Conflict between individuality and conformity in The Bell Jar In Sylvia Plath's novel The Bell Jar, Esther Greenwood seems incapable of healthy relationships with other women. She is trapped in a patriarchal society with rigid expectations of femininity. The cost of transgressing social norms is isolation, institutionalization and the loss of identity as a woman. The struggle for an individual identity under this regime is enough to bring a person to the brink of suicide. Given the oppressive system in which she must operate, Esther Greenwood's problems with women stem from her conflict between individuality and conformity. In formulating my argument, I relied on Adrienne Rich's book Of Woman Born, as well as Cathy Griggers' essay "Lesbian Bodies in the Age of (Post)Mechanical Reproduction." Rich discusses the cultural institutionalization of motherhood, while Griggers brings a feminist and Marxist perspective to the topic of lesbian body image in a capitalist, market-driven society. Both consider the effects of patriarchy and heterosexism in how they treat the experience of lesbians in society. I found these texts very useful in offering an explanation of Esther's harsh negative reaction towards Joan, as well as in illustrating the anxieties of women in an androcentric, heterocentric and conformist society. Esther's fundamental problem with female relationships is best exemplified in her book Conflict with Motherly and Mentoring Figures. These women challenge his desire to be independent and free. Rich describes a tendency towards matrophobia, the fear of becoming a mother. She explains that “the mother represents the victim in ourselves, the unfree woman” (236). This fear of becoming like the mother/......middle of paper......rginia Woolf and Walter Pater. New Haven: Yale UP, 1980. Minow-Pinkney, Makiko. Virginia Woolf and the problem of the subject. Sussex: Harvester P, 1987. Moi, Toril. Sexual/textual politics; Feminist literary theory. London: Routledge, 1985. Oberg, Arthur. "Sylvia Plath and the new decadence." in Butscher, Edward, ed. Phillips, Robert. “The Dark Funnel: A Reading of Sylvia Plath.” inButscher, Edward, ed.Plath, Sylvia. The collected poems. Ed. Ted Hughes. New York: Harperand Row, 1981. Rose, Jacqueline. The Haunting of Sylvia Plath. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1992. Rosenblatt, Jon. Sylvia Plath: The poetry of initiation. Chapel Hill: U ofNorth Carolina P, 1979.Smith, Pamela. "Architecture: Sylvia Plath's Colossus." in Butscher, Edward, ed.