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Sexuality in literature
What is the importance of career choice
What is the importance of career choice
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Recommended: Sexuality in literature
Ester's Search in The Bell Jar
“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” (Plath
66). Ester is against the conventional attitude of what a woman’s place in society is and expresses this in a number of ways throughout the book.
Ester tells us her views on the sexual relationship between a man and a woman, motherhood, and the kind of career that is considered practical.
Ester’s view on purity is described in the above quote, and as a result she feels the need to lose her virginity. Ester claims not to want to do this because of Buddy’s affair with the waitress, but just to even up the score. When she was nineteen Ester looked at people as those who hav...
A notable image that readers of the twentieth-century literature easily recognize is a bell jar. A bell jar is an unbreakable, stiff glass container that confines objects within its inescapable walls. It metaphorically represents the suffocating and an airless enclosure of conformism prevalent during the 1950’s American society. More specifically, American societal standards approve men to have the dominant role as they are encouraged to attend college in order to pursue professional careers. They are given the responsibility of financially supporting their families. In contrast, a women’s life in the 1950’s is centralized around family life and domestic duties only. They are encouraged to remain at home, raise children and care for their husbands. Women are perceived as highly dependent on their husbands and their ability to receive education is regarded as a low priority. Thus, the social conventions and expectations of women during the 1950’s displayed in The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath correlate to Esther Greenwood’s downward spiral of her mental state. Throughout the course of her journey, Esther becomes increasingly depressed because of her inability to conform to the gender roles of the women, which mainly revolved around marriage, maternity and domesticity.
Finally, even though, for a long time, the roles of woman in a relationship have been established to be what I already explained, we see that these two protagonists broke that conception and established new ways of behaving in them. One did it by having an affair with another man and expressing freely her sexuality and the other by breaking free from the prison her marriage represented and discovering her true self. The idea that unites the both is that, in their own way, they defied many beliefs and started a new way of thinking and a new perception of life, love and relationships.
The Space Race is remarkably similar to that of the arms race because of the parallel between the creation of the atomic bomb and the goal of reaching the moon. The United States’ bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki effectively established its place as the technologically superior nation; however, major milestones in space achieved early by the Soviets damaged America’s reputation. In 1957, Soviet scientists shocked the world by successfully launching the Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, beyond the Kármán Line (the boundary of space). This amazing breakthrough “rattled American self-confidence. It cast doubts on America’s vaunted scientific superiority and raised some sobering military questions.” This blow to national pride along with the fear that the Soviets could potentially launch ICBMs from space led to “Rocket fever”. The sudden wave of nationalism and the desire to build a space program worthier to that of the Soviet Union led to the...
"The bell jar hung, suspended, a few feet above my head…” For most people, when the name Sylvia Plath comes to mind, the word “psychotic” is the word that follows; however, there was more to Plath than her demented works. Throughout her shortened life, Plath had a variety of titles bestowed upon her: daughter, sister, student, wife, mother, teacher, author, and poetess However, Sylvia Plath was a haunted soul, as she also had the labels of “manic depressive” and “bipolar.” Her constant struggles with her mental illnesses are evident in her writing, especially her semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar.
Sylvia Plath wrote the semi autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, in which the main character, Esther, struggles with depression as she attempts to make herself known as a writer in the 1950’s. She is getting the opportunity to apprentice under a well-known fashion magazine editor, but still cannot find true happiness. She crumbles under her depression due to feeling that she doesn’t fit in, and eventually ends up being put into a mental hospital undergoing electroshock therapy. Still, she describes the depth of her depression as “Wherever I sat - on the deck of a ship or at a street a cafe in Paris or Bangkok - I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air” (Plath 178). The pressure to assimilate to society’s standards from her mother, friends, and romantic interests, almost pushes her over the edge and causes her to attempt suicide multiple times throughout her life. Buddy Willard, Esther’s boyfriend at a time, asks her to marry him repeatedly in which she declines. Her mother tries to get her to marry and makes her go to therapy eventually, which leads to the mental hospital. Esther resents the way of settling down and making a family, as well as going out and partying all night. She just wants to work to become a journalist or publisher. Though, part of her longs for these other lives that she imagines livings, if she were a different person or if different things happened in her life. That’s how Elly Higgenbottom came about. Elly is Esther when Esther doesn’t want to be herself to new people. Esther’s story portrays the role of women in society in the 1950’s through Esther’s family and friends pushing her to conform to the gender roles of the time.
the thought police. In today’s society if a women gives into sexual intimacy with another person
In today's society, one of the most controversial health-care-related ethical issues is assisted suicide for terminally ill patients. Assisted suicide is not to be confused with ethically justified end-of-life decisions and actions. Nurses have a responsibility to deliver comprehensive and benevol...
...were forced to assimilate European culture, often through violent means. The trauma caused by the violence and cultural loss have led Native Americans to use alcohol as a coping mechanism. Finally, their genetic predisposition is also a disadvantage, and unfortunately, it has only served to strengthen their addiction to alcohol.
...ng in their relationship, but cannot deny something that her newly awakened sexuality craves. It is her way of rebelling against society and fulfilling many suppressed wants and desires. It leaves her empty, however, as this passion did not come from love.
Milstein, Susan A. Taking Sides Clashing Views in Human Sexuality. Ed. William J. Taverner and Ryan W. McKee. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2009. Print.
Espeland, K. E. (2006). Overcoming burnout: how to revitalize your career. The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing, 37(4), 178-184.
One of the main reasons why Esther tried to commit suicide was the way she perceived her mother's actions, and the fact that she hates her mother:
It is within man’s blood and nature to explore, and space is our next New World. Man’s first achievement in space travel was the launch of the Sputnik on October 4, 1957. For the next decades, space travel was roaring like a rocket, fueled by man’s desire to explore, man’s desire for knowledge, and man’s desire to beat his enemies. However, these impulses have died out as the well of government funding has been diverted to wars and debts, and the interest of the American people has been diverted to wars and debts. Amidst all these issues it is debated as to whether or not space travel is worth the money and the attention of scientists, particularly since humanity faces so many issues on earth currently. However, because of the past inventions, current services, and future benefits, space travel is indeed worth the money and attention of governments and people. It is within our hands to control man’s advancement, and space travel is the next venue to do so.
“Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.” ( http://thinkexist.com/quotes/sylvia_plath/)
As Tamsin Wilton explains in her piece, “Which One’s the Man? The Heterosexualisation of Lesbian Sex,” society has fronted that heterosexuality, or desire for the opposite sex, is the norm. However, the reason behind why this is the case is left out. Rather, Wilton claims that “heterosexual desire is [an] eroticised power difference [because] heterosexual desire originates in the power relationship between men and women” (161). This social struggle for power forces the majority of individuals into male-female based relationships because most women are unable to overcome the oppressive cycle society has led them into. Whereas heterosexual relationships are made up of the male (the oppressor) and the female (the victim who is unable to fight against the oppressor), homosexual relationships involve two or more individuals that have been freed from their oppressor-oppressed roles.