Azal Fadhil Kadhim Aljawazri, M.A student of English Language and Literature, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad,
Rajabali Askarzadeh Torghabeh, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, (corresponding author),
Azra Ghandeharion, Assistant Professor in English Literature, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad
Abstract
As an autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar is associated with Plath’s own life, and revolves around a female character named Esther Greenwood who cannot adapt herself to the restrictions that the society has imposed on her. One of the most interesting features about this novel that has attracted the critics is related to its depiction of the American family and society in the fifties. The present study aims to shed more light on the analysis of the prevailing family patterns in the fifties, the main social outlines at the time of the novel, and the justification behind assignment of such roles to family and society by Silvia Plath in The Bell Jar. The novel has some indications that apparently refer to the family and society features (e.g. the implied and plain responsibilities of women, the influences that are universal and imperceptible in newspapers and magazines, in advertisements, and in the classes that are taught and the ways they are taught, in the career choices offered to women, in the university majors and the factors that lead to a college education at all) and provide helpful research material for the present study. The other significant point about this research is that it will explore why and how this novel considers the features of family and middle-class American society in the 1950s as suffocating and stifling, and how the great dilemma to be adjusted to the social standards like femininity brings about the suppression of individuality. In this study, it will also be explored how characters who are not capable of adjusting themselves to the familial or societal norms are often portrayed as unsympathetic or traumatized. It will be found that Esther’s feeling of being confined under a bell jar not only expresses her mental breakdown, but also is a general metaphor for a society that is stifled by its own standards and settlements.
Key Words: Family, Family in Literature, Murdock, Society, Society in Literature, Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
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- Introduction
1.1 Background of the Study
The role of the family and society has been one of the most important themes in the modernist literature. It has been reflected in different ways and by different writers or poets. Women writers such as Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) have paid specific attention to this issue. In fact, Plath’s The Bell Jar (1963) as the subject of the present study has taken a new look at the middle-class American society and family in the 1950s. What makes this novel distinguished is that many of the American families’ and society’s features are regarded as disgusting and restrictive by its main character. In addition, the pressure that she has to suffer in order to conform to social principles will at last result in her suppression and mental breakdown.
The Bell Jar has also explored the effect of the family on an individual’s identity in the context of 1950s American society. This issue is of great importance, because Esther’s melancholy is partially due to the fact that neither her father nor her mother can provide her with a steady emotional condition. It can be claimed that alienation as one of the key characteristics of any modern individual has been reflected in Esther, too; she cannot tolerate the limitations that the society imposes on her. In general, alienation can be categorized into two realms of sociology and psychology. Tabrizi (1991) asserts that although there is not a complete agreement and unanimity between sociologists about the meaning of alienation, it is clear that they have complete agreement about the role of social factors in the rise of alienation (pp. 1-2).
In this novel, the familial and social life seems meaningless, because Esther does not have her own individuality and freedom. In fact, she is trapped by a meaninglessness sense of alienation, since she feels that all of her life is subjugated by the roles that she is expected to have. Furthermore, most of her alienation appears when she rejects the traditional attitude of what a woman in a society should be. It can be noticed that Esther, unlike many women of her time, refuses to be measured by the society’s gender-based restraints. She refutes to marry or to have children, also desires to have sexual freedom in order to be considered as a different woman.
1.2 Towards Theoretical Framework
The present study is a qualitative research within the framework of autobiographical reading along with the concept of family and society as represented by Silvia Plath in The Bell Jar. This study aims to read this novel using functionalist views of family and society under the light of George Peter Murdock’s (1949) social and family theories. In keeping with Murdock’s functionalist definitions of family, the social functions of family which Murdock argues to be worldwide will be traced through the novel in accordance with the standards of the society.
Murdock (1949) mostly focused on four main functions of the family, including sexual relationships, economic cooperation among members, reproduction, socialization of infants and children. The first function that performs family as a social institution is that of regulation sexual behavior. There is no society which leaves people to express their sexual behaviors as they want, but there are a series of rules/norms that forbid some specific ways of sexual behavior. The second function of the family in society is reproduction, because each society needs new generations of young people to replace the old people in order to develop.
The economic cooperation function has also an important role in the family. Murdock (1949) states that, in addition to meeting the needs of a sexual nature, people get married and founded new families is that “by virtue of their primary sex difference, a man and a woman make an exceptionally efficient cooperating unit”. The fourth function that performs family is education, which, in Murdock’s opinion may be equated to the socialization of children.
