The thesis examines the development of female identity in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and Ana Schnabl's September. It focuses on the question of how social pressures, patriarchal expectations, family circumstances, sexuality, the body, and medicine influence the formation of the self-image of the protagonists, Esther Greenwood and Evelin Oderlap. First, the thesis presents the key theoretical premises of feminist theory concerning identity, the normativity of femininity, and the social construction of the female subject. In the central part of the thesis, the two novels are analysed through a comparative method, with the development of the protagonists' identities presented according to individual thematic sections. The comparison shows that the identities of the protagonists are shaped by traumatic experiences from the past, while recovery is not complete, but merely enables the possibility of further development of an identity that remains marked by trauma, yet becomes more autonomous.
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