It would be too sweeping, however, to claim that no modern novel has had significant social impact, or that no modern literary novel has ever been well received. What can be observed is a shift in the manner in which authors communicate a need for change, and perhaps their faith in the capacity of art to incite it.
Sylvia Plath’s 1963 novel ‘The Bell Jar’ has a reliable place in most lists of ‘canonical’ modern literature, despite its delayed and unwieldy rise to recognition and the complaint of critics that it ‘refuses to be the great novel you’d want a great poet’s only novel to be’ (Gould, 2011). This status, which has seen a ceaseless publication history, selling over 3 million copies, can arguably be accredited to its significance for 2nd Wave Feminism and its evocative depiction of mental illness. Gould comments that ‘feminists of the 1970s claimed Plath as a martyred patron saint of repressive domesticity’ (Catton, 2013), while many 21st Century critical interpretations of The Bell Jar laud it as a definitively feminist protest novel. From a psychoanalytical point of view, the novel has been praised for its radically honest depiction of mental illness, which has prompted some critics to read it as protesting the stigma and lack of sympathy surrounding those with mental illnesses, particularly women. Whether these interpretations are accurate, or whether they make the mistake of projecting too much ideology onto Plath’s very personal- practically autobiographical- story, as one school of critical thought suggests, they offer a reasonable explanation for
The Bell Jar’s sustained popular success. Novels that touch a cultural nerve and, whether wittingly or not, represent relevant social problems are very often successful in both their sales and the cultural significance they are able to sustain. Another relatively recent example of this is Harper Lee’s bestselling 1960 novel ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’: although not universally felt to be the most literarily accomplished novel (…), the story of a quest for racial justice was both topical and catalytic for the Civil Rights movement in the US. In her column for The Economist, literary critic E.W. affirms that ‘Atticus Finch, the lawyer who defends Tom Robinson, became the inspiration for generations of justice crusaders. His model of peaceful but persistent resistance resonated with activists’ while the storyline ‘brought the ugly realities of discrimination, especially in the South, to international attention’. (E.W, 2016).
