Identity and Depression in the 1950s Bell Jar

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Sylvia Plath is a twentieth century award winning poet and novelist of The Bell Jar. Plath was born on October 23, 1932 in Jamaica Plain Massachusetts. She suffered from depression for most of her life, starting when she was eight years old after her father died. Plath’s depression is reflected in her works, as she strongly relies on her own feelings to create similar moods, tones and themes in her poems and novel, The Bell Jar.
Sylvia Plath showed interest in writing at a very early age. Plath published her first poem when she was eight years old. Sylvia Plath continued writing and published numerous stories and poems before the age of twenty. After graduation in 1950, Plath received the Olive Higgins Prouty Scholarship from Smith College (Smithipedia). At the private college, Plath managed to excel in school and write over four hundred poems while suffering from depression (allpoetry). It was at Smith College, where she attempted her first suicide. Plath graduated from the school in 1955 and moved to Cambridge, England to continue her studies (AAoP).
While studying in England, Sylvia Plath met Ted Hughes, an English poet. Plath married Hughes on December 7, 1956. Plath and Hughes moved back to the United States in 1957. While in the country, Plath worked as a professor at Smith College teaching English Language and Literature; however in 1959, Plath gave up teaching and moved back to England to continue her writing. In 1960, Hughes and Plath had their first child, Frieda. Two years later, the couple had their son Nicholas. The same year Nicholas was born, Hughes left Plath for another woman. Hughes affair greatly impacted Plath’s writing as well as her other relationships with men such as her father’s. (Smithipedia)
Plath’...

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