"The Feeding of Young Women": Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, Mademoiselle Magazine, and the Domestic Ideal

Abstract

This article examines the way in which Sylvia Plath's novel, The Bell Jar , interacts with and is informed by 1950s magazines, focusing on 1953 issues of Mademoiselle magazine, the year in which Plath's novel takes place. "'The Feeding of Young Women'" considers the way in which Plath uses significant moments of eating throughout her novel to underscore the intense hold that Mademoiselle 's domestic, behavioral models have on Esther's sense of self. Reading both articles and advertisements in 1953 editions of Mademoiselle and looking specifically at passages in The Bell Jar that deal with Esther's eating and housekeeping habits, this article asserts that 1950s consumer culture—a culture that encouraged women to navigate beyond the private sphere of the home while limiting those options by simultaneously discouraging that navigation—contributes to Esther's metaphorical starvation.

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