For my initial research I will explore the roles that women played in the 1950s and how this affected Plath’s personal life, and Plath as a writer. In both The Bell Jar, and an array of Plath’s poems, women live restricted lives in which they are expected to marry and have children early. In the fifties, creating a family was understood to be a woman’s most primary and important goal in their lives, even over education and careers. Plath addresses this issue by showing the misery and alienation Esther Greenwood, protagonist of The Bell Jar, had to endure in order not to have to conform to the average 50s woman. I will further research whether Sylvia Plath herself felt pressured into the 50s housewife expectation during her marriage with Ted Hughes; and whether this ignited Plath’s depression as well as Esther’s.
Secondly, I will research more the events of Plath’s life which caused her to commit suicide, aside from her severe depression. I am interested in whether Plath wrote autobiographically as a result of her own illness, which then created a depressing tone on all her works. Or whether Plath’s autobiographical style of writing was a cry for help, and her intensions were to portray what she was going through.
The sources I will use for my research will be essays criticizing different themes in The Bell Jar and the poems in Ariel, as well as biographical articles about Plath’s life.
