Feminism And Cynicism In Esther's The Bell Jar

Our world sees the rights of women rising significantly since the 1950s, which it has, but that doesn’t mean that there still isn’t more that women go through and judged for that needs to be addressed and given into thought. During the 1950s women were seen to be married and mothers and stay home being a housewife as their life career just as Esther, in the Bell Jar, observes a gap between what society says she should experience and what she does experience, and the sad thing is the same mindset is still viewed on women today. Society expects women of Esther’s age and station to act cheerful, flexible, and confident, and Esther feels she must repress her natural gloom, cynicism, and dark humor. Today there is a significant change of how women …show more content…
Esther feels anxiety about her future because she can see only mutually exclusive choices: virgin or whore, submissive married woman or successful but lonely career woman. Sadly situations like the one Esther went through is still going on today. Men all around the world can have sex with multiple amounts of girls they like but would be looked upon as a man, but if a women has the same desires and tries to do just half as much as what men do women will be looked upon as whores. Another situation that Esther thought about was how she was afraid to be a lonely career women or a submissive married women; this is another situation that still goes on today. Men can have any career they wish to have and continue their career until they would like to retire, but the same concept can’t go for women because of their gender. Why can’t women go through marriage without worrying if their husband doesn’t want them to work anymore? Why aren’t men worried about the same thing? Just because they are a man? That right there isn’t equality between women and men. There can’t be rules stated that people can’t think a certain way because that’s impossible, but we need to start realizing