Esther’s Female Identity Confusion And Development In The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath, a poet, novelist, short story writer and essayist, is broadly known as one of the most outstanding pioneers in American literature in the 20th century. She is famous for her passion and creative writing. Her works are full of indignation, desperation, love, death, mental disorder and self-destruction. Her reputation enhances after her death. After her suicide in 1963 Sylvia Plath has become a representative figure and has long been regarded as a feminist writer of great significance. The Bell Jar, Sylvia’s only novel, published in London under the name of Victorian Lucas in 1963. It is a true story based on the writer’s experiences of adolescent depression and suicide attempt. Many critics regard this novel as her autobiography. The novel has received lots of acclaim, some of which even considered it as the female version of The Catcher in the Rye.This thesis centers on the discussion of the female identity of the heroine in Sylvia Plath’s novel:The Bell Jar with the theories of Erik Erikson, Judith Kegan Gardiner and James E. Marica. The discussion consists of two major parts:the confusion of female identity and the development of female identity.This paper consists of five chapters. The first chapter is a brief introduction to Sylvia Plath and the novel The Bell Jar. The second chapter expounds the theories of female identity which will be applied in the following chapters.The next two chapters attempt to probe into The Bell Jar, concentrating on two aspects--the patriarchal culture in the novel and the inner world of its heroine, in an effort to analyze Esther’s identity confusion and her development.In the third chapter, the discussion focuses on the young heroine’s identity confusion, trying to explore how Esther struggles in the choices between social condition and self desire. This chapter will discuss Esther’s identity confusion from three aspects---social identity, sexual identity and model confusion.In the forth chapter, the thesis focuses on the development of Esther’s female identity from the perspective of identity status in James E. Marica’s theory and reveals how the herione fights for her voice and attempts to establish her own identity. The last chapter is the conclusion. From the above analysis, we can draw a conclusion that in the process of female identity-pursing, favorable social environment, role models and peers can exert positive influence upon female growth.