Data Analysis The Struggle of the Main Character in Facing Social Oppression

reference to further guidance.

3.3 Data Collection

In the step of data collection, the writer will need both primary and secondary data sources. First of all, the writer starts with getting the novel The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath which is the primary data of this research and read it over and over until the writer understands the story well. The writer will also look into secondary data such as gathering data from books, articles, webs and other supporting material that is relevant to the topic of the study. After the collection of raw materials, the writer starts to go through the data more thoroughly and takes down any notes for necessary explanations. This involves underlining and highlighting important data as well as quoting from the novel to provide concrete evidence. The data will be selected and organized in accordance with the problem of the study so finally the writer can carry out an analysis.

3.4 Data Analysis

In analysis of this study, the writer will arrange the data in accordance to the area of analysis. The writer will then: 1. Classify the data accurately by relating it to the problems and aims of this study within the novel. 2. Investigate and analyze the phenomenon of social construction towards women that relates to the novel and social reality. 3. Identify and interpret the data that suggests struggles of social oppression the female character faces. Universitas Sumatera Utara 4. The writer then can make a conclusion from overall data analysis that have been analyzed and interpreted. Below is the flowchart of research design: Researcher Source of data: a novel The Bell Jar Quoteselected text related to social construction, feminism and social oppression Data selected: Interpreted analysis using the theories: sociology of literature, feminism, dynamic structuralism and also by descriptive and qualitative method. Conclusion Universitas Sumatera Utara CHAPTER IV ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS

4.1 Social Construction of Women’s Life

The phenomenon of social construction relies a lot on the idea that many aspects of our daily experience are the result of hidden social agreement, institutional practices and not a result of planned reality. Social reality is based on our behavior, language, culture and our institutional practices. Social construction is something you might not be aware of. You are somewhat living in separation depending on what gender, race and class you are. Race, class and gender don’t really mean anything. They only have a meaning because society gives them a meaning. Social constructions are the regulations made by people and how it privileges certain groups over others. For example, you are a woman or a man because society instructs what role you should do, not what you choose to. Just like it tells you what economic and social class you belong to. When a baby was born, the first thing a doctor does is look at the baby’s genitalia in order to determine whether it is be a boy or a girl. This is the beginning of the gender process of social construction. After they are classified as boy or girl, parents become part of this societal process as they start dressing them with colors that identify their gender. The “normal” thing to do in this case would be for baby girls to be dressed in pink and baby boys to be dressed in blue. The reason for this is because society has made colors become a symbol to show boys and girls. After this, as children grow up they start learning how they are supposed to act by observing and imitating the people of the same gender; girls should act like their mother and boys should act like their father. Each gender is expected to dress and act in a certain way Universitas Sumatera Utara and these behaviors then lead to stereotypes. As stated in Riant Nugroho’s Gender dan Strategi, the nurture theory believe that the differences of gender relations between men and women are not determined by biological factors but by social construction. In other words, according to nurture theory, social roles is considered and understood as a religious doctrine. It is not God’s will or even the determination of biological products but rather as a product of social construction. Therefore, the widespread values of gender prejudice in society that are considered caused by biological factors, is actually by none other than cultural construction 2008:22. This social construction is separating us depending on our physical appearance and our material possessions. We are seen differently because of where we live, where we come from and how we look. Women are weak, therefore men, who are strong and dominant, should be the one in power. If you live in an apartment, then you must be from the lower class, but if you live in a house then you must be either middle or upper class. If you go to a private school then you must be rich, but if you go to a public school then most certainly you’re poor or low income. This is all what society has planted in us, but we also have fault that we have been caught up on this whole idea of stereotypes and standard. We are supposed to follow because after all, we believe what we want to believe. …and they were mostly girls my age with wealthy parents.....and they were all going to posh secretarial schools like Katy Gibbs, where they had to wear hats and stockings and gloves to class…Plath, 2013:3 Esther Greenwood self-consciously distances herself from the other women who are wealthier than her. The fact that she won the opportunity for a month in New York City does make her part of the team. But she also knows the lifestyle these Universitas Sumatera Utara women live are not to her standards or her desires. This already shows the stratification that Sylvia Plath have introduced, these women all prefer the high class and are used to the excitement of the city life and luxuries. Whereas Esther feels like she does not belong there even though she has earned all those privileges. With all the stratifications and distinctions that have been constructed by society, the way people think and act to each other is also considered. There are places and environments in which an individual might have to adjust even if they are not from the place. These are mainly their behavior towards other individuals and how they present themselves. The consciousness of having to