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A study on Daring to break convention: tragedy of Sylvia Plath fiction

Abstract

This thesis will explore, in depth, how the poetry of Sylvia Plath operates as an expression of female discontent in

the decade directly preceding the sexual revolution. This analysis will incorporate both sociohistorical context and

theory introduced in Betty Friedan’s 1963 work The Feminine Mystique. In particular, Plath’s work will be put into

conversation with Friedan’s notion of the “problem that has no name,” an all-consuming sense of malaise and

dissatisfaction that plagued American women in the postwar era. This notion will be furthered by close-readings of

poems throughout various stages of Plath’s career, namely “Spinster,” “Two Sisters of Persephone,” “Elm,”

“Ariel,” “Daddy,” and “The Applicant,” works which speak to binaries enforced by cultural convention, the

dangers of the domestic model, and the inescapability of mid-century femininity. In advancing this argument,

biographical readings of Plath’s work will be rejected, bolstering the notion that her work stands alone as cultural

criticism. Operating in an age of restriction and repression, Plath’s work speaks to both female identity and

subordinating norms of domesticity. Though this thesis will certainly incorporate contemporary and modern

cultural criticism as well as historical context for the concept of feminine containment and restriction, it will be

most focused on analyzing Plath’s work as a poet, including assessing her praxis, aesthetic, and narrative choices.

Finally, this argument will conclude by establishing how the six poems considered, as well as the rest of Plath’s

oeuvre, directly anticipate second-wave feminism and the women’s rights movements of the sixties.
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“WOMEN HAVE LUST TOO. WHY SHOULD THEY BE RELEGATED TO THE POSITION OF

CUSTODIAN OF EMOTIONS, WATCHER OF INFANTS, FEEDER OF SOUL, BODY AND PRIDE OF

MAN? BEING BORN A WOMAN IS AN AWFUL TRAGEDY.”

SYLVIA PLATH
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Chapter 1

Plath in Context: Postwar America

Writers are largely a byproduct of the era that they inhabit. Even if it is entirely unintentional, sociohistorical

commentary inevitably diffuses into their work. For an author like Sylvia Plath, however, reaching womanhood in

mid-century America did not merely inflect her work: it inspired it. Life for American women in the middle of the

twentieth century (particularly middle class white women) was largely centered around the domestic sphere. A

symbol of hope, prosperity, and most significantly, stability, the home served as a model of successful democracy

following a time of turmoil and conflict. Entering her adulthood in 1950, Plath was maturing in an era where the

housebound role of women was an immovable status quo. Sylvia Plath’s poetry is a direct result of a sparring with

these rigidities, a desire for the comfort of gender normativity at odds with a desire for alternatives. Thusly, in

order to understand the content and craft of her oeuvre, it is first necessary to review the historical context in

which she was living and writing, roughly 1952 to 1963.

The Role of Women in Midcentury America

Following the conclusion of the Second World War in 1945, the United States became an icon of economic and

political strength. While other global powers suffered immense losses of life and damage to infrastructure,

American causalities were comparatively far less debilitating (Dunar 3). In the wake of violence and victory,

American families felt optimistic about the future. When soldiers returned home to a triumphant welcome,

peace felt permanent and the general perception was that life in America was unshakably stable. As a result,

women were urged to have children, to raise them in an era of prosperity. In what is colloquially known as the

“Baby Boom,” more than seventy-six million children were born between the years of 1946 and 1964 (Dunar

174). With expanding families came the need for expanded houses, in neighborhoods built specifically for the
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growing family. Subsequently, Americans began to move to the suburbs in droves, with low-cost mortgages giving

former soldiers and their families an additional incentive to head for small communities on the outskirts of larger

cities (Dunar 177).

The transition into a suburb-centric culture did little to benefit women. From the thirties into the forties, the

number of women in the workforce grew exponentially in response to the economic pressures of the Great

Depression (“Working Women in the 1930s”). When America entered World War II in 1941, men left jobs

behind to go abroad and fight. Consequently, women filled positions formerly held by men out of necessity.

The settling down into suburban life made many of these former freedoms inaccessible to women. Instead,

young women were being encouraged to stay home, to keep house and to watch children while their husbands

served as breadwinners of their family unit. By the end of the fifties, the average age at which women were

married was roughly twenty years old (U.S. Bureau of the Census). A growing number of teenagers were foregoing

higher education to marry, while thirty-seven percent had dropped out before graduation, mostly for marriage

and a life of domesticity (“Women’s Roles in the 1950s”). Even if women did pursue higher education, they were

often encouraged to take classes on home economics and interior design, their career choices often limited to

clerical or service industry roles. Of the forty percent of adult women who did work outside of the home, only

twelve percent practiced a profession (Zelomek). These women, often receiving their educations at women’s

colleges throughout the United States, went on to pursue academic and white-collar positions but found that

their ability and experience was overlooked due to their gender. Frustrated with the lack of career mobility, well-

educated women sought solace in the home, hoping that it would “become not a place of drudgery but a liberating

arena of fulfillment through professional homemaking, meaningful child rearing, and satisfying sexuality” (May

25).
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Over time, however, it became evident that the decision to embrace domesticity was far from a choice; it was a

reality steeped in normative cultural expectations. Though the second World War had reached its conclusion, the

United States’ deployment of the hydrogen bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ushered the world into a new state

of alert. Though Americans attempted to cling to the myth of unshakable peace and prosperity, the atomic era

was marked by anxiety and unease. In the wake of the introduction of nuclear weaponry, uncertainty and mistrust

of communist-aligned nations and individuals grew. For example, when the Soviet Union gained confirmed

nuclear capability in 1949, fifty-three percent of Americans polled stated that there was good chance of their

community being bombed in a future skirmish (May 25). The angst surrounding a perceived but unknowable

threat was soothed by the promise of containment. The first Cold War tactic of the United States, containment

aimed to quell the spreading of communism and quash the advancement of the enemy. This policy was

furthermore mirrored at home.

The domestic sphere became a “psychological fortress” for Americans, a “buffer against both internal and foreign

threats”; ideologically speaking, women challenging the domestic model felt just as threatening to American well-

being as the spread of communism (Meyerowitz 3). In the middle of the twentieth century, the personal was so

politicized that it became increasingly difficult to discern public from private. The prototypical middle-class

household – white picket fence, breadwinner husband, stay-at-home mother and homemaker – became a

national symbol of prosperity and democracy. As a result, women, the symbol of domestic bliss, became

indistinguishable from that which they represented – national identity hinged on women relenting and accepting

their role in the home.

Containment also stifled women’s sexuality. The notion of sexual containment was employed in conjunction

with the rise of the domestic model. Just as an atom could be utilized in clean energy in lieu of a weapon, a

“female bombshell could be harnessed for peace within the home” so that feminine sexuality would not threaten the

American way of life (May 108). While this is certainly not to say that unmarried men and women of the fifties did

not engage in sexual activity, the implications of the ethos of containment were overreaching. Sex without the

purpose of procreation was largely taboo, only discussed openly in reference to its threat on American morality.

Sexual containment, like the containment of communism, was built primarily on fear. Communities feared the

violation of gender roles (particularly the “preoccupation with female promiscuity”) would “cause sexual and

familial chaos and weaken the country’s moral fiber” (May 112). While there was no evidence to their claims, the
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rate of premarital sex not budging since the 1920s, the fear and distrust of female sexuality generated the notion

that it must be stifled and locked safely in the bounds of domestic monogamy. Yet paradoxically, women were

still expected to be sexually desirable, magazines and conversations revolving around how to garner a man’s

attention and win his affections.

In the fifties, women were variously infantilized, purified, and revered (the young, innocent ‘kitten’ or the model

mother figure) or sexualized then commodified for male consumption (December 1953 saw the first issue of

Playboy magazine). Fashion shifted from the fluid, boyish, practical looks of the twenties and thirties into

something more akin to Victorian-era corseting and caging. A poll taken in 1947 verified that a majority of

women did not like this style, one of crinoline, exaggerated brasseries, and carved out waists, but would wear it

anyway, as it was socially mandated (May 108). For American women in the middle of the twentieth century,

sexuality was something that was only discussed in terms of how it benefitted men. Whether through the

“girlfriend” types of Playboy or the moralistic maidens of the marital bed, the parameters detailing acceptable

expressions of female sexuality were defined by patriarchal standards. Female sexual autonomy and desire was a

seldom discussed taboo shrouded in a culture of shame that left women feeling deviant for pursuing sexual

interests.
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Women like Sylvia Plath, just coming of age at the advent of the fifties, often found that this era of restriction made

it incredibly difficult to reconcile individual identity with the responsibility of upholding a nationally endorsed

model. In 1951, at the age of nineteen, Plath wrote:

I am at odds. I dislike being a girl, because as such I must come to realize that I cannot be a man. In other

words, I must pour my energies through the direction and force of my mate. My only free act is choosing that

mate. And yet, it is as I feared: I am becoming adjusted and accustomed to that idea…I, so proud and disdainful of

custom, could consider marriage and honorable and vital estate. (Plath, The Unabridged Journals 54).

Even for Plath, a thoughtful artist with conflicting desires and interests, marriage and motherhood often seemed

not only encouraged but inevitable. With the average median age at marriage falling and the rate of childrearing

increasing, young women were pressured into making decisions about their future, familial and otherwise, quite

rapidly. A dichotomy emerged amongst college-aged women where those who were single and directionless

were envious of engaged peers for their stability and certainly while the betrothed grew resentful of those who

were not tied down by such a commitment, feeling as if they had sacrificed their liberty in some way (Friedan 69).

Young women were not encouraged to explore the full extent of their identities. They were instructed to “pity

the neurotic, unfeminine, unhappy women who wanted a professional career, higher education, and political

rights” (Lamb 29). Instead of following in the footsteps of these “undesirable” women, they were often led to

sacrifice selfhood and describe themselves only in terms of another – someone’s wife, someone’s mother.

The rigid sociocultural standards of the era put a particular amount of stress on the generation of women just

entering their late teens and early twenties in the late forties and early fifties. At a crossroads in their lives, these

women were pushed towards making the widely-endorsed decision, a stable future where they could thrive within

the home and find the comfort and structure they longed for in the family unit. Even those who were

“disdainful of custom” like Plath recognized that options were limited for women and that there was an

implicit responsibility in femininity, that the option whether or not to embrace domesticity was a mere illusion of

choice. In the postwar era, where domesticity was equated with democracy and a sense of national security, young

women felt the pressure to conform more than ever. Still, the difficulty of grappling with one’s passions,

desires, and individualities in an age of conformity and misogyny gave way to conversations between women, vital

writings and responses in magazines and journals, and a culture that anticipated the as-yet inconceivable Sexual

Revolution that began in the 1960s. It was operating within this space of pre-revolution that helped Plath hit her
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stride but ultimately did not provide enough impetus for change to assuage her feelings of emptiness and

uncertainty.

