Portrayal of The Protagonists In Sylvia Plath's 'The Bell Jar' and Paulo Coelho's 'Eleven Minutes'.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................... i
TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................iii
ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................... iv
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study .......................................................................
Statement of the Problems .....................................................................
Purpose of the Study .............................................................................
Method of Research ..............................................................................
Organization of the Thesis ....................................................................
1
3
3
3
4
CHAPTER TWO: PORTRAYAL OF THE PROTAGONIST IN SYLVIA
PLATH’S THE BELL JAR ................................................................. 5
CHAPTER THREE: PORTRAYAL OF THE PROTAGONIST IN PAULO
COELHO’S ELEVEN MINUTES .................................................... 17
CHAPTER FOUR: CONCLUSION ............................................................ 29
BIBLIOGRAPY ............................................................................................. 33
APPENDICES
Synopsis of The Bell Jar ....................................................................... 34
Synopsis of Eleven Minutes ................................................................. 36
Biography of Sylvia Plath ..................................................................... 37
Biography of Paulo Coelho .................................................................. 39
iii
Maranatha Christian University
ABSTRACT
Di dalam penulisan tugas akhir ini, saya menganalisis karakteristik dua
tokoh wanita dalam novel The Bell Jar karya Sylvia Plath dan Eleven Minutes
karya Paulo Coelho.
Tokoh utama dalam The Bell Jar, Esther Greenwood, memiliki prestasi luar
biasa di bidang akademik, namun ketidaksetaraan jender dalam masyarakat di
mana dia berada membuat dia terpuruk. Dengan melakukan hubungan seks di luar
pernikahan, Esther mendobrak nilai-nilai dalam masyarakat yang dianggapnya
merugikan wanita. Selain itu, Esther juga mengembangkan diri menjadi karakter
yang lebih baik.
Tokoh utama dalam Eleven Minutes adalah seorang pelacur bernama Maria
yang memiliki berbagai pengalaman seksual sejak usia muda. Maria mengalami
beberapa tahap perkembangan diri dalam hidupnya sejak berumur sebelas tahun.
Pada tahap terakhir, karakteristik dan cara pandang yang ditanamkan oleh
masyrakatnya juga diubah.
Walaupun seksualitas merupakan hal yang tabu di masyarakat mereka, seksualitas
menjadi kunci untuk perkembangan diri Esther dan Maria ke arah yang positif.
Bagi
Esther,
seksualitas
adalah
simbol
iv
kebebasan
atas
hidupnya
Maranatha Christian University
sendiri. Sedangkan bagi Maria, pengalaman seksualnya merupakan simbol
perkembangan dirinya.
v
Maranatha Christian University
APPENDICES
Synopsis of The Bell Jar
Esther Greenwood is a straight A’s student and always wins scholarships.
She travels to New York to work working as a guest editor for a month in a
magazine; yet, somehow she cannot have the time of her life.
She is faced with two options whether she marries and lives a conventional
life or keeps pursuing her dreams to be a writer, which is something unusual at her
time. Everyone thinks she will marry her friend, Buddy Willard. But, after hearing
Buddy’s confession that he has slept with a waitress several times, Esther decides
that she cannot marry him for he is a hypocrite. Esther eventually tries to lose her
virginity as well.
She then returns to her mother’s house in Boston suburbs. Being rejected
from a writing summer course in Harvard, Esther gradually feels depressed and
loses her ability to read, write, and sleep. Treatments from a psychiatrist make her
unstable and worse. She attempts to commit suicide in various ways including
taking sleeping pills.
Luckily, she survives from her suicide attempts. Philomena Guinea, who
sponsors Esther’s college scholarship, pays to move her to a private hospital.
There she meets her new psychiatrist, Dr. Nolan, who begins to improve her
condition with several therapies. As Esther improves, the hospital officials give
35
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her permission to get out sometimes. On one trip, she finally loses her
virginity with a math professor named Irwin. At the end of the novel, Esther will
have an interview with doctors deciding on her leaving the mental hospital.
36
Maranatha Christian University
Synopsis of Eleven Minutes
Eleven Minutes is about an innocent girl named Maria who lives in a small
place in Rio de Janeiro. Like many other girls, naïve Maria dreams that one day
she can fall in love with a wonderful man.
However, Maria experiences her first masturbation at the age of fifteen.
