Under the bell jar

* “Wives and Mothers, secondary citizens in a man’s world where your only possible achievement is a vicarious one.” Is this the destiny of all women? According to Adlai Stevenson’s address at Smith College in 1955, it was the only available destiny (Steiner 80-81). Imagine fifteen years of straight A’s, being creative and brilliant, graduating from one of the most prestigious colleges in the United States, and being told the unanimous vocation for women is to be only a wife and mother. In The Bell Jar, first published under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, in London in 1963, Sylvia Plath wrote a lightly disguised autobiographical novel that records her personal experiences through her heroine, Esther Greenwood. The predicament of women, especially talented, aspiring and vulnerable young women pitted against the oppressive expectations of others, is explored by Plath in her portrayal of Esther Greenwood in The Bell Jar. The “bell jar” is a metaphor for the alienation, i...