The Shortcomings of Postwar Women’s Movements

Though it appeared the progress women had been making in terms of employment, social status, and political

recognition in the twenties through the forties had been completely halted by the antiquated domestic ideals of

the postwar era, discussion surrounding the rights of women continued in the security of female spaces. While

the overall percentage of women entering and finishing college dropped in the fifties, women’s colleges

remained a breeding ground for burgeoning feminists. Between 1835 and 1900, seven women’s colleges (dubbed

“the Seven Sisters”) were opened in the United States, overcoming political pushback (Barnes 72). The purpose of

these institutions was to provide an education for American women that equaled, if not rivaled, the

opportunities provided to men in a similar socioeconomic bracket. Fifty years after these colleges opened their

doors, however, women began to forego pursuing higher education; though women made up 47.3% of all

college students in 1920, this percentage had dropped down to a mere 31% by 1950 (Eisenmann 44). This drop-

off in enrollment was due to an assumption that the type of women these all-female colleges produced would be

too brainy, too independent, too assertive, too unfeminine – and altogether unfit for marriage. Others ridiculed

women’s education as a simple waste of time. These viewpoints clashed with how female academics viewed these

institutions. For them, “women’s education was necessary for the growth and survival of the republic” (Barnes 72).

Certainly, women’s colleges served as a hotbed of growth for feminist theory and social movements. Motivated and

unsatisfied American women viewed education not only as a means of individual mobility but as a way to “remedy

social ills, learn leadership roles, and build coalitions to address inequities” (Barnes 74). This is not to suggest

that such revolutionary attitudes were mainstream. These colleges were far from free from the pressure and

rebuke of mid-century conservatism. Smith College, one of the Seven Sisters, was one of the most revered

women’s colleges of the era – it was touted as a “serious” schools for girls, one that would follow a Harvard-

esque model. Nevertheless, Smith was unquestionably influenced by the era.

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Gloria Steinem, notable feminist and founded of Ms. Magazine, who attended Smith from 1952 to 1956 (only

two years behind Plath, who attended from 1950 to 1955), stated, “Administrators, professors, the president

would say they were educating women so there would be educated children…People were trying to get women

out of the labor force and into the suburbs” (Petroziello).

It was at Smith that Plath began to explore her desires, her anxieties, and her fears. Plath, whose peer Steinem

described as “a very different person” who seemed unwilling to bend to conservative thought, found herself at

odds with a dichotomy within women’s education (Petroziello). On one hand, these institutions were

anticipating feminism, providing spaces for women that were free from sexual politics and pressures within the

classroom dynamic, encouraging free discussion and debate amongst students. On the other hand, the consensus

that women’s education was merely a springboard for finding a stable mate and having well-bred children dashed

any attempts to undermine the status-quo. Plath voiced her frustration at Smith during her freshman year, writing,

“Maybe this is why I am a girl…so I can live more safely than the boys I have known and envied, so I can bear

children, and instill in them the biting eating desire to learn and love life which I will never quite fulfill” (Plath, The

Unabridged Journals 32). Though the restlessness and dissatisfaction that often serves as an impetus for rebellion

was present, the prevailing attitudes of the era were so insidious that it made revolution impossible during the

decade. It was not until the sixties, when the Civil Rights movement inspired and encouraged pushback against

inequality, that modern feminism would develop fully.

Still, women managed to avoid being silenced in between the pages of books and magazines.

The circulation of women’s magazines that began decades prior only increased in the postwar era. These

magazines contained fashion and cosmetic tips, recipes, design advice, and, most tellingly, poetry and short stories.

In the forties, the heroines of short stories were hopeful with a “definite aura around them that their individuality

was something to be admired” (Friedan 30). They were often career-focused women with ambitions and goals.

The desire for conformity and order that developed in the 1950s, however, nearly eradicated this depiction of

women.
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By the end of 1949, only one-third of heroines in these stories held a career and even so, these protagonists

often shook off their delusional search for independence and disavowed their career in exchange for a husband

(Friedan 37). The women featured in these stories were extraordinarily young, childlike even. They cooked, they

cleaned, they were sexually submissive, they reared children, and they never complained. Major women’s

magazines like The Ladies’ Home Journal, McCall’s, Good Housekeeping, and Women’s Home Companion seemed crafted

specifically with the typical, domestic-driven woman in mind. That is not to say, however, that these stories of

virtuous inexperience and feminine containment were crafted by women.

In the forties, many of the staff writers and contributors for women’s magazines were female. As Americans

came back from the war, however, many of these female writers were forced out of their field and into the home,

replaced by men “who had been dreaming about home, and a cozy domestic life” (Friedan 49). This is not to

say that women did not find outlets of resistance. Despite being outliers, young women were still publishing

pieces that pushed back against the narrative they were being fed. While most mainstream women’s magazines

bent to the whim of patriarchal standards and beauty columns in the fifties, a publication called Mademoiselle stuck

to the values it was founded upon when it first hit the presses in 1935 (Aron). The magazine’s target audience

was modern-minded white college-aged women – Plath’s demographic. Mademoiselle’s pages were filled with

well-penned literature and, more importantly, a promise of hope for young women. With frequent fiction contests

and a yearly shot at one of twenty internships to serve as a guest editor of a collegiate edition, Mademoiselle

offered an alternative to the now male-dominated magazines of the era (Keller).

It was in the pages of Mademoiselle that Sylvia Plath found the freedom to write with the reassurance of an

audience that was also frustrated with the state of society. Plath’s short story “Sunday at the Mintons” was

published in a Spring 1952 issue as a winner of the magazine’s fiction contest. The story tells of Elizabeth

Minton, an aging spinster who puts aside her freedom for practicality’s sake as she serves as her brother Henry’s

housekeeper. Plath’s Elizabeth serves as a stand-in for women of the fifties, a cautionary tale of what might

become of the once rebellious and resistant. Henry chides Elizabeth for not being a “practical girl,” for

preferring reading and daydreaming to listening to the “sound of his voice as he marshaled her to duty,” for being

unable to “fend for herself” (Plath, “Sunday at the Mintons” 309-302). Plath’s use of Elizabeth for a feminine
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figurehead speaks to the frustrations of the era:

“She felt oddly that she was merging into someone else, her mother perhaps…Strange that she, after all these

years of independence, strange that she should…be circumscribed…by domestic duties” (Plath, “Sunday at the

Mintons” 311). The story takes a rather dark turn towards the end, as Elizabeth imagines Henry drowning in the

sea outside his home while the wind picks up her skirts and sends her aloft into the sky. Plath’s story, like so many

others of Mademoiselle, was markedly different that the housewife heroine of more mainstream media. There is

such a bite at the end of Mintons when Elizabeth “gave a sigh of submission” and returns to her brother’s side – it

is Plath’s navigation of the weighty feeling of inevitability, one that so many women faced when they felt relegated

to a choice of domesticity or death (Plath, “Sunday at the Mintons” 319).

Regardless of those, like Plath and her peers, who defied the mainstream, the United States remained on the cusp

of revolution until the movements of the sixties. Meanwhile, writers, philosophers, and activists worldwide were

beginning to publish texts that challenged chauvinistic conservatism. In 1953, French author and intellectual

Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex was first published in the United States. The text analyzed sexism and social

hierarchy through a critical lens, challenging the binary thinking that dominated postwar culture. De Beauvoir

observes that, in this era, men were considered “the Subject, the Absolute,” while women were reduced to “The

Other,” a singularity that kept them captive within the realms of femininity (de Beauvoir 6). The text became a

bestseller in the United States near immediately, the translation’s taboo cover (featuring the figure of a nude

woman) making it a subversive choice for young women. That being said, its first publication in the United States

did not have the revolutionary impact de Beauvoir hoped for in writing and publishing in her native tongue.

Knopf, the American publishing company that obtained the manuscript, mistakenly categorized The Second Sex

as a sex manual, “capable of making a very wide appeal among young ladies at places like Smith” (Glazer). Thus,

the editors sought out a professor who wrote on biology and human reproduction – not philosophy or theory –

to complete a translation of de Beauvoir’s text. Thusly, it was not until a full decade later that a fully developed

rhetoric of feminism was made mainstream. This reflective work, published in 1963, is largely credited with

sparking the second wave of feminism. It was called The Feminine Mystique.
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Chapter 2

The Poetics of the Problem that Has No Name

It was only in hindsight that the dissatisfaction felt by American women in the fifties was acknowledged as

something beyond boredom or hysteria. In 1963, the same year Plath died by suicide, author and activist Betty

Friedan (also a graduate of Smith College, over a decade before Plath and Steinem) published a pioneering look

at the perpetuation of the myth of the happy housewife. After working as a freelancer for women’s magazines

where editors would routinely strip her subjects of substance, a frustrated Friedan began working on a novel-

length exploration of female identity or rather, lack thereof, in mid-century America (“Betty Friedan”). This text,

The Feminine Mystique, opens with a description of what Friedan dubbed “The Problem That has No Name”. She

writes:

The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a

sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United

States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched

slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay

beside her husband at night – she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question – “Is this all?” (Friedan 1)

Friedan’s problem is one that plagued a large demographic (mainly white, middle-class) of American women, an

internalized longing that mingled unpalatably with the fear of non-conformity. The glossy appeal of women’s

magazines combined with a cultural notion that men and women did not suffer from a difference in superiority,

but a difference in identity. The general consensus of the postwar era was that women were so set apart from

men, in desire, in intelligence, in biological function, that they could not possibly have any interest in that which

men involved themselves in – whether it be poetry, physics, or politics.

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The women Friedan interviewed for Friedan’s research echo the sort of angst, melancholy, and feeling of dullness

that mark much of Sylvia Plath’s work. They remarked on “a tired feeling,” “crying without any reason,” feeling

“as if I don’t exist,” “empty somehow,” as if “I had no personality,” like “I just don’t feel alive (Friedan 8-10).

These women felt compelled to suffer in silence as they perceived all other women, all other housewives and

homemakers, to be satisfied, happy. The problem was personalized and a growing number of women felt their

struggle was entirely self-inflicted. When their fatigue became unbearable and these women visited healthcare

professionals, they were told it was all in their head, doctors advising them to take vitamins, go on a diet. At worst,

these women were prescribed tranquilizers (Friedan 297).

Plath’s eventual embracing of domesticity was viewed as one of the more intolerable cases, as the plight of the

educated housewife was akin to “a two-headed schizophrenic” and that Plath was one of many who was

“reduced to screams and tears…in the process of turning from poetess into shrew” (Friedan 11). Well-educated

women were often encouraged to live vicariously through their children, the only benefit of having spent years of

their life in higher education seemingly to raise superior offspring; frustratingly, for female thinkers and artists,

procreation was valorized over creation. This resulted in what Friedan asserted was a form of “progressive

dehumanization,” where women, trapped in the home by external and internalized cultural mandates, became

“dependent, passive” in an “endless, monotonous, unrewarding” life that resulted in a “slow death of mind and

spirit” (Friedan 369). Both psychological and physical ailments began to prop up in housewives across the United

States but these symptoms were widely undiagnosable. What was merely written off as boredom or hysteria in past

moments, doctors realized this so-called “housewife’s syndrome” was carrying a range of pathological effects,

from “heart attacks, bleeding ulcers, hypertension” to full-on psychotic breakdowns (Friedan 351). While women

died at a lower rate than men, it seemed their quality of life and sense of enjoyment surrounding the day-to-day

dropped off suddenly with

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the rise of the domestic model. In Bergen County, N.J., a densely populated model of American domesticity, a

study by Dr. Richard Gordon noted that “young housewives (18 to 44) suffered not only childbirth depression”

at a rate of one in three mothers but also that “all psychiatric and psychosomatic disorders” were exhibited

amongst women in “increasing severity” (Friedan 352). As mild depression gave way to suicidal ideation and

slight neurosis developed into psychotic breakdowns, American women were being forced to the point of

extreme mental illness merely because of this “Problem That Has No Name,” an intangible satisfaction so deeply

internalized and unspoken that it was difficult to pin down at all.

Despite this difficulty, Friedan, Plath, and other female contemporaries still attempted to vocalize this sensation

and make it palpable. Without the benefit of modernity, however, neither Friedan nor Plath had access to the

language or theory that explained this kind of insidious dichotomy. Plath was an individual who sought (and

thrived on) a plural identity but was confined by singularities, by the expectation to be feminine, to be a mother,

to be a wife, to be quiet. Plath wrote that she could “never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want”

– a dilemma that left her pondering, “Perhaps you could trace my feeling back to my distaste at having to

choose between alternatives…that’s why I want to be everyone, so no one can blame me for being I” (Plath,

Unabridged Journals 43). Certainly, her aching desire for something else – something more – was far from

uncommon for women in the fifties. In responding to such feelings of inadequacy and constriction, it was

difficult to recognize, let alone articulate such a sensation. As American women were consistently spoonfed the

myth that their own feelings of ennui were based in some sort of failure on their part, some lapse in proper

womanhood, female writers were grappling with the notion that this problem was far from self-inflicted while

trying to assess whether or not something so overarching was escapable.

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Sylvia Plath’s work as a poet is a direct response to this contention, a confrontation of Friedan’s “problem”.

Her work is fraught with images of women attempting, often in vain, to preserve their own identities in the

face of an opponent that strips them of the most human of qualities. Placed in its sociohistorical context, Plath’s

poetry reads as both a reaction and a rebellion to the postwar era’s suppression of female identity. It is angry at

times, frustrated, and in other instances, it seems forlorn, nearly cynical about the concept of progress. It is in

assessing these tones and the use of “I” as a narrative poetic structure that often leads critics and readers to ascribe

Plath’s poetry personal meaning. As a result, her work is so often obscured through the lens of biography. In

the next section, these critical perspectives will be disputed and instead, Plath’s work will be dissected as more

than intimate musings – her poetry serves as cultural criticism.

The Poetry of Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath’s poetry is often filtered through a lens of biography, the first-person speaker rarely if ever viewed as a

separate entity from the poet herself. While Plath certainly integrates the personal into her poems, this is an

aesthetic and thematic choice, not an invitation to dissect her familial disputes and psychological traumas. Her

work is not to be consumed as the mere musings of a tragically brilliant but ultimately doomed young women,

nor the embittered complaints of a scorned housewife. Critics and biographers will often go to great lengths to

find the most sordid details of Plath’s life -- her sexual experiences, her suicide attempts, her husband’s abuse

and infidelity -- in order to offer some sort of explanation for her poetry.

But to read Plath on biography alone, searching for the intimate hidden meaning in each stanza, is to do a

disservice to the cultural criticism she provides. It is also an inherently sexist form of critique, as male authors and

poets seldom face the same type of imposition. In literature, first-

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person male speakers are over-accepted as general representations of mankind. But Plath is not afforded the

same extension of a metaphorical voice. Though the speakers of her poems represent women in the postwar era

as a whole, Plath’s work is so often obscured by the public’s fascination with her life -- as critics like Carl Rollyson

assert, “Sylvia Plath is the Marilyn Monroe of modern literature” (Rollyson 1). Comments like these strip Plath to

superficialities and undermine the depth of her poetics. It is as writer Kari Larsen argues in her review of Rollyson’s

largely gossip-fueled Plath biography American Isis: “Systematically delegitimizing Plath’s poetry by relentlessly

turning back to her life and the idea that her life and her being intriguing, beautiful, and tragic is de-facto more

captivating than her poetry is irresponsible and misogynistic” (Larsen).

Sylvia Plath should be read simply as a poet, without the backdrop of celebrity worship and morbid fascinations.

Though her personal journals and letters (which are used in this exploration solely for the purpose of placing

Plath within the time period of “The Problem that Has No Name”) are a rich resource, they are not guidelines

for defining her poetry. Plath is a poet foremost, a poet who worked tirelessly to get her work published. As

such, the posthumous publication of her most intimate musings and letters (including those between Plath and

her mother as well as Plath and her therapist) seems nearly voyeuristic, violating authorial consent in some way.

Therefore, criticisms that derive themselves solely from biography often verge on conjecture, speculative piecemeal

work that discredits how Plath uses the confessional to her advantage. Her integration of personal experiences

and observations serve to say something about domesticity and womanhood as whole, her language of “I”

essentially a pluralized structure. Additionally, her turning inward operates as an exploration of a cultural

“sickness” -- that is, the subjugation and containment of American women and the construction of gendered

binaries. These are all conditions of Plath’s praxis and indicators of narrative, scholarly, and creative choices. As

such, they should be taken seriously, as not only poetics of the self but as the poetics of discontent.
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In the critical assessment of the six poems that follow (“Spinster,” “Two Sisters of Persephone,” “Elm,”

“Ariel,” “Daddy,” “The Applicant”), note that the full body of each work will appear, stanza by stanza, in the

text of the analysis. These poems are presented as Plath had intended, with no attached biographical readings or

assumptions. This argument incorporates the full text of each poem in order to avoid out-of-context line

citations that often plague literary criticism. As Plath’s poetry is paramount, it is critical to fully incorporate them

into the body of this discussion. The poems that appear in the next section are organized by time of composition

and are analyzed poem-by-poem in lieu of thematically or by period in Plath’s life. This is because Plath’s first

book of poetry was published in 1960 and she died in February of 1963; there is not a wide enough breadth of

work to analyze any substantial progression. Secondly, this thesis argues that Plath’s work, no matter date or

subject, has similar thematic elements and operates in service of some expression of discontent; thusly, as there is

no sense in sorting the works topically, poems are discussed in conjunction throughout each individual analysis.

As such, the organization of the poems serves to provide contextualization and keep the argument cohesive.

“Spinster”

Though Plath had been writing and publishing in magazines and journals since adolescence, her first collection was

not published until 1960. The Colossus and Other Poems was a “deft and surprising” edition, Plath attempting to

put aside academic verbosity for “ease and naturalness of language” (Wagner-Martin 166-167). The work was

varied and contained everything from muses on relationships between mothers and daughters (“The Disquieting

Muses” and “Point Shirley”) to image-driven nature work (“Mushrooms”) to, most relevantly, commentary on

the state of womanhood in the postwar era. Throughout Plath’s poetry, both single and married subjects are

explored and held in tension with one another, as if to hold both sides of the binary up to the
 18

looking glass. Unexpectedly, Plath’s single women are not necessarily any freer from the bounds of patriarchy than

those who have taken wedding vows – often, in fact, these women find themselves isolated by a culture that

rejects them. One such work is “Spinster,” a poem which unravels the experience of a woman who finds a

sense of liberation only in rejecting norms of marriage and domesticity, only to nevertheless find herself

entombed. The work begins:

Now this particular girl

During a ceremonious April walk With her latest suitor

Found herself, of a sudden, intolerably struck By the bird’s irregular babel

And the leaves’ litter (Plath, “Spinster” 1-6)

The first stanza introduces this “girl” as a woman set apart from others – she is “particular” and specific, not

made generic or incorporated within a larger group; this is reinforced by the definite pronoun “this”. Plath sets

her poem in spring – outdoors and during the month of April, expressly – which are typically employed into

poetry to incorporate notions of fertility and new life. It is a vigorous time of year, where flowers are pollinated and

growth is rapid. Plath writes that this walk is “ceremonious,” a word choice that feels dry and sardonic in lieu of

genuine. The connotation of this word is generated by both the over-inflated language used to describe a simple

springtime stroll and the events of the stanzas that follow. Clearly, the figure of the poem is meant to be

grateful for this moment with her “latest suitor,” verbiage which implies she has had a string of men before him –

she has garnered experience, she is not naïve. These lines combined assert that the woman in the poem is

trying her best to conform to the feminine role; she attempts to find a lasting mate, goes on obedient, polite

strolls, and does not underestimate the importance of romantic ventures. Yet, suddenly, something within the

woman tugs at her, and she is “intolerably struck,” unable to continue this ruse. She finds normally pleasant sounds

irritable as the bird calls become “irregular babel” and the soft leaves on the ground feels messy, out-of-place.

The reference to
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“leaves” also serves as a pun on leaving, departing from the expectations of domesticity. The language of

leaving and, in contrast, of being rooted is one that Plath employs throughout her body of work – it can be seen

again, later in this argument, in the analysis of “Elm”. Plath goes on:

By this tumult afflicted, she

Observed her lover’s gestures unbalance the air, His gait stray uneven

Through a rank wilderness of fern and flower. She judged petals in disarray,

The whole season, sloven. (Plath, “Spinster” 7-12)

After shaking off the haze of societal pressures, of the stress of what she should be doing as a woman of the era,

the woman is suddenly distressed by that which is around her. It is tumultuous, even her lover marked by

“unbalance”. The woman finds a sort of vulgarity in the natural world, “fern and flower” feeling somehow

“rank”. Plath links this abrupt repulsion at an organic display of blossoming foliage to the woman’s internalized

disgust at her social status and that which is expected of her, that marriage is the natural progression of a

woman’s life. It also feels incredibly invasive. As critic Jeannine Dobbs writes, “There is a violence in love that

threatens the spinster, that victimizes her” (Dobbs 15).