act a certain way in a certain environment sometimes affects them either positively or negatively. Some people are even unconscious about the social constructions affecting and changing their behavior because they feel like they are part of that group. These behaviors are known as norms. Sociologists have described norms as informal understandings that govern society’s behaviors. Norms are unwritten rules about how to behave in a given context. Social norms are usually adopted by groups of people that expect others to behave a certain way . Norms can arise formally, where groups clearly outline and apply behavioral expectations. Laws or rules serve as an example of this. A large number of these norms we follow naturally such as driving on the right side of the road in America or not speeding in order to avoid a ticket. Many formal norms serve to provide safety to the major public. Wellek and Warren claimed that the class of every community is based on their social stratification. Norms of the upper class often spread to the lower class. The bourgeoisie has long led the literary taste, long before gaining political power. Differences in tastes are based on age, gender, and particular groups and made it difficult to understand the social stratification 119:1990. Universitas Sumatera Utara The emergence of social norms or also known as ‘conventional laws’ in society maybe through informal evolution. This means that they emerge slowly as a result of repeated actions to control behavior. Social norms in American are important in society. The conscious and unconscious developments of social norms created order for the people in society in the big country. But it does differ from other cultures around the world. Americans lived a western lifestyle where they have more freedom to do what they want compared with other country. However, the lives of Americans are still set according to social construction. The social norms do exist formally and informally within society. Formal ones such as laws, religious taboos or informal such as mores, folkways, customs. But the implementation of certain social norms on women’s life has impacted how they have to act around men and the rest of the society. Women were used to think they are indeed secondary compared to men, this way of thinking also leads to the way they behave. Because a level is put on men and women, women had to think carefully how men would accept their behavior. How they behave or what they say is what men judge them by. As social beings, individuals learn when and where it is appropriate to say certain things, to use certain words, to discuss certain topics or wear certain clothes, and when it is not. The norms make good order in society but between gender roles there are impacts because the norms are bias. This woman lawyer said the best men wanted to be pure for their wives, and even if they werent pure, they wanted to be the ones to teach their wives about sex. Of course they would try to persuade a girl to have sex and say they would marry her later, but as soon as she gave in, they would lose all respect for her and start saying that if she did that with them she would do that with other men and they would end up by making her life miserable……I couldnt 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, 2013:80-82 Universitas Sumatera Utara The quotation above from the novel shows how the society was bias during the time. Even the women writing the article with a career thought they have to keep themselves pure for men, whilst men can have a double life. Esther clearly disagrees and thinks this is absurd. The example that is set by the women and media is something that does not support Esther’s situation at all. The article itself is a form of social construction that oppresses women mentally and biologically as well as lowering their standards. This proves how the ideologies of most people back then were still under the traditional patriarchal system. Where most women still thinks and agrees to the rules and regulations set by the male dominance. Not just problems in different gender roles, even in the same group of gender, individuals still have to try and fit the expectation of the group. When an individual fails to do this or does not accept this, they will feel like an outcast and rejected. Just like the The Bell Jar, Esther is one lucky girl to have got an opportunity to work in a fashion magazine in New York City, but the norms in the group of girls does not fit her. She does not feel happy or as excited as other girls do. But instead she feels nothing because she feels out of place, like she doesn’t belong to them. It might be because of the fast pace life of the city that time and Esther cannot keep up. These kinds of situations happen when an individual suffers to reach the expected norms of social construction. Especially in this context it is in the world of female gender, there is a restriction which trap women’s life. They are expected to act in a certain way, enter a certain career and live a certain life, especially which are fitted and suited for women. When one fails to be satisfied in this role they are lost and depressed. Because people limit women’s movement and create invisible oppression towards women. The emergence of these norms are from society, therefore society itself has constructed women to adopt these norms. They must stay quite and safe, they must Universitas Sumatera Utara not work with high career men and that they have to behave the way men want them to behave. I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldnt quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldnt make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet. Plath, 2013:78 Here we can see how social construction plays a big part in oppressing Esther’s thoughts. The quotation above sounds like sarcasm but at the same time she does consider all the options. She is packed by other people’s desires mixed with some of her own desires. The choices of life others ‘pressure’ on her, including her own mother definitely doesn’t make it any easy for her. Considering all those different lives clearly shows the influence of social construction slowly and successfully absorbing into her head. Her independence and her freedom is still there, the choice of her desired life is in one of those branches, but she still considers what society thinks is best for her, not what she thinks is best for herself.

