An Adolescent Female Identity Confusion

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and novelist. After her suicide in 1963 Sylvia Plath has become a cult figure and has long been hailed as a feminist writer of great significance. Due to her mother's influence, Sylvia tried to live up to an old fashioned feminine ideal of perfection and purity. Sensitive, intelligent, compelled toward perfection in everything she attempted, she was, on the surface, an outstanding student: winning prizes and scholarships. In fact, that was not the case: Sylvia never fulfilled the very high expectations she set for herself. She concealed her self-doubt and depression beneath a mask of strident energy and brilliant achievement. The Bell Jar is her only novel. It follows the real story of the author's experience of adolescent depression and suicide attempt, and critics view this novel as autobiographical. The narrator of The Bell Jar encounters bewilderment, apprehension and disappointment on the way to adulthood: her attempts to establish her own identity are undermined; society is indifferent to her sensitivity and artistic ambitions; people expect young women of her age to be attractive to get a man to settle down and start a family; her roommates at college mock her studiousness and only show her respect when she begins dating a handsome Yale boy.This thesis is an attempt to analyze the young protagonist in terms of her identity confusion, to diagnose her dilemma of choosing between career and family to the ambivalence of remaining a virgin as well as the lack of a role model to forge her own identity. Growing up in a patriarchal society where male is sole breadwinner and female is homemaker, Esther is in many ways a victim of her times, and her story tells us a great deal about how a young woman, and a talented young woman in particular, is torn by a struggle to choose between the self who might be a poet and the self who might be a housewife. Esther is also faced with a Madonna-whore dichotomy: she can either be pure and virginal or promiscuous and easy. This female sexual dilemma leads to her questioning of what a woman is and her sexual identity confusion. In addition, the lack of a suitable female role model is another very important consequence of her lack of identity. All the models she observes hide a defect, seeming to lack something, and she wants a perfect model.This thesis also deals with symbols and motifs in The Bell Jar which help to represent and develop the novel's theme of identity confusion. Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar still strikes a chord with many readers. Today more and more women value themselves on professional achievements and enjoy greater sexual freedom than ever before, however, there is still a long way to go for them to gain an independent social identity and a proper sexual identity.