Afterwards she thinks that she does not need a man to have sex. By the age of
nineteen, Maria, who has dreamed to go to a big city, leaves her job in a draper’s
shop and goes to Rio de Janeiro. There she meets an agent who offers her to work
in Switzerland as a samba dancer. She hopes she can get adventures, money and
also love there. Unfortunately, she is low paid. She then threatens to sue the owner
of the place she works. The boss feels scared and therefore, he gives her a lot of
money. After this, she quits.
As she runs out of money, she then decides to be a prostitute at
Copacabana bar. She earns money from that job so that she is able to buy her own
apartment. She also saves money in order to buy a small farm when she goes back
to her homeland.
During the eleven minutes of having sex, Maria learns about other people
and herself. Reality is much harder than what she thinks before. When she almost
disbelieves in love, she meets a painter of twenty nine who claims to see her inner
light in a café. She falls in love with this famous and rich painter, Ralf Hart.
As Maria helps Ralf with his lack of interest in sex, she also comes with a
different view about love. By the end of the story, when Maria is going back to
her homeland, Ralf, who chases her, decides to choose her to be with him and
they both live together.
37
Maranatha Christian University
Biography of Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath was born in Boston on October 27, 1932. The eldest child of a
German immigrant and an Austrian descent, Plath had started her debut as a poet
by the age of eight. Her first poem and drawing were published in a Boston
newspaper. However, in the same year her father died of lung cancer. Two years
later Plath’s family moved to Winthrop, Massachusetts. However, Plath’s
relationship with her mother did not go well.
Plath was a bright student for she could maintain an A average and won
many prizes. She got a full scholarship to Smith College and graduated with
summa cum laude. Most of her youth experiences were similar to those of her
protagonist, Esther Greenwood, in The Bell Jar. Continuing her academic records,
Plath also got a Fulbright scholarship to Newnham College. There she met an
English poet, Ted Hughes and four months later they got married. Six years after
that the marriage ended as she knew her husband’s adultery.
Her early style of poetry was based on the current styles of refined and
ironic verse. She got big influences in her writing from Dylan Thomas and her
husband. Her honesty in writing has given a unique point of view to psychological
disorder and to the feminists in a patriarchal society. The Bell Jar is Plath’s one
and only novel. Her “Collected Poems” won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1982.
Unfortunately, Plath decided to end her life by the age of thirty on February 11,
1963.
Source: “Sylvia Plath”
38
Maranatha Christian University
Biography of Paulo Coelho
Paulo Coelho was born on August 24, 1947 in the city of Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil. Since his teen age he has wanted to become a writer but his parents, who
are logical persons, opposed his idea. Coelho was committed to a mental
institution by his own parents due to his introversion and opposition to follow the
tradition. He spent three years in the mental institution and was released at the age
of twenty.
Coelho enrolled at law school as his parents’ wish. But he was dropped out
a year later. After that he traveled to South America, North America, Mexico and
Europe. Coelho also got several experiences before becoming an author. He was a
theater director, an actor, a lyricist and a journalist.
His first book, Hell Archives failed to make an impact in 1982. In 1987 he
wrote The Alchemist, which turns out to be the most translated book by living
author according to Guinness World Record. Other important works by Coelho
are Brida, The Valkyries, By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept, Eleven
Minutes, Veronica Decides to Die, The Devil and Miss Prym and so on.
Coelho won many prizes for his contribution in literature. He also built a
foundation to help children and elderly people in financial problems. Now he and
his wife, Christina Oiticica, split time to live in Europe and Rio de Janeiro.
Source: “Paulo Coelho”
39
Maranatha Christian University
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Sexuality used to be considered inappropriate and taboo to be discussed;
yet, nowadays it is a popular issue to write about. Sexuality itself is defined as
“the feelings and activities connected with a person’s sexual desires” (Hornby
1392). Sylvia Plath and Paulo Coelho use sexuality as one of the main issues in
their novels, The Bell Jar and Eleven Minutes. In these two novels, sexuality helps
the self-development of the female protagonists. Oxford defines self-development
itself as “the process by which a person’s character and abilities are developed”
(Hornby 1377). However, the development that I am going to discuss here
concerns with the characteristics and ways of thinking.