4.1.1 Partriarchy vs Feminism

There can be no doubt that our Nation has had a long and unfortunate history of sex discrimination. Traditionally, such discrimination was rationalized by an attitude of “romantic paternalism” which, in practical effect, put women not on a pedestal, but in a cage. - Frontiero v. Richardson, 1973 Universitas Sumatera Utara When we talk about women who are oppressed by men, we also talk about patriarchy, which has existed long ago. Patriarchal ideology is a system that gives priority for men. For centuries, the universe has been dominated by a patriarchal ideology, which has been defined as a set of beliefs that legitimizes male power and authority over women. For hundred years, patriarchy prohibited women from having a legal or political identity and the legislation and social attitudes support this way. …in all columns, books and articles by experts telling women their roles was to seek fulfillment as wives and mothers. Over and over women heard in voices of tradition and of Freudian sophistication that they could desire no greater destiny than to glory in their own feminity. Friedan, 1963:15 According to Kate Millet in Prabasmoro’s Kajian Budaya Feminis, legitimacy is made to ensure that the system running in a society is in accordance with the desire of public authorities themselves. That is, when women are equal members of society to men, rules are created so that the power structure remains in accordance with the ideology that underlies the entire structure of society itself. That ideology itself, without much debate, is a patriarchal ideology that promotes the interests of men, prioritizing the masculine values and at the same time ignoring the interests of women and degrading feminine values. This points to low appreciation of work and domestic roles even to the stage where women share public and economic burden to reach the needs of families. This occurs because of the role of women in the public sector is considered purely as extra work, while domestic work is a women’s place. They were taught to pity the neurotic, unfeminine, unhappy women who wanted to be poets or physicists or presidents. They learned that truly feminine women do not want careers, high education, political rights – the independence and the opportunities that the old-fashioned feminists fought for. Friedan, 1963:16 Universitas Sumatera Utara Feminist claims for equality are generally accepted as reasonable principles in western society and they fight for equal status for women of all races, classes, sexualities and abilities in the 21st century, unfortunately this idea is mostly rejected by the dominant power of men. In Tong’s Feminist Thoughts, feminist gender Nel Noddings claims that women and men speak different morals, and that our culture gives priority for the masculine ethics of justice rather than the feminine care ethics 1998:230. Here we can see how the women’s voices are stopped by cultural construction and feminine thoughts. Automatically, society decides what is more powerful. When women wanted to question inequalities in their own lives they turned to history to understand the roots of their oppression. It is also to see what they could learn from challenges that they have faced in the past. Feminism in America has played an important role in the history and culture of the country itself. The whole thing started in the late 1800s when women fought for their rights to be heard and allowed to vote. Through the next century the desire for women to become more socially equal was the focus of the feminist movement in America. The beginning of the first wave of Feminism in America began during the late 1800’s which was following the end of the American Civil War. The wave formally began at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 when 300 men and women rallied to the cause of equality for women. The goal of this wave was to open up opportunities for women, with a focus on suffrage. By 1920, American women were finally granted universal suffrage due to a passage that prohibited any citizen being denied the right to vote based on gender. Universitas Sumatera Utara The second wave began in the 1960s nearly as soon as the end of World War II and continued into the 90s. This wave unfolded in the context of the anti-war and civil rights movements and the growing self-consciousness of a variety of minority groups around the world. During the war, it was proven that women were completely capable of doing the jobs that men had abandoned when they went to war. Women requested to be freed from the traditional roles of housewife and caregiver. They hope to gain a higher position in the work force. The third wave of feminism in America took place in the early 1990’s. This wave did not have a specific goal but instead raised awareness to gain all sorts of equality, such as race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and social class. This modern wave of feminism also gives attention towards issues like gender violence, reproductive right, sexual harassments and provides support of all sorts.

4.1.2 American Society During 20

th Century Betty Friedan’s book Feminine Mystique pressed on the idea that women had no other roles other than being a wife or mother. She began encouraging women to pursue what they desired to do in life and gain the roles in a society that was labeled as male-dominated. Women started to oppose to gender discrimination in workplaces and demanded full equality to men. The typical image of America in the 1950s was of a simpler, happier one emerging from the aftermath of the Second World War. Families moved to the suburbs, raised a baby boom, and lived a life in which everyone had a specified role. Women were considered domestic caregivers, with a single responsibility for the home and child, while men brought home the money. This was what social construction labeled women as. Universitas Sumatera Utara Popular since the 1950s, this tenacious stereotype conjures mythic images of culture icons - June Cleaver, Donna Reed, Harriet Nelson - the quintessential white, middle- class housewives who stayed at home to rear children, clean house and bake cookies. Meyerowitz, 1994 The idea of the ideal women gave a clear picture to women of what they were supposed to imitate as their proper gender role in society. As a result, women began to construct their identities around this image, and some still do so today. Gender construction is nothing new to American society or even to any other society. Society does play a huge role in the construction of individual gender roles, and in turn our identity. This is not to say that society has complete control over this construction. Historians of American culture began to pay close attention to the socializing experiences of women from 1945 to 1960 also referred to as the “post-war” era. Before this change, historians considered these years fairly unimportant for women, often seeing them only as a passive link between women workers in World War II and the political activists of the 1960s. But in fact the ideological and institutional limitations of 1950s American society had a significant impact on the construction of women’s identities during this time period. Women had achieved perhaps too much economic independence during World War II, which makes the oppressive qualities of the domestic ideal of the 1950s harmful to the construction of women’s identities. At the time during the 1950s, there were many more men in the work force and women earned far less money. However in 1963 when Betty Friedans The Feminine Mystique was published, this critical study of middle-class womens anger and proposed solutions made the way for a redefinition of sex roles in America. In 1966, three years after Plath had taken her own life, Friedan and her colleagues established the