CM1135 Research Paper #1

Choosing a topic for my research paper was definitely hard to do this semester. No matter how bad they were while I was reading them, I did actually end up enjoying every book we studied so the choices were very broad. In the end I decided to do my independent project on comparing and contrasting The Bell Jar with Sylvia Plath's life, and what I found out was pretty shocking. All the events in the novel actually did happen to Plath in some way or another, with the names changed of course, and that explains why the novel is such an amazing read. Sure, I knew it was semi-autobiographical but not to the extent that it actually is. It turns out that Sylvia Plath actually wrote for Seventeen Magazine and won a contest just like Esther Greenwood did. She also threw her clothes off the roof of the hotel as it's described in the book... She later had to go borrow an outfit from a friend because of it, and that's how readers know it actually happened. I just thought it was so interesting to read about Sylvia Plath's life and connect it to Esther because once you read the novel and Plath's biography, it almost seems like one in the same. It's crazy (no pun intended).
Another thing I found interesting was that the character Marco was based on Sylvia's ex-husband Ted Hughes. He was apparently a womanizer type, just like Marco, and when Sylvia refused to kiss him he forced himself on her and she actually bit his cheek. He ended up ripping out her earrings in anger, and yet she still found herself attracted to him. It shows how much of an unhealthy relationship she has with men, I guess.
Another thing is the part of the novel when Esther loses her virginity and she ends up hemorrhaging and bleeding everything. Apparently this happened to Plath, too. She supposedly had an odd relationship with an older man, and he ended up raping her and she almost died from blood loss because of the hemorrhage. If you were to read the novel and Plath's biography you would swear her and Esther were the same person.