In the “Components of Gender,” Laura Franks speaks on her view of what exactly makes you who you are. She obviously does not agree with the way society defines gender roles or how those roles form a person. She speaks of 5 components of gender which are gender assignment, gender roles, gender identity, gender expression, and gender attribution. Each having their own definitions of what specifically describes a persons gender. Laura Franks is someone who has “refused to play gender games,” in other words she doesn’t follow up with the rules society has set up for what makes a male a male and a female a female. Like a game there are rules you must follow and if you don’t follow them you lose, she basically feels like society is playing the same game with gender. If your a male you have to be masculine and be the head of the household, and if your a female you have to be feminine and love being a housewife. Some people fear if they break societies expectations they would be looked at as the opposite of their gender or seem different from everyone else, like they don’t belong. Laura feels its time to break these rules and when you do your still who you are no matter society says.

With Esther in The Bell Jar she doesn’t but does seems to experience fear or discomfort  when she isn’t following the role that is expected of her by society. In the scene in chapter 11 where it says, “I was still wearing Betsy’s white blouse and dirndl skirt, I hadn’t wash them in my three weeks at home. I hadn’t wash my hair for three weeks either” (Plath 67) Esther isn’t performing proper femininity. Esther thought it would be silly to wash her clothes and her hair when she would have to just do it again the next day. Her mother thought she should have done so because as society would believe its dirty for a female to not wash her clothes, being that its one of the jobs they believe females should have which is cleaning and washing. I would say wearing Betsy clothes instead of her own was her choosing to perform gender roles properly because she maybe feared her own clothes wasn’t as fancy, or less feminine than what others would expect a female to wear to a special occasion.