• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q0P94wyBYk
• Can today’s women “have it all”? Explain.
• Read the article “She Works. They’re Happy,”
and answer the following questions:
• List 4 gains women have made since the 1950s.
• What are some conflicts that have arisen as a result of women’s
elevating status?
• What are some ways in which women are still unequal?
• Identify point of view & tone using opening
chapter.
• Analyze the significance of setting and
historical context.
• Begin analyzing major characters and
portrayal of gender.
• Analyze emerging motifs and symbols in key
scenes.
• Esther’s view of herself:
• View of others:
• Tone of narration:
• Reliable or unreliable? Why?
• What is the historical context of the novel?
• Physical setting?
• How does Esther fit into her environment?
Provide a supporting quote and page # for
this.
• What is the historical context of the novel?
• Physical setting?
• How does Esther fit into her environment?
Provide a supporting quote and page # for
this.
• Doreen
• Betsy
• Buddy Willard
• Jay Cee
• Rosenberg execution & Esther’s reaction (p. 1-2)
• Doreen and Esther go to Lenny Shepherd’s & “Elly
Higginbottom” (p. 16-17)
• Esther’s reflection in the elevator mirror (p. 18-19)
• The significance of baths for Esther (p. 19)
• The “talk” with Jay Cee & Esther’s flashback to her
college classes (p. 31-33)
• The Ladies Day banquet—gorging and ptomaine
poisoning (p. 43-47)
• Identify elements of Sylvia Plath’s life that
influenced her work and themes
• Read the biography from Contemporary Authors
Online, and highlight the following content:
• Important personal events (make a bulleted outline of
these after reading)
• Most significant written works
• Mental disorders
• Common motifs and themes in her work
• An analytical quote about The Bell Jar (in the margins,
explain whether it is favorable or unfavorable)
• An analytical quote about Plath’s poetry
• An analytical quote about Plath’s legacy
• Use close reading techniques to analyze a
scene for literary significance.
• Write a well-organized paragraph analyzing
your assigned scene.
• Discuss your findings with a small group and
with the class.
1. Begin with a topic sentence identifying your scene and its
overall significance (i.e. in terms of developing a character,
symbol or motif, conflict, etc.)
2. Analyze the importance of the scene, being sure to use relevant
literary terminology, as appropriate.
3. Integrate at least one quote.
4. In your concluding sentence, give some indication of how this
scene might be related to a larger theme of the work.
5. After meeting with your small group, write a brief reflection
beneath your paragraph, highlighting something your discussion
added to your understanding of the scene.
“At last, obediently, like the mouth of a ventriloquist's dummy,
my own mouth started to quirk up…”
• Identify and employ the traits of stream of
consciousness in a short writing piece.
• Analyze the section in which Esther has a mental
breakdown and its importance structurally to
the narrative.
• 1. As Esther heads back home to Boston for the summer, why does she look
like a “sick Indian”? How does she feel wearing Betsy’s clothes? What
motif is being developed here?
• 2. “The gray, padded car roof closed over my head like the roof of a
prison van, and the white, shining, identical clapboard houses…
proceeded past, one bar after another in a large but escape-proof cage”
(114). What does Esther’s description of the suburbs suggest about her
mental state?
• 3. Who is Dodo Conway, and what is Esther’s opinion of her? What does
this suggest about Esther?
• 4. Identify 5 signs that Esther’s mental condition is rapidly deteriorating.
• 5. Describe Esther’s encounter with Dr. Gordon. What does she judge him
for? Are her judgments fair or a result of her state of mind?
• 6.
What is the significance of the scene in which Esther meets the sailor?
• 7. Describe the private hospital in Walton and Esther’s reaction to the patients.
What is her first encounter with EST like?
• 8. On p. 146, how is it clear that Esther’s mother does not understand her daughter’s
condition?
• 9. Give 3 examples of how Esther “fails” to end her life. Why is she unable to
follow through each time?
• 10. What is Esther supposed to do as a volunteer at the hospital? What happens
after just one day?
• 11. Analyze Esther’s experience at the graveyard, including her musings on
Catholicism. What psychological factors are probably at play? In searching for her
father’s grave, what do you think Esther is really searching for?
• 12. How does Esther resolve to end her life at the end of Ch. 13?
• 13. What is the significance of the headlines Esther occasionally includes in the
narrative (p. 136 and 146)?
• Analyze some of Plath’s poems for similar motifs
and imagery found in The Bell Jar.
• Write your own poem inspired by Plath’s
confessional style.
• Label was first used by the critic M.L. Rosenthal, who
referred to Robert Lowell as a poet who reveals to his
readers aspects of his private life that would
conventionally be kept hidden, unless one were confessing
to a priest (or in therapy with a psychiatrist)
• Autobiographical manner of addressing personal
experiences: depression, relationships, confusion, death,
trauma, psychological breakdowns, etc.
• Emerged in the late 1950s and early 1960s in the works
of Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, and Anne Sexton (among
others)
• Diagnose Esther’s condition using the symptoms
of mental illness.
