An Interpretation of Personality Alienation in The Bell Jar 解读《钟形罩》中的人格异化文献综述

 2021-10-22 21:49:20

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1.Introduction1.1 Research backgroundThe Bell Jar is an autobiographical novel published by Sylvia Plath. Based on the author's early life experience, the novel narrates a 19-year-old girl's spiritual experience of loneliness, despair, and struggle in the suffocating "bell jar" of a patriarchal society. It was popular on American campuses in the 1960s and was regarded as a must-read for female readers. The author of this book, Sylvia Plath, who was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1932, is a representative of American confessional poets and the most important American poetess after Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Bishop. In 1963, she committed suicide at the age of 31 due to a love affair with the famous English poet Ted Hughes.The Bell Jar was written in the 1960s when the feminist movement and feminism began to awaken. In the 1960s and 1970s, the opportunities for middle-class and ordinary working-class women to go out to work gradually increased, and their jobs gradually stabilized. In this context, female awareness increased and strongly demanded to integrate into the mainstream society, but the social situation hindered them from realizing their desire for equality between men and women and obtaining equal status with men. Therefore, they are eager to change the mainstream consciousness of discrimination against women in American society at that time, including Sylvia Plath. It was the gap between the call for womens rights in American society at that time and the lack of actual womens rights that inspired the alienation of Plaths personality and led to the birth of The Bell Jar.The theory of alienation first appeared in Hegel's philosophy. He believes that nature, human beings and social ideology are all the objectification of ideas, that is, the external expression. Hegel believes that the general definition of alienation is the phenomenon created by the subject but in turn confronts or dominates or dominates the subject. Esther struggles with the patriarchal society and traditional ideas, and in turn struggles with her own soul to die, which is the manifestation of her personality alienation.1.2 Need for the studyIn general, Sylvia portrays the young woman Esther vividly but sadly. Esther grew up and struggled in the "thin air" world which, like a bell jar, gradually alienated her personality and finally led to her death. The process of her alienation and the reasons for the distortion of her personality are worth discussing.This essay examines the growth process of Esther from the perspective of personality alienation, analyzes the common catalytic effect of the time background and family reasons on Esther's personality alienation, and attempts to help readers understand the poet's unique female values and rebellious consciousness. It is also hoped to shed some light on the future research to probe into the social imprisonment and oppression of women.2.Literature review2.1Previous studies on The Bell JarThe Bell Jar was published in 1963. For a long time, The Bell Jar has been paid more and more attention by literary critics because of its autobiographical nature. Although there are different voices, the status of it is difficult to shake (Song, 2018). After the publication of the novel, it was once popular on American campuses and was called a must-read for women, but it was also listed as a banned book because of its over-repressed content.In more than 50 years since the publication of the book, many scholars at home and abroad have done a lot of research from different angles, among which the discussion on patriarchal thought and feminism are the most heated. In the traditional western concept, men represent rational will and women represent physical feelings. As Augustine said, "emotion is the body, reason is the soul, women are the embodiment of the body, and men are the embodiment of the soul." the family that women obey is correct. " (Wendel, 1995:33). The oppression of patriarchal ideas and the bitter struggles of women in The Bell Jar are also worth discussing and pondering. Esther lived in the United States in the 1950s, when the American society and economy developed rapidly, and women got more opportunities to receive higher education. However, this kind of equality is superficial. Because of the ethical bondage and suppression of women in the traditional patriarchal society, women are beset with difficulties in the pursuit of personality development (Wang Wang, 2016). Wang(2019) interprets it from the perspective of body politics, and thinks that The Bell Jar presents a train of docile female characters who are disciplined by social forces. It is concluded that American women during the Cold War lived in a suffocating and depressing discipline society, and powers disciplined women in an all-round way through body politics. From the theoretical perspective of Henry Lefev's spatial ternary dialectics, Wu (2019) points out that the various spatial structures depicted in Plath's novels are the product of the dominant power relationship between men and marginalized women under the background of American society at that time. The protagonist Esther's independent construction of female space is a powerful counterattack to the single dichotomy of power. In addition, quite a few scholars have also analyzed the suicidal behavior of Esther, the protagonist of The Bell Jar. When she found that the mainstream thought of society could not be changed by her strength and behavior alone, and the whole significance of the female body to the patriarchal culture was its reproductive value, Esther, who was unwilling to give in, used suicide to express his infinite indignation against