In The Bell Jar and Eleven Minutes, both women protagonists’
characteristics develop through sexual issues. Sexuality here lends them a hand to
reach that stage. Esther in The Bell Jar is an intelligent young woman who lives in
America in 1950’s. Knowing that her boyfriend has already lost his virginity, she
decides to lose hers as well with another guy. Maria in Eleven Minutes is an
uptown girl whose fate has brought her to Rio de Janeiro and in the end, she ends
1
Maranatha Christian University
up as a prostitute by her own decision. Although they encounter different sexual
experiences, I find sexuality helps them to develop their characteristics and
change their ways of thinking.
The Bell Jar is Sylvia Plath’s one and only novel. Although she was well
known as a poet, this semi-autobiography of hers is worth reading. Almost every
part of the novel reflects her life. Plath made The Bell Jar “an important novel of
the era” (D’Elia). Despite the fact that she was dead by committing suicide, her
work remains alive until now. “… [Plath] resonates so powerfully because of the
modernism of her life story. She was a genius surely, but still faced the questions
women of the era started to ask: Am I going to be me, or am I going to be a
mother? Am I going to be me, or am I going to be a wife?” (Arnold).
Meanwhile, Paulo Coelho is a best-seller author. “Eleven Minutes topped
all lists in the world…” (“Biography”).
Unlike many authors who include
sexuality in their novels without any specific purposes, Coelho stated that “I wrote
Eleven Minutes, in order to find out if, at this stage of life, at 55, I had the courage
to learn everything that life has tried to teach me on the subject” (“Paulo Coelho
on Eleven Minutes”).
According to Roberts in Writing about Literature, a character is “a verbal
representation of a human being as presented to us by the authors…” (66). That is
why I find that analyzing a character is something challenging as “reading for
character is more difficult than reading for a plot, for character is much more
complex, variable, and ambiguous” (Perrine 67). Both Plath and Coelho have their
own intention to form such characters. Thus, in my thesis, I am going to analyze
2
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the portrayal of protagonists in The Bell Jar and Eleven Minutes. To be more
specific, I am going to analyze how sexuality plays an important role in the
development of both protagonists.
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEMS
The problems that I am going to analyze in my thesis are:
1.
How are the protagonists portrayed in the novels?
2.
How do the protagonists develop throughout the novels?
3.
What are the purposes of the authors in creating such characters?
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The aims of this analysis being constructed are:
1.
To show how the protagonists are portrayed in the novels.
2.
To show how the protagonists develop throughout the novels.
3.
To show what the purposes of the authors are in creating such characters.
METHOD OF RESEARCH
In writing this analysis about these two novels, Plath’s The Bell Jar and
Coelho’s Eleven Minutes, I apply the library research method to find some books
to help me in gathering information I require. The novels that are mentioned
above are the primary texts for this analysis. Having read the novels, I collect
some references and criticisms regarding the novels from the Internet websites in
order to support this analysis.
3
Maranatha Christian University
ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS
The thesis is divided into four chapters. The first chapter is the Introduction,
which consists of the Background of the Study, Statement of the Problems,
Purpose of the Study, Method of Research and Organization of the Thesis.
Chapter Two contains the portrayal of the protagonist in The Bell Jar. Chapter
Three contains the portrayal of the protagonist in Eleven Minutes. The last chapter
is the Conclusion. The thesis ends with the Bibliography and the Appendices,
which contains the synopses of the two novels and biographies of the authors.
4
Maranatha Christian University
CHAPTER FOUR
CONCLUSION
Having analyzed the portrayal of the protagonists in The Bell Jar and Eleven
Minutes in the previous chapters, I would like to draw some conclusions. In my
opinion, both The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho
are worth-reading novels and they depict two interesting and exceptional female
protagonists. The first novel, The Bell Jar, is like an autobiographical novel
because the story is based on Plath’s life experiences. Despite the fact that it is an
autobiographical novel, the protagonist’s absurd mind, depression, suicide
attempts and characteristics are still interesting to be analyzed. The second novel,
Eleven Minutes, depicts an unusual character as the protagonist who is a prostitute
named Maria.
Both Esther and Maria have some similarities. They are described as young
single women who are cynical—Esther is cynical about her life and society,
whereas Maria has cynical ideas about love and life. Other similarities between
them are that their characteristics develop in the course of the stories. Both of
them are inadvertently in the process of self-development, and sexuality plays an
important role to help them there.
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Maranatha Christian Universtity
Another similarity between them is the societies where they live in. Both
societies give bad effects to the protagonists’ lives and characteristics. In The Bell
Jar, the society is not so beneficial for women and there are gender inequalities
here and there. In Eleven Minutes, although Paulo Coelho does not specify the
situation of the society, it is obvious that men are superior to women. Esther gets
depressed by her society’s expectations. Meanwhile, Maria’s society dictates her
to live in a standardized life, which makes her frustrated and cynical.
