The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and Top Girls By Caryl Churchill both feature motherhood and marriage as one of their main themes even though the texts were set at different points in time. The Bell Jar was published in 1963 around the time of the publication of Betty Freidans Feminine Mystique. The Feminine Mystique stated that the ideal housewives of the 1960s were a myth as each one of them were secretly unhappy but never spoke out about their unhappiness due to fear of not abiding by the social normality of the time. This feeling of displacement in the social norm is what Plath bases the experiences of protagonist Esther upon and what eventually drives Esther into mental instability. Motherhood and marriage is seen to be a key factor in the society of which The Bell Jar is set ,and is portrayed as one of the things that suppresses female identity when Esther is asked to be Mrs Buddy Willard as if she is owned by Buddy and not her own person. Even though Top Girls is set in 1980s England while Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister, it shows direct correlations to the ideas shown in The Bell Jar. Just as the bell jar itself portrays motherhood and marriage to be a hindrance to Careers In the form of Dodo Conway, Top Girls protagonist Marlene symbolises the other option women have in the choice between a career and a family. Marlene, unlike her sister Joyce, is shown to have given up her child for the chance to pursue a career as if having both is impossible; a lot like Jaycee is in The Bell Jar. This essay will argue that In both texts motherhood and marriage is shown to be a hindrance to both women's careers and their female identity. The theme of marriage in The Bell Jar and Top Girls Is shown to demolish the female identity of the women. In The Bell Jar Plath uses Buddy as a symbolic figure to show how even the clean men of that time were only out for one thing. Plath also uses him to portray how marriage is like a prison in which the identity of women is sealed once married and thus causes them to cease to live as their own person but as the man's property instead. This is portrayed when Buddy asked Esther to become Mrs Buddy Willard. Although it is tradition to take the husbands last name when you get married, Plath uses the appropriation of his first name as a way of symbolising to the reader that marriage is the bell jar itself and that the women are able to see out of their glass prison. However, even if they are unhappy the outside world is unable to hear their screams. This links to the Feminine Mystique as it states that all married women are unhappy but unable to express their discontent just as if they were trapped in a bell jar. This also links to Marlene and Joyce's Mother in Top Girls. Churchill uses their inability to refer to her as their Mother, within pages 94 and 95, as a way of expressing how after their Mother married that bastard she lost all identity as if it was swallowed by his drunkenness and violence.