Thesis For The Bell Jar

Thus far in her life, she has been awarded multiple opportunities to which she may make a multitude of decisions. Sadly, the more options presented to her, the more crippled she becomes. This is possibly due to her conflicting views on societal expectations. Rosi Smith pointed out the fact that “The cold war era led to an ideology of cultural containment, enforcing perspective roles on women within an American suburban, conservative, and conformist setting” (Smith 33). It would be logical to conclude that Esther cannot decide what to do in life because she wants to do the opposite of what is expected of her. She is the perfect example of the rebellious adolescent, caught at a crossroad in her life. However, this is ultimately not the case. She has an inability to continue living; a fear of choosing the wrong path, and decides, whether subconsciously or not, that abstaining from decision is better than making the “wrong” one. This leads to her an unsuccessful attempt at suicide, another instance in which she is unable to decide the best way to kill herself, and ends up

Throughout The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath explores a number of themes, particularly regarding the gender roles, and subsequently, the mental health care system for women. Her 19-year-old protagonist, Esther Greenwood, is the vessel through which Plath poses many probing questions about these topics to the reader. In the 1950s when the novel was set, women were held to a high standard: to be attractive but pure, intelligent but submissive, and to generally accept the notion of bettering oneself only in order to make life more comfortable for the significant male in her life. Esther not only deals with the typical problems faced by women in her time, but she has to experience those things through the lens of mental illness though it is up for

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.

In the Bell Jar, Esther Greenwood struggles to find an identity within a male dominated society. From her mother’s expectations to her career’s expectation, Esther is unable to to distinguish the correct societal and personal ways to achieving her desired result. She is lost. Her continual journey down into the most repressive times of her life reveals past experiences that ultimately changed her path to becoming someone new.

The relationship gains the approval of both of the individuals parents and many expect them to settle down and start a family. While finding a life partner is what society of the time deemed a success for a woman, Esther resented Buddy's expectation of her to simply distance herself from her desire to be a poet and become a mother. “I also remembered Buddy Willard saying in a sinister, knowing way that after I had children I would feel differently, I wouldn't want to write poems any more. So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state.” (Plath The Bell Jar). Buddy’s views become clear to Esther and lead her to finally decide that she is not willing to subside to them. Esther isn’t willing to let go of her creativity in exchange for motherhood, however she feels that she in unable to proclaim this as Buddy’s views correlate with those of her society. Her first escape from alienation, her first feelings of liberation from Buddy Willard and his views are illustrated when Esther asks her trusty doctor, Dr. Nolan to go for a ‘’fitting’’. Esther feels free as she climbs up onto the examination table: she feels both mentally and physically prepared to take on Buddy. Unfortunately, “Ever since I’d learned about

Esther’s abrupt shift in mood thoroughly captures how the tiniest conditions can have a lasting effect. In The Bell Jar, Plath consistently writes Esther’s character and being as independent, hence, leading Esther to be more on her own with tasks. She does not believe in having other people in her life, solving or controlling anything. Esther’s constant independent characteristic resulted in different desires, passions, and arrangements for her future, than most other people in her life. As Buddy attempted to talk to her about marriage and love, the two always had opposing viewpoints on the matter. “I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a fourth of July rocket”. Plath portrays Esther as wanting trepidation, solely by herself. Not married, or looking after a child. The achievement of having an eternal response on the readers part was high, because the comparison of a fierce independence woman to a rocket made an

Because she is now out of school and introduced to the business world, she is starting to recognize that all of her past successes are meaningless to this bigger community. She is also beginning to realize now that all of the hard work she put into school never made her happy, and is now left questioning what brings her happiness. Esther has always had a plan for her future, and the fact that she’s unsure of it now makes her more terrified than ever. Later in the book, Esther decides to quit her internship, because of her confusion. Since she now has no plan for the future, she sees no reason to stay at the internship, because it’s only making her feel worse. For the remaining summer, she decides to go back home. Just after she arrives home, she receives a letter addressing that she didn’t make it into a writing course she had earlier applied for, for college. Esther was really hoping she would make that writing course, and because of the rejection, it causes her to feel inadequate, and even more depressed about her future. This event causes Esther to isolate herself in her room, away from everyone, and all of her problems. “I crawled back into my bed and pulled the sheet over my head. But even that didn’t shut off the light, so I buried my head under the darkness of the pillow and pretended it was night. I couldn’t see the point in getting up. I had nothing to look forward to” (131).