The most important characteristics of the family are the fact that its members are living together, to share various joint activities, to contribute with resources necessary to life, and to have children. At least two of the family members have sexual relations, in accordance with the standards of the society in which they live. Of course, other sociologists have added further family functions than those proposed by Murdock. For example, a function of family that should not be neglected is to provide affection, protection and emotional support. Finally, another important function of the family is granting of a social status. Thus, in the first instance, individuals define themselves in relation to the family they belong.
Murdock’s definition came under attack for a number of reasons. First of all, many people pointed out that there were many societies that were exceptions to Murdock’s stated functions. Murdock (1949) also thought of the family as an ‘economic’ unit with a division of labor along gender lines. Murdock considers this division of labor as rewarding for the spouses and as strengthening the bond between them, as they are perceived as doing distinct but complementary work.
The ‘educational’ function that Murdock refers to, can also be termed ‘socialization’. The family has the responsibility of transmitting a society’s way of life, norms and values to the younger members. This function is an important one as, without culture, the society could not survive, and too much deviation from the norm would disrupt the stability of the society. To this end the author will scrutinize the novel as well as comparing and discussing the instances of dominant family and social patterns throughout the work as well as comparing the findings with those reported by other studies in this respect to provide a clear picture of the Silvia Plath’s goal of delegating certain roles to family and society in the Bell Jar.
Thus, this study will analyze Plath’s novel according to the important functions of Murdock which are related to the economic cooperation, sexual relationship, reproduction, socialization, and providing affection, protection, and emotional support. Moreover, the function of the family that is to grant its members an appropriate social status will be discussed here. The novel has also strong appeal for scholars of the 1950s, feminists, psychology buffs, older women who experienced the time the novel describes, persons undergoing psychological turmoil, addicts, poets, and uncountable other groups and individuals as well as contemporary scholars.
- Relevant Studies
The Bell Jar (1971) as this study’s primary source narrates the story of a young girl named Esther Greenwood who is smart, beautiful, brilliant, and prosperous. Plath demonstrates Esther’s insanity in order to show the profound infiltration into the dimmest and most disturbing points of the human spirit. As the secondary sources, there have been many articles and books regarding the role of the family and society; for example, Family and Society in American History (2001) by Hawes and Nybakken has drawn so many examples from the eighteenth up to the twentieth centuries and discusses the current changes in the American family. It also introduces some of the ways which are used to study American families. By building a connection between the fluctuating social conditions, this book studies and analyzes husband-wife and parent-child relationships by focusing mainly on language usage, gender roles, legal structures, and other contexts.
Social Class and Changing Families in an Unequal America (2011) is the other example of a new and modern evaluation of the condition of the family, living in the age of inequity. This book emphasizes some specific aspects of family behavior and discusses how much the families’ experiences are formed by the issue of social class. This book presents the readers with a complete and accurate evaluation of contemporary family life amongst the tempestuous economic fluctuations in the United States.
Martineau’s Society in America (1837) based on her travelling to the United States of America is about different aspects such as politics, economics, civilization and religion of the country before returning to England. She also went to prisons, hospitals, and mental institutions, literary and scientific foundations, factories, plantations and farms and also experienced living in farmhouses and log cabins; and travelled by horse, stagecoach and steamboat. So, the current book can provide lots of information about the society of America.
As a comprehensive study of the contemporary American family, Families in America: A Reference Handbook (2002) presents a convincing overview by providing a collection of statistical portrayal of family life in America. This work covers some subjects including the multicultural family, families of divorce, and blended families. Families in America provides a detailed study of the various needs of a contemporary American family.
As well as the role of the family and the society, Sylvia Plath has also been studied by so many thinkers; for example, Sylvia Plath and Cold War Politics (2002) talks about how in The Bell Jar, Plath has commented on the conflicts which were specific to women’s bodies. These themes lead to a specifically feminist critique of the patriarchy. This book studies the association between Plath’s writing and the Cold War and argues that the time (1960–1963), the place (England), and the politics are important issues to consider when we consider Plath’s poetry and fiction.
Moreover, Buell in ”Sylvia Plath’s Traditionalism” (1976) has argued that Esther’s connections to Joan and Doreen have lesbian overtones and suggest aspects of Esther’s incomplete identity. This struggle is what Frederick Buell focuses on when he argues that Esther’s identity struggles are the result of her frightening lack of an inner, stable self’. A Ritual of Being Born Twice (1972) as another important collection in this regard argues that Esther’s search for her identity represents an important struggle throughout the novel. As argues, the ultimate prize in Esther’s pursuit would be the discovery of her one true self. Perloff believes that Esther is successful in her quest and learns to be herself rather than what others expect her to be.
