THE BELL JAR

Sylvia Plath’s only novel The Bell Jar was first published on 14 January 1963 under her pseudonym “Victoria Lucas” just before her death by suicide on 11 February 1963. It is a semi-autobiographical novel the names of people and places are fictional and it addresses the issue of socially acceptable identity. The protagonist is on a quest to forge her identity to be herself rather than what others expect her to be she feels trapped in domestic life and fears losing her inner self under the oppression of a patriarchal society as if suffocating under a bell jar.