Esther feels a sense of alienation and isolation from society as a young woman living in the 1950s America. Society expects a woman of Esther’s age to be cheerful and confident being the top academic student that she is and to keep progressing until she has finished school then settle down and be married to a clean man with two and a half children. Until becoming nineteen years of age, this is exactly what Esther had been doing and this concept was set in her mind, not by choice, but convinced by the conventions of

society. This societal pressure suffocates and incarcerates her. “After nineteen years of running after good marks… I was letting up, slowing down, dropping clean out of the race.” After nineteen years of withstanding the pressure, following the footsteps of societal expectations, she realizes that she is not being her true self and she collapses in search for her true identity.

An issue that Plath explores which deeply relates to society’s expectations is feminism. Society expects Esther to stay a virgin until she is married but Esther sees the hypocrisy of all this when she finds out that Buddy Willard, the man she was planning on marrying had been having numerous affairs with the local waitress. It’s not the fact that he had cheated on her that makes her angry, but the fact that society accepts this kind of behaviour from a man, but not from a woman. “I couldn’t stand the idea of a woman having to have a single pure life and a man being able to have a double life, one pure and one not.” From the beginning of her adolescent life, she had it clear in her head that she was to st

Some topics in this essay:
Sylvia Plath, Buddy Willard, America Society, Esther Greenwood, bell jar, Bell Jar, sylvia plath, society’s expectations, societal pressure, , 1950s america, stay virgin, esther feels, conventions society, plath explores, society expects, novel bell jar,