The Meaning of a Cover

Dutch Edition

Dutch Edition

 

American 2009

American 2009

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath is a novel about a young woman’s descent into depression and mental illness. It is the story of Esther Greenwood a nineteen year-old woman that actually seemed to be quite lucky. She went to a good university, had a loving mother, an aspiring doctor as a boyfriend, she even won a contest and a trip to New York with a famous women’s magazine. Even with all of that she felt different and unhappy and trapped. She behaved erratically developed a different identity and desired to commit suicide. This story reflects the own life of the author as well, who not too long after publishing the book succeeded in her last attempt and commited suicide. It is evident that this novel is fairly morbid and deep, and it is also a world famous novel.This novel has been translated to many different languages and the cover art has been very different for each country. It is noticeable that each country has a different take on what cover is most befitting to this novel. Some cover arts are like the one from the Dutch edition of the novel; titled, De Giazen Stolp This cover shows a woman in long black clothing slumped on the ground and hugging her knees to her chest while looking up. This cover art idea could be extracted from the section just before Esther goes to the mental hospital, where she decides to crawl into a hole in her basement while overdosing on pills. This cover clearly shows that the book is about the darkness and struggles of a young woman. It is an appropriate for anyone wondering what this novel holds behind that cover. Other covers for this book, American covers in particular, decide to go in a different direction with their designs. The cover from the publishers “Faber and Faber” from the year 2009 take a lighter approach to the cover design. This version shows a woman with a model figure in an non-distinctive white strapless gown with seemingly long hair gathered in a low bun. After knowing exactly what the book is about, this cover seems rather innapropriate. This looks more like a novel about a bride at her wedding. It can only be imagined that this cover idea came from the beginning of the novel where Esther is still in New York living the dream of every other girl her age. Because this version of the novel is somewhat current, it can be inferred that the company went with this friendlier idea to encourage more sales with a younger, more modern generation. There is a famous saying that goes, “you cannot judge a book by it’s cover.” Though this is true, there should be a limit to how far off the subject of a novel the cover art should stray. To those who have not read that book, they would be mislead; and to those who have read it, they will be disgruntled to say the least.

manifesto draft

Zenia McLeod

Feminist Manifesto

There Was Once

We are NOT damsels in distress, someone that needs to be rescued. Why can’t WE slay our dragons and save the day? The idea that we can’t save our own lives is ridiculous! Women do it every day. We solve our own problems and make our own decisions. We don’t need approval from anyone to do so, we just do. And we’re good at it too, great even!

Who needs Prince Charming anyways? Isn’t anyone tired of that foolish impression of women being a burden, someone that only a man can take care of?! We don’t NEED men. They aren’t our bread and butter. We can raise families on our own, or run businesses and even nations. Who ever says that a leader has to be a man is ignorant to the vast capabilities of a women.

I make a challenge to every women whose ever felt that you couldn’t amount to as much as a man. CHALLENGE EVERYTHING! Don’t just take things the way they are. Ask who, what, where, when, and why, especially why. We could change the status quo, you know. Don’t settle for positions and titles that society has placed on us. We’ve come a long way from just being in the kitchen. There’s so much more we can do, and be. If all women were to embrace this revelation and run with it, how much better off we would be.

*I’m not completed with the draft, I just wanted to know if I was going in the write direction for the manifesto part.*

Rough Draft 1

Gender discrimination refers to “the practice whereby one sex is given preferential treatment over the others. The practice of giving social importance to the biological differences between men and women is there everywhere. In some societies, these differences are very much pronounced while in others, they are given less importance. If I were to write about this issue in a bold way I might go for the smaller things that people do not really notice.
The first being; we have yet to have a woman president. 49 other countries in the world have. Yet America has not, granted we are currently experiencing our first black president so I am sure one is coming in the future. Why is it hard for us to vote a woman president? Why has only one run so far that has had a decent chance of wining? What if we look at the opposite of this?
Women get things sometimes at a free or cheaper price then men do simply because they are female. Is this because men see them as objects? Lets look at clubs for an example; these places are known for letting females in for free rather than males. More then often I have gone to house parties and been denied because there are to many males in there already or I don’t have any girls with in my group. But they will let in 5 girls at a time and still deny me. They claim they have to maintain the right guy/girl ratio. I have clearly seen girls use this to their advantage of this though. Whose fault is this; the media for portraying women as objects and not people? Men for only viewing women as objects and not people? Or perhaps it’s the women themselves for not doing anything to change this image. I think it is the media’s fault.