What Does it Mean to Feel Alone? The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath
In this course we’ll explore the intersection of gender, the treatment of mental health in literature, and loneliness.
We’ll read and discuss Sylvia Plath’s novel The Bell Jar.
The Bell Jar chronicles the breakdown of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as a probable and accessible experience to the reader. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.
About this six-session class series
This course is part of a six-session class series. Participants are welcome to enroll in the full class series or session-by-session. All Premise courses are conversation-style and facilitated.
The ideal: Participate in the full class series.
Students are invited to participate in each session in the class series. The enduring questions of the class will become deeper and more complex by participating in each session. Students come to know one another and connect more deeply through participation in the full series.
The cost of the full six-session series is $125 and includes the bonus session. Register here for the full series.
Can’t make the full series? Participate as you are able.
If you can’t participate in all sessions, we encourage you to attend any session they are able. We believe in low-barrier, flexible, and adaptive learning and community-making. Therefore, you are welcome whenever you can make it at Premise!
The pay-as-you-go session cost is $35/per session.
Class date and time
Sunday, August 21, 2022 4:00-5:30PM PST
All Premise classes take place on Zoom.
Why take this course?
Loneliness is central to the human experience. Yet, it can be hard to talk about loneliness and isolation because of social stigma. We may feel that loneliness is a personal failure. In her poem The Loneliness One dare not sound, Emily Dickinson writes loneliness is the “Horror not to be surveyed.” Loneliness is baked into what it means to be human, and most of us will experience periods of loneliness in our lives. But, what does it mean to be lonely?
Even before the forced isolation of Covid-19, rates of loneliness were skyrocketing in the U.S. and around the world. More than 20%, in fact, of the adult population in America admits to struggling with loneliness regularly. That's more people than have diabetes in our country and more adults than smoke in the United States. Public health officials medicalize loneliness and refer to it as an epidemic.
Yet, philosophers and psychologists have long argued that loneliness is an essential part of the human condition.
Philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote, “Solitude is the human condition in which I keep myself company. Loneliness comes about when I am alone without being able to split up into the two-in-one, without being able to keep myself company.” The existentialist feminist writer Simone de Beauvoir embraced loneliness and thought of it as her creative force.
Each course in this series will examine what it means when we feel alone and how to make sense of the human experience of loneliness.
Together, we’ll explore the questions:
What does it mean to feel alone?
Are being alone and being lonely the same?
Can we be coupled, have a family or a strong community of friends, and still be lonely?
Is there a purpose for loneliness?
Can we live with the pain of loneliness without succumbing to it?