Roles Of Women In The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath

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Restrictive Women’s Roles during the 1950’s in The Bell Jar Society for women during the 1950’s often spiraled into psychological distress from the restrictions and high expectations that conformed them. In The Bell Jar, the thought process of the main protagonist, Esther Greenwood, reveals a complex array of aspirations and ideals based on social expectations, which are not fulfilled eventually leading to her depression. Therefore, the author, Sylvia Plath, employs the use of several literary elements in order to achieve the theme of social expectations for women in the 1950’s and their repercussions. Throughout history, a woman’s role was to marry and have children. They were expected to put all aspirations aside in order to sustain a household. This is clearly shown in The Bell Jar when Plath implements a simile when …show more content…
For example, Plath applies situational irony to emphasize the hypocrisy Esther unwillingly encounters about the topic of sexual purity. In The Bell Jar, Esther is constantly reiterated by her mother and her boyfriend, Buddy, about sustaining her sexual purity. They claim that women should remain virgins until marriage. This causes Esther to think how “how fine and clean Buddy was and how he was the kind of person a girl should stay fine and clean for” (Plath 68). However, after discovering Buddy’s affair with an older waitress, she immediately becomes furious towards him for pretending to be pure while in fact being impure, which demonstrates the hypocrisy and irony of social expectations Esther involuntarily endures. Thus, despite the views of sexual purity that have been ingrained in her mind by society, Esther desires to lose her virginity and embrace her sexual freedom by getting on birth control and having sex with a
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