Plath's The Bell Jar -The Liberated Woman
I tried to imagine what it would be like if Constantin were my husband.
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. (Plath, 68)
This lifestyle described by Liberated Woman, who was shunned by the Liberated Woman, Esther Greenwood in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar was prevalent among married women during and around the 1950's. Although the description sounds unappealing it was said to be the ultimate fulfillment for a woman. Even if she was not completely satisfied, a woman was not to question her role in the marriage or in society. Betty Friedan wrote in 1963, " for over 15 years there was no word of this yearning... [for] all the columns, books and articles [were written] by experts telling women their role was to seek fulfillment as wives and mothers" ( Bloom, 461). If a woman broke away from this pattern of living an unfulfilling life solely as a wife and mother, she was considered a Liberated Woman.
There was the desire to be a Liberated Woman and there was also, during this time, the women's liberation movement. The whole time leading up to the women's liberation movement in the late 60's, it became evident that a change in the lives of women would be necessary. The Civil Rights movement was taking place as well as other social movements. Women began to realize that although they were t...
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...e them seriously is a whole other story.
Works Cited
Friedan, Betty. "The Problem That Has No Name." Takin' It To The Streets: A Sixties Reader, pp. 459-467. ed. Alexander Bloom and Wini Breines. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Mainardi, Pat. "The Politics of Housework." Takin' It To The Streets: A Sixties Reader, pp. 491-495. ed. Alexander Bloom and Wini Breines. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
"Manifesto Redstocking's ." Takin' It To The Streets: A Sixties Reader, pp. 485-487. ed. Alexander Bloom and Wini Breines. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. New York: Bantan Books, 1971
Rossi, Alice. "Job Discrimination and What Women Can Do about it." Takin' It To The Streets: A Sixties Reader, pp.468-473. ed. Alexander Bloom and Wini Breines. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
This summer we had an opportunity to dive into the world of bioweapons, through Richard Preston’s novel The Demon in the Freezer. His book explored the colorful world of smallpox and its use as a biological weapon. Earlier this week we were graced with this authors present for an ACES event. He discussed some of the found topics in his book such as animal testing, what small pox is, and even its eradication. One of the great things we had the chance of vocalizing were our many opinions on the gloom associated with this intriguing disease.
The book jumps to a distressing story about Peter Los in 1970 in West Germany who became ill due to smallpox. After ten days he was hospitalized but medical staff did not realize he had smallpox, which is highly contagious. Preston gives vivid descriptions of the disease and how it ravages the body. Los survived his illness, but caused an epidemic that killed many others that had become exposed to him. “Today, the people who plan for a smallpox emergency can’t get the image of the Meschede hospital out of their minds.
A notable image that readers of the twentieth-century literature easily recognize is a bell jar. A bell jar is an unbreakable, stiff glass container that confines objects within its inescapable walls. It metaphorically represents the suffocating and an airless enclosure of conformism prevalent during the 1950’s American society. More specifically, American societal standards approve men to have the dominant role as they are encouraged to attend college in order to pursue professional careers. They are given the responsibility of financially supporting their families. In contrast, a women’s life in the 1950’s is centralized around family life and domestic duties only. They are encouraged to remain at home, raise children and care for their husbands. Women are perceived as highly dependent on their husbands and their ability to receive education is regarded as a low priority. Thus, the social conventions and expectations of women during the 1950’s displayed in The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath correlate to Esther Greenwood’s downward spiral of her mental state. Throughout the course of her journey, Esther becomes increasingly depressed because of her inability to conform to the gender roles of the women, which mainly revolved around marriage, maternity and domesticity.
Mark Twain, the author of Huckleberry Finn, has written a story that all will enjoy. Huck is a young boy with not much love in his life, his mother died when he was very young, and he had drunk for a father. Huck lives with the widow and she tried to raise him right. While at the widow's, Huck went to school and learned to read and write. The widow also tried to civilize him. She would buy him nice clothes, and make him do his homework.
Chalmers, David. And the Crooked Places Made Straight: The Struggle for Social Change in the 1960s. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991.