In ”Plath’s The Bell Jar as Female Bildungsroman” (1986), Wagner argues that many of the episodes in the latter part of the novel are skeletal. It is as if Plath was unwilling to give up any important details but that she also realized that her readers were, in effect, reading two stories. The first half of The Bell Jar gives the classic female orientation and education with obvious indications of the failure of that education appearing near the end of the New York experience. The second half gives an equally classic picture of mental deterioration and its treatment, a picture relatively new to fiction in the late 1950s, important both culturally and personally to Plath. But the exigencies of the fictional form were pressing, and Plath had already crowded many characters and episodes into her structure.
It is also argued in Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness (1976) that Plath’s The Bell Jar, slight a novel as it might be in the future and as judged against those works that grew out of it and away from it, was really the watershed. And Plath’s tragic suicide was the waste land from which contemporary women have, and will, free themselves. Lauretis (1976) also argues that The Bell Jar is not a single case history, but rather a synchronic view of womanhood, for once seen from the woman’s perspective. In it we do not find archetypes such as the ewig Weibliche, the Virgin Mother of God, Eve the Temptress, and other man-made glorifications or condemnations of man’s desire, to which women have so long adhered that they have accepted them as their own image.
In addition, ”The Separative Self in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar” (1990) has discussed that The Bell Jar makes apparent the oppressive force (at least for women) of the model of separative selfhood which dominates patriarchal culture. The novel dramatizes a double bind for women in which, on the one hand, an authentic self is one that is presumed to be autonomous and whole, entire to itself and clearly bounded, and yet in which, on the other hand, women have their identity primarily through relationship to a man.
Maple (2009) as another critic argues that one effect of the interest in disability as an identity category over the past few decades has been the inspection of depictions of disability in literature. Although Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar is not classically read from the viewpoint of disability theory, Esther’s identity is molded not just by her experiences as a woman, but as a disabled one. For this reason, Esther’s experiences cannot be completely enlightened by either feminism or disability theory self-reliantly, and this requires some mixture of the two. Smith (2008) is another critic who has employed Butler’s theory of performativity to evaluate the policies of female identity development. She has also showed how functionalist methods arising from popular Freudianism would define gender roles as primarily biologically determined and see opposing models of sexuality and female discontent as illnesses curable by psychology.
George Peter Murdock as one of this study’s main theorists has written some sources which can provide this study with useful information; for example, ”Correlations of Matrilineal and Patrilineal Institutions” (1937) is an examination of the various socioeconomic variables which are related to the matrilineal and patrilineal organizations. Several variables were found to correlate considerably with matrilineal and patrilineal institutions. Social Structure (1949) includes some interdisciplinary examination of family and kinship structures and their association with marriage and sexuality in human societies around the world that is based on the discoveries of the Cross-Cultural Survey.
Ethnographic Atlas: A Summary‘s (1967) main goal is to provide useable cultural samples for behavioral scientists who wish to test cross-cultural theories. In addition, while this book will be particularly valuable to comparative anthropologists, its probable audience are also historians, political scientists, psychologists, and sociologists. The Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (1969) has also covered the best-defined society in each of 186 cultural provinces of the world selected at a time when cultural objectivity is utmost; hence, it is chiefly a sample of preindustrial societies. It is a collective series of data based on a sample collection by George P. Murdock and Douglas R. White of 186 ethnographically well-described societies, published in the journal ETHNOLOGY in 1969.
- Discussion
The present study is an attempt to conduct an analytic reading of The Bell Jar by Silvia Plath with a focus on family and society. These features are richly attended throughout the work which provides adequate material for the analysis from a variety of points. The purpose of this article is to examine and trace the main family patterns as well as dominant social patterns at that time plus the reason behind delegation of such roles to family and society in The Bell Jar. To reach this purpose, this study will utilize Murdock’s philosophy concerning the role of the family and society which is of great importance in The Bell Jar. This theory will reveal how the family and society both play an important role in Esther’s subjugation that is due to their stereotypical thought towards a woman.
As an autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar is associated with Plath’s own life, and revolves around a female character named Esther Greenwood who cannot adapt herself with the restrictions that the society has imposed on her. The Bell Jar is regarded as a distinguished work of literature, and has also attracted a lot of attention to its unique material (Egeland, 2013, p. 19). Esther Greenwood as this novel’s protagonist is a college girl, a good student, a brilliant writer, and a fashion magazine contest winner; she is also the well-mannered daughter of a typical family with two children, a clever game player, a sexually confused late adolescent, and finally a mental patient.