How she longer for winter then! – Scrupulously austere in its order Of white and black

Ice and rock, each sentiment within border, And heart’s frosty discipline

Exact as a snowflake. (Plath, “Spinster” 13-18)

It is for far more than seasonal woes that the poem’s speaker longs for winter. Women of the postwar era were

often dealt purely illusionary choices, their autonomy routinely threatened and questioned. For the woman,

winter offers some semblance of order and “discipline,” a regulation that is not imposed by masculinity but by the

“scrupulously austere” winter. While springtime gaiety (and the men she has associated with the season)

brings nothing but instability, winter feels oddly comforting in its severity. April is open, fertile, expecting –

but winter is closed off and forbidding.

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But here – a burgeoning

Unruly enough to pitch her five queenly wits Into vulgar motley –

A treason not to be borne. Let idiots Reel giddy in bedlam spring:

She withdrew neatly. (Plath, “Spinster” 19-24)

The distrust and fear of men that Plath generates in this poem speaks a great deal to the relationships between

men and women in the middle of the century. The negative diction that Plath employs in the poem does not

display a disdain for men, per se, but instead an anxiety that settling down with a man means sacrificing your

own sense of self. The woman of the poem fears her “queenly wits” are at stake should she succumb to the pressures

of monogamy and domesticity. There is a slight sense that the woman is ashamed as she refers to those who

succeed in the pursuit of passion as “idiots” – she feels as if there is a disconnect in her inability to simply do

what is expected of her.

And round her house she set

Such a barricade of barb and check Against mutinous weather

As no mere insurgent man could hope to break With curse, fist, threat

Or love, either.

(Plath, “Spinster” 26 -30)

The “queenly” nature of Plath’s speaker, mentioned in the previous stanza, is reinforced here as men are

“insurgent” and weather is “mutinous”. Plath’s “Spinster” is matriarchal, inverting the common narrative of

royalty that men are kingly, to be respected as leaders and authority figures. The language of royalty, which is used

again and again in Plath’s work, is also relevant in how it harkens back to the cultural expectations of women – to

raise men of high education and social graces, echoes of past eras that insisted women bear sons fit to take the

throne. In this stanza, Plath’s spinster finally falls into her titular role as she imprisons herself within her

home, finding a false sense of empowerment; though she may be safe from “mutinous weather” and

“insurgent” men, she has essentially imprisoned herself.

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Here lies Plath’s commentary on womanhood in her time period. In her estimation, a woman’s options were to

either conform and marry (and be shackled within the domestic sphere) or to pursue the single life (wherein you

are shackled within yourself and neglected by a disapproving culture). Though “Spinster” is a work that speaks

directly to this duality, critics lost in biography miss the point. One such critic, N.B. Masel, writes that the

woman within the poem is “insecure, unstable…a victim of a deep-rooted personal inadequacy” and that this

in some way “reveals the disturbed self of Sylvia Plath” (Masel 43-44). This fascination with Plath’s temperament

and mental illness is so consuming that it clouds the intention of her work, which serves as a deft cultural

criticism.

Contemporary reviews of Colossus seemed preoccupied with Plath’s refusal to choose a theme, style, or even a

particular voice. The text houses varied works with no real cohesion, Plath still trying to balance her level of

education with her desire to make each poem accessible. It was experimentation with different tones and voices –

but reviews from critics, nearly entirely male, saw it as sophomoric, lacking in some way. These remarks are biased

in tone and word choice and verge on condescending with qualifying remarks regarding Plath’s gender. One such

review came from Al Alveraz in a December 1960 issue of The Observer: “She is not of course, unwaveringly

good. At times her feeling weakens, the language goes off on its own and she lands in blaring rhetoric. At other

times, she hovers close to the whimsy of fairy stories,” being sure to differentiate Plath as a “poet” rather than a

“poetess” marked by “deliciousness, gentility, supersentitivity” (Alveraz). The careful attention Alveraz takes

to remove Plath from her female peers, to masculinize her, is negated by his over- qualification. His assertion

that Plath was not matured as a writer and that she “had not developed a consistent voice” neglects to

acknowledge that this lack of cohesion was Plath’s intention (Wagner- Martin 180). As an individual who

frequently combatted binaries and rigid singularities, Sylvia Plath did not value a uniform style – her work in

Colossus varies in tone and topic, from nature-reads on sows to incisive takes like “Spinster”. It was only in

Plath’s poetry that she was finally free to escape that which confined her and allowed her to critique the culture

she was immersed in.

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“Two Sisters of Persephone”

Another of Plath’s poems that acutely deconstructs the postwar era’s subjugation of women is “Two Sisters of

Persephone”. Though not included in Colossus, “Persephone” was featured in an issue of Poetry and was later

culled for a collection posthumously. Like “Spinster,” this work operates largely on the dichotomy between

women who followed the route of matrimony and motherhood and those who attempted (futilely) to escape. It

opens:

Two girls there are: within the house One sits; the other, without.

Daylong a duet of shade and light Plays between these.

(Plath, “Two Sisters of Persephone” 1-4)

Despite the title of the poem, this first stanza suggests that it is not two sisters but one singular woman that

Plath writes of, struggling with two conflicting identities. As there are “two girls” within one “house,” the figure of

the poem acts as a sort of split-psyche that flits between the options presented to American women. As she “plays

between these” notions, an important thread is established between this work, “Spinster,” and throughout Plath’s

canon – that is, the desire to be everything, to avoid all binaries, to escape the confines of femininity and exist in

total liberation.

In her dark wainscoted room The first works problems on A mathematical machine.

Dry ticks mark time

As she calculates each sum. At this barren enterprise

Rat-shrewd go her squint eyes, Root-pale her meager frame.

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(Plath, “Two Sisters of Persephone” 5-12)

The first identity Plath uncovers is a single woman who, unlike the embittered and frightening woman of

“Spinster”, finds herself unmarried and undomesticated due to her interests. The figure is calculating, focused on

a “mathematical machine” in lieu of a partner or romantic prospect. She is the model of academia that those who

challenged women’s colleges scorned – she is undesirable and unfeminine. Plath’s description of this woman as

“rat-shrewd,” “root-pale,” and “meager” do not necessarily mean that she is literally physically unattractive. Rather,

these ugly descriptors are ascribed, Plath’s cultural commentary coming into play as she incorporates society’s

perception of such a resistor. The language of “dry”-ness and the woman’s “barren-enterprise” underscore her

failure as a woman, her choice to pursue scholarly work being a hindrance to both finding a mate and bearing

children.

Bronzed as earth, the second lies, Hearing ticks blown gold

Like pollen on bright air. Lulled Near a bed of poppies,

She sees how their red silk flare Of petaled blood

Burns open to the sun's blade.

On that green altar

(Plath, “Two Sisters of Persephone” 13-20)

Whereas the mathematically-focused sister (or persona/interest, if we are to follow the singular subject

proposition) is “pale,” her environment cold, dead, empty, and childless, the second sister is “bronzed as earth”.

She is representative of the ideal postwar woman, a natural, fertile, beautiful creature ripe for masculine

consumption. The woman is at once deified and sexualized: the “red silk flare” of the poppies extends an allusion

to deflowering, the loss of virginity marked by “petaled blood,” being pried open by the sun’s phallic “blade”. The

“altar” of grass keeps the sexual imagery reined in and culturally condoned, an indication that this is marital

consummation. At the
 24

same time, this calls to mind the language of ritual sacrifices, as if the second sister is a offering for American

convention.

Freely become sun's bride, the latter Grows quick with seed.

Grass-couched in her labor's pride, She bears a king. Turned bitter

And sallow as any lemon,

The other, wry virgin to the last, Goes graveward with flesh laid waste, Worm-husbanded, yet no woman;

(Plath, “Two Sisters of Persephone” 21-28)

Like the flowers, the second sister is now torn up. This provides Plath’s incisive critique of her era’s insistence that

motherhood was something pleasant, ideal, natural, and imperative; the second sister is not aglow in maternal

bliss but suffering and exhausted. When she becomes pregnant and gives birth, the woman seems to lose her

otherworldly etherealness and turn “bitter” and “sallow”. Her bearing of a “king” and consequential discontent is

akin to how many housewives of the fifties felt; they were expected to raise kings, children bound for academic

and social greatness, while sacrificing these opportunities in their own lives. (Note the difference in

“Persephone” as opposed to “Spinster”: once married, Plath’s poems assert, the freedom to be “queenly”, in

control, is sacrificed for the pursuit of a “king”.) The first sister, meanwhile, remains entirely pure, a “wry virgin to

the last”. Here, Plath again highlights the paradoxical role of American women, to be simultaneously virtuous and

an object of sexual desire. Nevertheless, without a man’s touch, she “goes graveyard with flesh laid waste,” her

body now only penetrated by the beings that prey on her corpse. The verbiage of “worm-husbanded” in particular

delivers a morbidly intimate blow, as if the woman’s sexual form was squandered all her all life only to be entered

and explored by scavengers.

Inscribed above her head, these lines: While flowering, ladies, scant love not Lest all your fruit

Be but this black outcrop of stones.

(Plath, “Two Sisters of Persephone” 29-32)

With the concluding stanza of her poem, Plath delivers a final blow that underscores her criticism of postwar

culture. These concluding lines offer a damning notice to women; as with the fate of the two sisters, no matter
 25

what a woman of the era does (whether she remains a virginal spinster focused on a trade or follows the norm

and embraces domesticity), she is damned. The tomb inscription of the first sister reflects her regret; she did

not fulfill what she felt was her feminine duty and let her “fruit” go to waste, avoiding impurity but also missing

out on fulfilling her duty as a woman. Meanwhile, as explored in the previous two stanzas, the second sister has all

of the fulfillment and joy drained out of her as she is harvested for marriage and child-rearing. Plath’s assessment

of postwar womanhood as being either a death-sentence or a series of regrets is apparent here, a contribution to

her running commentary on the difficulty to find identity in rigid binaries.