National Organization for Women NOW. Universitas Sumatera Utara Betty Friedan was perhaps the first to identify what is now referred to as the stereotype of the “ideal woman”. In her classic study The Feminine Mystique she stated that, magazines did not passively participate in enforcing these gender roles, but were in fact an active force behind the creation of what she termed the “feminine monster.” She claimed that the manufacturing sector had decided to make women better consumers of home products by reinforcing and rewarding the concept of women’s total fulfillment through the role of housewife and mother” Friedan, 1963. She was greatly alarmed at how advertising had become such a powerful force in shaping the social fabrication of women such as pressuring women to stay at home. She was also alarmed by how with certainty these advertisements shaped the creation of a woman’s identity in terms of this ideal model. Throughout almost every source discussing the domestic ideal there is an agreement that media, primarily magazines and film, were the primary methods of which this model was send out to women, in effect the social construction agent. Women could find fulfillment only in sexual passivity, male domination, and nurturing maternal love. It denied women a career or any commitment outside the home and narrowed woman’s world down to the home, cut her role back to housewife Friedan, 1963. The slight absence of feminism in the 1940s and 1950s in American society made an impact on women’s life. Perhaps more specifically referring to the condition at the time and relating it to the novel The Bell Jar. The setting and social condition where the story and how social reality was like at the time. Even though waves of feminism already begun and develop there are still absence of the movement. It is probably impossible to fully understand The Bell Jar without an awareness of the relative absence of feminism in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s. These Universitas Sumatera Utara decades were fairly wealthy ones in American history, and womens social and financial positions are usually based on their husbands occupation and income. Although more than six million women went to work when America was engaged in World War II, after the war ended, many were encouraged to leave the work force and the patriarchal system emerges back into society. Dr. Benjamin Spock, who published the book Baby and Child Care, once even said that the federal government subsidizes housewives to discourage them from entering into the work force. Many single women worked out of economic needs, they were not encouraged to show ambition or to stay in the work force indefinitely. A married woman who is either with or without children that earns as much as her husband was rare. But women who worked in basic or low-paying jobs were less of a threat to mainstream America. Just like in The Bell Jar, Mrs. Greenwood encourages her daughter, Esther, to learn shorthand because that skill will at least guarantee her some kind of job after college. The lack of choice, freedom, and social support really puts a pressure on the roles of women at the time. It was either living their desired life but not deserving as much, and living the traditional role of women and relying on their husband. 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. Plath, 2013:83 Esther confesses that she hates the idea of being captivated by men. The life that she wants is not to live under a set of rules all her life, but she wants to experience she own excitement through her own freedom. Universitas Sumatera Utara The changing world of women has had a dramatic impact on Americans in the last 30 years. Historically, men have held jobs outside the home while women care for the house and family, the study noted, but that situation began to change when the baby-boom generation started to grow up. The 1950s were perhaps the last decade in which womens behavior and social norms were in agreement with the family oriented lifestyle. By 1960 one-fourth of married women with children were in the labor force, and today the figure is more than half. The Bell Jar functions on many literary levels, but it is perhaps most obviously about the limitations forced on young, intelligent American women in the 1950s. A brilliant woman with literary desires, Esther glances into the future and does not like her choices. As it has been discussed before, The Bell Jar relies heavily on Plaths own life experience. Like Esther, Plath attended Smith College on scholarship, earned top grades, published poetry at a young age, and majored in English. Like Esther, she did a summer internship in New York City, suffered a mental collapse, and was institutionalized. Both eventually recovered to the extent they were released from psychiatric units into the real world. While Esthers future, by the novels conclusion, remains uncertain, Sylvia Plaths recovery only lasted a decade and on February 11 th 1963, she chose to end her own life. In Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, there are major feminist issues, mainly concerning liberal feminism and some radical feminism. Esther struggles to live her desired life, doing what she loves. She is instead burdened with the thoughts of her mother’s wishes and other voices of society. This kind of pressure is what made the construction of women’s life at that time. The issues that women face in order to get a small bit of freedom is pushed aside by what society decide. Universitas Sumatera Utara The way society is taught to be socialized is most important and goes unnoticed, therefore it is valid to claim that gender is socially constructed through our everyday practices, whether we are aware of the construction or not - Gender: A Social Construction Greco, 2013. But as society moved to a different decade, women were educated during the 1960s at a higher rate than in any previous time, many of them in fields not traditionally thought to be accessible to women. Birth control also became available during this time, which increased the sexual independence and professional career options of women. The 1960s, with its increase of women in the workforce, education and availability of birth control, this idea appeared to be the exact opposite of the “ideal woman” of the 1950s. However, most studies indicate that while women succeed in these areas, they still felt it was necessary to hold on to the domestic ideal as much as possible in order to maintain their identity as a “good woman, mother, and wife.” So while women in result achieved great rise of liberation during the 1960s they were still bound by the oppression of the domestic ideal, much like the problem that workingwomen of today face. Even for Plath, after all the liberation and changes that have happened for women, the oppression in her life in the 1960s still made her to end her life. The construction of gender construction in our society had almost made a permanent label from when it first started. The phenomenon of this construction has made a huge effect in the lives of women especially. This is because from the beginning women were treated as a second-class citizen by men. It affects women greatly because as human beings just like men, they are restricted to do things that men can. This kind of discrimination oppresses women’s lives, as it is completely Universitas Sumatera Utara unfair. The misjudging perspective that men put on women is lowering the standards of women, even if they are way more intelligent and skilled in various aspects than men are. It has almost become a tradition and a typical stereotypical ideology even to this day in certain places and culture. As we have looked into the social condition of how women’s life were constructed in America particularly during the 1950s, linking to The Bell Jar.