In addition to their similarities, Esther and Maria also have some
differences. For Esther, her sexual issue is simpler than Maria’s and it happens
once only, in which she loses her virginity. As for Maria, she has lots of sexual
experiences starting from her teen age years until finally she becomes a prostitute.
Esther’s sexual encounter, however, is not based on love. She loses her virginity
with a stranger, for what she concerns the most is that her action will be a symbol
of her rebellion towards society, whereas Maria regains her happiness by having a
love-based sexual relationship.
Sexuality for Esther is a symbol for freedom and empowerment of her own
life and body as the society where she lives in is a double standard one and strictly
forbids women from having a sexual relationship before marriage, while, for
Maria, her sexual experiences are the representations of her milestones during her
path in her character development. They are divided into three milestones. Each
milestone marks the changes and developments of her characteristics.
Their self-developments are different. For Esther, in the beginning, she is
described as someone who is not satisfied and unhappy with her life. Eventually,
Esther’s characteristics start to develop after she undergoes the sexual
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Maranatha Christian Universtity
encounter— her life turning point. Afterwards, she is about to embark on having
good qualities in herself and planning to establish her life. As for Maria, who is
depicted as a happy girl in the beginning, loses the happiness while growing up.
Her way of finding happiness is like a U-turn, which means she traces back to the
stage when she feels content with love and life. Moreover, her characteristics
gradually develop and change during her long span of sexual experiences.
Plath’s intention creating Esther as the protagonist is to show that a person’s
characteristics and abilities could be developed after breaking the most important
rule in society that bonds her, which concerns of not having sexual relationship
before marriage. Maria, however, is intended to prove that self-development can
also be regained by having experienced various sexual experiences. While
Esther’s sexual experience is like a key that opens the lock of freedom and herself,
Maria’s sexual experiences are like milestones that bring her to find her true self
and happiness.
Plath and Coelho based their protagonists on real people. Plath created
Esther Greenwood as her duplicate as it is commonly known that Esther’s
circumstances are quite similar to Plath’s, whereas Coelho, who did not get the
idea to create Maria character from his own life record, added some elements to
the book that leads to Maria’s not simply being the biography of the real
prostitute. Nevertheless, I am convinced the two protagonists are relevant to real
life. In reality, there might be people like Esther, who excellently accomplish
great academic achievement in life but still do not know yet what they will want
to be and ended in depressions, or people like Maria, who are just in search of
31
Maranatha Christian Universtity
new adventures and choose what is considered the wrong way of living by her
society.
Surprisingly, after months of my profound analysis of Maria and Esther
characters, I understand and agree with their unusual and different choices of how
they live their lives. Both of them use sexuality— something that is taboo and
prohibited in their societies—as a helping tool for their self-development.
Regardless of the sexual issues they have, I believe that in order to achieve
freedom and happiness, one might do atypical deeds that are not included in the
ways of living the standardized life which makes him or her unhappy and
frustrating. Hence, I can comprehend their decision to use sexuality.
32
Maranatha Christian Universtity
BIBILIOGRAPHY
Primary Text(s)
Coelho, Paulo. Eleven Minutes. New York: Harper Collins Publishers Inc. 2005.
Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. New York: Harper Collins Publishers Inc. 2006.
References
Arnold, Martin. “Sylvia Plath, Forever an Icon” CPCW: The Centre for Programs
in Contemporary Writing. 2000. 18 Oct. 2009.
“Biography” Paulo Coelho Official Site. 2009. 18 Oct 2009.
Bonds, Diane S. “The Separative Self in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar” Sylvia PlathOnline Essays and Papers. 1999. 18 Oct. 2009.
D’Ellia, Kristen. “Analyzing Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar Through a Feminist Lens”
Sylvia Plath-Online Essays and Papers. 2003. 18 Oct. 2009.
Hornby, A.S. Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary 7th Edition. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2005.
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N, Asley. “America During the 1950s” Intranet. 1999. 2 Sept 2010.
“Paulo Coelho” Wikipedia. 2009. 18 Oct. 2009.
“Paulo Coelho on Eleven Minutes” Harper Collins. 2009. 17 Oct. 2009.
Perrine, Laurence. Story and Structure. United States of America: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, Inc. 1974.