• Analyze the section detailing Esther’s recovery
and its function in the narrative
• bell jar (noun)
• 1. a bell-shaped glass cover used for
covering delicate objects or used in a
laboratory, typically for enclosing
samples.
• 2. an environment in which someone is
protected or cut off from the outside
world.
• 1. Describe the imagery used to describe Esther’s experience on p. 170-171.
What is it effective at capturing?
• 2. What does Esther’s request for a mirror and her subsequent breaking of it
represent?
• 3. What seems to be going on with Esther from pages 177-179? (Consult the
mental illness worksheet.)
• 4. What does Esther’s mother say on p. 179 that shows her lack of understanding
about Esther’s condition?
• 5. In this section, Esther engages in unacceptable, anti-social behavior. Find 2
examples of this.
• 6. Who is Philomena Guinea? Why has she taken an interest in Esther? How does
Esther react?
• 7. What does Esther say about being trapped in a bell jar? Contrast this with the
image at the bottom of p. 185.
• 8.
How is Dr. Nolan different from Dr. Gordon? How does Esther
let her past experience inhibit her from welcoming treatment under
Dr. Nolan’s care?
• 9.
Describe some of the other patients such as Valerie and Miss
Norris. How do they represent various “success” or “failure” cases in
the treatment of mental illness?
• 10. Who shows up unexpectedly at the asylum? Why does she say
she is there? Do you believe her story?
• 11. How does Esther feel about her mother coming to visit? Why?
• Evaluate whether the ending of the novel fulfills the
requirements of a bildungsroman.
• Analyze structure and style
• Identify and interpret character foils, motifs, symbols,
and themes
• 1.
Why is Esther worried about being transferred to Belsize?
• 2.
What does Esther mean when she says, “Joan was the beaming double of my
old, best self, specially designed to follow and torment me”?
• 3.
What happens to cause Esther to think Dr. Nolan has betrayed her? How does
the experience turn out differently from the way Esther expects?
• 4.
What happens to cause Esther to say, “the bell jar hung suspended a few feet
above my head. I was open to the circulating air”? How does this contrast with her
earlier comments about the bell jar?
• 5.
Find Joan’s comments about Mrs. Willard. How do they compare and contrast
to thoughts Esther has had about mothers?
• 6.
How does Esther define her relationship with Joan? Find a quote from p. 219.
• 7.
How does Esther respond when Joan makes a pass at her?
• 8. What causes Esther to think “I am climbing to freedom,
freedom from fear, freedom from marrying the wrong person…”?
• 9. Describe Esther’s encounter with Irwin. How does it confirm
and/or refute Esther’s notions about sexuality and gender?
• 10. What happens to Joan, and how does Esther respond? What
does this say about Esther’s evolving identity crisis?
• 11. What does Esther worry about in the final chapter? What do
you suppose will be Esther’s fate once she leaves the asylum?
• 12. The author ends the novel (p. 242-244) with contrasting
images of birth and death. Describe the two scenes. How do they
connect to other scenes throughout the novel and help contribute to
one of the overarching themes?
• What types of female characters surround
Esther? Are any of them positive role models?
Ultimately, why does Esther reject each of
them?
• What about males? Are there any positive
male depictions in the novel?
• Can you identify any pairs of foils?
• Ch. 1-9: Esther in New York as summer intern at
Ladies’ magazine
• Ch. 10-13: Esther at home in Massachusetts,
descending into madness, attempting suicide
• Ch. 14-20: Esther’s therapy & recovery (?)
• In what ways does Esther “come of age”
throughout the novel?
• Non-linear, episodic, stream-of-consciousness,
disorienting, sometimes hallucinatory prose
• Why? What literary effect does style have on
the narrative and our understanding of the
narrator?
• The breaking of Esther’s leg while skiing
symbolizes the tragic reality that freedom is an
illusion for women living in a man’s world.
• Esther’s doomed magazine photo shoot
illustrates that patriarchal systems which confine
women to rigid gender roles restrict female self
expression.
• Plath uses the motif of tabloid headlines to
posit that a culture fixated on sensationalized
news becomes desensitized to actual human
suffering.
• Thirty years after women became 50
percent of the college graduates in
the United States, men still hold the
vast majority of leadership positions
in government and industry. This
means that women’s voices are still
not heard equally in the decisions
that most affect our lives. In Lean In,
Sheryl Sandberg examines why
women’s progress has stalled and
offers compelling, commonsense
solutions that empower women to
achieve their full potential.
• “[Fighting] to give women and girls a
fighting chance isn’t just a nice thing
to do. It isn’t some luxury that we
only get to when we have time on
our hands. This is a core imperative
for every human being in every
society. If we do not continue the
campaign for women’s rights and
opportunities, the world we want to
live in — and the country we all love
and cherish — will not be what it
should be.”
• --“The Shriver Report: A woman’s
nation pushes back from the brink.”