The Bell Jar

6 Pages 1418 Words

Searching For Identity, Finding Pain And Confusion In Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar

In Sylvia Plath’s novel The Bell Jar, the protagonist Esther Greenwood encounters pain and confusion every time she interacts with a man. She finds pain in her heart from her boyfriend Buddy by learning the reality of a double standard, pain in her emotions from a woman-hater by learning the truth of misogyny, literal pain from having lost her virginity to a professor and literal pain to the head from a doctor. In the end, all these types of pain leave scars on her Esther’s life, for her to remember always. Each painful interaction with a man forces Esther to confront and find her own identity.
Esther reaches maturity in the early 1950s in an America where women’s roles were automatically assigned. Esther shares her point of view with the audience, whiles learning of the double standard set in society.
I saw the world divided into people who had
slept with somebody and people who hadn’t,
and this seemed the only really significant
difference between one person and another. (82)
This proves to be an obstacle with her boyfriend Buddy. He is the typical male; he attends an ivy-league school and is a pre-med. Buddy represents the traditional path for Esther. He wants her to be pure and keep her virginity until she is married. Buddy believes in the typical place for women in society and he wants Esther to go by it. However, she feels quite the opposite. In fact, she wants “…change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself like an arrow…”(83). Esther later reveals her inner true feelings for her boyfriend, who is considered by many to be perfect.
Buddy Willard was a hypocrite…I thought he was
the most wonderful boy I’d ever seen…and now
he wanted me to marry him and I hated his guts. (52)
He admits to cheating on her and wants her to be someone she was not. He causes so much confusion and pain ...