In response, Plath’s poetry resists binaries. The drive behind her work is a desire to pursue a plural identity, a

disavowal of strict gender roles. While that which restrained women, including Plath herself, was both culturally

imposed and self-perpetuated, she postures that these conventional notions of femininity and masculinity are

incredibly damaging to women. The notion that women must choose between a life of sterile work and academia

or a life of being bound to the house as a wife and mother ruled the fifties. Al Alveraz, the same critic who

covered 1960’s The Colossus in The Observer, remarked that upon meeting Plath, he viewed her as a wife and

mother, her identity as a writer scrubbed away. Of the encounter, he states that upon learning of his lapse, he

called her poems “lovely” because “What else do you say to a bright young housewife?” (Wagner-Martin 176).

Chauvinistic comments like these were far from uncommon. Men of the fifties, particularly male writers, were

afforded with privacy, space, and time to write. Their critics took them seriously. For Plath and other female poets

of the fifties and sixties, it often felt like a battle between motherhood and artistic freedom, female confinement

and total liberation; this is exactly the type of binary that Plath’s poetry resists and rejects. The microcosm of the

arts community mirrored American life in this way and it is a critical tension that Plath explores in her work.

The women of her poems oscillate between whether or not they will succumb to the model of marriage and

motherhood deemed most acceptable. Much like American women coping with the realities of the “problem that

has no name,” these poems reflect internalized debates – would starting a family or settling down quell the feeling

of stagnation and subordination or simply exacerbate it?

Plath’s nuanced rhetoric and marked skill was something male reviews harped on – Bernard Bergonzi of the

Manchester Guardian wrote that Plath differentiated herself from female contemporaries as she defied the “rule”

that “the work of women poets is marked by intensity of feeling and fineness of perception rather than by
 26

outstanding technical accomplishment (Bergonzi). This review, sexist and reductive, discredits female poets,

underestimates Plath as a writer, and completely ignores the intimate, attached intensity of feeling that is the

undercurrent of every work. Despite Bergonzi and other critics attempting to detach Plath from her gender,

womanhood is essential to her poetry, the misogyny she faced her fodder. Plath was keenly aware of the sharper

lens of critique that would be applied to her work due to her gender, yet reviews like this no doubt reinforced

the perceived dichotomy between artistry and womanhood. “Two Sister of Persephone” is an especially effective

response to these sexist reactions to her simultaneous finely-honed skillset and her identity as a midcentury

American woman; Plath’s use of two female figures, the blurring and repetition of “she,” the two identities

simultaneously held in tension and made indistinguishable, allows the poem to generate a universal female subject.

Certainly, the poem serves as an example of cultural criticism as it takes one woman and segments her into a model

of idyllic womanhood and a model of pure individualism, putting these two halves in tension – the very same

tension that Plath and thousands of other housewives faced, the internalized longing for an escape from such

either-or mentalities. The ultimate inability for either of Plath’s female identities to find satisfaction or fulfillment is

indicative of Friedan’s “problem that has no name,” the malaise and emptiness nearly palpable. It is evident then, in

this reading of Plath’s poetry, that her work serves as an incisive response to the world she inhabits.

“Elm”

Not all of Plath’s poems were straightforward with their intention; she often employed elements of nature to

cultivate a rich exploration of female discontent. The speaker in her 1960 work “Elm” is a personified tree, the

language largely incorporating celestial and natural imagery. Nevertheless, the undercurrent of feminine

dissatisfaction and discontent is still quite evident.

Contrary to Bernard Bergonzi’s bigoted remarks, Plath plays with “intensity of feeling” in this poem while also

employing a great deal of technical finesse, challenging the notion that women are subpar poets capable only of

recording the day-to-day in lieu of angry, spirited creators compelled to write revolutionary works (Bergonzi).

The poem begins:

I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root:

It is what you fear.

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I do not fear it: I have been there. (Plath, “Elm” 1-3)

Plath begins with the titular elm tree as speaker. The elm has been gendered female (“she says”) and she directly

addresses the main narrative figure of the poem. Note that the tree does not address the surface-level aspects of

her being – the trunk, branches, and leaves – that sprout above the ground. Rather, she assures the listener that

there is a darkness, a “bottom”, the resides below the superficial, beyond what is visible to passerby. In

incorporating this conversation, Plath hints at a commentary that women are more than mere housewives, far

more than fair foliage for a man to incorporate into his life. There is a darkness to women, a collective darkness

that lurks beneath the surface, the “feminine mystique” that lies shadowy and immovable. The nature of roots, of

the tree physically being grounded permanently to a given spot, also speaks to the “fear” that the elm

recognizers in the listener. These lines reflect both the emptiness and dissatisfaction mid-century women hid below

idyllic roles as housewives and nurturers and the desire for freedom from being tied down or restrained by gender

roles.

Is it the sea you hear in me, Its dissatisfactions?

Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness? (Plath, “Elm” 4-6)

The tree goes on to mention the audible “sea” that the listener may hear inside of her. The mention of the sea

being within oneself mirrors the poetic notion of women being tidal creatures, their fertility cycles linked to the

ebb and flow of tides. This language not only reinforces the tree’s gender but introduces the topic of childrearing

and sexuality. The sea is also representative of freedom, an untethered and boundless force, but in the case of

the elm, the sea is locked inside, signalizing a “dissatisfying” containment of a desire that is unattainable. This

sensation is akin to the feeling women in the fifties had when they were forced to swallow their desires and

passions and instead serve as some symbol of static stability. The “voice of nothing” and “madness” mentioned is

a nod to “housewives’ syndrome” and the growing mental decay of American women; the tree rhetorically asks

the listener if what she hears is the elm’s locked-away dissatisfactions or her own.

Love is a shadow.
 28

How you lie and cry after it

Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.

All night I shall gallop thus, impetuously,

Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf, Echoing, echoing.

(Plath, “Elm” 7-12)

It seems the elm tree is speaking to a young woman, still coming to terms with her identity in postwar culture while

considering the longevity of youthful optimism. The elm, however, quickly dashes any thoughts of romance or

fulfilling heterosexuality. She asserts that, for love itself, there are only two socially acceptable methods for a

woman to find such a connection: “cry,” to be the hyperemotional, weepy figure of femininity, or to “lie,” to be

sexually submissive and allow a man to take her. Nevertheless, a part of her asserts that she will remain true to her

desires and “gallop thus, impetuously”. There is a tension here that suggests a frustration with confinement and

that when hidden, such as in the cover of “night,” there is a desperate desire for the rash and impulsive. The

chase will be a fruitless one, however, and all women will nevertheless arrive at their deathbeds (“head is a stone,

pillow is a little turf”) before they find satisfaction.

Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons? This is rain now, this big hush.

And this is the fruit of it: tin-white, like arsenic.

I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets. Scorched to the root

My red filaments burn and stand, a hand of wires.

Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs. A wind of such violence

Will tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek. (Plath, “Elm” 13-21)

The fire line of the fifth stanza raises a question (“Shall I bring you the sound of poisons?”), which serves as some

articulation of desire. This is key as desire is something that women of the postwar era as meant to be avoid–

they are meant to be satisfied, content, to ask for nothing.

 29

This line is particularly bleak as it mentions something toxic as a desire, death perhaps the only form of relief from

such rigid standards. As the poem progresses, the tone feels more wrenching and desperate; this tone is crafted

by the sudden shift of the weather, nature turning violent. Now, the elm warns the listener of the dangers that

may belie her in her femininity. As Plath manipulated springtime in “Spinster,” so she manipulates the rain, usually

a symbol of life and purity, turned toxic. A “big hush,” the downpour brings not beautiful life but wretched “tin-

white” offspring that are incredibly deadly.

As with women facing postpartum depressive and psychotic episodes, the earth laments her botanic children, which

are described as corruptive and poisonous. The tree goes out to express what she has suffered – the “atrocity” of

sunsets, something beautiful likened to a destructive fire, a wind of “violence” that shatters her limbs. Plath’s

incorporation of violence and death dismantles norms of gentle womanhood and shatters the inadequate binary

models of femininity (poet v. woman, mother v. artist, virgin v. whore) that the postwar era presented. Though the

domestic model of the postwar era promised a bright future, “Elm” promises that rooting women to one spot

will bring only poison, fire, and violent winds. Additionally, this is another skillful cultural critique by Plath as

she comments that that which is often described as natural or proper (such as the domestic model) holds

dangerous implications for those living within their confines. Suffering, the tree “must shriek,” the “must”

indicating this is not an active choice but an act of self-preservation. The elm becomes brash and restless,

demanding her voice be heard. The “bystanding” that will no longer be tolerated is evidence of a society that

seemed largely unconcerned with the woes or wants of women. In response, the tree shrieks in despair, longing

for her anguish to be acknowledged and refusing to be silenced.

The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me Cruelly, being barren.

Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her.

I let her go. I let her go

Diminished and flat, as after radical surgery. How your bad dreams possess and endow me. (Plath, “Elm” 22-27)
 30

The reference to the moon is also feminized (“she would drag”). Foremost, the moon reflects a gravitational

force, natural and beyond external control. This reflects what Plath first incorporated with lines regarding the

tides, reflecting the cyclical nature of menstruation and fertility. The notion that the moon is “dragging” the

female figure of the poem suggests that the demands of twentieth-century womanhood are relentless and that

the women are not consenting to the roles they are being forced into. In Plath’s writing, the female form often

seems a prison and this is no different – women are chained and dragged to notions of motherhood based

solely on biological realities. Yet the language of the moon being “barren” is jarring. It echoes the linkage

between womanhood and motherhood, the inability to conceive a feminine failure. It also generates a tension that

personifies the moon as “merciless,” a scornfulness that is perhaps brought on by her envy of the fertile elm.

The start of the ninth stanza adds a frantic cadence with the repetition of “I let her go. I let her go”. The

language of “diminished and flat…radical surgery” is masterful turn of phrase that holds two significant

meanings. One, the tree finds herself “diminished and flat” in terms of temperament after seeking “radical

surgery” (i.e.; a lobotomy) in order to quell her anxieties and desires. Secondly, the language used is a tongue-in-

cheek reference to the female body, “radical surgery” referring to a mastectomy, the “diminished and flat”

verbiage quite literal.

I am inhabited by a cry.

Nightly it flaps out

Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me;

All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity. (Plath, “Elm” 28-33)

It is within these few lines that Plath tackles feminine ennui directly. By the default of her womanhood, she is

intertwined, “inhabited” by a cry, a wail that begs for something more, a desperation that she cannot come to

terms with. (The language of “inhabited” is also a play on the notion of pregnancy, as though the tree is barren,

she still carries tears of longing within her). The elm is looking to fill a void or vacancy, left by a lack of mobility

and autonomy, with “something to love.”