One of the most interesting features about this novel that has attracted the critics is related to its depiction of the American family and society in the fifties. Jannet McCann (2012) argues that The Bell Jar seems to be a clear book, but actually it poses many questions that need to be argued in detail (p. 19). As stated, one of the other attractive points about The Bell Jar is its ability to cover an inclusive range of issues which exemplify a comprehensive collection of traces related to the role of that time’s family and society.
Based on what is observed in the novel, regarding the role of the family, Plath would not think of marriage as promising as many other women. In fact, marriage and children seemed to be a burden for her, imprisoning a woman inside her domestic environment. And dejectedly, the young writer made her own individualism reliant on finding a particular kind of man. As a college student, she had not completely defined the sense of inequality and unfairness that restricted her when she looked at male-female relations (Bonds, 1990, pp. 49-64).
In The Bell Jar, mental disorder seems to be the best solution to ignore and escape the limitations imposed by the society; it also provides Esther with a nice way to be liberated from the conventional ideals of both the marriage and family which used to be prevalent in the 1950s. The menaces of such conformism are represented through the character of Esther’s boyfriend’s mother. Actually, the world of the 1950s was not a hopeful era for such a creative young woman. At the very beginning of the journals, as Plath talked about her first days at Smith College and her experiences there, she wrote about the issues central to The Bell Jar; for instance, she wrote about the society’s outlooks towards a female, and stated that she hoped to get used to the idea of marriage and children (Kukil, 2000).
This study as one of the first attempts that seeks to delve into the rationale behind the delegation of family and society roles to characters in the Bell Jar will discuss that Esther’s melancholy is fairly due to the reason that neither her father nor her mother can provide her with a steady emotional situation; she lost her father while she was very young, and her mother has been uncaring towards her daughter’s personal feelings and problems. Furthermore, Esther’s German background makes her more isolated from the American society, because Germany is still supposed as an enemy. Thus, it can be concluded that without a parent as a source of inspiration or relief, Esther cannot help but suffer from mental depression.
In fact, family in The Bell Jar is believed to be a force that subjugates women to the authority of a dominant male figure like the husband and/or father. In addition, this novel makes us see how an alternative mother character may have a critical role in Esther’s recovery, because she shows Esther that women can have pleasing lives, free from the male control. As well as the important role played by the family, society also has a significant role in this novel which deals with the shallow tenets of 1950s American society through the viewpoint of Esther as an outcast. Esther’s experiences show the darker side of the 1950s American society by enlightening the gender disparities and social conformism under the surface of American prosperity.
The American society in the 1950s was so patriarchal that any woman had to merely submit to the desires of the opposite sex (Jancovich, 1996, p. 222). The Bell Jar discusses the effects of the society’s outdated principles on a young woman. Esther’s objectives of becoming a writer, specifically a poet, are clear. However, acquiring these goals in the 1950s is not so easy. Esther’s environment presses her to marry, settle down, have children, and to be a happy housewife. However, pretending to be the woman everyone wants her to be, trying to please her family along with everyone else in her life is impossible for her until she mentally breaks down and attempts suicide. From an early age Esther understands that, for most women, marriage and family are the chief features of their lives.
Therefore, in The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath has shown that both the family and the society are influenced by the role of gender. As the main character of the novel, Esther explores how the role of gender in her surroundings affects her, and gradually shapes her identity. It seems that different factors are influential on Esther such as the diverse settings, including the northeast region of the United States, the Amazon Hotel, Smith College, and the mental asylum which are specific places, affecting Esther’s thoughts on the role of gender. Likewise, the gender roles among Esther’s family and peers, both men and women, can affect her, too.
Murdock’s social and family theories show how the social pattern in America in the fifties influenced the family pattern in Plath’s The Bell Jar. The main character and speaker of the novel, Esther Greenwood feels she is oppressed by the domestic duties and is losing her inner self because of the problems imposed on her by the oppressive patriarchal society in the mid-20th-century America. Her relationship with her family is also under the influence of the social standards because they expect her to do whatever the society sees as desirable.
It was already stated that Murdock attributed four main functions to a family, including sexual regulations, reproduction, economic cooperation, and socialization/education. The first function is related to sexual behavior. It means that in each society there are a number of certain standards and principles which limit each family’s sexual behavior to some particular ways. The second function of the family is related to reproduction, meaning that each society needs young people to replace the old people, and this is done through three ways such as reproduction, migration, or conquest of other societies. The economic cooperation function has also an important role in the family. The fourth function is education.
It is important to note that one of the main issues in determining anyone’s life can be their accomplishments and disappointments in their individual lives, and relationships with each other. Sylvia Plath as the writer has also depicted this issue in her novel, “The Bell Jar.” What is of higher significance in this regard is related to the education and growth of Esther. Being female or male would indicate various differences in one’s access to education. In the second half of the nineteenth century, basic education became available for both men and women. At the same time, the industrial revolution produced a vast number of factory jobs.
