Dwelling in Madness. Spaces of Resistance and Homologation in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar
Abstract
This paper aims to analyze Sylvia Plath’s semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, by highlighting the multiple interactions between the character Esther’s madness and her relationship to public spaces. The city of New York, the interstitial spaces like streets and trains, as well as her neighborhood and the heterotopia of the asylum, are all places where she repeatedly stages her very own performance. For each of them, Esther’s engagement with mental issues is a way of responding to or escaping multiple conflicting desires and social pressures.
Finally, the paper attempts to show the problems with categorizing The Bell Jar as a Bildungsroman: Esther’s reintegration into public life is actually not an active process of self-improvement or development, but a coercion to stage a socially approved norm.
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