 31

The darkness within her is dormant and heavy, a lingering, all-consuming despondency for which there is no

known cure or resolution – the problem that has no name. In the face of stagnation and the absence of an

alternative, the speaker has become accustomed to the malignant creature’s presence but is unable to assuage the

agitations that come along with “its soft, feathery turnings”. This softness, often equated with antiquated ideals of

femininity, feels suffocating and violent for the speaker.

Clouds pass and disperse.

Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables? Is it for such I agitate my heart?

I am incapable of more knowledge. What is this, this face

So murderous in its strangle of branches?——

Its snaky acids hiss.

It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults That kill, that kill, that kill.

(Plath, “Elm” 33-42)

The elm recognizes that there is something missing in her life but searches for what it possibly could be, finally

deeming them “irretrievables”. This sensation mimics that of postwar women who were unable to discern what

exactly they were longing for, especially when they had everything – a husband, a house, children – that was

culturally mandated. The elm, women, and Plath herself were all “incapable of more knowledge” in that this

feeling, the “problem that had no name,” was not something that had readily accessible language to describe and

was not a topic that yielded research or understanding. As the poem concludes, the speaker comes to terms with

that which “petrifies the will,” the poisonous American culture slowly rendering her completely unchangeable,

stripping her of her autonomy. It is this concept of the will being petrified, of freedom of choice being stripped

away, that Plath equates with death.

 32

“Elm” is a work that feels contained, the titular tree a rooted symbol who cannot find escape or salvation due to

the life she is condemned to. Anne Sexton, a workshop classmate and confessional contemporary of Plath’s

time, commented that Plath’s work sometimes was “all in a cage (and not even her own cage at that). I felt she

hadn’t found a voice of her own, wasn’t, in truth, free to be herself” (Sexton 177). Sexton’s comments differ

from those of male reviewers as they acknowledge that some of the confinement or over-exertion exemplified in

Plath’s work was not an indication of shortcomings as a poet, but of internalized insecurities and patriarchal

expectations. That being said, the caginess of Plath’s work often feels intentional, as if part of her praxis involves a

closed-off sense of inescapability. Her inability to “find a voice” too was purposeful, with each different style

and subject exploring ideas and identities that were inaccessible to American women.

Within her poetry, Plath was trying desperately to define and unearth “the problem that has no name”. In

“Elm,” her subject represents American women as a whole, an immovable, rooted force that is discontented

and disdainful of its surroundings. Despite some critics attempting to link “Elm” with Plath’s own psychiatric

diagnosis, every sense of longing, malaise, and frustration evident in this work was also apparent in postwar

households.

“Ariel”

Written in 1962, “Ariel” is one of Plath’s best-known works. On the surface, the poem is quite literally about

the feeling of riding a horse. As most biographical critics would note, Plath had a horse named Ariel while living on

her family estate in the later years of her life (Wagner-Martin 220). The poem is far more than an equestrian

recollection, however. The speaker of “Ariel” is the vision of a liberated woman, an idealistic fever dream of

pure liberation.
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Stasis in darkness.

Then the substanceless blue Pour of tor and distances.

God's lioness, How one we grow,

Pivot of heels and knees!--The furrow

Splits and passes, sister to The brown arc

Of the neck I cannot catch (Plath, “Ariel” 1-9)

The poem opens with a stillness, a “stasis”, a disquieting lack of action that troubles the speaker of the poem.

There is a sense of shallowness as well, a “substanceless blue” sky that feels dull and empty. The speaker sits atop

her horse and suddenly kicks off, the surroundings a “pour of tor and distances” as everything begins to meld

together with her increasing speed; the language generates a malleability, as if the land has become fluid. This fast-

paced movement frees her in some way, the bestial motions of her horse inspiring her own escape. Referring to

the horse as “God’s lioness,” Plath crafts a kinship between the female horse and the female speaker, as if the

speaker envies the horse’s freedom from cultural convention. “God’s lioness” is also a reference to the

translation of the Hebrew “Ariel,” – God’s lion – which is used as a symbolic name for Jerusalem and a moniker

for sacrificial alters (Frymer). This religious reference is both obvious (towards the name of the horse) and more

nuanced. Plath’s use of feminized religious language crafts an aura of divinity, that the speaker of the poem is

beyond earthly censure or restrictions. The enjambment Plath employs in her stanzas crafts a cadence that

mimics the rollicking gallop of a speeding horse, giving the poem an accelerated feel. The speaker states that

though she is a “sister” to the creature, she “cannot catch” up to its pace. There is a sense of longing created in

these words, signifying that the speaker wants the same kind of freedom and swiftness that her horse maintains.

Nigger-eye Berries cast dark Hooks----

Black sweet blood mouthfuls, Shadows.

Something else

Hauls me through air----

Thighs, hair;
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Flakes from my heels. (Plath, “Ariel” 10-18)

It is first necessary to address Plath’s use of a racial slur, which will henceforth not be reiterated in this text.

Her use of “eye” is a play on words, at once describing the shape and structure of blackberries and a reflexive

personal pronoun “I”. Throughout her body of work, Plath often falls into patterns of racism, anti-Semitism (as

will be explored in the later analysis of “Daddy”), and classism. In order to attempt to express her discontent and

feelings of subjugation, Plath compares herself to historically oppressed groups. This approach is deeply flawed

and shows the poet’s own biases and bigotry. Plath was so focused on gender and her own lived experience as a

white middle- class woman that she felt free to use such derogatory language. This serves as a signpost of Plath’s

time, however; even the feminist movements that Plath’s work anticipates were far from intersectional. In

considering the personal as political and the combination of both as poetic, Plath’s blind-spot is offensive and

inexcusable but the work still serves as her own analysis of the feminine mystique (even as it serves only the

struggles of her own demographic).

Moving on, though the speaker initially describes the union of herself and her horse as “God’s lioness,” it is

evident that her feeling of invincibility is only temporary. The “dark hooks” of blackberries snag the speaker,

pulling her out of her reverie. Following several stanzas marked by a swift launch into fluidity, the rapid and

unstoppable rhythm of a horse, the poem is cut swiftly by “hooks”. This can be connected to the “hooks” of

social convention, of family life, of past traumas, holding a woman back from liberation. The “shadows” and

“blood” that plague Plath’s ride feel like ghostly figures, images that stop her in her tracks similar to the

“hooks”. Momentarily, the poem stops with definitive punctuation after “shadows,” as if to call to mind the

woman’s sense of liberation again being halted. When she remembers that which awaits her once she dismounts

her horse, the routines of drab daily domestic life, she doubles down and throws herself into her ride.

Now, the horse begins to speed up. There is a sexual, sensual energy to Plath’s descriptors of “thighs, hair,” her

speaker’s heels upturned. Symbolically, even the mere the act of riding a horse is something rhythmically sexual.

The “flakes” that fall away may be the restraints of conformity crumbling and decaying, leaving only pure

feminine power behind.

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White

Godiva, I unpeel----

Dead hands, dead stringencies.

And now I

Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas. The child's cry

Melts in the wall. (Plath, “Ariel” 19-25)

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Chapter 3

Lady Godiva of Mercia

Plath’s mention of “White Godiva,” an allusion to Lady Godiva of Mercia, is an extremely incisive critical move.

Godiva was the wife of the Earl of Mercia who became a legendary figure when, exasperated at her husband’s ever-

increasing taxes, protested by stripping nude and riding a horse through the marketplace (“Godiva (c. 1040–

1080)”). She became a cultural symbol of sensuality, power, and resistance. It was also rumored that the men

who dared look upon Godiva during her act of rebellion were either blinded or struck dead. Plath’s use of such a

symbol of defiant female sexuality underscores a feminist reading of her work. As she continues, the speaker

“unpeels,” an act of disrobing from affronts and “dead stringencies,” casting all rules aside. Finally free, the

woman in the poem no longer feels the responsibilities or burdensome pressures of her daily existence. Her

“child’s cry melts in the wall,” unheard and unimportant. Without these sonic reminders of motherly chores, the

woman is liberated.

And I

Am the arrow,

The dew that flies,

Suicidal, at one with the drive Into the red

Eye, the cauldron of morning. (Plath, “Ariel” 26-31)

After abandoning her role as a mere housewife, the woman becomes “the arrow, the dew that flies”. The arrow

stands in sharp contrast to that which acts as a symbol of motherhood and femininity. It is a phallic symbol,

masculine and full of power, speed, violence, and flight. This is not the sole time Plath used the symbol of an arrow

to discuss notions of masculinity and femininity. In her only full-length prose work, The Bell Jar, Plath discusses

the notion that a “man is an arrow into the future, and…a woman is the place the arrow shoots off from” (Plath,

The Bell Jar 72). Her protagonist Esther Greenwood, a model for the “problem that has no name,” responds to

this consideration: “That’s one of the reasons I never wanted to get married. The last thing I wanted was infinite
 37

security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all

directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket” (Plath, The Bell Jar 83). In Plath’s work,

the arrow is consistently used as a stand-in for the power and assertive decisiveness of masculinity. In the tenth

stanza of “Ariel,” the speaker embraces this, refusing to adhere to the roles that have been imposed on her, even

if it is merely for a brief ride. Though biographical critics may assert that the verbiage of “suicidal” is ominous or

telling considering the poem was penned only a year before Plath took her own life, this is an erroneous and

limiting reading of the text. “Suicidal” modifies “dew that flies,” only moments before Plath talks of the rising

of the “red” sun. As the speaker’s ride began just before dawn, this language implies that with the rising of the sun

and the coming of the day’s daily chores, her moments of gleeful liberation will soon be cut short. Indeed, Plath

ends her poem on a domestic note, the “cauldron of morning” bringing to mind the preparation of food.

Though the woman of “Ariel” appears entirely different from the “Spinster,” the “Sisters,” or the “Elm,” she is an

indication of what possibilities lie just beyond the grasp of the domestic. In the natural world, without any other

human to impose ideas, regulations, or restrictions on her, the woman thrives, free from that which restrains her.

Critic Susan R. Van Dyne writes that the woman is a “daring exhibitionist,” elaborating: Self-engendered and

self-delighting, these heroines appropriate male potency as their own. They frequently trespass on male

prerogatives; they are violent in their self-assertion and unrestricted in their liberty. By contrast, the male figures

who appear in these poems are mute, shrunken, disfigured, immobilized or dead. (Van Dyne 101).

