Conflict between Individuality and Conformity in The Bell Jar Essays

appointment mingled with Individuality and Conformity in The Bell Jar In Sylvia Plaths novel The Bell Jar, Esther Greenwood seems incapable of healthy relationships with other women. She is trapped in a patriarchal society with rigid expectations of womanhood. The cost of transgressing social norms is isolation, institutionalization and a lost identity as woman. The struggle for an individual identity under(a) this regime is enough to drive a person to the verge of suicide. devoted the oppressive system under which she must operate, Esther Greenwoods problems with women stem from her conflict between individuality and conformity. In formulating my topic, I have relied on Adrienne loadeds book Of fair sex Born, as well as Cathy Griggers essay Lesbian Bodies in the date of (Post)mechanical Reproduction. Rich discusses the cultural institutionalization of motherhood, while Griggers brings a Feminist and Marxist spot to the topic of lesbian body image in a capitalist, market-d riven society. twain consider the effects of patriarchy and heterosexism in their treatment of the experience of lesbians in society. I found these texts to be very helpful in oblation an explanation of Esthers harsh negative reaction to Joan, as well as in illustrating the anxieties of women in an androcentric, heterocentric, and conformist society. Esthers fundamental problem with female relationships is beaver exemplified in her conflict with mothering and mentoring figures. These women defy her desire to be independent and free. Rich describes the tendency toward matrophobia, the fear of becoming ones mother. She explains that the mother stands for the victim in ourselves, the unfree woman (236). This fear of becoming like the mother/... ...rginia Woolf and Walter Pater. New harbour Yale UP, 1980. Minow-Pinkney, Makiko. Virginia Woolf & the Problem of the Subject. Sussex Harvester P, 1987. Moi, Toril. Sexual/Textual Politics Feminist literary Theory. London Routledge, 1985. Oberg, Arthur. Sylvia Plath and the New Decadence. in Butscher, Edward, ed. Phillips, Robert. The Dark Funnel A discipline of Sylvia Plath. in Butscher, Edward, ed. Plath, Sylvia. The Collected Poems. Ed. Ted Hughes. New York Harper and Row, 1981. Rose, Jacqueline. The Haunting of Sylvia Plath. Cambridge Harvard UP, 1992. Rosenblatt, Jon. Sylvia Plath The Poetry of Initiation. chapel Hill U of North Carolina P, 1979. Smith, Pamela. Architectonics Sylvia Plaths Colossus. in Butscher, Edward, ed.