The era of I love Lucy, Leave it to Beaver and Father knows Best, brought about a time where family values were necessary, family life was wonderful and no one was worrying about politics and the Cold War. These families had the molds of women constrained in the home, men bringing home the bacon and all in the homes of white middle class families. Women in the 1950s were often depicted as dependent on men and were encouraged to get married young. (Bloom and Breines, 6) It took large media input from movie stars like Marilyn Monroe, to influence many women to join the workforce and reject the “traditional feminine roles”. (Bloom and Breines 6) This mold would be challenged by the introduction of the Birth Control pill in 1954 and the growing unhappiness of women who would seek to break the walls that trapped their mothers. (Bloom and Breines, 5) More women would venture out of the homes and into the workplace between the two decades, “from 25 percent in 1950to 32 percent in 1960”. (Bloom and Breines, 5) The introduction of the Birth Control pill allowed for women to avoid unwanted pregnancies or even marriages and encouraged the sexual liberation that would be seen in the sixties.
Sylvia Plath wrote the semi autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, in which the main character, Esther, struggles with depression as she attempts to make herself known as a writer in the 1950’s. She is getting the opportunity to apprentice under a well-known fashion magazine editor, but still cannot find true happiness. She crumbles under her depression due to feeling that she doesn’t fit in, and eventually ends up being put into a mental hospital undergoing electroshock therapy. Still, she describes the depth of her depression as “Wherever I sat - on the deck of a ship or at a street a cafe in Paris or Bangkok - I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air” (Plath 178). The pressure to assimilate to society’s standards from her mother, friends, and romantic interests, almost pushes her over the edge and causes her to attempt suicide multiple times throughout her life. Buddy Willard, Esther’s boyfriend at a time, asks her to marry him repeatedly in which she declines. Her mother tries to get her to marry and makes her go to therapy eventually, which leads to the mental hospital. Esther resents the way of settling down and making a family, as well as going out and partying all night. She just wants to work to become a journalist or publisher. Though, part of her longs for these other lives that she imagines livings, if she were a different person or if different things happened in her life. That’s how Elly Higgenbottom came about. Elly is Esther when Esther doesn’t want to be herself to new people. Esther’s story portrays the role of women in society in the 1950’s through Esther’s family and friends pushing her to conform to the gender roles of the time.
During the sixties and seventies there was an influx of social change movements, from civil rights, gay rights, student’s rights and feminism. In the early sixties the US was experiencing
Tucker, Jonathan B. Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2001.
Bloom, Alexander, and Wini Breines. "Takin' it to the streets": A Sixties Reader. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford UP, 1995. Print.
Until the Feminist Movement in the 1960’s, women faced enormous inequality in the workforce. (E-Collaborative, 2014) Many jobs prior to this time were limited to only males, women often held submissive occupations, working under the supervision of a man. In many instances both sexes were carrying out the same responsibilities but were paid on an entirely differ...
Virtue theory and utilitarian theory are two of the principal ethical theories. Though each theory deserves the general respect they have gathered, both are under constant attack from objection and scrutiny.
While the 1960s were a time of advancement for minorities, it was also a time of advancement for women. In 1963, Congress passed the Equal Pay Act, which outlawed discrimination in the workplace based on a person’s sex (Foner 944). To ensure that women would have the same opportunities as men in jobs, education, and political participation, the National Organization for women was formed in 1966 (Foner 944). The sixties also marked the beginning of a public campaign to repeal state laws that banned abortion or left the decision to terminate a pregnancy to physicians instead of the woman (Foner 945).
Betty Friedan wrote many books, however, “It Changed My Life”, “The Second Stage”, and “Beyond Gender” will be mentioned in my paper. Friedan fought for many things such as the perspective of the change in school, home, and workplace, women’s rights, and women’s right to choose whether it is how they want to live their life or how they take care of their bodies such as abortion. The mindsets of women from her novels between the1960s to the 1980s changed drastically, from the time of women having plenty of free time, to women not having enough free time. Many women during this era, did not want to be like their mothers, and Betty Friedan was one of them. Women play such an important role in our society that they should be given everything a
But when the “Women’s Movement,” is referred to, one would most likely think about the strides taken during the 1960’s for equal treatment of women. The sixties started off with a bang for women, as the Food and Drug Administration approved birth control pills, President John F. Kennedy established the President's Commission on the Status of Women and appointed Eleanor Roosevelt as chairwoman, and Betty Friedan published her famous and groundbreaking book, “The Feminine Mystique” (Imbornoni). The Women’s Movement of the 1960’s was a ground-breaking part of American history because along with African-Americans another minority group stood up for equality, women were finished with being complacent, and it changed women’s lives today.