Happiness and the Female Identity in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation

Resumen

There are several academic works focusing on mental illnesses and the struggles of the female political body. Women’s writing and theory become a central issue for feminist theorists such as Betty Friedan, Elaine Showalter, Simone de Beauvoir or Hélène Cixous. These theorists denounce the detrimental consequences of a patriarchal reality on the mental health of women. These two issues have often been intrinsically connected to one another. This essay attempts to explain the mental issues that women have struggled with due to female oppression and discrimination. In this essay, the analysis of Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar will provide an insight of the female experience based on the protagonists’ personal pursuit of happiness and well-being as well as the analysis of their gender oppression. I illustrate the connection between the role of two ambitious young women and mental illness. Both novels will, thus, be examined through a comparative and critical analysis to understand the evolution of the female roles in society over the years as well as the question of happiness. Thus, the contextualization of these novels will foremost expose the impact of female reconciliation with the question of happiness