A* A level English Literature Coursework 'The Bell Jar' and 'The Color Purple'
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using your knowledge of the contexts in when these texts were written and the reactions of readers over time
compare the ways in which walker
in ‘the color purple’
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English Literature 2015
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Using your knowledge of the contexts in when these texts were written and the reactions of
readers over time, compare the ways in which Walker, in ‘The Color Purple’ (1982), and Plath, in
‘The Bell Jar’, (1963) explore the struggle for identity in their texts.
Introduction
Arguably caused by the American political landscape under Eisenhower of the fifties, Sylvia Plath’s
The Bell Jar is a scathing piece of satire, set amongst the ambience of immense cultural and social
apprehension where conformity was a central beacon that all were expected to be ensnared by.
Alice Walker’s epistolary text, The Color Purple, converges with that of Plath’s in the sense that it is
the exploration of female identity but it in fact refers to the rediscovery of black female’s
particularity. Both expressions of voice of the author’s protagonists are incredibly empowering and
although it has been exhibited by many feminist writers that autonomy is a male developmental
issue rather that something appropriate for women, Plath and Walker utilise their personal struggle
to mirror that within their novels.
Sub-topic 1:
The early writings of Plath, although she was still a student, depict her construction of identity
gradually becoming more complex because of the nurturing debates of gender and sexuality. Sex- or
rather the constraints and repressions surrounding it- was central to Plath’s creative and
psychological development. Albeit, she was raised to disregard tradition, in her diaries, Plath
expresses her hatred towards boys who could express themselves sexually, while she had no choice
but to ‘drag’ herself from one date to another in ‘soggy desire’. 1 Like Plath, Esther’s world is
encompassed with limited sexual choices where convention is the dictator ergo she sets out to lose
her virginity to someone whom she has no intention of marrying, thus defying the conventional
expectations of a woman of her standing. In doing this, she releases herself of the suffocating
constraints to abide to a chaste self (delineated when she receives an article from the Reader’s
Digest called “The defense of Chastity” mailed to her by her mother) 2 but simultaneously is faced
with the non-fulfilment of her desired independence or even sexual pleasure. In fact, when she is
presented with this momentous moment of sex, it is something that disgusts her: “Then he stood
there in front of me and I kept on staring at him. The only thing I could think of was turkey neck and
turkey gizzards and I felt very depressed.” 3 It is engrained in Esther’s mind that this is what she
wants, one may even say that the turkey- synonymous to the pagan holiday of Thanksgiving in
America- is an emblem of how fortunate humans are to experience this pleasure, but rather it is
mangled. It can be said that Plath, alongside the positioning “in front” 4, forcefully confronts Esther
with societal norms but through her lens it is completely corrupted by her struggle for self and her
internal battle in abiding by anticipations for women to be compliant with nature. Esther is a
character whose repressed sexual identity is one of a conflicting matter for her, it is even seen in the
beginning of the text when Esther is faced with two completely contrasting girls, Doreen and Betsy.
Doreen is a rather promiscuous character and Betsy is nothing of the sort, but Esther still perceives
herself in both of the girls- reflecting her sordid struggle for identity. Particularly with regards to
Doreen’s sexual nature, some critics, including Hoogland and Leonard, suggest that Doreen is not a
1
Staff, H. (2017) ‘Sylvia Plath & What We Look For in a Literary Icon’, Poetry News. Available at: Sylvia Plath &
What We Look For in a Literary… | Poetry Foundation (Accessed: September 2020).
2
Plath, S. (1966) ‘The Bell Jar’. Faber and Faber Limited. (ed.) Chapter 7.
3
Ibid. p 71.
4
Ibid. p 71.
, “real” person but is instead Esther’s sexually promiscuous persona that must be repudiated. 5 One’s
position may align with this observation as Esther rejects Doreen’s polluting sexual proclivity,
physically confronting Esther with her ailing poison 6;Esther struggles to fit into the existing
paradigms, which consequently precipitates her contesting identity.
The two authors coincide in their approach to represent the minds both protagonists have over their
sexuality and ultimate identity but some divergence is seen in the way that Celie’s struggle is
something because of external forces forcibly repressing her expression. Walker herself has
described her novel as simply ‘a book about God’, albeit Celie’s letters are to God and the text
progresses to mirror Celie’s religious journey and all-encompasses search for self, the very central
nature to Biblical scripture is to censor sexual freedom and it essentially lays its foundation on the
belief of the damned female who gifted humanity with inescapable original sin. Although one may
deem this to be an over-simplified view of this text, the readership can see that the author
understands sexual identity to be something that is amongst many on a spectrum, not binary
opposites; Walker writes in a time where the women's movement and changes in the understanding
of female sexuality also played a central role in the sexual revolution that emerged in America in the
1960s and 1970s. More specifically, and in this text’s instance, the gay and lesbian movement was of
rising significance. One can posit that the ever-present idea of sexuality and societal ideals of
fecundity, permeate through the character of Shug. The reader, alongside the protagonist of Celie, is
enamoured with her pink house, her “sassy” 7 red shoes that she pairs with a “skin-tight red dress” 8;
her very presence oozes femininity and flowing sexual expression- encapsulated in the colour “red”.
One may also note the physicality of the adjectives to describe Doreen and how the sibilance
conjures a sensual tone to the mouth. Red is a colour that- through time- has been linked with lust
and passion (seemingly desirable traits of a woman) but those same features have historically led to
the persecution and humiliation of women. Women have forcibly repressed their sexuality because
of branding- like the scarlet woman, or the Victorian Babylon- that all stem from Eve as the ‘fallen
woman’ in the Bible, a symbol that Shug is besmirched with. With reference to the now developing
lesbian and gay movement at the time of Walker’s writing, one can understand the struggle that
Celie has to endure because of the censored authoritative nature she inhabited. It is important to
note that Walker only permits Celie to fully explore her sexual identity through relations of a
disparaged disposition- with Shug- which one can certainly pose is Walker delineating the
inescapable struggle that Women faced, an almost cyclical nature.
Sub-topic 2:
In light of the aforementioned antagonism both protagonists are faced with, one must postulate that
representation is one of the broad areas of contestation in feminist criticism and that it is an entity
that is manifested prominently through the expression of clothing. Although Esther’s clothing-
related anxieties are born of mid-twentieth-century Western trepidations, the concerns that the
novel raises about fashion, femininity, and identity are still relevant to modern readers and It must
be acknowledged that even though the context and styles of expression have developed in the half-
century since Plath wrote The Bell Jar, sculpting oneself through clothing remains a practice fraught
with anxiety- especially for women. 9 Whilst envisioning herself as a wife or mother, she sees herself
5
Pelt, A. (2015) ‘Esther’s Sartorial Selves: Fashioning a Feminine Identity in the Bell Jar’. Available at: (PDF)
Esther’s Sartorial Selves: Fashioning a Feminine Identity in The Bell Jar | April Pelt - Academia.edu (Accessed
August 2020).
6
Plath, S. (1966) ‘The Bell Jar’. Faber and Faber Limited. (ed.) Chapter 4.
7
Walker, A. (1983) ‘The Color Purple’. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. (ed.)
8
Ibid.
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