Gender Undone in Sylvia Plath’s the Bell Jar, Essay Example

Penned and published in the aftermath of World War II, The Bell Jar by touted author Sylvia Plath deals  with gender and women’s highly circumscribed and restrictive role in the United States during the 1950s. Her portrayal of suburban motherhood during the 1950s attests to the observation that despite their participation in World War II, at the conclusion of the war, they were forced to abandon their jobs in the public sphere and were pushed back into their domestic role. Indeed, they were expected to rear children and care for the home while their husbands immersed themselves in the world of politics and business. Women are thus expected to sacrifice pursuing a career in order to fulfill their biological purposes to bear children, which serves merely as one way that men in America dominate their female counterparts. Finding their fulfillment as mothers and wives, women like Esther, the perturbed protagonist of this novel, were expected to submit to a patriarchal system in which, Plath notes, was similar to being brainwashed and enslaved within the private realm as part and parcel of a totalitarian system. Men had the freedom to carouse and engage in sexual affairs with loose women, while women were expected to revolve their lives completely around their fathers and husbands. As such, The Bell Jar cogently explores the subordination of women who are expected to become mere appendages and domestic slaves to their husbands, which forms the social code Esther is so worried about and preoccupied with. Her friend Doreen to an extent does not comply with the social codes that govern women, as she is feckless and brash and becomes a person Esther truly looks up to. Through the character of Doreen, it becomes evident that Plath decries the suffocation of women’s rights, autonomy, and freedom that is so embedded within the patriarchal structure of American society during the 1950s. Due to Esther’s inability to chafe against prevailing social mores, it becomes evident that she believes the only way that she can escape from entrapment is through the bell jar of suicide, as Doreen eventually becomes someone she deplores rather than respects.

Plath limns the condition of women during the 1950s as subordinated and stringently oppressive to their male counterparts, a condition in which Esther struggles with on a quotidian basis and plunges her into clinical depression. Such depression ultimately propels her to attempt suicide due to the fact that she cannot reconcile the double standards that remain at the heart of western patriarchy and render women vulnerable to male hegemony. One example of such a double standard is Buddy Willard’s ability to engage in extramarital sex complacently and with impunity while women like Esther are required to commit to submit to the oppressive cage of marriage, which she views as a legal form of imprisonment and entrapment. Rather than pursue a professional career, it is unequivocal that women were expected to embrace a life as a child-bearer and a domestic slave once a woman becomes encumbered in the institution of marriage. Indeed, the phallus, a signifier of manhood, enabled individuals in the world depicted in the novel pursue a life of opportunity, freedom, professionalism, and authenticity.

As mentioned previously, being a female in the United States during the 1950s carried with the expectation of becoming a mother and wife regardless of prior achievements. In The Bell Jar, the narrator alludes to this grim reality when she asserts that men like Buddy Willard court and serenade her during the romance period with the intention of merely ironing her out flat like a rug once they are married in the same manner that his mother evinced (Plath). Marriage reduced women’s lives to menial domestic work and chores, and Willard’s mother solely tended to her family while her son pursued a double life demarked by hypocrisy in which he engaged in casual and extramarital sex with a waitress who worked at a restaurant nearby (Plath 13). Through Esther, it becomes clear that he very idea of sex is repulsive, as the protagonist views it as a violent act towards females that retains very little attractiveness or pleasure. When Buddy exposes his male genitalia to Esther, she describes it as appearing like a turkey neck and its accompanying gizzards. Indeed, the phallus was not attractive to Esther and thus did not sexually stimulate her when she had her first sexual experience with an older man in an attempt to exact revenge on Buddy for his blasé attitude towards sex. She bled profusely and noted that sexual intercourse was merely an act that brought men gratification and exacted bloody violence on females which is reified later in the novel when the protagonist almost gets raped by Marco, a noted misogynist (Plath).