4.2 The Struggle of the Main Character in Facing Social Oppression

According to the data analysis that applies to dynamic structuralism, the first step to be carried out is examining the intrinsic element with the technique reading in detail. In analyzing the struggles of social oppression, the will researcher look at the social conditions between men, women and society in that time. According to the sociological approach to literature, elements in a literary work is directly linked to elements in society. This approach departed from the idea that literature is a picture of social reality and that literature documents and records socio-cultural reality of a society at a particular time. It also links the relationship of the elements in one work with the elements in the society portrayed in the works. As Wellek and Warren have stated: Literature is a social institution that uses the medium of language. Traditional literary techniques such as symbolism and dimensions are social conventions and norms as a community. Literature presents life and that life itself consists mostly of social reality, although literature also “mimics human nature and the subjective world. Literature has a social function or benefits are not entirely personal. Thus, the problem of literary studies imply or constitute a social problem: the problem of tradition, conventions, norms, types of literature genre, symbol and myth. 1990:109. The analysis of this chapter will explore the results of identity formation within a society through the thoughts and actions of the main female character Esther Universitas Sumatera Utara Greenwood. The novel begins with Esther’s first exposure to New York City, the all- American metropolis that symbolizes the fast-paced, ultra-modern lifestyle that is envied by many people. Elements in the novel follows the way in which the feminist identity develops while existing in a society that is distinguished by sexism, patriarchy, double standards, and rigid expectations. This study will involve approaching the text through both a feminist angle and sociological angle. The cycle of isolation, exclusion, death, and rebirth is not only physical, but also mental as well, and symbolizes Esther’s consciousness of her sexuality. This is in terms society’s imprisonment towards her by oppressing her life. Although the story of The Bell Jar is set in the American 1950s, many of the elements and issues in which Plath planned to show are still present and widespread even today. It describes how the health and happiness of women at a time were only considered important in reference to a man. The situation is also considered trapped because it shows how women are expected to work a certain career that is allowed and directed by society. This means they are the expectancy of society’s lifestyle for women in the career world and how they should live it. This phenomenon is then linked to the cultural elements that exist in the communities in which the novel was produced and used. It can be a socio-cultural customs, habits, ways of thinking, and the way people act at that time. In many ways this novel is a feminist text centered on the struggles of a young woman who cannot reach her goals and achieve her true potential in a male- dominated society. The author tries to convey the important message of how this society is very much entitled to molding the lives of women in every aspect of their life. The Bell Jar vividly describes how America in the 1950s was an unbelievably stultifying and an oppressive environment in which to grow up, particularly for Universitas Sumatera Utara women. The limitations forced by sexism tend to block Esther’s talent at every turn until she is puzzled of her own self. Plath in The Bell Jar also demonstrates the way in which women are psychologically unhealthy for not meeting the expectations to socially given sex roles. According to Phyllis Chesler, a leading feminist critique, female happiness is viewed and treated as a problem of individual pathology, no matter how many other female patients are similarly unhappy - and this by men who have diligently avoid the objective fact of female oppression. Womens inability to change to or to be satisfied by feminine roles has been considered as a difference from natural female psychology rather than as a criticism of such roles. Each woman as a patient thinks these symptoms are unique and are her own fault. She is neurotic, rather than oppressed. She wants from a psychotherapist what she wants--and often cannot get - from a husband attention, understanding, acceptance, merciful relief, a personal solution. The silence depressed me. It wasnt the silence of silence. It was my own silence. I knew perfectly well the cars were making noise, and the people in them and behind the lit windows of the buildings were making a noise, and the river was making a noise, but I couldnt hear a thing. The city hung in my window, flat as a poster, glittering and blinking, but it might just as well not have been there at all, for all the good it did me. Plath, 2013:18 Esther Greenwood’s time in New York City have not had the happiest experience; it wasn’t even what she would have expected herself to react. The girls were given all the privileges but Esther couldn’t enjoy them, she is stuck in her own silent mind, like stated in the quote above. Even the noises and life of the most exciting city is mute like it has no life at all. Her surroundings might all seem unreal to her, almost fake, picture-like and not the reality that she is in now. This is due to Universitas Sumatera Utara her shift in her desired-life, because Esther is not sure if this is the life or career that she wants. All the material and the excitement do not do any to her because she does not know if that is her preferred life. The pressure of the whole New York society and the experience eventually brings her to think none of it is real. I thought of crawling in between the bed sheets and trying to sleep, but that appealed to me about as much as stuffing a dirty, scrawled- over letter into a fresh, clean envelope. I decided to take a hot bath. There must be quite a few things a hot bath wont cure, but I dont know many of them. Whenever Im sad Im going to die, or so nervous I cant sleep, or in love with somebody I wont be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: Ill go take a hot bath. I meditate in the bath. The water needs to be very hot, so hot you