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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,

Esther refuses to allow society to control her life. Esther has a completely different approach to life than the rest of her peers do. The average woman during this time is supposed to be happy and full of joy. Esther, on the other hand, attempts to repress her natural gloom, cynicism, and dark humor. This eventually becomes too hard for her and causes her emotions to go crazy. She begins to have ideas

Annotated Bibliography Bonds, Diane S. “The Separate Self in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.” from “Women’s Studies”, Vol 18, No. 1, (May 1990), pp 49-64. Gale Research, 1999.

Esther’s mother and society’s expectation as a woman, which is to be a good wife and a mother, suffocate and demoralize Esther’s dream as a professional writer. Esther’s mother wants her to “...learn shorthand after college, so I’d have a practical skill as well as a college degree” (Plath 40). Her mother believes that Esther cannot further advance her education as a writer and simply wants her to be a secretary since professional career for women was uncommon and discouraged because it disturbs the role as a married woman. These pressures often obliged her to fall into the societal expectations, to give up her higher education, and to marry somebody. However, she knew that the marriage and the babies were not for her, “because cook and clean and wash were just about

He is smart and pretty college boy. Esther believes that she has to marry him because that is what society expects from her. In reality Esther does not want to marry Buddy and she tries to her best to get him out of her life by trying to date other men. Buddy Still is part of Esther life no matter hard she tries. She also comes back to buddy because again she feels like she to marry him. Esther feels trapped by the 1950s stereotypes, that it causes to lose sight of what she really wants in life to be a writer. Esther came to New York, because she won a writing contest, Her and 12 other girls were sent to work for this magazine company where they are expected to write articles for this magazine. The other girls in the company came to New York to find a husband and be able to live a rich life. Esther seems like the only person who is actually working hard. She does not like the other girls because they talk about rich expensive things like yachts, and parties in brazil. Esther is living the life she wants to have but not taking advantage of the opportunity that she could do something bigger. Multiple times throughout the book Esther say this is what I have to do and want to do. Esther does not really want to do this, she has no idea wants she wants to. She convinced herself that she wants to marry Buddy and go to New York to write for this magazine. Buddy to Esther represents everything she convinces herself that she wants to do.

Esther was constantly pushed around by men, which was a stereotype in the 1950’s that men controlled the women and were always in charge. Esther had a relationship with a man named Buddy Willard who was expecting that she was just going to marry him. Men believed that they had everything a woman may desire, but actually they did not. Women were forced to marry men because of their fortune or family relations.

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

In some moments, she even has to give up her personal sentiments or belief for her family and the destiny of the whole Israelites. Even though Esther is a book about the victory of a woman, men are still the prevailing figures, for the major story is composed by the conflicts

The role of women in 1950s society is repeated throughout the novel: That Women are inferior and dependent upon men. Esther’s boyfriend, Buddy, always quoted his mother saying, “A man is an arrow into the future and what a woman is is the place the arrow shoots off from” (Plath, 72). Esther didn’t want to be a “place the arrow shoots off from”; she wanted “change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions herself” (Plath, 83). Esther wanted to be her own arrow -- after college, she wanted to be a poet professionally. But that was impossible because a woman’s role was to become a wife and mother. Or, if nothing else, she became a secretary. Esther’s mother always urged her to learn shorthand because no one would be interested in a plain English major. If she learned shorthand, everyone would want her and she’d transcribe letters for all the up and coming young men. However, “the trouble was, she hated the idea of serving men in any way” (Plath, 76); Esther wanted to be her own person.

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.

Esther’s misrepresented view of the world is increased by her struggle to choose between settling down becoming an independent woman and starting a family. An example of this

Uncoincidentally, Esther’s leading depressive feelings towards marriage occur not long after she meets her first “woman-hater” (106) in New York and her rejection from a selective writing course, which proves her depression is a result of the events that occur in her life, rather than her own brain miswirings. In her article “We Are All Mad Here: Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar as a Political novel,” Laura De La Parra Fernandez explains: “the moment her career opportunities dwindle, she starts to feel trapped in a role she does not desire, and that is when she begins to identify herself with the Other counter to the American discourse—for, in refusing to fulfil her role as a woman, she is as terrible a traitor to her country” (165). Esther

Esther is not only exposed to the very traditional role of women but is also exposed to less conventional examples of what a

    This drive found within Esther has been there her whole life. She is very intelligent, and goes to some of the best schools on scholarship. She believes that she is destined for more than just being a housewife saying it was a “wasted life for a girl with fifteen years of straight A’s” (Plath 68). When she returns to Boston from New York City, Esther feels trapped by her life. She does not understand how ordinary people live their life, and is stuck at a crossroads between typicality and a life of new opportunity. However, the tear in convention and desire inside Esther creates a source of stress on her life that drives her into a depression. This is important because it shows that the desire to comply inside her is battling her desire

Jo Gill writes that women were “faced with contradictory and seemingly irreconcilable demands to be both clever and attractive, confident and submissive” (Gill, 2008: 5). According to Betty Friedan, women were expected to be fulfill themselves by devoting their lives to being housewives and mothers (Friedan, 1969: 18). More importantly, as Linda Wagner-Martin notes, “the non-married life-style was as suspected as deviant sexual behaviors, and pressure on women to marry – no matter how carrier oriented, how ambitious, how intelligent – was inescapable (Wagner-Martin, 1992: 3). Women who accepted the prescribed social roles were praised by society, whereas women who went against social norms were regarded as deviant (Friedan, 1969: 16). Jo Gill notes that Sylvia Plath “wrestles with these societal expectations again and again directed at women in her Journals and in The Bell Jar where impossibility of the choices available to women such as her heroine Esther Greenwood are exposed to dreadful effect” (Gill, 2008: 5). Similarly, Linda Martin-Wagner holds that The Bell Jar is filled with protagonist’s fear of never finding a suitable career, husband, and mental health (Martin-Wagner, 2003: 9). It may be argued that Sylvia Plath pictured her own fears in The Bell Jar. The fears that resulted from the 1950s