A Study in Conceptual Metaphors and Transitivity in The Bell Jar

This book attempts to find new ways of looking at the protagonist of The Bell Jar by concentrating on the language and the narrative of the novel. Drawing on Lakoff and Turner's (1989) model for novel metaphors, this research tries to show how the heroine challenges the norms of her time through creative conceptual metaphors that defamiliarize the established ideals regarding virginity, marriage, pregnancy, and electroshock therapy. The analysis of the metaphors in these categories reveals the protagonist's social deviation. The writers go on to link this feature of the main character to her disintegration which can be seen in her transitivity choices in the first thirteen chapters of the novel. Simpson's (1993) model for transitivity analysis contributes to a better appreciation of the character's fragmentation which is a consequence of her deviation. Both conceptual metaphors and transitivity choices pave the way for understanding the characterization of the protagonist in narratological terms, first as a disintegrated woman and then as a person who experiences a kind of rebirth.