can barely stand putting your foot in it. Plath, 2013:19 I dont believe in baptism or the waters of Jordan or anything like that, but I guess I feel about a hot bath the way those religious people feel about holy water. I said to myself: Doreen is dissolving, Lenny Shepherd is dissolving, Frankie is dissolving, New York is dissolving, they are all dissolving away and none of them matter any more. I dont know them, I have never known them and I am very pure. All that liquor and those sticky kisses I saw and the dirt that settled on my skin on the way back is turning into something pure. The longer I lay there in the clear hot water the purer I felt, and when I stepped out at last and wrapped myself in one of the big, soft white hotel bath towels I felt pure and sweet as a new baby. Plath, 2013:20 The constant struggles Esther face in the outside world and the stress it has on her can be seen due to how she wants to cleanse her body. Her perspective towards hot water is very different to the perspectives of society. Here is an element in the novel that shows her true character. This situation is a method of how she copes with society in her stressful daily life. By giving herself some time, she cleans of all the oppression and stress and restores her true spirits. The character’s survival technique shows how spiritual she is but in a different way, in her own way. The amount of social oppression out there can also be noticed because of this desire of a hot bath. Everything in her everyday life is dissolving and she is left with herself to focus up to the point she feels reborn again. Esther’s way of staying pure and being her self is by Universitas Sumatera Utara cleansing her body with a hot bath. The fact that she is only pure during or a while after a hot bath really shows how much she is not living in her own wanted life. She has to force herself to stay in the route of society up to the point she considers herself not ‘pure’. The womans stomach stuck up so high I couldnt see her face or the upper part of her body at all. She seemed to have nothing but an enormous spider-fat stomach and two little ugly spindly legs propped in the high stirrups and all the time the baby was being born she never stopped making this unhuman whooping noise. Plath, 2013:65 While society celebrates motherhood, Esther views maternity as something disgusting and unhuman. The woman she witnesses in the delivery room is reduced to a horrible spider. Her perspective about motherhood changes completely, yet after this her mother still pushes her to marry and start a family. My list grew longer. I was a terrible dancer. I couldnt carry a tune. I had no sense of balance, and when we had to walk down a narrow board with our hands out and a book on our heads in gym class I always fell over. I couldnt ride a horse or ski, the two things I wanted to do most, because they cost too much money. I couldnt speak German or read Hebrew or write Chinese. I didnt even know where most of the old out-of-the-way countries the UN men in front of me represented fitted in on the map. For the first time in my life, sitting there in the soundproof heart of the UN building between Constantin who could play tennis as well as simultaneously interpret and the Russian girl who knew so many idioms, I felt dreadfully inadequate. The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadnt thought about it. The one thing I was good at was winning scholarships and prizes, and that era was coming to an end. I felt like a racehorse in a world without racetracks or a champion college footballer suddenly confronted by Wall Street and a business suit, his days of glory shrunk to a little gold cup on his mantel with a date engraved on it like the date on a tombstone. Plath, 2013:77 I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of Universitas Sumatera Utara other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldnt quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldnt make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet. Plath, 2013:78 The quotation above clearly shows the dilemma that Esther is facing. Her options about how to live her life stretches in more branches than she realized. Only one branch is what she really wants to live by, but the other branches are also making here confused. She cant quite make the decisions since everyone else around her is also trying to make the decision for her, each wanting different things she should do with her life. This kinds of oppression is what goes around her head all the time, considering all the things what people think is best for her. Esther as a women does not have the most stable support system around her, because we can see she is more of an isolated person. Her desires to do more with her life comes to pause, due to the pressure that other people put on her. Due to all this pressure, Esther lacks independence for herself as she contemplates more on other’s opinions instead of coming to solid terms with her own desires. 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. Plath, 2013:72 These words are the sayings of Mrs. Willard, Buddys mother and Esthers prospective mother-in-law. The idea that a woman might want to be something other than her husbands biggest fan is foreign to Mrs. Willard. Esther does not accept the idea that women should be happy with marriage and domesticity while the man goes off and does exciting things. In this passage, Esther rejects Mrs. Willards views. Universitas Sumatera Utara Instead of having her future defined by long years of flattering over a husband, Esther wants to open up her perspective and explore the possibilities. The idea of being in a patriarchal environment scares and makes her want to do more for herself. The sayings of Mrs. Willard are the typical all mother sayings at that time. It is also the ideology of how women’s life should be, the way how easy and proud she says it already shows the how society has successful form her concepts of women’s life. The Bell Jar is not simply about social oppression in the 1950s but it also dealt with the topic of mental illness. This oppression comes from society which put a climax on one’s life. Specifically, it is about one depressed and confused womans suicide attempt at a time when the medical profession often relied on rough methods like electroconvulsive therapy ECT. In ECT, a low electric charge is passed through a patients body to cure such illnesses as depression