Although most of her creative energies were directed toward poetry, Sylvia Plath produced one novel, The Bell Jar (1963), a striking work which has contributed to her reputation as a significant figure in contemporary American literature. A thinly veiled autobiographical account of the inner conflicts, mental breakdown, and ultimate recovery of a college girl in the 1950s, the novel is one of the earliest to express rebellion against the conventional roles of women, a forerunner of such works as Erica Jong's Fear of Flying (1973) and Marilyn French's The Women's Room (1977). Yet it is more than a feminist document, for it presents the enduring human concerns of the search for identity, the pain of disillusionment, and the refusal to accept defeat. As a novel of growing up, of initiation into adulthood, it is very solidly in the tradition of the Bildungsroman. Technically, The Bell Jar is skillfully written and contains...