The Effects Of Sexist Culture In Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar

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 setting of The Bell Jar was New York and Boston in 1953 summer, and we can see from the beginning of the novel that Esther’s value orientation was totally different from 1950s’ of American society. Thousands of teenagers long for American dream because they hope to change their poor life by working hard. Esther succeeded in her study since she was young, and her talent as well as industriousness won her a lot of praise and scholarship. These made Esther, who was short of money, got various enviable chances-paid practical training in the New York famous magazine office was just one of her latest achievements. We can say that Esther’s life was absolutely the best interpretation of American dream. However, to Esther, she could not feel the significance of realization of American dream, and she could not react as what others expected, either. At that time, most American would deem her symbol of success of having one-month busy activities and various presents. However, Esther could not link her achievements on study to the successful image that the society set for women. In a word, Esther did not know what kind of women she should be.

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.

One relationship and event ultimately lead to Esther’s battle with the gender stereotypes of the 1950s. In the era is which Esther Greenwood lived, women were expected to be prim, proper, pure, married and with children. Esther struggled with this concept as she fits none of the following categories. Her former boyfriend, Buddy Willard, created extreme stress for Esther and greatly contributed to her mental breakdown. Before the pair became involved with each other, Esther was enamored with him.

Through the character of Esther, Sylvia Plath explains the struggles of women in the male dominated society of the 1900’s in her semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar. Some of the many problems women faced during this time were marriage, motherhood, and feminism. Throughout the novel, Esther is influenced by many people and struggles to find herself in a patriarchal society. Thus, Plath, through her semi-autobiographical novel, is able to expose problems women faced in the 1900’s.

“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth. ”This quote by John F. Kennedy illustrates that by conforming to society, is being imprisoned to society and that if a person is conforming, they, as an individual, will never grow. In The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, the protagonist, Esther Greenwood feels pressure to be a housewife and be like every other women at that time period, all the while not having the option to be independent and encounters oppressive men throughout the story. She perceives to be in a confinement constructed by society, in which she seeks freedom Esther faces an internal struggle, to either bend to society’s norms or create her own path to walk upon. Plath creates an intriguing tale about Esther, who is confronted

In the novel, Esther spent her whole life trying to please her mother with her academic successes since her mother nurtures the irrational ideology that women should apprentice a pragmatic skill such as shorthand writing along with a college degree in order for them to support themselves. Consequently, Esther contemplates on her life saying: “From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked [...] I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig-tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which figs i would choose (73) . Esther’s society in the 50s era imposes different notions for male and female careers. As a matter of fact, women are expected to be homemakers, wives, and mothers and to dedicate their energies to caring for men and children instead of following their own dreams. Esther’s mother, Mrs. Wilard establishes this customary path and faith that Esther should believe in. Being in this position, Esther must give up her ambitions witfully. Esther’s mother basically started the root of the obstacle in Esther’s life since as stated in a Women’s Studies Reader: “Today’s high rate of emotional distress and breakdown among women in their twenties and thirties is usually attributed to this ‘role crisis’. If girls were educated for

Mrs Willard suggest that “[a man is] an arrow into the future and [a woman is] the place the arrow shoots off from”, both of these quotations are later commented on by Esther, ”The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be a place an arrow shoots of from.” There are more women in the novel following these traditions, such as Esther’s mother who married her father directly after college “and from that day on [she] never had a minute’s peace.” As Linda W. Wagner states, “The Bell Jar must be read as (…) a testimony to the repressive cultural mold that trapped many mid-century women, forcing them outside what should have been their rightful, productive lives.” Throughout the novel, it becomes clear this life is not what Esther wishes for herself, Mrs Willard symbolises one of the kinds of women Esther can chose to be, she represents

Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar contains a constant reference to a bell jar that acts as a controlling image. The bell jar in the novel controls the novel in three ways. It acts as a symbol for the depression that Esther Greenwood, the central character, experiences. It also serves as a metaphor for her. Finally, it is the very illusion that drives her into depression. Esther Greenwood works for a fashion magazine in New York and lives a "dream life" for many girls. She soon realizes that she lacks pleasant emotions and falls into despair. She constantly considers suicide and continually checks in and out of mental clinics. She often feels trapped, as if trapped in a glass jar, unable to

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 main character Esther, in Sylvia Plath's novel experiences a series of internal conflicts and mental challenges, which eventually lead up to her breakdown. Esther initially struggles with the feeling that society expects her to be happy, due to her luxurious life in New York City but in reality, she is very unhappy. Additionally, Esther has lost her grip on life and feels emotionally numb. On top of these emotions, Esther deals with feeling like she is on display, or in the spotlight, which exposes her to societies judgement and adds extra pressure on Esther.

Although Esther seems normal on the outside, she is trapped in the bell jar of society. It is important to realize that a bell jar is a bell-shaped glass cover used to preserve delicate objects. The bell jar that encloses around Esther is society’s ideals of a young woman. She was raised in a household where women are to live to expectations of a career based on gender, prospects of marriage, and life duties. Esther is trapped within these expectations of a distorted glass wall. The deformed walls of the metaphorical bell jar twist Esther’s perception of reality. Furthermore, Esther is the delicate object trapped in an environment that is isolated from the rest of the world.

When Esther’s in a photo shoot for Ladies’ Day, Jay Cee wittily comments how “[Esther] wants to be everything” (97). It is exactly correct that Esther wants to be everything to the point where the thought of choosing one single thing leads to her unraveling. Jeanne Inness comments how “educational experiences and choices leading to occupations will differ, but none will be quite so persuasive as the female's need to choose between profession and domesticity.” There is a constant pressure on Esther’s need to choose, which ultimately overwhelms her. One could argue that The Bell Jar is Esther Greenwood’s struggle with changing her female bildungsroman into a male bildungsroman and this constant struggle is her undoing. Her undoing simply results

It seems throughout this piece that Esther plays more of a role as the protagonist, who is hindered and

The Bell Jar is a roman à clef, which is defined as a true story with changed names. That being said, many of the events included in this book are believed to be events that really happened to the author, Sylvia Plath. A large part of these events revolve around a major theme, which is being trapped within mental illness. Esther, the main character that is based off of Plath’s personal journey through mental illness, suffers from one and even tries to commit suicide multiple times. She is very unhappy with her life along with the treatments that psychiatrists have her undergo. Many dated psychiatric treatments did not help patients, and could have even caused them more harm due to lack of research and knowledge about effects of the treatments. Esther is a great example of a patient that could have had a different life if she had received different care.