and schizophrenia. Like Esther in The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath also received ECT. The impact of society’s social construction made someone want to end their life and the treatment at that time are as forceful and brutal as this. This cruel conception of social oppression is what makes some view society as an enemy in the world we live in. Esther was a victim of social construction and so was Plath to the point when she ended her own life. Others might have experienced the struggle and fear that they face at the time too. Im through with that Doctor Gordon, I said, after we had left Dodo and her black station wagon behind the pines. You can call him up and tell him Im not coming next week. My mother smiled. I knew my baby wasnt like that. I looked at her. Like what? Like those awful people. Those awful dead people at that hospital. She paused. I knew youd decide to be all right again. Plath, 2013:145 Universitas Sumatera Utara Esther have just received shock treatments from Doctor Gordon, a psyciatrist. She is completely traumatized and obviously shock to have reacived this kind of treatment for her stressed condition. From the quote above we see that Esther’s mom actually blame her Esther for her own unstableness. It shows by the way she says ‘you’d decided’ as if Esther wanted to go through this path. As if Esther did it on purpose and now have enough of it and being back to her own self. Esther’s struggles is clearly not understood deeply by her own mother, she only sees what she wants to believe she sees and seems to blame it on Esther. Her mother lacks to see her own daughter’s real condition and why she is like this. This struggle is what leads Esther to hate her mother at most times. I summoned my little chorus of voices. Doesnt your work interest you, Esther? You know, Esther, youve got the perfect setup of a true neurotic. Youll never get anywhere like that, youll never get anywhere like that, youll never get anywhere like that. Plath, 2013:146 Her mind is starting to go insane as she questions herself about her life. Esther struggles to find the right answer because she does not know what she wants to do or even recognize her own capabilities anymore. She is left to think she is suck nowhere forever. She does want to get better, that might be one of the reason she questions all this to herself, but she is still stuck at the point where she does not know how to overcome her struggles. I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow, the million moving shapes and cul-de-sacs of shadow. There was shadow in bureau drawers and closets and suitcases, and shadow under houses and trees and stones, and shadow at the back of peoples eyes and smiles, and shadow, miles and miles and miles of it, on the night side of the earth. Plath, 2013:147 Universitas Sumatera Utara Esthers thought when she is suicidal and depressed. Unable to run away from the oppression that is forced on her and the trauma she has experinced, she is affected by dark thoughts and images. She doesn’t know what was the most beautiful thing anymore because everything she believes in is overshadowed and cant find herself out. If I looked in the mirror while I did it, it would be like watching somebody else, in a book or a play. But the person in the mirror was paralyzed and too stupid to do a thing. Then I thought maybe I ought to spill a little blood for practice, so I sat on the edge of the tub and crossed my right ankle over my left knee. Then I lifted my right hand with the razor and let it drop of its own weight, like a guillotine, onto the calf of my leg. I felt nothing. Then I felt a small, deep thrill, and a bright seam of red welled up at the lip of the slash. The blood gathered darkly, like fruit, and rolled down my ankle into the cup of my black patent leather shoe.Plath, 2013:147 Somehow, in the broad, shadowless light of noon, the water looked amiable and welcoming. I thought drowning must be the kindest way to die, and burning the worst. Some of those babies in the jars that Buddy Willard showed me had gills, he said. They went through a stage where they were just like fish. Plath, 2013:157 Lately I had considered going into the Catholic Church myself. I knew the Catholics thought killing yourself was an awful sin. But perhaps, if this was so, they might have a good way to persuade me out of it. Plath, 2013:164 The various ways in which she tried to kill herself, but always tend to fail. Esther suffers from her own self, she does not know what she wants or what to do. The suicidal attempts are creeping more into her head like how her owns desires are being pushed away by everything else around her. I pulled up a chair opposite Miss Norris at the table and unfolded a napkin. We didnt speak, but sat there, in a close, sisterly silence, until the gong for supper sounded down the hall. Plath, 2013:191 At the psychiatric institution, Esther identifies particularly with Miss Norris, a patient who is described as something of a bachelor, with a plain dress buttoned up to Universitas Sumatera Utara her chin and her hair arranged in a schoolmarmish bun. Miss Norriss silence could represent the way womens needs and desires are silenced by society, perhaps explaining Esthers sisterly identification with her. She can relate to her situation and mirror herself in the same condition. What society has done is cruel because even if they were rebellions, they are still successfully shut by society to be silenced. I climbed up on the examination table, thinking: I am climbing to freedom, freedom from fear, freedom from marrying the wrong person, like Buddy Willard, just because of sex, freedom from the Florence Crittenden Homes where all the poor girls go who should have been fitted out like me, because what they did, they would do anyway, regardless... I was my own woman. Plath, 2013:223 Esther feels liberated after acquiring birth control. This point she is confident that she can do what she wants and control her body the way she wants to. She actually admits to feeling free of things that have oppressed her in the past. All the main struggles that she have faced are actually beginning to be solved by this act she is doing for herself. This conveys a radical perspective that Esther has, she can now control her own body and is not afraid to be controlled over by someone as this is one of Esther’s stepping stone. My mother kept telling me nobody wanted a plain