CM1135 Research Paper #2

I think the best thing about research papers is getting to learn more about your topic. For example, I had no idea Ted Hughes cheated on Sylvia Plath until I looked it up. I didn't know she had kids, and I also didn't know that she admired Virginia Woolf. It's funny, but this semester I've really grown to love a couple authors I didn't even know existed before. The Bell Jar is full of heavy material, but it's one of the best books I've ever read. I don't care about books full of sparkling vampires or hunky werewolves, I love reading stuff that's significant to someone's life and has great themes. It's the whole reason I liked Animal Farm when we studied it in high school, it had historical significance. If you knew nothing about the Russian Revolution it would have just looked like a bunch of animals fighting and making their "society" worse.
In the same way, The Bell Jar shows the reader how hard living back then was for women who weren't stereotypically feminine. If you didn't want to settle down with the first man who asked you to marry him, what did you do? Sure, some women were independent and happy, but what about the others? Others like Esther who had trouble with the fact that she didn't want things society told her she should. They had the hardest time, of course, because being indecisive might have been one of the hardest things in your life. When Esther says she doesn't want to marry Buddy he calls her crazy. He doesn't understand why she would pass up an opportunity to be with someone who would eventually be a successful doctor and make buckets of money. But that's just not what she wants. Men like Buddy think they can just chain a woman down solely based on the fact that they're easy on the eyes and they make money. But the fact is, if it's just not the life you want to live then there's nothing anyone can do. Esther didn't want that kind of life, so she turned him down. She couldn't live the way she wanted to, and eventually it took a major toll on her psychological well-being. I can't help but wonder, if Esther were to live in this day and age, would she still have suffered her breakdown? I really don't think so.