Roberts, Edgar V. Writing about Literature. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1998.
“Sylvia Plath” Wikipedia. 2009. 18 Oct. 2009.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................... i
TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................iii
ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................... iv
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study .......................................................................
Statement of the Problems .....................................................................
Purpose of the Study .............................................................................
Method of Research ..............................................................................
Organization of the Thesis ....................................................................
1
3
3
3
4
CHAPTER TWO: PORTRAYAL OF THE PROTAGONIST IN SYLVIA
PLATH’S THE BELL JAR ................................................................. 5
CHAPTER THREE: PORTRAYAL OF THE PROTAGONIST IN PAULO
COELHO’S ELEVEN MINUTES .................................................... 17
CHAPTER FOUR: CONCLUSION ............................................................ 29
BIBLIOGRAPY ............................................................................................. 33
APPENDICES
Synopsis of The Bell Jar ....................................................................... 34
Synopsis of Eleven Minutes ................................................................. 36
Biography of Sylvia Plath ..................................................................... 37
Biography of Paulo Coelho .................................................................. 39
iii
Maranatha Christian University
ABSTRACT
Di dalam penulisan tugas akhir ini, saya menganalisis karakteristik dua
tokoh wanita dalam novel The Bell Jar karya Sylvia Plath dan Eleven Minutes
karya Paulo Coelho.
Tokoh utama dalam The Bell Jar, Esther Greenwood, memiliki prestasi luar
biasa di bidang akademik, namun ketidaksetaraan jender dalam masyarakat di
mana dia berada membuat dia terpuruk. Dengan melakukan hubungan seks di luar
pernikahan, Esther mendobrak nilai-nilai dalam masyarakat yang dianggapnya
merugikan wanita. Selain itu, Esther juga mengembangkan diri menjadi karakter
yang lebih baik.
Tokoh utama dalam Eleven Minutes adalah seorang pelacur bernama Maria
yang memiliki berbagai pengalaman seksual sejak usia muda. Maria mengalami
beberapa tahap perkembangan diri dalam hidupnya sejak berumur sebelas tahun.
Pada tahap terakhir, karakteristik dan cara pandang yang ditanamkan oleh
masyrakatnya juga diubah.
Walaupun seksualitas merupakan hal yang tabu di masyarakat mereka, seksualitas
menjadi kunci untuk perkembangan diri Esther dan Maria ke arah yang positif.
Bagi
Esther,
seksualitas
adalah
simbol
iv
kebebasan
atas
hidupnya
Maranatha Christian University
sendiri. Sedangkan bagi Maria, pengalaman seksualnya merupakan simbol
perkembangan dirinya.
v
Maranatha Christian University
APPENDICES
Synopsis of The Bell Jar
Esther Greenwood is a straight A’s student and always wins scholarships.
She travels to New York to work working as a guest editor for a month in a
magazine; yet, somehow she cannot have the time of her life.
She is faced with two options whether she marries and lives a conventional
life or keeps pursuing her dreams to be a writer, which is something unusual at her
time. Everyone thinks she will marry her friend, Buddy Willard. But, after hearing
Buddy’s confession that he has slept with a waitress several times, Esther decides
that she cannot marry him for he is a hypocrite. Esther eventually tries to lose her
virginity as well.
She then returns to her mother’s house in Boston suburbs. Being rejected
from a writing summer course in Harvard, Esther gradually feels depressed and
loses her ability to read, write, and sleep. Treatments from a psychiatrist make her
unstable and worse. She attempts to commit suicide in various ways including
taking sleeping pills.
Luckily, she survives from her suicide attempts. Philomena Guinea, who
sponsors Esther’s college scholarship, pays to move her to a private hospital.
There she meets her new psychiatrist, Dr. Nolan, who begins to improve her
condition with several therapies. As Esther improves, the hospital officials give
35
Maranatha Christian University
her permission to get out sometimes. On one trip, she finally loses her
virginity with a math professor named Irwin. At the end of the novel, Esther will
have an interview with doctors deciding on her leaving the mental hospital.
36
Maranatha Christian University
Synopsis of Eleven Minutes
Eleven Minutes is about an innocent girl named Maria who lives in a small
place in Rio de Janeiro. Like many other girls, naïve Maria dreams that one day
she can fall in love with a wonderful man.
However, Maria experiences her first masturbation at the age of fifteen.
