The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way, I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters. Besides, those little shorthand symbols in the book my mother showed me seemed just as bad as let t equal time and let s equal the total distance.-The Bell Jar

 Esther Greenwood, an aspiring young English major of the 1950's was faced with a dilemma of what to do with her life after graduating, a problem students still face today. Although women had growing importance in the mid-20th century work force, there were only a few limited career opportunities open to her. Esther yearned to write, but not what someone else dictated. She wanted to become her own author  and branch out in whatever direction she wanted. That really was not the most practical option for her though. With little foreign language experience and a principal skill of scholarship winning, there were not many great jobs available.

Shorthand, a secretarial notation was often viewed at the time as a necessary skill for women in the workplace during the 50's. About 70% of women in the workplace held jobs in the clerical branch, or in factories. Having a clerical job was out of the question for Esther, as it would have been for many other women aspiring for something greater. Dictating the words of men held no appeal to Esther, and also the abbreviated  words often used quickly became one of her pet peeves. There were plenty of women authors, but many professional and managerial positions were still closed to women during this time. Only about 15% of working women were professionals, and 6% held managerial positions. At the same time, African American women were even more limited in what jobs they were allowed to hold. These jobs were almost exclusively domestic and physically demanding.

Ever since WWII when women had to fill positions for men off at war, there had been an increasing movement towards women's equality in the work force. When the men came back, many women still kept their jobs, and thus a new class of mothers and single women making their own income began. To allow women to be able to support themselves with this income the Department of labor took several steps towards equality in the workplace like equal pay and training for professional positions. Although these reforms did not materialize until later, this decade was responsible for the start of the equal pay movement. The effects that this movement made are still very poignant today. This gender gap in the workplace will most likely stay around for a long time to come, but seeing how far women have advanced into the professional and managerial fields, brings much hope for the future.

"What a man wants is a mate and what a woman wants is infinity security," and, "What a man is is an arrow into the future and what a woman is is the place the arrow shoots off from"..."The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket."

 As I begin my exploration into the world of Sylvia Plath, there is one theme that dominates the struggles of Esther. There always seem to be two forces pulling on her life, the traditional values of how she "should" live her life, and what Esther really wants to do. Much like Virginia Woolf, Plath writes of the frustrations of women trying to express their desire to write creatively in a world where that it is often discouraged. Even though The Bell Jar takes place in a much more modern era, the tendency for women to feel the only professional job they can take is a menial or secretarial one still existed. If Esther could not launch her writing career, the only options still practically open for a woman in her situation were to become the wife of a career man and raise a family, or become a secretary.

In the 1950's you had the stereotype of the "nuclear family" that supposedly dominated every woman's dreams of what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. As opposed to in Woolf's or Plath's eras, today there is so much more diversity in how the family life is structured. If Esther had lived today, surely she would have not felt so much wrongness in wanting to live freely with or without a husband.

How did it come about that married life today is often so different?  According to Pew Research Center, the share of women ages eighteen to thirty-four that say having a successful marriage is one of the most important things in their lives rose nine percentage points since 1997 – from 28 percent to 37 percent. For men, the opposite occurred. The amount of men with the same opinion dropped from 35 percent to 29 percent.

Now why is this happening that men are finding it less appealing to get married than women? According to research done by Suzanne Venker it's because due to the decline of this family model "women aren't women" anymore". According to many others though it is because many people of both genders do not feel as great of a need to get married, especially at a young age anymore.

There is a logical fallacy here. The definition of a family unit is ever diversifying and changing in modern times, but is that the cause of this drop in men finding marriage essential. Just because this social change happened does not mean that it is the cause of the statistic. Is there another factor in play here changing the way we view marriage?

Introduction

Hi, my name is Alison Judd. On this blog I will be writing about the issues addressed in the book The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath.