The Role Of Women In The Bell Jar By Sylvia Plath

In the passage, the character of Esther Greenwood represents the struggle of women trying to hold their place in a modern, yet conservative society. Author Sylvia Plath uses the character of Esther Greenwood and figurative language to portray the disarming role of society in the 1950s. The Bell Jar revolves around Esther who is a wonderful student and an aspiring poet. She clearly struggles with societies expectations which tell her to be both educated and a homemaker. The dichotomies of her society leave Esther bitter and unable to decide a future for herself.

Men have continuously controlled the narrative for women; women were expected to be the housewives instead of reaching for a higher education or occupations that were considered “out of their league”. Women in early to mid 1900’s were oppressed by the man’s perfect view of what a woman should and should not be. Hastily after they were given the right to vote in 1920, men pressured women to stay in the realm of expertise they had participated in for centuries, domesticity. Sylvia Plath the writer of, The Bell Jar, uses the life of Esther Greenwood to show how cultural views of women disabled them from reaching their highest abilities. In addition, Betty Friedan’s book, The Feminine Mystique, explains how many women that went along with the

Sylvia Plath’s writing chronicled a wide variety of subjects; from a descent into mental illness in The Bell Jar to doomed hospitals in the titular short story Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams. She was married to Ted Hughes and had two children with him before he left her and she committed suicide in 1963. Her works shared some common elements that were based on experiences from her own life. Discussions of depression, sexuality, and feminism were prevalent in her writing and were directly inspired by her own experiences both during and post-college. Her characters illustrate how she viewed her life during the 1950s, exploring details such as how women were not allowed to pursue a multitude of careers and were seen as inferior to men. Sylvia

Driving to the UN with Constatin, Esther has a significant realization: “I thought how strange it had never occurred to me before that I was only purely happy until I was nine years old”(Plath, 39.) Plath goes on to write about the various things Esther did growing up. “ Girl Scouts and the piano lessons and the water-color lessons and the dancing lessons and the sailing camp”(Plath, 39.) all of these activities can be generally associated with activities that most girls complete upon growing back. All of these stop once her father dies. Esther becomes a character that criticizes and questions the role of women in society.

Esther is a very deep thinker, but she does not always think deeply about her actions. Due to Esther’s mental illness, she is often debilitated from thinking clearly, nevertheless, she demonstrates a lack of personal responsibility. An early example of her spontaneity happens her last night in New York after a series of events that she does not handle well. “Piece by piece, I fed my wardrobe to the night wind… the gray scraps were ferried off, to settle here, exactly where I would never know, in the dark heart of New York.” (page 111) This scene occurs after Esther begrudgingly goes to a night life party. An incident that confronts her confusion and uncertainty with sexuality occurs, so she apathetically flees the scene. Once she is home, wanting to erase memories of the night, she removes her soiled dress and throws it off her balcony; she does the same with all of the remaining items in her wardrobe. She does not handle this, and most, situations with grace. She wants to forget and

Throughout literature, authors have used stories to tell personal experiences and address public issues. Sylvia Plath conveyed her suicidal thoughts with her poetry and novel The Bell Jar. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle described the gruesome working conditions in the Chicago meat-packing industry. Today, storytelling has expanded to include oral stories and art, using visual cues and sound to convey the author’s emotions. Lynda Barry and Kevin Kling use their novels One Hundred Demons! and The Dog Says How to remediate their internal battles with depression and disabilities.

In Sylvia Plath’s novel, The Bell Jar, Plath expresses her opposition to the idea of men having complete control over every aspect of women’s lives by utilizing the narrator Esther; a radical feminist, to speak out against conformity in a society run by men. Esther represents everything controversial about domesticity in the twentieth century. Throughout the novel she touches on taboo subjects such as radical feminism, rape, and resistance of patriarchal dictates, all of which were touchy topics to speak out about for women of this time period. From the beginning of the novel Esther is constantly torn between what defines her as an individual and what she should conform to because that is what society expects of her as a woman. Esther has a pessimistic outlook on domesticity and despises the idea of playing the role of a helpless puppet that a man holds the strings to. She is not completely against the patriarchal dictates placed on her gender but instead wants to put her own twist on the part she will inevitability be forced to play one day.

Compare and Contrast: “The Bell Jar” and “Daddy” Literature and art, in general, can convey very strong, powerful feelings and provide emotional relief for the artist. Although Sylvia Plath likely meant for her works to be interpreted as simple fiction they are littered with autobiographical details. The characters are not meant to be herself, still, what she writes about the mental condition and feelings of the narrators are proven to be her personal thoughts, evidenced by the events of her life, namely her depression and suicide. Through her poems, in this case her poem titled “Daddy”, and her only novel, “The Bell Jar”, we can have a vivid, personal retelling of the issues she faced throughout her life such as the loss of her father, feelings of

Esther’s upbringing I believe had a huge affect on how she developed as a person. The author specifically mentions this line about her father and her upbringing, very few lines about her father are in the book, for instance, “My own mother wasn't much help. My mother..to support us ever since my father died, and secretly hated..him for dying” (Plath 39). In which the author gives us some insight into her life and she seemed to never develop a relationship with her father or men since she had only her mother and this lack of social skills with men foreshadows later in the novel when the issue of sex, virginity, boys all come clashing down upon her. Esther saw sex as a competition when it came to Buddy Willard, an old friend turned lover to most hated guy. Buddy had lied to her about his virginity and for some reason this ticked her off and every since she had tried to lose her virginity. The issue of why she had to be equal to Buddy when it came to sex I believe had something to do with gender equality since the time period of when this book was written, 1963, wasn’t a very welcoming time to women's liberation and freedom. Though Buddy’s liberation was a shock to her for the reason that he made her feel special but it was taken away for example, “i almost fell over..he made me feel I

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

What is in the spring of your life if the spring of a life refers to your first twenty years in your life? The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel by Silvia Plath, describes Esther Greenwood’s harsh spring of her life. Narrating in the first person, Esther tells her experience of a mental breakdown in a descriptive language, helping the readers visualize what she sees and feel her emotions. The novel takes place in New York City and Boston during the early 1950s when women’s roles were limited to domesticity. The repression of women’s roles in the American society during the 1950s and other influences such as her lack of confidence, her hesitance, her mother, and her feminist point of view seem to affect her mental breakdown.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath also addresses the tensions between expectations regarding traditional female roles and the increasing demands and opportunities of paid labor. In the summer of 1953, The Bell Jar opens. Esther Greenwood, a brilliant young woman, is functioning as an editorial intern at a famous women’s magazine in New York city. Although Esther has an academic promise and aspiration, she feels demoralized about her future and disconnected from society. In addition to her early symptoms, she also feels obligated to adjust to social desires for what a young woman should be: a virgin until marriage, a wife, and a mother. The reader can get a sense of Esther’s independent personality in many ways. For example, she demonstrates resistance

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

Esther was the main character in the novel the Bell Jar. Esther faced multiple challenges throughout her life and tried many ways to overcome them. Sylvia Plath is Esther. Sylvia Plath’s most popular written novel The Bell Jar creates a theme of someone being viewed as successful but, struggling with their internal feelings. Esther dealt with many problems through her years being in a great writing business. Though there were many lessons learned in this novel there were many that the main character Esther still did not understand and these conflicts that are present in the world to day. Also, many didn’t understand how to solve these issues we can see how the main character dealt with them and may prevent other from feeling the same ways

Today in the year of 2015 feminism is still an important, ever relevant movement that promotes the worth of women in a mostly male dominated society. The struggle of women was even more so in the 1950s, the timeframe in which the protagonist of The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath resides. Esther Greenwood, while being clever enough to thrive in society is chained by her womanhood.