However, more than ninety percent of women still stayed at home. Their education was limited to a basic level and the focus for girls and boys was kept on very different levels. The main focus for female education was on teaching young girls domestic skills, while other forms of education were regarded as a threat to the domestic domain. Higher degrees of education were also supposed to enable women to enter the job market, which was not generally accepted. Helen MacGill, who was Canada’s first female judge and the first woman to be admitted to Trinity College, remarked the following:
The university classroom…was a milieu in which women seemed startlingly out of place. [To most Victorians,] the development of a girl’s mind was superfluous; motherhood was considered her only important function, and family life her only satisfactory destiny. To send her to college would make her unfit for a passive role as wife and mother, and develop in her an objectivity which, though thought admirable in a man, was then considered awkward, unpleasant, and masculine in a woman. (as qtd. in Bassett, 1975, p. 107).
The twentieth century included several changes for American women. For example, their situation in the society changed, and these changes were thoroughly linked to the social variations such as industrialization, population growth, and the two world wars. More women started to work outside the home, and the number of women who were involved in political activities also increased. One of the most important events was the introduction of women’s right to vote in 1919.
Consequently, domestic life changed significantly for white, middle class women in the 1950s. The literature of the second part of the twentieth century is generally characterized by radical cultural, political, and social changes. The literature of this time places more emphasis on the individual. The examination of one’s private life is the main theme for many writers of the time, who are often referred to as ”confessional poets”. Sylvia Plath also belonged to this group.
In The Bell Jar, we can see how Esther has always tried hard to be what she wishes, regardless of what others expect her to be. However, she has to take on the roles others expect her although she strongly discards these roles. Esther condemns the shallow and artificial world of cover girls and fashionable magazines. Whereas she rejects the traditional life of a mother and wife, which seems boring to her, she at the same time thinks about what it is like being married and having children. However, her mother cannot do her duty as a role model.
Esther is a character whose psychological miseries were not understood even by her own mother: “My mother said the cure for thinking too much about yourself was helping somebody who was worse off than you” (Plath, 2013, p. 161). Her mother is shown as being ignorant of her serious depression. In the first paragraph about her mother, Esther describes her outlook:
My own mother wasn’t much help. My mother had taught shorthand and typing to support us ever since my father died, and secretly she hated it and hated him for dying and leaving no money because he didn’t trust life insurance salesmen. She was always on to me to learn shorthand after college, so I’d have a practical skill as well as a college degree. (p. 39)
Esther’s first experience with electroshock therapy also shows that professionals like Doctor Gordon are similarly unable to help her: “with each flash a great jolt dubbed me till I thought my bones would break and the sap fly out of me like a split plant. I wondered what terrible thing it was that I had done” (Plath, 2013, p. 143). Esther’s depression is not taken seriously at first either, she is in this a ‘test case’ for these inadequate methods, but finally she seems to receive more effective help by Doctor Nolan.
Esther fights against the social pressure to adapt to societal rules. She feels this pressure not only from her mother or the society in which she is living, but also from her fiancé. Experiences such as living in New York, receiving a first marriage proposal, and having success in college are all distressing for her. Esther gets highly depressed instead of defining goals for herself.
Esther is a typical character of her time. Pat Macpherson (1991) explains this in her chapter “Coming Apart in the Atomic Age”: “Esther, like millions of her fellow citizens in the 1950’s, burrows inward to find and repair the sub-atomic psychic fissure responsible for her nervous condition. Identifying the cause and treatment of her maladjustment is the business of a growth industry of experts, from teen magazines to psychiatrists” (p. 6).
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In Plath’s own description of Esther, it is clear that what disturbed this depressed character was mainly her restraining environment. She is offended by the repressive atmosphere in society, and this is meticulously presented to her when working at the fashion magazine. Esther’s problem is that she feels that there is no apt place for her in the society. The pressures she experiences as a young woman through her job in New York City and at home are what restrain her inside the bell jar. Her inability to live freely in this society without any pressure is what Esther is uneasy by.
Esther is in search of her identity, and at the same time feels alienated from the cultural expectations of the 1950s society. She cannot adapt herself to the image of women at that time. Plath has used her protagonist to address themes such as societal pressure, female sexuality, and limitations. One of the limitations that Esther attributes to the society belongs to the sexual function. She thinks of the standards regarding this issue as restrictive. This is why she shapes an affair with Buddy. According to Murdock, husbands and wives have sexual access to each other, and in all societies, there are some norms regarding sexual activity outside marriage. So, Murdock has argued that the family supplies the sexual needs of its adult members and also restricts sexual access of other members of the society to achieve constancy.
