The central attitude of one’s perception of others and themselves is the division of people into women and men. Many people believe that the psychological differences that exist between men and women are directly related to the biological features of the male and female body. At the same time, the explanation for many gender differences should be sought in social norms that ascribe different types of behavior, attitudes and interests according to biological sex. These norms form in everyone certain ideas about what set of qualities is characteristic of women and what set of qualities is characteristic of men. The problem of studying stereotypes in relation to oneself and others and arises due to the fact that they fix established simplified notions, on the basis of which a person makes decisions when analyzing the situation, constructing behavior.
Masculine characteristics are personality traits traditionally attributed to the image of a man. This gender layer includes such qualities as strong, purposeful, brave, independent, independent and aggressive. Masculinity is part of art, providing readers with the opportunity to get acquainted with the image of a man, in varying degrees, conforming to generally recognized gender stereotypes. Nevertheless, for several hundred years, the literary world has seen active attempts by authors to disprove the standard image of the man. R.W. Connell states that “normative modes of masculinity […] face the problem that not many men actually meet the normative standards. This phenomenon can be seen in many of the works of feminist writers who have devoted their work to challenging preconceptions about masculinity.
The Bell Jar presents images of women endowed with atypical masculine traits that have more in common with masculinity than with traditional femininity. By portraying her characters in this way, the writer challenges society, which is accustomed to identifying gender according to a narrow set of stereotypical traits. Platt’s characters are, unconventionally for the literature of the era, resolute, aggressive, and self-sufficient. It is known that, in adolescence, people through reflection seeks to identify with themselves, their peers, there is stabilization of sex and gender standards and gender and sexual self-identification.
In adulthood, the analysis of already formed sexual and gender standards is connected with the unique human capacity for self-knowledge and self-assessment, which allows one to interact with the people around, to perform the correction of one’s own behavior and assessments of other people in terms of existing auto- and hetero-stereotypes. However, Sylvia Platt, like many feminist and meninist writers, has shown that a woman’s self-identification process by primary characteristics is not always based exclusively on the feminine. Often a woman’s character may contain traits that are contrary to her generally accepted stereotype. A similar process occurs with the identification of the male, which is sometimes based on predominantly feminine characteristics, which emphasizes the validity of Connel’s assertion.
Thus, stereotypes of male and female behavior are learned and changed with great difficulty, because they are strong. The ideas formed in society about the image of a man and a woman spread to all representatives of one or another sex, regardless of individual characteristics and age. Nevertheless, over time it has been recorded that this model is not working, as the representatives of the male and female biological sex may have personal qualities that do not correspond to gender standarts for them. This has been reflected in numerous literary works and publicistic texts.