Self-consciousness is a tough and endless journey. Everything I experienced, construct and
deconstruct the value of my existence. Once I opened The Bell Jar, I realized that Sylvia
Plath and I are two self-questioning sisters. “I took a deep breath and listened to the old
brag of my heart. I am. I am. I am.” (Plath 243), only people who strongly percept and
introspect their existence can compose this sentence. I kind of believe that although culture
and history shaped us differently, we all insist self-questioning and never forget that values
are contingent and that knowledge and belief system are situated historically and culturally
(Travis 6).
Patriarchy, the binary structure that oppressed women’s freedom and rights, are
every where. No matter when, no matter where. In 1950s American society, Sylvia Plath
have been told: What a man wants is mate and what a woman wants is infinite security,
she is the platform the arrow shoots off from, she’s better to be pure and innocent on sex”
(Plath 72&81) . However, I, a millennial teenager have also been instilled the ideology of
“female morality” (女德).
My grandma was raised up in a poor Chinese rural family in 1940s. Before the
Chinese economics reform, Confucianism controlled the mainstream of Chinese philoso-
phy (of course for now it’s still the mainstream). When I was five, my grandma let me
watch the “female morality lesson” every afternoon. In the video, a middle-age woman
stood on the stage with hundreds of fans under. She advocated, “Women is the pusher
behind a successful husband. Only if the wife is soft, receptive and house-caring, the man
could focus on the career and keep family harmonious. When the husband go back home,
wife must kneel down to take off his shoes and make tea for him. Outside, women
shouldn’t reveal their skin, or you’re a slut. Be careful! When you lost your virginity, you
lost everything.” As a kid, I didn’t deny any of the opinion and attitude above. I finished
the whole lesson without saying anything, like a good kid should do.
Although I haven’t experienced marriage and reproduction, those memories remind
me of Sylvia’s argument. “When you were married and had children it was like being
brainwashed, and afterward you went a pouty numb as a slave in some privets, totalitarian
state.” (Plath 85) Obviously, this is the personal perception of Sylvia. I don’t think mar-
riage and reproduction put every woman into a totalitarian state. Everyone has their own
situation of relationship and self-awareness. However, society is an inevitable condition