#her work isn't just Silly Depressed Teen Girl fiction ok that makes me so mad

[ambientsoundtrackfan]

Gatekeeping Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar

Reading yet another think piece which posits that The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath is autobiographical and that Esther Greenwood's character represents the political and feminist views of Plath. I'm going insane insane, it's so much worse to me than thinking the misogyny and deranged thoughts of Winston Smith from Orwell's 1984 is indicative of Orwell's own views because I see most well read people calling that out and understanding what a braindead misreading that is. But with Plath it's like people (esp other women!!) don't even care at all that they are basically assuming its autofiction or outright biography. At this point with all of Plath's posthumous work published and the dedicated scholarship of her art it's so lazy that people ignore this myth about The Bell Jar. The novel is closer to 1984's dystopia than it is to Sally Rooney's Normal People. Esther Greenwood is deranged, pathetic and bigoted from her paranoia of her own "shortcomings" while living in McCarthy era America. It literally ends with Esther being "cured" and choosing to become a Good American Wife. Just because the themes of the US immigrant experience, homophobia, racism, classism, post WW2/Cold War politics, capitalism, archetype of outsiders don't stand out from YOUR reading doesn't mean it's not there. Analyze and read the actual novel not just going off "vibe" from female manipulator tiktoks.

tldr: Sylvia Plath ≠ Esther Greenwood