Bell Jar Analysis The ultra-conservative air of the 1950s generates the Betty Crocker type of woman, satisfied with her limited role in a male-dominated society, one who simply submits to the desires and expectations of the opposite sex. The Bell Jar, by Syliva Plath, explores the effects of society's traditional standards on a young woman coming of age. The protagonist, Esther Greenwood, a nineteen-year-old college student, receives messages about a woman's place in society her entire life. Esther's aspirations to become a writer, especially a poet, are obvious. However, the realization of these aspirations in the 1950s is not so clear. Esther's environment pushes her to get married, settle down, have children; be the happy housewife. For nineteen years she puts up a front, pretending to be the woman everyone wants her to be, trying to please her family and her peers, until she mentally collapses and attempts suicide. His mother is the first of his teachers to convey this message. For example, Mrs. Greenwood wants her daughter to learn shorthand because this will allow her to live until she can get married, because it can also get her a husband. He constantly stresses the importance of Esther remaining "pure", so that she can get the best of husbands possible. Esther soon realizes that, for most women, marriage and family constitute the main substance of their lives. Esther receives more lessons from her medical student boyfriend, Buddy Willard. He often spouts comments as if one day Esther will "stop rocking the boat and start rocking a cradle." She also says that once she has children she will "feel differently" and no longer want to write poetry, that she will be "brainwashed and numb like a slave in a private, totalitarian state." This is what happened to Buddy's mother, who, after her marriage, let her husband walk all over her like a "kitchen doormat." It is his mother that Buddy quotes when he says, "What a man wants is a mate and what a woman wants is endless security" and "What a man is is an arrow to the future and what a woman is the place where the arrow is shot." out of." Even the editorial staff of Ladies Day, the magazine that gave Esther and 11 other girls a free trip to New York for winning a fashion magazine competition, accentuates the girls' femininity. Upon their arrival in New York, the editors take the girls from fashion shows to beauty salons, from gala lunches to publicity parties. Then, after dressing them like Cinderella, the editors put them in front of the camera along with a dozen other "anonymous young people with all-American bone structures." The magazine is clearly not interested in promoting the intellect of the girls who won the pageant in the first place. It is no wonder that Esther grows tired of this stale, unprofitable environment that only stifles her personal growth. Before Esther went to New York, her life was well circumscribed. During that fateful summer in the city, she suddenly she found herself faced with questions: what does it mean to be a woman? What female role should she play? The book features a variety of female roles: Dodo Conway, a perpetually pregnant woman whose face shines with a "serene, almost religious smile"; Buddy Willard's mother, wife of a professor and prominent citizen who constantly quotes words of wisdom; Doreen, the southern blonde who always gets the men she wants; Betsy, the modelcheerful, innocent and simple Midwestern; Philomena Guinea, the best-selling writer who gives Esther a college scholarship; and Jay Cee, the editor of a successful fashion magazine. But despite Dodo's placid contentment, Jay's intelligence, Mrs. Willard's feminine wisdom, Doreen's attractiveness, and Betsy's innocence, they are all essentially flawed as human beings and as women. In addition to good looks, Doreen also possesses an innate vulgarity and frivolity. Dodo, although maternal, represents nothing more than a flaccid and deformed animal. Mrs. Willard, although seemingly refined and cultured, actually lets her husband walk over her like a doormat. Philomena Guinea's novels are not literary masterpieces, but endless soap operas full of gossip, while Betsy represents the empty-headed "good girl". For all these women it is impossible to assert their independence, to remain alone on a solid basis, to be themselves. These male-dependent, narrow-minded, imperfect women constantly bombard Esther's mind; their world and way of life do not satisfy his needs or desires. One of the novel's key passages best describes the conflicting emotions running through Esther's mind and shows a vision of her life branching out like a green fig: from the tip of each branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckons and winks. . One fig was a husband, a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor. . . and beyond and above these figs were many other figs which I could not distinguish. . . I saw myself sitting on the fork of this fig tree, starving, just because I couldn't decide which of the figs I would choose. I wanted them all, but choosing one meant losing all the others, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to shrivel and blacken, and, one by one, fell to the ground instantly. my feet. This passage from the symbolic tree of Esther shows the astonishing complexity and confusion characteristic of the choices women must make. A common root emerges into thousands of different branches and she faces the dilemma of choosing one and only one path. Negative images of childbirth and children are also prominent throughout the book. In a gynecologist's office, observing a mother lovingly caressing her baby, Esther wonders why she doesn't feel the same maternal sensations as her biological and social roles suggest. For her, children are a trap and sex is bait. He realizes that they represent life, but not the life he wants to live. She doesn't want to fulfill herself through childbirth, as many women would; she wants to realize herself, alone, without anyone's help. Between the enormous fetuses on display in Buddy's hospital ward and her neighbor, Dodo Conway, permanent slave to her seven children, Esther feels overwhelmed, even nauseated. The children lure Esther to suicide by presenting her with only two options: give herself completely to the child or die. The choice to live looms so visibly and painfully that she takes matters into her own hands and later attempts to kill herself. She also attends the birth at the hospital where Buddy works. The woman's belly was so high that I couldn't see her face or upper body. It seemed to have nothing but a huge fat spider belly and two thin ugly little legs resting in high stirrups, and all the time the baby was born it never stopped making this inhuman hissing sound. The primary. . . I kept saying to the woman: "Come down, Mrs. Tomolillo, push down, you're good, push down," and finally through the split and shaved place between her legs, dirty with disinfectant, I saw a dark and hairy thing appear. In this scene the.