This is in contrast with Esther’s opinion, since she thinks of marriage as a force which will prevent her from following her goals as an independent and successful writer. Esther wishes to destroy any image that society links with women. The Bell Jar is in fact a criticism of the society, because by expecting women to stay a virgin, it limits them. Esther is against the idea that to be a good wife, she has to undertake a passive role. She could not accept the tradition that women were not allowed to have premarital sex.
Esther challenges her social role by dating several men and thinking that men’s purpose is just to control women; this pessimistic way of thinking plays an important role in her failure to have any relationship with men. She cannot accept to get married. Martin writes that “the bell jar is a symbol for the internal chaos and despair produced by excessive external prohibitions” (Martin, 1973, p. 193). These proscriptions all entailed the issue that Esther feels destined to a limited life because of being a woman. She believes that she could either have a vocation, or a family, but both would not be possible along with each other. Esther intends to lose her virginity as an attempt to oppose the limitations of the society; however, she understands “in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs. Willard’s kitchen mat” (Plath, 2013, p. 85).
Esther is wedged in an impasse whether to ensue her social order by getting married, or to follow her necessity to be self-determining. Esther’s being stuck in such a dilemma deepens her mental disorder. She is after romantic relationships with men, but she is not successful, because what she wants is in contrast with the society’s standards. All these make her feel that she views the world in a different way, and eventually she starts to feel a sense of unreality, which becomes so intolerable that leads to her attempted suicide and madness.
Esther wishes to experience adventures that are rejected by the society, particularly sexual experiences. While it was regarded as a natural incident for men to fulfill their sexual desires outside marriage, women were expected to remain chaste until marriage, when sex had to be all about having babies. The darker side of this sexual double standard is that sex is often associated with violence in the novel in ways that blur the line between consensual sex and rape: the sexual act is depicted as another way for men to declare their supremacy over women.
When she understands that Buddy epitomizes a sexual double standard, she decides to reject him forever. Buddy has had an affair with some other woman while dating Esther, but expects her to be a virgin until they marry. Esther thinks that having a sexual relationship can result in her independence and adulthood, but she finds this as being rejected by the society. Esther believes that marriage is not in accordance with her wishes, because she has to be either a passive married woman or successful but lonely career woman.
As a matter of fact, many of Esther’s problems are related to a differed view of sexuality. Throughout the novel, Esther is obsessed with her virginity, and divides the world into two separate groupings: those who have and who have not had sex. She considers women like Doreen who have sexual freedom as objects of charm. She relates female sexuality to authorization and thinks of it as a crucial point in her recovery. It is only when Esther can control her own sexuality that she can achieve freedom. Esther’s perception of sexual freedom is very much different from the traditional form of sexuality shown in the novel.
Plath herself suffered from depression for a long time, and The Bell Jar as her autobiographical novel about the experiences which led up to her first suicide attempt 10 years earlier was published less than a month before her death. Thus, The Bell Jar is an autobiographical novel, and intensely linked to Plath’s own experiences. Nonetheless, the madness that is often ascribed to Plath and reflected in her novel through the character of Esther had very profound social reasons. As it is clearly expressed in The Bell Jar, the 1950s America was an incredibly dulling and domineering environment for women. The boundaries forced by sexism also thwarted Plath’s talent. It was why she could not help reflecting upon those bitter experiences.
One of the central themes in The Bell Jar is womanhood and what it meant to be female in 1950s America. Esther’s significance is her being a symbol of the differences between men and women. Esther’s connections with other female characters in the novel also present her different attitude towards this issue. Esther is upset by society’s assertion that young women stay virgins until after marriage while allowing men sexual freedom. Female characters like Esther’s mother, Mrs. Willard, and Betsy obey these social standards and try to convince Esther to do so by sending her pro-chastity pamphlets and dispensing sexist maxims. However, there are some other female characters like Doreen, Dr. Nolan, and Joan Gilling who reject these expectations. Doreen has a sexual relationship with Lenny Shepherd while Dr. Nolan convinces Esther that there is nothing wrong with pre-marital sex. Through Joan’s relationship with DeeDee, Esther also witnesses a lesbian relationship that is in contrast with society’s norms.
