![]() Although the novel does not overtly advocate rebellion or social reform, it reveals conventional attitudes and prejudices that plague the female protagonist. ![]() The text reveals a social framework where adults are unable to communicate effectively with the younger generation and are incapable of providing the necessary support for the temperamental adolescent mind, represented through Esther Greenwood's solitary descent in to insanity. Although far from conforming to the traditional characteristics of the bildungsroman that relates a coming-of-age story, The Bell Jar explores on the contrary how the pressures and expectations of parents and authority figures can bear a negative impact on the malleable mind of youth. Cleverly contrasting moments of severe depression, eclectic memories and descri ptions of banal everyday life, Plath manages to create a patchwork narrative that verges on breaking the traditions of chronology and entertains the 'stream-of-consciousness technique' (Meyering 1993: 381), whilst managing to maintain a sense that the novel is whole and complete. In writing The Bell Jar (1963), Sylvia Plath highlights a number of issues that society itself is often afraid to raise: whether as a result of social stigmatisation or otherwise, problems such as depression and suicide are brought forwards into the limelight. ![]()
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