Femininity In The Bell Jar

Women haven’t always had the freedom that they have today. Women were supposed to live a certain life even though sometimes they didn’t want to. They had to tend to their husbands at all time, stay home and do housework while still taking care of their children or being pregnant. Women were abused physically, emotionally, and psychologically. Although women were perceived to act and present themselves in a certain way, some young women went against the cult of the true woman hood not only to be different, but to escape he physical, emotional, and psychological abuse that they will or have encountered. In novels, The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Path and Lucy, by Jamaica Kincaid both young women have the similarity to rebel against the cult of true

How would one feel if they had to drop all of their dreams and goals in order to look good for the neighbors? How would one feel if all they were used for was to conceive their spouses child? Those instances don’t sound too good, well a woman's role in the 1950’s was just that. In the dark novel written by Sylvia Plath, Esther Greenwood is constantly battling an inner conflict of listening to society which leads her to battling depression. Plath shows the women’s roles and the challenges of how women must sacrifice their dreams to become wives and mothers through Esther’s accountings.

The Bell Jar: Women Dissociated from the Norm In the modern world, women are leaders; they are entrepreneurs, CEO's, and astronauts, and anything else they want to be, but in the 1950's they were seen in a very different light. They were thought of as simple-minded people who needed to be protected. They had to dress and act a certain way, but it was during this time where women everywhere tried to change that. Looking back, many novels have ties to fighting for gender equality, one of them is The Bell Jar.

Inspired by Mary Jane Ward’s The Snake Pit, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath was released in 1963 and discusses a great deal of how difficult it was to be a woman in the 1960s. The 1960s was a struggling time for women; society set standards that women felt obligated to follow. Society told women that their only jobs were to get married, have children, and become homemakers, and if a woman did not fall under all of these categories, she was considered a social outcast. The main character, Esther Greenwood, fears that she will not make a good wife because she could not cook, she stood too tall, and danced poorly. Women also had many restrictions on what they could do. For example, they could not serve on a jury, get an Ivy League education, and they did not experience equality in the work place. Society expected women to follow these standards perfectly, without fault. How were women to live by all of these standards and still think of themselves as strong and independent? Alas, because society focused so much on what women should do, that they did not appreciate some of the other things that some women could do. Intelligence, determination, and understanding were not considered impressive or useful to women in this time. The character Esther Greenwood in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar reflects the struggle to maintain self-respect and personal motivation in a society that demands perfection.

Esther did not know what she especially wanted with her life. Jay Cee stated to Esther that not having an idea of what she wants, will not get her very far because Esther is

The restrictions a woman has leave her with no choice but marriage unless she would rather accept rejection from society. That brings on fear for Esther and her future: “Her dejected feelings came from the lack of control she felt she had as a woman. Esther felt she would never actually be able to have choices in life because of society’s pre-constructed ‘housewife’ role” (D’Elia 8). Esther had little control over her life and no amount of fighting would change the way society would negatively view her. Assuming the role as a housewife would be Esther’s surrender to society’s sexist ways, which she stands against. She saw the American housewife as a possession of a male that would be used up and spit out. There was also trouble if Esther decided to “stick it” to society and pursue the single life since disapproval from the ones around her would surely follow: “Accordingly, women were viewed as mates and all kinds of ‘rights’ came to be questioned… The non married lifestyle was as suspect as deviant sexual behaviors and pressure on women to marry – no matter how career oriented, how ambitious, how intelligent – was inescapable” (“America at Midcentury” 1). The image of losing her identity became a threat since Esther believes that her destiny calls for her to use her intelligence for something greater. She does not want society to see her negatively either, causing some restlessness in her life. Esther saw the housewife situation as another form of slavery and even imagines what it would have in store for

She goes through many instances in which the most sane of people would not be able to return unscathed. But we as readers refuse to credit her misfortune because of our own insecurities and the constraints society has set upon us, even today. Esther Greenwood lives and copes with a mental illness in this book, and that is not something most people are comfortable with. We try to rationalize her actions, stating that she is just pressured by those around her, or her feminist views are what cause her troubles. The reality is a culmination of multiple factors, some of which are unexplainable. Very much like Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, Esther’s story is taken with varying levels of sympathy and understanding. Many would see her as the typical brooding teenager, one who makes mountains out of molehills. She is unbelievably privileged, especially for the time in which her story takes place. One could say that she has it all, even more. But who are we to decide what is big and what is small? Who are we to decide what classifies one’s feelings as worthy of the label of illness or just simply disagreeable? The Bell Jar is indeed an important bildungsroman, because it opens discussion to harsh realities of life, ones in which many are unwilling to face. This unwillingness could have meant the end for Esther Greenwood; her mother being embarrassed of her daughter’s condition,