Afterwards she thinks that she does not need a man to have sex. By the age of
nineteen, Maria, who has dreamed to go to a big city, leaves her job in a draper’s
shop and goes to Rio de Janeiro. There she meets an agent who offers her to work
in Switzerland as a samba dancer. She hopes she can get adventures, money and
also love there. Unfortunately, she is low paid. She then threatens to sue the owner
of the place she works. The boss feels scared and therefore, he gives her a lot of
money. After this, she quits.
As she runs out of money, she then decides to be a prostitute at
Copacabana bar. She earns money from that job so that she is able to buy her own
apartment. She also saves money in order to buy a small farm when she goes back
to her homeland.
During the eleven minutes of having sex, Maria learns about other people
and herself. Reality is much harder than what she thinks before. When she almost
disbelieves in love, she meets a painter of twenty nine who claims to see her inner
light in a café. She falls in love with this famous and rich painter, Ralf Hart.
As Maria helps Ralf with his lack of interest in sex, she also comes with a
different view about love. By the end of the story, when Maria is going back to
her homeland, Ralf, who chases her, decides to choose her to be with him and
they both live together.
37
Maranatha Christian University
Biography of Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath was born in Boston on October 27, 1932. The eldest child of a
German immigrant and an Austrian descent, Plath had started her debut as a poet
by the age of eight. Her first poem and drawing were published in a Boston
newspaper. However, in the same year her father died of lung cancer. Two years
later Plath’s family moved to Winthrop, Massachusetts. However, Plath’s
relationship with her mother did not go well.
Plath was a bright student for she could maintain an A average and won
many prizes. She got a full scholarship to Smith College and graduated with
summa cum laude. Most of her youth experiences were similar to those of her
protagonist, Esther Greenwood, in The Bell Jar. Continuing her academic records,
Plath also got a Fulbright scholarship to Newnham College. There she met an
English poet, Ted Hughes and four months later they got married. Six years after
that the marriage ended as she knew her husband’s adultery.
Her early style of poetry was based on the current styles of refined and
ironic verse. She got big influences in her writing from Dylan Thomas and her
husband. Her honesty in writing has given a unique point of view to psychological
disorder and to the feminists in a patriarchal society. The Bell Jar is Plath’s one
and only novel. Her “Collected Poems” won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1982.
Unfortunately, Plath decided to end her life by the age of thirty on February 11,
1963.
Source: “Sylvia Plath”
38
Maranatha Christian University
Biography of Paulo Coelho
Paulo Coelho was born on August 24, 1947 in the city of Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil. Since his teen age he has wanted to become a writer but his parents, who
are logical persons, opposed his idea. Coelho was committed to a mental
institution by his own parents due to his introversion and opposition to follow the
tradition. He spent three years in the mental institution and was released at the age
of twenty.
Coelho enrolled at law school as his parents’ wish. But he was dropped out
a year later. After that he traveled to South America, North America, Mexico and
Europe. Coelho also got several experiences before becoming an author. He was a
theater director, an actor, a lyricist and a journalist.
His first book, Hell Archives failed to make an impact in 1982. In 1987 he
wrote The Alchemist, which turns out to be the most translated book by living
author according to Guinness World Record. Other important works by Coelho
are Brida, The Valkyries, By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept, Eleven
Minutes, Veronica Decides to Die, The Devil and Miss Prym and so on.
Coelho won many prizes for his contribution in literature. He also built a
foundation to help children and elderly people in financial problems. Now he and
his wife, Christina Oiticica, split time to live in Europe and Rio de Janeiro.
Source: “Paulo Coelho”
39
Maranatha Christian University
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Sexuality used to be considered inappropriate and taboo to be discussed;
yet, nowadays it is a popular issue to write about. Sexuality itself is defined as
“the feelings and activities connected with a person’s sexual desires” (Hornby
1392). Sylvia Plath and Paulo Coelho use sexuality as one of the main issues in
their novels, The Bell Jar and Eleven Minutes. In these two novels, sexuality helps
the self-development of the female protagonists. Oxford defines self-development
itself as “the process by which a person’s character and abilities are developed”
(Hornby 1377). However, the development that I am going to discuss here
concerns with the characteristics and ways of thinking.
