(1) Analyze the success of confessional modes in Plath’s The Bell Jar and poems from Ariel. Account for severe criticisms of self-indulgent neurosis.
(2) Compare Plath’s startling images of confinement and coercion in “Purdah” with those in poems by Anne Sexton, Audre Lorde, and H. D.
(3) Summarize lines from Plath’s prose and verse that capture her ambivalence toward male authority figures, in particular, her husband and father.
