, a departure from the so-far prevailing world view of men for women. However, to limit the former as ‘feministic’ would perhaps not be a just act. This study, accordingly, undertakes deep textual and sub-textual analysis of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, long seen as a feminist writer’s artistic expression, to establish how far the feministic thought is intertwined in the narrative.