The Bell Jar

Society has an influence everyone, and everybody tries so hard to fit in, but try doing that while feeling the way Ester feels. Keeping up with every ones expectations is always hard especially when   your own mind thinks differently.
    This book makes me think about how men and women are looked very differently. Ester stared "What a man wants , is an arrow into the future and what a woman is the place the arrow shoots off from." Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar. From Ester’s point of view Men always go to college and go to work where the woman is there to support him. Ester wants different, She wants to succeed and follow her dreams, but that’s hard when the world expects you   to become a wife and take care of children. Today things are really different, women can become successful, but when it comes to starting a family in America it is typical to have the man work and the woman cook, clean and care for the children.
    Throughout the book ester becomes withdrawn from social life, she also feels that she isn't pretty   and all she has going for her is her scholarship in writing and the fact that she is smart. Buddy, another character in this book he is college bound, and a doctor and of course he is handsome. buddy is interested in Ester and them being together is what Ester’s mother would consider the perfect future.This of course adds extra pressure on Ester. Buddy is bound to make good money, and Ester cant help to feel this will be her future she will marry a working man while she stays home, cooks, cleans, and cares for the children. This is expected out of women in in this time period, doing anything more than this as a women is an extreme accomplishment."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 as numb as a slave in a totalitarian state."   - Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar. Ester pushed through the expectations of society and went to college to become a working... [continues]

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