The vivid, startling simile of the cadaver's head that Esther imagines, floating 'like some black, noseless balloon stinking of vinegar'(Plath 1996: 2), already rings alarm bells for the reader about her sanity, emphasised even more so by its strong, dark lexical chain when compared to the mundane 'eggs and bacon'(Plath 1996: 1) in the same passage. Thus the opening is symbolic of her innocence: she is not ignorant, but the reader is reminded that she is young, curious and potentially vulnerable. Within the first few paragraphs of the novel, Plath establishes a narrative that charmingly balances honesty with pessimism as Esther's character naively ponders her fear of electrocution, she describes the way that 'it had nothing to do with ' and ' thought it must be the worst thing in the world'(Plath 1996: 1), blissfully unaware of her own ominous future. 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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