/lit/ - Literature

>>1245399

Coming-of-age

To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream.

When I was nineteen, pureness was the great issue.
Instead of the world being divided up into Catholics and Protestants or Republicans and Democrats or black men and white men or even men and women, I saw the world divided into people who had slept with someone and people who hadn't, and this seemed the only really significant difference between one person and another.
I thought a spectacular change would come over me the day I crossed the boundary line.

1950s society says it's okay for Buddy Willard to sleep with a waitress, but Esther's expected to remain pure. Her only choices are to stay a virgin until she marries, or lose her virginity, everyone'll think she's a slut, and no one would want her.