In The Bell Jar and Eleven Minutes, both women protagonists’
characteristics develop through sexual issues. Sexuality here lends them a hand to
reach that stage. Esther in The Bell Jar is an intelligent young woman who lives in
America in 1950’s. Knowing that her boyfriend has already lost his virginity, she
decides to lose hers as well with another guy. Maria in Eleven Minutes is an
uptown girl whose fate has brought her to Rio de Janeiro and in the end, she ends
1
Maranatha Christian University
up as a prostitute by her own decision. Although they encounter different sexual
experiences, I find sexuality helps them to develop their characteristics and
change their ways of thinking.
The Bell Jar is Sylvia Plath’s one and only novel. Although she was well
known as a poet, this semi-autobiography of hers is worth reading. Almost every
part of the novel reflects her life. Plath made The Bell Jar “an important novel of
the era” (D’Elia). Despite the fact that she was dead by committing suicide, her
work remains alive until now. “… [Plath] resonates so powerfully because of the
modernism of her life story. She was a genius surely, but still faced the questions
women of the era started to ask: Am I going to be me, or am I going to be a
mother? Am I going to be me, or am I going to be a wife?” (Arnold).
Meanwhile, Paulo Coelho is a best-seller author. “Eleven Minutes topped
all lists in the world…” (“Biography”).
Unlike many authors who include
sexuality in their novels without any specific purposes, Coelho stated that “I wrote
Eleven Minutes, in order to find out if, at this stage of life, at 55, I had the courage
to learn everything that life has tried to teach me on the subject” (“Paulo Coelho
on Eleven Minutes”).
According to Roberts in Writing about Literature, a character is “a verbal
representation of a human being as presented to us by the authors…” (66). That is
why I find that analyzing a character is something challenging as “reading for
character is more difficult than reading for a plot, for character is much more
complex, variable, and ambiguous” (Perrine 67). Both Plath and Coelho have their
own intention to form such characters. Thus, in my thesis, I am going to analyze
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the portrayal of protagonists in The Bell Jar and Eleven Minutes. To be more
specific, I am going to analyze how sexuality plays an important role in the
development of both protagonists.
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEMS
The problems that I am going to analyze in my thesis are:
1.
How are the protagonists portrayed in the novels?
2.
How do the protagonists develop throughout the novels?
3.
What are the purposes of the authors in creating such characters?
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The aims of this analysis being constructed are:
1.
To show how the protagonists are portrayed in the novels.
2.
To show how the protagonists develop throughout the novels.
3.
To show what the purposes of the authors are in creating such characters.
METHOD OF RESEARCH
In writing this analysis about these two novels, Plath’s The Bell Jar and
Coelho’s Eleven Minutes, I apply the library research method to find some books
to help me in gathering information I require. The novels that are mentioned
above are the primary texts for this analysis. Having read the novels, I collect
some references and criticisms regarding the novels from the Internet websites in
order to support this analysis.
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ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS
The thesis is divided into four chapters. The first chapter is the Introduction,
which consists of the Background of the Study, Statement of the Problems,
Purpose of the Study, Method of Research and Organization of the Thesis.
Chapter Two contains the portrayal of the protagonist in The Bell Jar. Chapter
Three contains the portrayal of the protagonist in Eleven Minutes. The last chapter
is the Conclusion. The thesis ends with the Bibliography and the Appendices,
which contains the synopses of the two novels and biographies of the authors.
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CHAPTER FOUR
CONCLUSION
Having analyzed the portrayal of the protagonists in The Bell Jar and Eleven
Minutes in the previous chapters, I would like to draw some conclusions. In my
opinion, both The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho
are worth-reading novels and they depict two interesting and exceptional female
protagonists. The first novel, The Bell Jar, is like an autobiographical novel
because the story is based on Plath’s life experiences. Despite the fact that it is an
autobiographical novel, the protagonist’s absurd mind, depression, suicide
attempts and characteristics are still interesting to be analyzed. The second novel,
Eleven Minutes, depicts an unusual character as the protagonist who is a prostitute
named Maria.
Both Esther and Maria have some similarities. They are described as young
single women who are cynical—Esther is cynical about her life and society,
whereas Maria has cynical ideas about love and life. Other similarities between
them are that their characteristics develop in the course of the stories. Both of
them are inadvertently in the process of self-development, and sexuality plays an
important role to help them there.
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Another similarity between them is the societies where they live in. Both
societies give bad effects to the protagonists’ lives and characteristics. In The Bell
Jar, the society is not so beneficial for women and there are gender inequalities
here and there. In Eleven Minutes, although Paulo Coelho does not specify the
situation of the society, it is obvious that men are superior to women. Esther gets
depressed by her society’s expectations. Meanwhile, Maria’s society dictates her
to live in a standardized life, which makes her frustrated and cynical.