The world is filled with an infinite amount of human possibilities; however, this spectrum of "infinite possibilities" can slim down to one because an individual can succumb to peer pressure. Their thoughts and actions are altered according to the respective environment they associate themselves with. They may or may not face the reality at one point in the future, but the chances for that are slim because naive minds are susceptible to adapt according to their surroundings. In other words, the individual will conform to the social construct in order to fit in. The character Esther Greenwood, from The Bell Jar, a nineteen year old adult living independently in New York City experiences this. She suffers from the pressures of her society; this leads her to adjust her actions according to these pressures. She was expected to fit the “image” that was socially acceptable – a pure women until marriage, but a mother and wife after. Esther feels isolated from society if she attempts to be a “normal” girl, but this makes her stand out. Because of the hardships Esther faces with men and society, she has a hard time trying to figure out what to do with her future. Similarly, in A Room of One’s Own, by Virginia Woolf, women have to adjust to the expectations set for them by their societies. Woolf provides a “real life” story to demonstrate the ways in which women were looked down upon for writing rather than fitting the acceptable womanly image. The guidelines given by Virginia Woolf

Thesis: In The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath utilizes an autobiographical protagonist to express purity versus impurity, as well as mind versus body in a world of double standards.

The pain and trauma that stem from Esther’s illness have warped her view of the world around her. However, this symbol also represents the pressures put on women in the 1950s to be what was considered ideal for women during this era. The bell jar “suggests more than Esther’s inner alienated world”, it also “signifies society which destroys Esther” and “symbolizes ‘scientific punishment’ for non-conformists” (Evans 105). She “must combat the additional alienation of being an aspiring woman in an era of strict limitations for women” which only hinders her further from her goals in life (Axelrod). While many women at the time planned on marrying and settling down, Esther does not view these expectations for women in the same way and instead wishes to be her own independent person. While working as the guest editor of Mademoiselle, a fashion magazine, Esther “suffocates under the bell jar forced on her by a competitive, male-oriented society”(Evans 105). During the fifties women were not expected to have successful careers in general and the male dominant world held a high level of competition; while trying to come out on top in this society Esther ends up cracking under the intense pressure. Representing both the stifling social limits set on women and the protagonist’s dismal mental state, the bell jar is a robust symbol in this novel.

In Sylvia Plath's novel The Bell Jar, Esther Greenwood seems incapable of healthy relationships with other women. She is trapped in a patriarchal society with rigid expectations of womanhood. The cost of transgressing social norms is isolation, institutionalization and a lost identity as woman. The struggle for an individual identity under this regime is enough to drive a person to the verge of suicide. Given the oppressive system under which she must operate, Esther Greenwood's problems with women stem from her conflict between individuality and conformity.

Sylvia Plath’s novel, The Bell Jar, shows that the mores of America contribute to the mental deterioration of some of the most creative and introspective of people. The novel is basically an autobiography-one which is a strange mix of mundanity, grotesqueness, barbarity, nature, and glamour. Something dark and insidious perturbs the author’s stand in protagonist, Esther Greenwood, in both traumatizing and prosaic circumstances. The novel remains iconic in American culture due to its resonance with feminists and mental health experts, as well as the shocking suicide of its author.

In Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and Alice Munro’s Lives of Girls and Women, Esther and Del try to take control of their sexuality and their sexual lives. These two female protagonists attempt to gain sexual confidence by quietly rejecting the societal images of women. They are able to seduce men and pilot their own sexual lives. These women are also able to ignore the popular beliefs about marriage and motherhood, thus freeing them from the traditional, restrictive female sexual roles. By rejecting the popular notions of womanhood, sexuality, and marriage, Esther and Del become the mistresses of their sexuality and sexual

This is a novel that has a lot of feminism on how women are treated in Esther’s workplace. The opening line in the novel she says, “It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.” Esther feels lost, sad like she’s not even in her right state of mind and doesn’t have a clue why she came to New York for.

“Sylvia Plath was an angry young woman born in a country and at a time that only intensified her fury” (Wilson). This quote perfectly describes Sylvia Plath’s feminist attitude which was reflected in her writing. Since writing is such a personal endeavor, one inevitably leaves a part of one’s self behind in a story. This is certainly the case in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, which is very similar and at times indistinguishable from Plath’s own life. Through protagonist Esther Greenwood’s feminist dialogue in The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath highlights the subservient view of women in the 1950s, which was partially a result of World War II.