In addition to the sexual function, Esther’s society has also enforced different expectations regarding male and female career or the ‘reproductive’ function that is related to bearing and raising children. In that time’s society, women were supposed to be housewives and mothers in order to devote their time to caring for men and children rather than following their own wishes. Esther’s mother, Mrs. Willard, Betsy, Dodo Conway, and many other female characters are representatives of this orthodox path. Her mother’s persistence that she learns shorthand shows her idea that any woman should know about the female secretarial career. On the other hand, Jay Cee, Philomena Guinea, Dr. Nolan, and Dr. Quinn establish another route by following careers other than home scope, and inspire Esther to do so as well.
Thus, in this novel the classification of the good and the bad girls is in terms of their relationship to men and society. Esther is extremely aware of this problem of being thrust by society into an “either/or” situation. This quandary is depicted in New York through the characters of Doreen as the “bad” girl and Betsy as the “good” girl. Esther needs to get her true self, and to be regarded as an individual; so she recurrently rejects many ones who have surrounded her. She believes that her father might have helped her, but he died long ago. Thus, she feels alone in conflict with herself.
According to Höhn (2007, p. 17), ”Cult of Domesticity” was an important Victorian social concept which was established early in the nineteenth century and by the end of the century had developed into an accepted concept about the women’s social role. This concept meant that women and their specific proficiencies were of great significance, and also play a fundamental role in the home and within the family. Besides, it was presumed that this ”homemaker” role was imbedded in a women’s biological and intellectual capacity.
Höhn (2007) has also declared that a woman’s femininity was closely related to her commitment in the home. The more she devoted her time to cleaning, cooking, and washing, the more feminine she was believed to be. She was expected to selflessly put the comfort of others before her own desires. The ”Cult of Domesticity” also implied that the role of mother and wife was the role that God had given to women. In addition to fostering their children, serving their husbands, and doing the housework, women were also expected to educate their children in ethical and religious issues, and to raise their daughters according to the concept of separate spheres, meaning that a woman’s sphere and her duties were separated from the man’s. This was also true about women who worked outside their own home (pp. 17-18).
Closely related to this function is the mother-daughter relationship which is very important, because it has a great influence on Esther’s attitude towards the way through which she has to fulfill this function. Although this relationship is paid less attention in the novel, the writer has outlined other relationships between two females in terms of the motherly tie. Esther wishes that Jay Cee were her mother, and even compares Dr. Nolan to her mother. The theme of becoming a mother is treated as a specific one, as depicted by Esther’s visiting the hospital where she watches a baby’s birth and sees miscarriages in bottles, and by the character of Dodo Conway, a mother of six who shocks Esther for having so many children.
The family is also an ‘economic’ unit, with a division of labor along both the man and the woman. Murdock considers this division as a crucial feature which can strengthen the relationship between them, as they are supposed to do different but matching work. Likewise, the ‘educational’ function that Murdock refers to can also be termed ‘socialization’. It means that the family has the responsibility of transmitting a society’s way of life, norms and values to the younger members. This function is an important one as, without culture, the society could not survive, and too much deviation from the norm would disrupt the stability of the society.
Esther likes to be a poet and writer; however, the expectations placed upon her as a young woman in 1950s make her feel pulled between her wish to write and the pressure to marry and have children. On the one hand, she earns scholarships, and on the other hand, she is assumed to become a wife and mother. The girls at her college make fun of her seriousness and only show her respect when she dates an attractive and fashionable boy. Her relationship with Buddy also makes her mother happy who expects her daughter to marry him. Buddy believes that Esther has to let go of her poetic desires as soon as marrying, and Esther also thinks that being a poet is in contrast with motherhood.
Esther’s breakdown can be stated that is somehow related to finishing the school year and facing with the exterior burdens of what to do next, when her application to the high-status summer-school writing course is rejected. It is when returning to her mother’s house in suburban Boston, that Esther’s breakdown starts:
I slunk down on the middle of my spine, my nose level with the rim of the window, and watched the houses of outer Boston glide by. As the houses grew more familiar, I slunk still lower. I felt it was very important not to be recognized. The grey, padded car roof over my head like the roof of a prison van, and the white, shining, identical clapboard houses with their interstices of well-groomed green proceeded past, one bar after another in a large but escape-proof cage. I had never spent a summer in the suburbs before. (Plath, 2013, p. 114)
Esther’s goal to be a writer and a poet is not really easy to be achieved in the 1950’s, the time which urges her to marry, have children, and live happily. All these expectations make her mentally break down and attempt suicide. Her mother is in fact her first role-model in how to live. For example, Mrs. Greenwood wants her daughter to learn shorthand because it can even get her a husband.