In addition to their similarities, Esther and Maria also have some
differences. For Esther, her sexual issue is simpler than Maria’s and it happens
once only, in which she loses her virginity. As for Maria, she has lots of sexual
experiences starting from her teen age years until finally she becomes a prostitute.
Esther’s sexual encounter, however, is not based on love. She loses her virginity
with a stranger, for what she concerns the most is that her action will be a symbol
of her rebellion towards society, whereas Maria regains her happiness by having a
love-based sexual relationship.
Sexuality for Esther is a symbol for freedom and empowerment of her own
life and body as the society where she lives in is a double standard one and strictly
forbids women from having a sexual relationship before marriage, while, for
Maria, her sexual experiences are the representations of her milestones during her
path in her character development. They are divided into three milestones. Each
milestone marks the changes and developments of her characteristics.
Their self-developments are different. For Esther, in the beginning, she is
described as someone who is not satisfied and unhappy with her life. Eventually,
Esther’s characteristics start to develop after she undergoes the sexual
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encounter— her life turning point. Afterwards, she is about to embark on having
good qualities in herself and planning to establish her life. As for Maria, who is
depicted as a happy girl in the beginning, loses the happiness while growing up.
Her way of finding happiness is like a U-turn, which means she traces back to the
stage when she feels content with love and life. Moreover, her characteristics
gradually develop and change during her long span of sexual experiences.
Plath’s intention creating Esther as the protagonist is to show that a person’s
characteristics and abilities could be developed after breaking the most important
rule in society that bonds her, which concerns of not having sexual relationship
before marriage. Maria, however, is intended to prove that self-development can
also be regained by having experienced various sexual experiences. While
Esther’s sexual experience is like a key that opens the lock of freedom and herself,
Maria’s sexual experiences are like milestones that bring her to find her true self
and happiness.
Plath and Coelho based their protagonists on real people. Plath created
Esther Greenwood as her duplicate as it is commonly known that Esther’s
circumstances are quite similar to Plath’s, whereas Coelho, who did not get the
idea to create Maria character from his own life record, added some elements to
the book that leads to Maria’s not simply being the biography of the real
prostitute. Nevertheless, I am convinced the two protagonists are relevant to real
life. In reality, there might be people like Esther, who excellently accomplish
great academic achievement in life but still do not know yet what they will want
to be and ended in depressions, or people like Maria, who are just in search of
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new adventures and choose what is considered the wrong way of living by her
society.
Surprisingly, after months of my profound analysis of Maria and Esther
characters, I understand and agree with their unusual and different choices of how
they live their lives. Both of them use sexuality— something that is taboo and
prohibited in their societies—as a helping tool for their self-development.
Regardless of the sexual issues they have, I believe that in order to achieve
freedom and happiness, one might do atypical deeds that are not included in the
ways of living the standardized life which makes him or her unhappy and
frustrating. Hence, I can comprehend their decision to use sexuality.
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BIBILIOGRAPHY
Primary Text(s)
Coelho, Paulo. Eleven Minutes. New York: Harper Collins Publishers Inc. 2005.
Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. New York: Harper Collins Publishers Inc. 2006.
References
Arnold, Martin. “Sylvia Plath, Forever an Icon” CPCW: The Centre for Programs
in Contemporary Writing. 2000. 18 Oct. 2009.
“Biography” Paulo Coelho Official Site. 2009. 18 Oct 2009.
Bonds, Diane S. “The Separative Self in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar” Sylvia PlathOnline Essays and Papers. 1999. 18 Oct. 2009.
D’Ellia, Kristen. “Analyzing Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar Through a Feminist Lens”
Sylvia Plath-Online Essays and Papers. 2003. 18 Oct. 2009.
Hornby, A.S. Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary 7th Edition. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2005.
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N, Asley. “America During the 1950s” Intranet. 1999. 2 Sept 2010.
“Paulo Coelho” Wikipedia. 2009. 18 Oct. 2009.
“Paulo Coelho on Eleven Minutes” Harper Collins. 2009. 17 Oct. 2009.
Perrine, Laurence. Story and Structure. United States of America: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, Inc. 1974.
Roberts, Edgar V. Writing about Literature. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1998.
“Sylvia Plath” Wikipedia. 2009. 18 Oct. 2009.
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