Universidad Nacional de Catamarca Facultad de Humanidades Licenciatura en Ingls

Literatura del Habla Inglesa Despus de la Segunda Guerra Mundial Trabajo Prctico N 6 Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar Alumna: Luciana Ahumada M.U.N: 1576 Ao: 2012

Social Conditioning in Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath`s novel, The Bell Jar, highlights the problems of oppressive patriarchal society in mid-20th Century America showing the cultural oppression underwent by its protagonist, Esther Greenwood. This novel shows the feminine social detachment in a repressive culture and the destructive effects that social conditioning may produce on women by exposing the mental crisis of the female protagonist and her final attempt to kill herself . The protagonist must struggle against social and cultural oppressions to construct her own identity as a woman. Esther finds herself unable to fit in and finally considers death as the only possible way of reborning and being what she really wants to be. Esther struggles to define herself in relation to culturally conditioned stereotypes of women. She struggles with the conflict of her career and motherhood; what she wants and what is expected of her. She confronts the conflict between her wish to avoid domesticity, marriage and motherhood and her inability to conceive a possible future in which she could avoid that fate. For instance, she affirms to hate serving men in any way: I hated the idea of serving men in any way (40). Esther does not want to get married or have children but instead she has proffessional ambitions: What I always thought I had in mind was getting some big scholarship to graduate school or a grant to study all over Europe, and then I thought I'd be a professor and write books of poems and be an editor of some sort. Usually I had these plans on the tip of my tongue. "I don't really know," I heard myself say. I felt a deep shock, hearing myself say that, because the minute I said it, I knew it was true (18). Esther recalls images suggesting the self-multilation of marriage and motherhood. For instance, she says: It would mean getting up at seven and cooking him eggs and bacon and toast and coffee and dawdling about in my nightgown and curlers after he'd left for work to wash up the dirty plates and make the bed, and then when he came home after a lively, fascinating day he'd expect a big dinner, and I'd

spend the evening washing up even more dirty plates till I fell into bed, utterly exhausted.This seemed a dreary and wasted life for a girl...(44); That's one of the reasons I never wanted to get married. The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket (44). Then, she recalls the way in which Buddy Willard`s mother weaves a beautiful rug only to destroy its beauty in a matter of days by using it as a kitchen mat. The message is clear to Esther: ...I knew that in spite of all the roses and the kisses...waht a man secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for the wife to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs Willard`s kitchen mat (69). She also recognizes the domestic servitude as a dreary and wasted life for a girl with fifteen years of straight A`s (68) In the first half of the novel, we can observe the protagonist`s alienation leading to her mental breakdown and suicide attempt. Thus, at the beginning of the novel, as Esther walks along the New york streets, wondering what it would be like being burned alive all along your nerves (1), her thought is not just a resonse to the electrocution of the Rosenbergs but to her own growing sense of alienation from the cultural demands and images of women imposed by society. She iniciates a self-recognition crisis which is, for instance, shown when she repeatedly confronts her own unrecognized or distorted image in the mirror; mistaken on one occasion for a big, smuggy-eyed chines woman(16) or looking like a sick Indian (92). By the end of the novel, when Esther readies herself to meet the board of doctors, she behaves as if she is preparing for a bridegroom or a date, she checks her stocking seams, muttering to herself: Something old, something new (199) giving the idea of her reborning which she then affirms saying: I wasn`t getting married. There ought, I thought, to be a ritual for being born twice- patched, retreated and approved for the road (199). The female character reborns accepting herself separated from women who may be associated with some stereotype of womanhood unacceptable to Esther. In conclusion, the Bell Jar makes apparent the oppressive force (for women) of the model of separate selfhood which dominates patriarchal culture. The novel dramatizes a double bind for women in which, on the one hand, an authentiic self is one that is pressumed to be autonomous but, on the other hand, women have their identity only through relationship to a man. It is the increasing tension of this double bind that takes Esther to her mental breakdowm and suicide attempt. Her mental crisis and final decision suggests there is no possible escape for a woman to be herself and fight for her own ideals in such oppressive society. Esther may have become the epitome of many women struggling to find a place in which to be free from patriarchal bonds.