Unlike men, women have the risk of having a baby. Getting pregnant before marriage is shunned in the society and is completely unacceptable while men carry no such risks as if they are free to do whatever they want. Women are treated as if it’s a necessity to get married and have children. For a woman to save her virginity for her future husband is considered the “normal” thing to do, and this can be seen in 20th centuries society as well as our society now and anything that goes against it is almost unthinkable in the judgemental eyes of society. However Esther, and Sylvia Plath believes in equality between men and women and says that it’s hypocrisy for a non virgin person to expect a virgin partner. “Ever since I’d learned about the corruption of Buddy Willard my virginity weighed like a millstone around my neck. It had been of such enormous importance to me for so long that my habit was to defend it at all costs. I had been defending it for five years and I was sick of …show more content…
Men and the women who conformed to men in this system could be happy while she couldn’t do so. In the book, even during her healing process, Esther rejects the reign of men by saying “What I hate is the thought of being under a man’s thumb, A man doesn’t have a worry in the world, while I’ve got a baby hanging over my head like a big stick, to keep me in line.”
The Bell Jar is a piece that Sylvia Plath has written because there was a voice she couldn’t silence in her, as she says. The problems of women and Esther at 1960’s is also the problems of our generation. It’s a book that everyone who feels stuck between the teeth of life should