Motherhood In The Bell Jar
The Bell Jar: Marriage and Children
The Bell Jar written by Sylvia Plath portrays the complex and troubling ways of what it means to be a female in the 1950s in America. Throughout the novel, Esther reflects on how both men and women can be viewed and treated by society; how society expects them to act and what they must do. Most of Esther’s reflections pertain to marriage/motherhood, sex, and her career, her stance on the idea of womanhood comes across differently than the other female characters in the novel. In The Bell Jar, society expects women to be homemakers, wives/mothers, those who devote themselves to care for their husbands and their children rather than pursuing their dreams. On the other hand, Esther believes that the marriage life is appallingly unappealing: “but I knew that’s what marriage was like, because cook, clean, and wash was just what Buddy Willard’s mother did from morning till night” (Plath 84). Esther detects that society wanted women to only partake in one way of living, that they …show more content…
Buddy, her boyfriend, assumes that she will drop her poetic career as soon as possible when she becomes a mother, but Esther soon comes to realize that she can’t have both motherhood and a work life: “The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way. I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters” (76). Instead of having her future defined by her husband, Esther wants to open her horizons and encounter more possibilities. The way women’s need and desires remain silenced by society explains Esther’s look on life, “but a baby coming out of a woman, and then something awful happened and we went our separate ways,” she seems to be reluctant to motherhood, she views it as being disgusting and inhuman (65). Esther concludes that she wants to live her life per her own way rather than being her husband biggest fan, she wants something better for
The Bell Jar written by Sylvia Plath portrays the complex and troubling ways of what it means to be a female in the 1950s in America. Throughout the novel, Esther reflects on how both men and women can be viewed and treated by society; how society expects them to act and what they must do. Most of Esther’s reflections pertain to marriage/motherhood, sex, and her career, her stance on the idea of womanhood comes across differently than the other female characters in the novel. In The Bell Jar, society expects women to be homemakers, wives/mothers, those who devote themselves to care for their husbands and their children rather than pursuing their dreams. On the other hand, Esther believes that the marriage life is appallingly unappealing: “but I knew that’s what marriage was like, because cook, clean, and wash was just what Buddy Willard’s mother did from morning till night” (Plath 84). Esther detects that society wanted women to only partake in one way of living, that they …show more content…
Buddy, her boyfriend, assumes that she will drop her poetic career as soon as possible when she becomes a mother, but Esther soon comes to realize that she can’t have both motherhood and a work life: “The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way. I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters” (76). Instead of having her future defined by her husband, Esther wants to open her horizons and encounter more possibilities. The way women’s need and desires remain silenced by society explains Esther’s look on life, “but a baby coming out of a woman, and then something awful happened and we went our separate ways,” she seems to be reluctant to motherhood, she views it as being disgusting and inhuman (65). Esther concludes that she wants to live her life per her own way rather than being her husband biggest fan, she wants something better for