English Major. But an English major who knew shorthand was something else again. Everybody would want her, she would be in demand among all the up-and-coming young men and she would transcribe letter after thrilling letter. The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way. I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters. Plath, 2013:76 Here, Esther explains her struggle to learning shorthand, a secretarial skill, from her mother. Shorthand is very different with creative writing, which is an expression of her own individuality. Universitas Sumatera Utara The education she took is the stepping-stone for her desired life but she is in fact saddened and confused because people around her want her to be something else. What is the point of getting a high education when all society expects is for her to live a normal domestic life and not come to use any of her knowledge. She is passionate about writing poetry but is uncertain if she has a chance to fulfill it. Look what can happen in this country, they’d say. A girl lives in some out-of-the-way town for nineteen years, so poor she can’t afford a magazine, and then she gets a scholarship to college and wins a prize here and a prize there and ends up steering New York like her own private car. Only I wasn’t steering anything, not even myself. I just bumped from my hotel to work and to parties and from parties to my hotel and back to work like a numb trolleybus. I guess I should have been excited the way most of the other girls were, but I couldn’t get myself to react. I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo. Plath, 2013: 2 This quotation describes the disconnected feeling Esther have between the way other people view her life and the way she experiences her life. Esther should feel happy and excited but doesn’t. She has been rewarded to spend glamorous month in New York. Even though she realize she has earned all of it, Esther feels uncertain both about her own abilities. Even she is confused to that she doesn’t find New York thrilling and romantic. Instead, she finds it dizzy and depressing, and she finds the fashion world she live in is shallow and not very important. The feeling of deadness that Esther describes here is the start of the madness that soon affects her. The gap between society’s expectations and her own feelings and experiences becomes so large that she feels she can no longer live her life. The opposition between social construction for women at that time and what she wanted to do is obviously oppression. Universitas Sumatera Utara Esther’s illness rooted from society’s expectations of her and also her own self-concern about her abilities. Esther is an intelligent young woman with a huge desire to make it for her, but she is also unsure if that is what she wants. This confusion makes her loose herself, she is fighting or herself but also fighting for other people. Esther knows the consequences that she marries and live a domestic she’ll be unhappy, but she also knows that her mother expects her to become this and everyone around her to become that. She is expected to enjoy the things that other people enjoy. She doesn’t really have enough guts to say what she wants but instead takes goes down on what has affected her situation. How did I know that someday-at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere-the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldnt descend again? Plath, 2013:241 Esther is still in fear about the future as she is about to leave the asylum. Her experiences and views have made her strong but at the same time, the social construction that already exist will haunt her again. Expectations towards herself and her own expectations will have to be separated or she will loose it again. The impact that society has on her oppresses her to a great level, even when she is starting over, after leaving the asylum. One of the most common interpretations of the novel sees Esther Greenwoods life as an example of the difficult position of educated women in America in the 1950s. Esther struggles with the combined rewards and stigmas of standing out in school, but she is not without humor. I hated coming downstairs sweaty-handed and curious every Saturday night and having some senior introduce me to her aunts best friends son and finding some pale, mushroomy fellow with protruding ears or buck teeth or a bad leg. I didnt think I deserved it. After all, I wasnt crippled in any way, I just studied too hard, I didnt know when to stop. Plath, 2013:54 Universitas Sumatera Utara Esthers intellectualism seems to be a disability to some people, perhaps including Esther herself. She benefits from the prestige associated with regularly dating Buddy Willard and she is much relieved when, just as she considers breaking up with him, he caught tuberculosis. Even though Esther insists throughout the novel that she intends never to marry, she seems unable to eliminate it altogether as a possibility. She feels hurt by the photograph on Dr. Gordons desk, by the hairy, ape-shaped law student from Yale who tells her shell be a prude at forty, and by Buddy when he visits her at the psychiatric hospital and wonders who shell marry now. To Esthers mind, all of these men seem to mock her being incompetent in a marriage. Esthers dissatisfactions may be typical of well-educated American women of her generation. Yet, Esther does not imagine herself as part of a community of women who suffer in the same way. Even in the psychiatric hospital, she distinguishes herself from the other women there. Esther is repulsed by Valerie, who has had part of her brain removed, and fascinated by Miss Norns, the mute, unresponsive patient. She is suspicious of the society women ten years her senior, like Dee Dee and Mrs. Savage who trade private jokes about their husbands. Esthers tendency to identify herself in contrast to these other women points out that this is not a ‘feminist manifesto’ as some critics have claimed it to be. Still, she is clearly affected by a conflict between her ambitions and received roles for women. This conflict is evident in her desire for sexual experience on the one hand and, on the other, a realistic understanding of the advantages of sex before marriage. When she gains access to birth control, Esther proudly “I was my own woman as already quoted above. Universitas Sumatera Utara CHAPTER V CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

5.1 Conclusion