Esther thought about the sexual double standards she faced in society quite often. Particularly, she had constant thoughts about her sexual stage. She is a virgin throughout the majority of the novel and the fact weighs in her mind incessantly. Esther’s mother sends her an article that was written by a married woman. What she happened to get out of the article was that “a man’s world is different from a woman’s world…”

Because the method was not implemented correctly, Esther is awake the whole time, feeling the electricity course through her. As her condition worsens, she is placed in a privately funded asylum. She once again undergoes electroshock therapy, but this time it is done correctly, lifting the bell jar off of her. She states that it hangs a few feet above her head. Being under the bell jar is a terrifying experience for Esther. It renders her useless of her greatest skill, writing. It makes her hate essentially everyone and everything that had once meant something to her. It turns her into a hollow shell. She makes an attempt to seem normal and portray the talented girl she has always been, up until then. “How did I know that someday – at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere – the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn’t descend again” (Plath 241)? Even though

When Esther first arrives in New York, she doesn't have the same reaction that most of the other girls around her have. She enforces this reaction when she says “I guess I should have been excited the way most of the other girls were, but I couldn't get myself to react.” From a psychological perspective we could tell that something is deeply wrong with her. She is isolating herself from others. According to Saul McLeod, the author of the article called “Psycho dynamic Approach” states that “our behaviors and feelings as adults are powerfully affected by the unconscious thoughts” . This means that unconscious are a product of behaviors and feelings. She is unable to think in a rational way because of her inability to control the balance between her conscious and unconscious thoughts.

Since Esther’s condition got worsened she was taken to a mental hospital where she met a better therapist who applied appropriate treatment procedures to make her feel better. Esther purchased a diaphragm, to help her free from the feeling of getting pregnant. Also the pills finally started to work and helped her recover. At the hospital she meets her friend Joan who was also from the same college. She was found to be a lesbian and was bullied throughout her life. One day Esther gets to know that after all this Joan kills

The thoughts of Buddy continued, and eventually Esther thought back to when she went to see Buddy at Yale Medical School. He showed her fetuses and cadavers in jars which did not upset her. What did upset her was the medicine given to the woman receiving a C-section in order to make her “forget” her pain. Esther remarked how only a man could make such a medicine. She was upset that the woman should have to forget such a thing. I think this shows her respect for women. During this time period, the 1950s, women did not necessarily stand up for themselves. Women were not seen as they are today as strong and independant. They were not thought of as critical thinkers or ones to think for themselves. Esther is way ahead of her time, and can see past

Women are perceived as men’s wives and only that man are your partner forever and always. Yet men are allowed to rampant on other women and their wives just let it happen because it is seen as a normal thing in the 1950’s but heaven forbid a woman tries to see other men that women would be mocked. In The Bell Jar Esther is cheated on by her boyfriend and she responsibly breaks it off but still has small feelings for the man. This book shows very well how the women are clearly stately or inferior to men and the men are morally weak. In the beginning of the novel Esther is distressed about how she “wants her future to look” (Plath 4) because the world for her then had her defined as a mother whose only job is to take care of the husband and make babies. Esther was obviously none of those things because she was humorous, moody, and independent. These are all explicit reasons on how men and women are differently perceived in this novel.

In this perspective, Marco’s offering of the diamond to Esther mirrors the earlier proposal of Buddy Willard, with whom Esther has a complicated relationship in much of the novel. Thus, the diamond draws a parallel between the two men as well as between Esther and Marco’s primary love interest, his cousin. Buddy, though seeming to really want a future with Esther, sees her as inferior due to her gender, mentally conforming to the traditionalism that is rooted in his family, and wants no more than for her to do the same and become his housewife despite Esther’s aspirations and ambitions. Marco can be seen as a brutal amplification of Buddy’s character. His cousin’s rejection has caused violent contempt for womankind to dominate Marco’s character, as he labels them all “sluts”.

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.