Analysing and comparing Sylvia Plath's the Bell Jar and Susan Sontag's Alice in bed within the frame of feminism and panopticon

Throughout the history, there is a crucial difference between men's and women's position. Women have been the ones who are expected to engage in some social roles such as being an ideal mother, housewife while men have been expected to deal with outer world. Especially, women who have an intellectual power to write have had paradox between their creative minds and feeling of obligation to be accepted by society. For the sake of literature, these women have suffered from mental illness and depression. At the end, suicidality emerges among these women. This thesis study aims at demonstrating how social and familial constraints have an impact on the future plans of women no matter how they have creative minds.This study will handle this issue by analyzing Sylvia Plath's novel, The Bell Jar, and Susan Sontag's play, Alice in Bed. These works will be the main sources of this thesis while they are being analyzed within the frame of Feminism and Foucault's notion of Panopticon. Both of the works question the position of women in patriarchal society. The protagonists in the novel and the play clearly demonstrate the oppression they feel because of dominant forces. These characters are the examples of the power that patriarchal system creates, and they clearly show the limitation of women's scopes of success because of this system. They feel engulfed, and they suffer from depression, so they have a tendency towards committing suicide. Hence, this thesis will reflect society's pressure on women's desires and their identity, and it will demonstrate the double standards applied to women which later gives rise to psychological problems for women.