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Quest of Identity Esther's Dream Vs. Society's Dream PAGE 77…

- - - - Mrs. Willard
        
        Mrs. Willard is a strong supporter of traditional gender roles for women. She stays at home and takes care of her family. Mrs. Willard believes that women's role should be focused in the home, taking care of the family. Furthermore, Mrs. Willard has strong beliefs about chastity.
      - Doctor Nolan
        
        Dr. Nolan breaks traditional gender roles, working as a psychologist. Dr. Nolan is trusted and appreciated by Esther. Furthermore, Dr. Nolan encourages Esther to break out of traditional gender roles, helping her to get a diaphragm in order to prevent pregnancy and allowing Esther to become less afraid about losing her virginity.
      - Doreen
        
        Similar to Esther, Doreen does not enjoy the fashion program. Furthermore, Doreen is very free with her sexuality. Therefore, Doreen goes against societal conventions, acting how she pleases. Although Esther admires this rebellious attitude, Esther herself can not bring herself to be a rebel quite like Doreen.
      - Her Mother
        
        Due to the loss of her husband, she is forced to work and stay at home and raise the kids. She holds true to most of society's norms, working only to provide for her children. Furthermore, she encourages Esther to fit into society's mold for women, getting her to learn shorthand in order to become a secretary. Esther's mom does not want her career to influence her ability to become a mother and wife.
    - - Marriage
        
        "'Im never going o get married.' 'your crazy.' Buddy brightened. 'You'll change your mind'" (93)
        
        "When she heard I was going to the Yale Junior Prom she treated me with amazement and respect" (60)
        
        "Theres lots of blind people in the world. You'll marry a nice blind man someday" (171)
        
        "When I told the poet I might well get married and have a pack of children someday, she stared at me in horror. 'But what about you career?' she had cried (220)
        
        "She and Buddy couldn't understand why I chose to go to New York City instead" (19).
        
        "What a man is is an arrow into the future and what a woman is is the place that the arrow shoots off from" (72)
      - Having Children
        
        "I also remembered Buddy Willard saying in a sinister, knowing way that after I had children I would feel differently, I wouldn't want to write poems any more" (85)
        
        "Here was a woman in terrible pain, obviously feeling every bit of it or she wouldn't groan like that, and she would go straight home and start another baby because the drug would make her forget how bad the pain had been, when all the time, in some secret part of her, that long, bling, odorless and windowless corridor of pain was waiting to open up and shut her in again" (66)
        
        "You oughtn't to see this,'...You'll never want to have a baby if you do. They oughtn't to let women watch. It'll be the end of the human race" (65).
  - - - "I climbed on the examination table, thinking ' I am climbing to freedom, freedom from fear" (223)
      - "How easy having babies seemed to the women around me! why was I so unmaternal and apart? Why couldn't I dream of devoting my self to baby after fat pulling baby like Dodo Conaway?" (222)
      - "What i hate is the thought of being under a man's thumb, I had told doctor Nolan. "A man does not have a worry in the world, while Ive got a baby hanging over my head like a big stick, to keep me in line" (221)
    - - What Esther wants in her life....
        
        "That's one of the reasons I never wanted to get married. 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" (83)
        
        "The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way. I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters" (76)
        
        "It was a joke because I never intended to get married" (26).
      - What Esther believes...
        
        " I knew that in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs. Willard's kitchen mat" (85)
        
        "I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and hand children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state" (85)
        
        "I started adding up all the things I couldn't do. I began with cooking. My grandmother and my mother were such good cooks that I left everything to them" (75)
        
        "This seemed a dreary and wasted life for a girl with fifteen years of straight A's, but I knew that's what marriage was like because cook and clean and wash was just what Buddy Willard's mom did from morning till night" (84)
- - - - "there must be something in poetry if a girl like me spent all her days over it" (68)
      - "I said I wanted to be a poet" (101)
      - "People were made of nothing so much as dust, and I couldn't see that doctoring all that dust was a bit better than writing poems people could remember and repeat to themselves when they were unhappy or sick and couldn't sleep " (60)
      - Sylvia's Passion for Poetry - "Oh, satisfaction! I don't think I could live without it. It's like water or bread, or something absolutely essential to me. I find myself absolutely fulfilled when I have written a poem, when I'm writing one. Having written one, then you fall away very rapidly from having been a poet to becoming a sort of poet in rest, which isn't the same thing at all. But I think the actual experience of writing a poem is a magnificent one" ("A 1962 Sylvia Plath Interview with Peter Orr")
    - - "'What do you have in mind after you graduate?' What I always thought I had in mind was getting some big scholarship to graduate school or a grant to study all over Europe, and then I thought I'd be a professor and write books of poems or write books of poems and be an editor of some sort. Usually I had these plans on the tip of my tongue. 'I don't really know' I hard myself say. I felt a deep shock hearing myself say that, because the minute I said it, I knew it was true" (32)
  - - - "How could I write about a life when I'd never had a love affair or a baby or even seen anybody die" ( 109-110)
      - "Well, I always was interested in prose. As a teenager, I published short stories. And I always wanted to write the long short story, I wanted to write a novel. Now that I have attained, shall I say, a respectable age, and have had experiences, I feel much more interested in prose, in the novel" ("A 1962 Sylvia Plath Interview with Peter Orr")
    - - "I also remembered Buddy Willard saying in a sinister, knowing way that after I had children I would feel differently, I wouldn't want to write poems any more" (85)
      - "The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way. I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters" (76)
      - "When I told the poet I might well get married and have a pack of children someday, she stared at me in horror. 'But what about you career?' she had cried (220)