Ainsley Shaw

  Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Bachelor Arts and Culture

Reading Double: An Autofictional Reading of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar

Ainsley's elevator pitch
Considering the longstanding debate of whether to read it as autobiography or fiction and the prominence of trauma discourse, my thesis proposes a new reading of The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1963) as autofiction with an autofictional lens informed by trauma. Using feminist narratology, my analysis delves into the characterization of the protagonist, while also examining literary techniques and rhetorical devices to show how trauma is reflected through narration, figurative language, patterns, and a duality of closeness and distance. Read as autofiction, The Bell Jar can be seen as producing real-life effects and a new way of connecting with Plath.