The Bell Jar Barbarianism

People embodies social institutions within them, and all social cues and behaviors are passed down, weather through direct education or not. The subtle process allows for unhealthy conducts and damaging ideals to seep through and pass on unseen, until it manifest itself in destructive ways, and this destruction can happen to a singular person or a group of people. When this destruction happens, people see it as a singular event rather than a process that has historical implications. However, it is the social institution that allows for the growth of civilization. The social evolutionary process dictates that civilization evolved of barbarianism, thus, without the social institution embedded within and passed on, civilization will break
While this permits civilization’s continuity, the necessary social norms and acts are often time restricting and harmful, hence people rebel against the system. In order to rebel, there must be an understanding that the institution itself is hidden, and at times, invisible, but exist nonetheless, which will influences the resistance movement. The resistance that takes shape on the individual scale also resonates beyond the self. Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar lends itself to this resistance of expectations and social behavior necessary for fitting in, especially during post-war United States. The Bell Jar revolves around the way the main protagonist, Esther Greenwood, suffocates under these expectations, and how she goes about resisting this system, ultimately reaching the liberatingly radical form of resistance, suicide, yet, even as she resist, Esther comes to understand the limitation of her resistance and the ways the institution and its dominant ideologies stamps out such
This self is embodied through her New York wardrobe, which highlights what it means to be a lady. She “fed [her] wardrobe to the night wind” where it will land “in the dark heart of New York” (111). She is shedding away the lies that her New York body had become for her, despite the fact that her New York self is what society wants her to become. While still in New York, Esther performs her role diligently, and at one point, created another persona, “Elly Higgenbottom”(11), thus, allowing Esther to create a space where she can hide, escape, and even free herself from trying to fit into the unyielding identity that is expected of her. This all ends once she killed that self, letting go of the visual representation of that out the window, discarding the underlining image of who Esther is supposed to be. The end of New York marks the end of Esther’s subtle