Lillian Oesch - Argument Essay Outline by Lillian

Novels that star cynical and depressed female leads benefit their impressionable young female audience.

horizontrw — 2025-03-26 17:28:10 UTC

Allows readers to escape from their real worries, indulging in a fictional world like any other fiction fan.

horizontrw — 2025-03-26 17:28:10 UTC

Strong form of escapism that takes away stress and allows readers to relax, living through a life that isn't theirs (Sellers).

Many of the authors write these novels with their own personal experiences and feelings in mind, conveying their complex emotions through storytelling.

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Some are close to an auto-biography with how much the authors project in their work (Plath).

Readers can connect personally with the characters.

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They can see themselves in the characters and learn how to make their way through similar issues in their own life, alike these fictional leads (Sellers).

Some readers use the characters' grief to express and push through their own.

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The fictional heroines created a blueprint for how to indulge in sadness that allowed readers to grieve the way they needed to (Jamison).

Teaching depression through the lens of Esther Greenwood in The Bell Jar.

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Students were able to learn about depression by reading The Bell Jar when paired with American Melancholy: Constructions of Depression in the Twentieth Century. This allowed the students to see depression in a much more personal way, rather than the standard textbook definition they're comfortable with (Brown).

Reading these books gives a firsthand lens into mental struggle.

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It's an entirely different world in the characters' eyes compared to the readers, and it can be extremely enlightening to see how these issues are firsthand. (Savon).

Majority of these books are banned as they're deemed "inappropriate" or controversial.

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Extremely renowned books like these, such as The Handmaid's Tale are banned (Tolin).

Reading these banned books allows readers to learn about the info that is stripped from them.

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There is a large societal blindness in just how many books are banned. These books give women empowerment to express their "taboo" negative emotions freely, and that is a right that all women deserve (Liou and Cutler).

Opposing Viewpoint: These books further develop misogyny and dumb women down to helpless, sad creatures in need of saving by men.

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These books reinforce the idea that women are inferior and primitive. We view women authors and their work as infantilised and taken much less seriously (Stuckes).

While many of these heroines in these novels are struck down by men, the men in their life are a small factor to the much greater equation of their mental spiral. These women are also an extreme minority with their complex, intense emotion, manifested in the strife of the grieving women today. (Sellers).

Opposing Viewpoint: These books depress readers and further upset them.

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The sheer amount of negativity in these novels allow readers' grief to fester further, making them more and more like these characters. Idolization can especially become an issue. It's "just straight up depressing," (Savon).

Most readers find themselves in these characters and form a personal connection with them. While it may be obvious that these novels are depressing, many are motivated and assisted by these books. Bouncing back from a rough spot or inching out of a cynical purgatory can have its inspiration sparked from the grief of these fictional characters (Jamison).

Hook: Describing "The Fig Tree"

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"I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose," (Plath).

The Fig Tree metaphor used in The Bell Jar is a renowned excerpt, arguably one of the most well known quotes not just from the novel but from Sylvia Plath herself.

Background Information:

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Many women in novels, like Esther Greenwood from The Bell Jar are very often depicted as self-destructive, pessimistic anti-heroines (Jamison). These novels cover the depths of mental destruction in women, slowly paving the way for their personal descent.

Restate Thesis

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Novels that star cynical and depressed female leads benefit their impressionable young female audience.

"So What?" + Closing Statement

horizontrw — 2025-04-07 22:39:59 UTC

It may seem pointless to argue for these novels, as books as a whole are disappearing completely. However, if the accessibility of novels like these and more are fought for, young women can connect with the characters and learn more about the world and themselves, improving their own mental path and becoming ultimately stronger.