According to McCann (2012), the world of the 1950s was not favorable for unconventionally imaginative young women. This is also described at the very beginning of Plath’s journals where she talked about her first days at Smith College and her experiences as she became used to the studies and social whirl there. she wrote:
After a while I suppose I’ll get used to the idea of marriage and children. If only it doesn’t swallow up my desires to express myself in a smug sensuous haze. Sure, marriage is self-expression, but only if my art my writing isn’t just a mere sublimation of my sexual desires which will run dry once I get married. If only I could find him. . . the man who will be intelligent yet physically magnetic and personable. If I can offer that combination, why shouldn’t I expect it in a man? (p. 5)
Plath saw marriage and children as a deception, and sexual disparity as a basic feature in the society. And miserably, the young writer made her own self-expression reliant on finding a particular type of man (p. 6). In The Bell Jar, Plath has illustrated Esther as a character who observes how unworkable it is to fight against traditional roles and functions owing to their being deeply rooted in the society. The 19th century coincided with the restoration of a number of Victorian feminine ideals such as gracefulness, inaction, obedience, and volatile emotions.
The traditional gender roles in the 19th century banned women from expressing themselves and men recurrently thought of women as unreliable and whimsical (Bordo, 1993, p. 2366). These traditional outlooks towards women continued up to the 1950s, when home life and the stereotypical ‘perfect’ housewife were regarded as basic features of this period. Esther is also stuck in the dilemma whether to accept these roles as mother and wife or not. When thinking about what marriage is like, she says that waking up every morning to cook and clean while her husband was at work ”seemed a dreary and wasted life for a girl with fifteen years of straight A’s” (p. 84). Though she has a desirable internship in New York and a promising future, Esther becomes disheartened about the future.
Susan Bordo has declared in ”Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body” that Esther suffers from Agoraphobia as a common disorder in the late 19th century characterized by the ”loss of mobility, loss of voice, [and] inability to leave the home” (Bordo, 1993, p. 2365). Esther confines herself inside, alienates from those around her, and suffers from the inability to express herself through writing. She is actually the representative of the gender stereotypes typical of this time. Bordo has also proclaimed that this mental breakdown is a reaction to overwhelming pressure to live up to traditional gender roles.
Instead of clear rejection of these roles, Esther becomes ”caricatures” of these societal ideals instead (Bordo, 1993, p. 2365). For Esther, this results in overstated weakness. She confines herself to her home and loses her identity and her voice (writing) after facing with the reality of becoming the conventional housewife. Finally, she attempts suicide in order to escape the irresistible pressure from her mother, friends, and professors. It should be also stated that Plath used the story of Esther’s mental illness as a means to criticize these orthodox gender roles.
In addition, the image of a bell jar that refers to both the title of the novel and an important metaphor used by Esther denotes the feeling of being detached from the world, and protected from the outside because of her weakness. The Bell Jar as the story of Esther’s struggles to fit into her society’s gender roles and the way these struggles lead to her mental illness means to condemn gender roles and their limiting aspect. This novel displays women’s experiences and the way through which they are treated. Plath as the author has used her pen to criticize the treatment of mental illnesses and the refusal to tie it with gender roles, and also burdens many women like Esther may have.
Plath has described a prevalent problem and has concluded that gender roles have an undesirable influence on women’s mental health. Consequently, forcing gender roles upon women has hostile effects on their mind, body, and soul. So, it is very well noticeable how all these functions in their traditional form could be closely related to mental breakdown of Esther who considered these functions as a burden on herself and wanted to be different by rejecting them. The Bell Jar challenges the dominant functions in the 1950s that women were inferior to and dependent on men. They were expected to become wives and mothers. Bright young women such as Esther were supposed to sacrifice their own dreams to the needs of their husbands. The novel scorns the supposition that women are lesser by showing the insincerity and ethical weakness of the male characters.
- Conclusion
The Bell Jar reflects Sylvia Plath’s distress and disappointment that is mainly due to the masculine society in which she was living at that time. Esther Greenwood as the protagonist of The Bell Jar is living in a society that considers women as inferior to men. Through this novel, Plath has presented the society’s role and beliefs towards women in the 1950s. As Plath’s own reflection, Esther desires to be a writer; but according to that time’s society, such a career would not be acceptable for a woman, since it is regarded as an un-feminine role for a woman. It is due to such beliefs that the female role in society has been restricted, making it impossible for women to do whatever they desire. The book is according to E. Miller Budick (1987), a ”solution to the sociological problems of women, a language and an art competent to secure women against male domination” (p. 872). Through this novel, Plath meant to stimulate women to discard society’s forced roles, and to become more self-determining. She also wanted to show the harmful effects of such constraints, leading to their mental disorder and suicide. The Bell Jar can be regarded as a clear manifestation of that era’s discrimination.
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