The character of Doreen offers an interesting corollary to Esther who, unlike Esther, is conveys a general disregard for the social mores structuring the lives of women during such a culturally conservative epoch, It is clear that the very intimating of marriage is repulsive to Path in The Bell Jar because it imprisoned women who possessed talent and acumen that held promise for them to pursue a career. Doreen is a witty, satirical, and abrasive figure who nonetheless transforms into someone who is passive and affixed to male desire when Lenny Sheppard is in her presence, thereby becoming a sexual object for Lenny who can do with her as he pleases in the bedroom. When Doreen makes out in the apartment in front of Esther, Esther immediately removes herself from the area because she is so repulsed by the very sight of them engaging in sexual content in front of her (Plath). Doreen seemingly disregards social expectations of being female through her uninhibited personality, although she still appears to be tethered to social expectations with regards to how she relates to the men in her life.  Esther eschews imprisoning herself in marriage to someone like Buddy Willard who lacks basic human decency which his blasé attitude towards sex out of marriage intimates while she is expected to remain chaste and pure to be christened only by him.

Esther copes with her feelings about the place of women in American society in a way that is unique from Doreen who, despite her outspoken nature and abrasiveness, embraces the role prescribed for her. It is clear that Esther’s anxiety, depression, and frustration are all manifestations of her general discontent. Esther is preoccupied with death at a young age, as she constantly is thinking about the different ways that humans can die. She even states that death by electrocution would be the worst way to extirpate because that is tantamount to being burned alive with all of one’s nerves feeling the pangs of it (Plath 1). This preoccupation with death is a reflection of how discontented she feels about her life and the roles that are ascribed to her. Indeed, Esther feels empty and bored, and also observes that other women she encounters evince the same general feeling of boredom due to the emptiness of their lives as well (Plath 2-3).

Because of her inability to cope with the expectations of women to submit to a life of domesticity and motherhood, Esther plunges into clinical depression that is treated with electric convulsion. She views this treatment as the ultimate manifestation of violence towards her, as she feels as though she is being slowly killed. Such discursive framing intimates that being female in 1950s America was a crime that should be punished and caused such trenchant pain and discomfort due to the fact that she did not conform to the prototypical female mold as personified by Dodo or Doreen in the presence of her lover. Esther never shows an indebtedness towards Budd in the same way that Doreen does towards her lover, refusing to act as a sexual or domestic slave to the men in her life. Doreen had initially appeared to be a woman who was outspoken, jovial, and satirical, yet  she eventually becomes reduced to a sexual object by Lenny who does what he pleases with her. Both Esther’s experiences with men combined with what she seems taking place around her to undergird her unsuccessful suicide attempt due to the fact that she believes she will never be able to escape the bell jar that women are expected to be kept in. Such a feeling of entrapment is incurred as a result of the subordinated and oppressed position women occupied in 1950s America. Women remained at the mercy of the desire of their male counterparts who used them as vessels for reproduction in addition to sexual pleasure while they were able to pursue their own careers and fame in addition to engaging in casual sex with impunity. All personal accomplishments women achieve are rendered moot once they get married, an idea so repulsed by Esther who laments how Buddy’s mother is completely ensconced in a world that revolves completely around the men in her life at the expense of her own personal happiness and pleasure. Such stringently proscribed gender expectations for women to become wives and mothers rather than accomplished professionals undergirds the spiral into depression by Esther. It is also interesting that Esther rejects the romantic advances of Joan, thereby eschewing embracing the homosexual alternative despite the taboo nature of such a choice. Such a rejection intimates that lesbianism during the 1950s was not viewed as a viable alternative to male hegemony and female subordination to their male counterparts due to the fact that it was seemingly unnatural and thus disgusting.  It is the inferior nature of female to males within the institution of marriage as well as the societal expectation for women to be sexual objects and domestic slaves as Doreen evinces by the end of the novel. Deep clinical depression and suicide thus emerge by the end as the bell jar through which Esther can escape from such a circumscribed and oppressive world that women like Doreen and Dodo are seemingly immune to.

Works Cited

Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. London: Heinemann, 1983. Print.