the patriarchal society (Yan, 2013). Some scholars analyze Esther's suicidal behavior based on the interpersonal relationship theory and come to the conclusion that loneliness, social isolation, and thwarted effectiveness can be the mental states that have inflicted an acute pain on the heroines, a pain that makes them ready to die by suicides (Sepideh, Simon, Roghayeh, 2017). Other characters are fragmentary, subordinate to Esther and her developing consciousness (Linda, 1986). Through taking a descriptive and qualitative approach, Silvia (2017) concludes that Esther Greenwood has distaste for her life because of her unconscious mind. She got a lot of influences from her bad experiences including the time she spent with her ex-boyfriend, her mother, her friends, and also her opposite views toward the social perspectives. Besides, some scholars attribute Esthers suicide to her mother and believe that the key event in Esthers life is her breakdown and recovery. That her mother never admitted any complicity in that psychological malaise was, as we have seen, endemic to her psychologyand, of course, to her daughters (Wagner, 1999).2.2 Previous studies on theory of personality alienation in literary worksThe phenomenon of alienation always exists in the process of societal and historical development (Ren, 2018). The theory of alienation was first put forward by Hegel (1979), who believes that, in the stage of philosophy, the idea has completed its self-understanding through philosophy and completed the process of returning to the unity of the idea. The so-called alienation is the process of objectification. Zhou (2016) pointed out that from a sociological point of view, the main phenomenon of alienation is meaningless. Because he is unable to give himself a correct position in society and is unable to control his whole destiny, he loses his pursuit of ideal, and everything in the universe is meaningless at this time.Plenty of scholars have developed a strong interest in the personality alienation and distortion of characters in Chinese and foreign works. After reading a large number of literary works, some scholars find that creative writers and their characters appear to be introverted, high on neuroticism and psychoticism, and more alienated (Moran, Tiwana, 1987). The concept of alienation is considered here as having three major components: powerlessness, normlessness and social isolation (Dean, 1961). Wang (2018) has analyzed the personality alienation shown in American female writer Edith Wharton's masterpiece Fun Home, and holds that the characters in the novel form their specific personality masks due to the influence of family and social factors. Under the heavy pressure of personality mask, people living in upper-class society are essentially a group of alienated people with distorted personality. Zhou (2016) interpreted the black literary work Native Son. Through the analysis of the contents of the novel, he points out that under the apartheid system for centuries, the social ethical mechanism has seriously distorted the ethics of black men and alienated their personalities. Alienation and dogmatism also were found to be associated with several commonly held personality traits, which center around anxiety, low self-esteem, and social estrangement manifested in feelings of hostility, aggression, loneliness, rejection, and isolation (Sexton, 1983). As for the personality alienation of the protagonists in The Bell Jar, not a few scholars have made a detailed analysis. Despite the challenges and confrontations made by Esther, the invisible bell jar of social ideology still makes her unable to get rid of the helpless role of being gazed at. The personality of this sad character is also gradually alienated in the world of "thin air" (Song, 2018). The opposing ideas and standards imposed on women depress and alienate the protagonist from the world (Martin, 1993). Zhou (2018) explained that Esther, the heroine who has been excluded from the edge of mainstream discourse for a long time, is very difficult to get equal rights with men in terms of work, family and sex. It is also difficult to get rid of the awkward situation of exclusion. In the constant struggle, she can not find a sense of identity and belonging, and her spirit is extremely empty and has no sustenance. As a result, she becomes mentally distorted and morbid, which leads to her self-division and personality alienation.ReferencesDean, D. G. (1961). Alienation: Its meaning and measurement. American Sociological Review 24 (6), 783-791.Jafari, S., Astar, R. K. (2017). The Acquired Capability for Lethal Self Injury: Case Studies of Plaths The Bell Jar and Eugenides The Virgin Suicides. International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature 6, 21-26.Lurababa, S. (2017). Esther Greenwoods Distaste of Life as Seen in Sylvia Plaths The Bell Jar. Journal of Literature and Language Teaching 8 , 9-21.Martin, L. W. (1993). The Bell Jar: A Novel of the Fifties. American Literature 65, 381-382. Moran, J., Tiwana, M. (1987). Personality and alienation of creative writers: a brief report. Pergamon 8, 449.Phillips, A. (1998). Feminism and politics. New York: Oxford University Press Inc.Ren, Q. H. (2018, June), A Comparative Study of the Alienation Theory of Marx and that of Marcuse. Paper presented at the Conference on Management, Education and Social Science, Qing Dao, Shandong.Sexton, M. E. (1983). Alienation, dogmatism, and related personality characteristics. Journal of Clinical Psychology 1, 80-86.Wagner, L. (1986). Plaths the bell jar as female bildungsroman. Womens Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 12, 55-68.Wagner, L. (1999). Recalling the Bell Jar. London :Palgrave Macmillan.E.M.温德尔（1995），《女权主义神学景观》（Feminist theological landscape），刁承俊译。

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