A Gendered Approach to Ontological Insecurity and Alienation in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar

Many scholars and critics regard The Bell Jar more as an autobiographical work than as a fictive piece. But The Bell Jar is much more than that. The Bell Jar depicts an artist’s suffering. It is a book that needs to be suffered and felt in order to understand first hand, the degree and intensity of suffering, a creative and a sensitive mind undergoes – a mind that is lucid and acutely and painfully conscious of its being and the implications of ‘being’ as a continually painful and traumatic action in progress. This paper analyses how the novel presents the American woman’s boundary situation which forces her to live the feminine mystique and doesn’t allow her a subjective expression or any individuality.