The Bell Jar

This work, as much poetry as it is prose, chronicles the downward spiral of sophomoric teenage college student Esther Greenwood. Plath's voice creates Esther as sardonic and misfit, acting as both victim and brutal enforcer to the social and gender roles of her time.
While Esther's petty snap judgments and internal dressing-down of all those who surround her never truly ceases, her growth beyond obedience to absurd self-held maxims chronicles the most important of journeys that one makes in the transition from young adult to adult.