Taking care of one’s offspring is many people’s end goal in life. This was especially true in the fifties, when the picture perfect, suburban home with a white picket fence was the standard. However, Esther does not view children, particularly babies, in such a loving manner. Instead, Esther believes that babies bring pain, are scientific, and bestow unwanted responsibility. It is common knowledge that childbirth causes great suffering to the mother. But, at the same time, most people recognize it as a beautiful part of the miracle of life. Nevertheless, there is a small population that cannot find anything pleasing about delivering a newborn and, of course, Esther falls into this group. Her description of the mother as an animalistic creature making an “unhuman whooing noise” has a negative connotation, …show more content…
This is brought up while she was in the lab with cadavers. As she gazes about the room, she seems to focus on the “big glass bottles full of babies that had died before they were born” (63). Although this section does not give much insight into what Esther is thinking, it does display Plath’s view on the subject. The row of jars in what seems to be a morgue of some sort, gives the whole scene an eerie, cold, and hard feel. This is much different from what the reader is used to when presented a scene with babies. Normally, the infants would be alive, and the tone would be on the happier side. This laboratory setting is carried into the next scene where Esther describes the delivery table as being “some awful torture table” with “wires and tubes” (65). Neither the interesting equipment, nor the fetuses startles Esther, since she points out that she did not flinch at all. She was trying to prove her bravery to the reader, however it comes across as her being detached, and lacking in