Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar Trisha Paul Unless

Sylvia Plath { The Bell Jar Trisha Paul Unless otherwise noted, this material is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Share. Alike 3. 0 License.

Who is Sylvia Plath? American writer (poetry, short stories, novels) Married to poet laureate Ted Hughes, 2 kids Committed suicide in 1963 (age 31) One month after the publication of The Bell Jar

The Bell Jar Heinemann First Edition 1963 Harper 2005 Faber and Faber 2013

DSM-V Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Currently in 5 th edition (published May 2013) Used by mental health professionals in the U. S. Included homosexuality until 1974 (DSM-II, seventh printing) No longer includes Asperger’s syndrome (now part of Autism Spectrum Disorders)

Depression Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) Incorporated into DSM-III in 1980 Depressed mood most of day, hopelessness, despair, fatigue, etc. “Bereavement exclusion” (DSM-IV): depression not diagnosed after recent death of loved one

Stigma “bodily signs designed to expose something unusual and bad about the moral status of the signifier. The signs were cut or burnt into the body and advertised that the bearer was a slave, a criminal, or a traitor—a blemished person, ritually polluted, to be avoided, especially in public places. ” (1) Now: “applied more to the disgrace itself than to the bodily evidence of it” (1 -2) Where does stigma originate from, and what influences stigma?

Visible vs. Invisible What might some examples of visible stigma be? Of invisible stigma? How might these experiences of stigma differ?

Poetry Language: word choice, tone, sounds Structure: punctuation, line breaks, stanzas Grammar: metaphors, similes, Frank’s illness narratives: chaos, quest, restitution