The Lifting Of The Bell Jar: A Lacanian Interpretation Of Esther's Attempt To Find Her Subjectivity

Sylvia Plath is chiefly remembered as a brilliant American woman poet whose poetry has been praised as a supreme model for modern poetry.Her only novel The Bell Jar has arrested comparatively less critical attention.However,the significance of this novel has been re-scrutinized in recent years by critics who study Sylvia Plath's biography and her works.They have studied the novel from the perspectives of feminism and Freudian psychoanalysis.This thesis is intended to re-interpret The Ball Jar with the help of Lacanian theory,especially the Mirror theory,and to find out the reason for the madness of the protagonist,Esther,and her recovery.It is suggested in the thesis that the process of Esther's getting psychosis and her recovery is actually a struggle of finding her subjectivity.Esther becomes a split subject due to her fighting with the patriarchal Symbolic Order.She refuses to accept the rules and restrictions of the Symbolic Order.The thesis consists of seven chapters.The first chapter is a literature review.The second chapter is the theoretical framework of Lacanian theory which will be used in the followed chapters.The third and fourth chapters give an account of how Esther gets psychosis.The fifth chapter focuses on how Esther is cured in the asylum and the subjectivity she finds.The sixth chapter points out that the subjectivity which Esther finds is not a true one because the ultimate subjectivity,according to Lacan,can never be found.The last chapter is a conclusion and a prediction as well.It is predicted that Esther will be mad again because her desire to find her subjectivity is in the discourse of the Other,which can not be fully and ultimately satisfied.