Certainly, if there is a male figure in “Ariel”, Plath deems him so unimportant that he is never heard from. In

“Elm,” masculine forces are a danger to the natural world, entirely gendered female. In “Sisters,” men are

something that bring angst and dissatisfaction to a woman’s life; the suitor of “Spinster” seems intent only on

causing disarray and chaos. By contrast, Plath’s women are not only sympathetic but dynamic. They struggle and

they suffer but as “Ariel” demonstrates, they also thrive and embrace roles of power. Though the dead-end life of

domesticity still beckons the speaker back at the conclusion of the poem, for ten stanzas she is freed from the

shackles of patriarchy. As Van Dyne suggests, she is acting not as a model of postwar femininity but of

masculinity, seeking what she desires unabashedly and without censure.

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The absence of a male figure to put her in her place allows the speaker of the poem to feel whole, liberated. This

choice by Plath is deliberate, a reminder of her intentions as a poet of discontent.

“Daddy”

Van Dyne neglected to recognize that men in the work of Plath could also be incredibly cruel and policing.

Such is the case in her prolific 1962 work “Daddy,” a poem essentially synonymous with Plath’s career. The

work is hotly discussed amongst critics, most of whom assert that this work is either a reflection on growing up

under the thumb of Otto Plath or an assessment of Plath’s tumultuous marriage to fellow poet Ted Hughes. In

1976, author Edward Butscher discussed this tension in his new release, the first full length biography of Sylvia

Plath, published less than a decade after her death by suicide. His biography was poorly researched and largely

based on conjecture and antiquated analyses. As a result, Butscher dismissed “Daddy” as a “Freudian exercise”

(Butscher). His analysis of the work as an expression of Plath’s Electra complex is at once reductive and

misogynistic. This kind of critique does a disservice to Plath’s work and acts as a masculine write-off of feminine

discontent. Yet “Daddy” is not, as Butscher asserts, a work indicative of Plath’s psychosexual father-daughter

longings, but a piece that speaks most viscerally of the relationship between American men and women.

As with “Ariel,” it is important to address the language and imagery that Plath incorporates in “Daddy”. She

employs references to concentration camps, the genocide of Jewish communities during the Holocaust, and Nazi

symbolism such as swastikas. These allusions are horribly anti- Semitic and blatantly offensive. They are deeply

problematic and nowhere in the body of this text will these claims or references be defended. Plath’s attempts

throughout “Daddy” to liken the subjugation of women to the systematic extermination of Jewish families during

the second World War is both a historical signpost and a reminder of the poet’s privilege. With the benefit of

hindsight, it is abundantly clear that this kind of language is reprehensible. For Plath, however, a poet writing

works that reflected only on her own plight – that is, the damaging implications of the 1950s American domestic

model on (primarily white, suburban, middle-class) women – these choices were less malicious and moreso

ignorant. In reading the following passages with the betterment of modernity, these objectionable choices will be

read for their commentary on women without indulging that which is bigoted.
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You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe

In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. (Plath,

“Daddy” 1-5)

The work begins with a play between themes of patriarchy and petulance, the latter of which Plath often equated

with femininity, internalized misogyny linking childish demands and desires to something inherently feminine and

inherently undesirable. The first stanza opens with a series of commands (“You do not do, you do not do”) which

sound like a repetitive chiding from an unseen patriarchal figure. This cultivates a sing-song kind of cadence that

feels mockingly regressive. Plath is clearly attempting to thumb her nose at the culture she resides in, one that

constantly insists she behave, fall in line. The “black shoe” Plath mentions is a looming phallic figure, one that

she is forced to reside in in less-than-ideal conditions. This speaks to the reality of postwar women living in the

fifties, living under the foot of man, being cautious not to make a scene. The fear Plath’s speaker articulates, in

which she barely dares to “breathe or Achoo” is informed by a fear of maligning social convention, Plath

echoing the sentiments of a woman who, to borrow a chauvinistic turn of phrase, knows her place.

Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time-- Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with

one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off beautiful Nauset.

I used to pray to recover you. Ach, du.

(Plath, “Daddy” 6-15)

While the next line, “Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time,” may appear entirely biographical

(Plath’s terse, stern father died when she was an adolescent), there is another layer to this expression that feels

universal. The voice in Plath’s poem knows that undercutting (or “killing”) a male head of power will grant her

some sort of peace, liberty, or comfort; but even that agency is taken from her, as the man dies without her

influence. Plath writes that the masculine symbol in this poem is “marble-heavy, a bag full of God,” insinuating

that men are cold, distant, and altogether too powerful, wielding their gender as if it made them deities. The talk

of a “Ghastly statue” whose head resides in the “freakish Atlantic” also calls to mind a poem in Plath’s earlier
 40

collection – “The Colossus”. Plath constantly uses the symbols of stones and rocks throughout her work. These

references cultivate a sense of stoicism and rigidity, cold symbols reflecting what felt like an unchangeable era.

Additionally, this harkening back to her original work, which was about admiring and tending to a crumbling statue

of a man, shows progression in Plath’s critical poetry; that is, the tone shifts from a tender woman, broken and

resolved to continue her day-in-day out caretaking, to that of a vengeful, frustrated figure who carries disdain

for the statue and all he represents.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town Scraped flat by the roller

Of wars, wars, wars.

But the name of the town is common. My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two. So I never could tell where you Put your foot, your root.

I never could talk to you. The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare. Ich, ich, ich, ich.

I could hardly speak.

I thought every German was you. And the language obscene,

An engine, an engine Chuffing me off like a Jew,

A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began to talk like a Jew.

I think I may well be a Jew. (Plath, “Daddy” 16-35)

From here, the poem takes a more abstracted turn, comparing the reign of patriarchy to the rise of fascism and

the brutality of war. Plath’s visceral imagery of a tongue “stuck in a barb wire snare” (a clear, and brutally

offensive, reference to a concentration camp) is the sort of shocking, raw-nerve comparison Plath used to break

boundaries and demand her reader’s attention. As stated previously in this analysis, Plath’s language here is a

historical signpost that underscores her own biases and privileges;

 41

she was a white woman writing in reaction to the suffering of white women, so focused on gender that issues of

religion, race, and historical sensitivities fell to the wayside. While it is difficult, disturbing, and, with the benefit of

modernity, enormously derogatory, this rhetoric is important.

By representing the titular masculine figure of the poem as a Nazi – a cold, cruel, bigoted, heartless, calculating

fascist – Plath is able to convey the level of power and violence that a male- dominated culture yields.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna, Are not very pure or true.

With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack

I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you.

With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. And your neat mustache

And your Aryan eye, bright blue. Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You--

Not God but a swastika

So black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist,

The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you. (Plath, “Daddy” 36-50)

The speaker’s assertion that she is a “bit of a Jew” with “gipsy ancestress” resonates as if she is attempting to find a

tangible reason why man is to be feared; likening mid-century America to the holocaust feels rational to her in this

respect. There is a tangible anxiety in these lines, the fear of the male figure coming across in each line – the

woman feels hunted and threatened by men. Just as Plath spoke of man as something “marble-heavy” in

previous stanzas, he is now described as “Panzer-man,” a figure that is at once unable to connect and completely

indestructible. This is also an additional to Plath’s thematic structure: “Panzer” is the German word for “armor,”

a name later given to the armored tanks used by Nazis in World War II (“Panzer”).
 42

Thus, though the speaker previously spoke of his demise, it is clear that the “Daddy” of this poem represents

more than a singular man; he is representative of the patriarchal social system as a whole, something that can be

quelled but never completely destroyed. This overwhelming, overarching influence falls like a “swastika so black

no sky could squeak through,” any feeling of hope or thought of liberation seemingly dashed. Nevertheless, the

speaker maintains her acerbic wit and, in the end of the tenth stanza, cements her message that masculine-

dominated social structures are a universal detriment with a final blow. “Every woman adores a Fascist” is a line

fueled by sarcastic rage. The notion of men as domestic “fascists” that women are meant to fawn over, “adore”

was one that dominated postwar cultural conversation. Women were meant to be quaint, subservient, controlled –

men were meant to make the rules and enforce them. Here, in her mocking singsong, Plath rejects that notion,

using violence (“boot in the face”) to reinforce the culturally enforced submission of women. The repetition of the

“B” sounds in “boot” and “brute” sound like furious stomping or contemptuous spitting. It is evident that

Plath’s speaker, a stand-in for women of the postwar era, is frustrated and ready for resistance by any means

necessary; thusly, these lines are a clear indicator of the budding sexual revolution.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy, In the picture I have of you,

A cleft in your chin instead of your foot, But no less a devil for that, no not

Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.

I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die

And get back, back, back to you.

I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue. And then I knew what to do.

I made a model of you,

A man in black with a Meinkampf look

 43

And a love of the rack and the screw. And I said I do, I do.

(Plath, “Daddy” 51-67)

Plath continues to flesh out the image of this overarching masculine figure by continuously describing him in

shades of darkness: he stands at the “blackboard,” he is “the black man,” “a man in black,” something void and

sinister. She underscores this by describing him as a devil-like figure who preyed on the innocent, attractive “pretty

red heart” of the speaker. This has a duel meaning, as it can point towards the loss of zeal and enthusiasm for

life that many women in the postwar era succumbed to or a sexual conquest, perhaps the loss of virginity or

innocence. The speaker initially “tried to die” in retaliation of the wrongs that the man has done, but in realizing

“what to do,” she elects to live on in spite and to be his most vocal opponent. The poem hints at the violence

and inequity apparent in the American domestic sphere as well. At the opening of the fourteenth stanza, Plath’s

speaker agrees to marry a dominant, restrictive husband with a “love of the rack and the screw”. This reference

reinforces the language of torture and domination, the “rack and screw” an antiquated punishment device that

pulled a victim’s limbs in opposite directions until they were left immobile. Plath’s choice of the rack and screw

in particular is telling, as it speaks to the stubbornness of the era and how it rendered women unable to resist

their bounds. As with Plath’s other poems, this leads to a fairly pessimistic conclusion about the nature of escape

from culture’s constrictions. The cycle seems to be self-perpetuating and inescapable, the subjugation of women

tainting every aspect of American life.

So daddy, I'm finally through.

The black telephone's off at the root, The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two-- The vampire who said he was you And drank my blood for a year,

Seven years, if you want to know. Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart And the villagers never liked you.

They are dancing and stamping on you.

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They always knew it was you.

Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through. (Plath, “Daddy” 68-80)

In the concluding stanzas of the poem, however, Plath differentiates “Daddy” from her other works by doubling

the stakes. While the speaker of the poem has indeed married yet another embodiment of misogyny, she is not

afraid to “kill” him as she did her father. Furious, unhinged, and ready to entirely let go of patriarchal

overtures, the speaker likens the male figure to a “vampire”. This speaks largely to the overwhelming sensation

of ennui and malaise that postwar housewives felt, as if their will to live was being slowly drained. Frustrated and

undone, the speaker writes that there is a “stake in your fat black heart,” a violent penetrative act

uncharacteristicly performed by a woman, a very literal, sexually-charged image of revenge. Additionally,

according to lore there is only one way to kill a vampire (the aforementioned stake through the heart); this

reinforces Plath’s language of desperation and futility, as there are limited options for escape and resistance.

Following this line, Plath gives a clear indication that this work is certainly not merely autobiography and is instead

a protest piece that viciously tears at the cultural climate. In lieu of the speaker working alone, she has a team of

“villagers” on her side who celebrate on the father’s grave. These individuals represent other women joining the

speaker, their shared victimhood and oppression bringing them together to cheer the demise of their cruelest

foe.

“Daddy” can be a rather difficult poem to avoid biographizing, as Plath’s father’s Germanic roots and cold

tendencies could easily be found within the text. However, Plath is not the only woman to incorporate the

language of fascism and the holocaust into her writings on gender, culture, and sexuality. Betty Friedan too

spoke to this in her analysis of progressive dehumanization. In The Feminine Mystique, Friedan actually referred to

the domestic sphere as “the comfortable concentration camp,” elaborating that:

 45

I am convinced there is something about the housewife state itself that is dangerous…In fact, there is an

uncanny, uncomfortable insight into why a woman can so easily lose her sense of self as a housewife in certain

psychological observations made of the behavior of prisoners in Nazi concentration camps…American housewives

are not on their way to the gas chamber. But they are in a trap and to escape they must…refuse to be nameless,

depersonalized, manipulated (Friedan 367, 371-372).

The use of such an analogy may be antiquated and discomforting but for the women of Plath and Freidan’s

time, it rang truthfully enough to incite resistance. While the benefit of modernity has provided more nuanced

conversations on sex and gender (without risking over-inflated comparisons tinged with charged language), what

these comparisons show is just how evident the all-consuming feeling of confinement for American women was.

Plath draws on this parallel in “Daddy” as it allows her to make a dramatic, gut-wrenching impact in an attempt

to assure her readers will get the message. Both the male figure of Plath’s poem and Friedan’s analysis of the era

serve as figureheads for a culture that routinely deprived women of success, vigor, and sexuality. Certainly, the

closed-in quarters of a cul-de-sac did little to improve the feeling of being confined. Thusly, Plath reached for the

ultimate historical frame of reference for internment and bigotry to convey the severity of the situation. In

“Daddy,” she resists the American domestic model as it served a patriarchal culture, urging for an escape from the

replication of a father-daughter dynamic in the relationships of husband and wife (hence the poem’s title and

childlike singsong elements). It is evident this poem is not a manifesto about a poet’s deceased father: it is a plea

for resistance from a woman who felt too restricted to fulfill that rebellious desire herself.
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Chapter 4

“The Applicant”

The final poem that this thesis will analyze is Plath’s “The Applicant,” which was written in 1962 and published

posthumously in 1965, two years after Plath’s death. The poem is one of the most straightforward works of

cultural criticism that Plath produced. A bitingly sarcastic commentary on the standards for American

housewives in the fifties, “The Applicant” skewers expectations of women while acknowledging the absurdity of

the domestic model. It begins:

First, are you our sort of a person? Do you wear

A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch, A brace or a hook,

Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch, (Plath, “The Applicant” 1-5)

From the very first line of the poem, Plath introduces the notion of social acceptability. The language used is one

of exclusivity, giving the reader the allusion that familiar cultural mandates, like a pinched waist or a picket fence,

will follow. Rather, Plath subverts this, listing a ragtag motley crew of attributes that would make one rather unfit.

The speaker looks for imperfections or artificialities, like a “glass eye, false teeth, or a crutch”. Interestingly, even

sexual organs are reduced to something manufactured (“rubber breasts or a rubber crotch”). This opening is

outlandish, poking fun at the physical requirements of desirability in the postwar era by turning them on their

head.

Stitches to show something's missing? No, no? Then How can we give you a thing?

Stop crying. Open your hand.

Empty? Empty. Here is a hand

To fill it and willing

To bring teacups and roll away headaches And do whatever you tell it.

Will you marry it?

(Plath, “The Applicant” 6-14)

 47

The speaker’s interest in “stitches to show something’s missing” has two meanings in Plath’s work. One, this could

perhaps allude to the biblical taking of Adam’s rib to create Eve. Secondly, such verbiage may point towards the

absence of a penis, “stitches” an innuendo for something inherently female. (The latter understanding of this line

reads as Plath’s sarcastic reaction to the theory of “penis envy,” the Freudian notion that women desire male

genitalia.) The poem’s speaker then insists that without something missing, there is nothing they can provide,

before quickly admonishing the applicant. The stern “stop crying” is Plath’s commentary on both the

erroneous synonymy between womanhood and the hyperemotional and a comment on toxic masculinity,

which asserts that men must be tough, aggressive. In an attempt to placate the party addressed in a very

maternal manner, the speaker offers something: “Here is a hand”. Detached from its body, the “hand” is a simple

stand-in, something incomplete and empty. More forwardly, the “hand” here represents a romantic suitor, a

prospect for marriage who will provide what the applicant desires, a pretty wife to “bring teacups and roll away

headaches and do whatever you tell it”. The wife in question is reduced to an “it,” an object with no autonomy,

something to be bought and sold and kept. The language of the wife’s submissiveness (“Do whatever you tell it”)

is at once ominous and matter-of-fact. Ultimately, it is the male applicant who will be entirely authoritative over the

day-to- day life of the bride-to-be.

It is guaranteed

To thumb shut your eyes at the end And dissolve of sorrow.

We make new stock from the salt. I notice you are stark naked.

How about this suit -

Black and stiff, but not a bad fit. Will you marry it?

It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof Against fire and bombs through the roof. Believe me, they'll bury you in it.

(Plath, “The Applicant” 15-25)

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The poem now grows increasingly dark. The speaker explains that “It is guaranteed to thumb shut your eyes at

the end and dissolve of sorrow”. In other terms, once the husband dies, the woman in question no longer serves

a purpose. She exists for the mere company and service of her husband and in his death, she becomes a consumed

widow who merely ceases (“dissolve”) to be.

Plath’s reference to the dissolved material as “salt” could serve a biblical allusion to Lot’s wife and the destruction

of Sodom and Gomorrah – despite being told not to look back at the city’s demolishment, Lot’s wife glances

behind her as they flee and is turned into a pillar of salt (Avi- Yonah). The motivations of Lot’s wife vary from

pure curiosity to motherly concern (some readings tell of Lot’s wife looking behind to see if her daughters are

safely following), but her actions are nevertheless disobedient. Plath uses this biblical reference to harken back to a

historical reference of female dissonance while warning of the possibility of destruction, disintegration; as in

“Persephone,” Plath asserts that women of the era are damned no matter their intentions nor matter of

resistance. (This reference to a historical dissonant is similar to Plath’s reference to the resistant Lady Godiva in

“Ariel”.) From the widow’s remnants, the speaker makes a new series of brides, insinuating that these women are

all empty, interchangeable. As the sale goes forward, the speaker insists that the applicant (who is “stark naked”)

put on a suit that is “waterproof, shatterproof, proof against fire and bombs through the roof”. This certainly

speaks to Cold War Era themes, the rhetoric underscoring the anxieties of the atomic era. Beyond that, however,

Plath is making a point about how the applicant donning a suit and going forward with marriage will ensure his

own security and social stability. This stanza exemplifies the attitudes of domestic confinement, as the model wife

is a symbol of safety and security.

Now your head, excuse me, is empty. I have the ticket for that.

Come here, sweetie, out of the closet. Well, what do you think of that?

Naked as paper to start

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But in twenty-five years she'll be silver, In fifty, gold.

A living doll, everywhere you look. It can sew, it can cook,

It can talk, talk, talk.

(Plath, “The Applicant” 26-35)

The speaker then sardonically demeans the man, commenting that his “head…is empty”. Plath’s choice here is

piercing, as it critiques men for upholding the masculine model. In lieu of thinking for himself, the applicant

has caved to social norms, for himself (as a typical, hardline husband) and for his future bride (as a submissive

housewife). Nevertheless, with a void, empty head, he is the perfect individual to impose postwar-era models of

domesticity on. The speaker beckons the applicant’s new acquisition from her hiding place, asking the man what

he thinks of “that…naked as paper to start”. That” refers to a woman, who is completely vulnerable, a sexual

object ready to be demeaned. Plath then cleverly uses traditional anniversary gifts as a way to explain the value of a

good wife: though she is flimsy paper now, she will learn her place and soon she will harden, she will be silver, she

will be gold, all in time. The woman in question is a commodity, a beauty that will enhance his own social currency.

A human doll, she will complete all the housewife’s duties; “It can sew, it can cook” and it can “talk, talk, talk”

though the applicant certainly will never have to listen.

It works, there is nothing wrong with it. You have a hole, it's a poultice.

You have an eye, it's an image. My boy, it's your last resort.

Will you marry it, marry it, marry it. (Plath, “The Applicant” 36-40)

The first line of the last stanza denotes many marriages of the fifties. Though happiness or satisfaction wasn’t

always felt, as long as “it works” well enough and fit the domestic mold, it was satisfactory. The speaker goes on

to state that the bride is all the man needs to be truly happy and satisfied: if he had a “hole” (wound), she’d serve

as “poultice” (a medical covering), if he had an

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“eye,” she’d serve as a pleasant “image”. These are not equal meetings; in both instances, the woman exists to

serve, please, or assuage the man. For the applicant, the wife gives him something beautiful to look at, something

to conceal or cover an emotional gap, a hole to fill (literally and figuratively, both a vulgar reference to a vagina

and to the woman’s own vacuous nature). Though the concluding line of the poem begins as an inquiry (“Will

you…”), the definitive period at the end of the line marks that this union is far from a choice. Even still, each

line of this stanza ends with a full-stop, forcing the cadence of the poem to slow while creating a conclusive end

to each line, with no room for questioning or disobedience. This reflects Plath’s reaction to the domestic

model, synonymous with American democracy, which was an imperative for adults coming of age in the

fifties.

“The Applicant” is a demonstration of Plath’s satirical skill, a work that calls attention to the absurdity of the

postwar era. The role of women was regressing despite previous decades’ movements and advances in terms of

occupational and civil liberties. The home was somehow being used as an iron-clad failsafe against communism.

The white-picket-fence and happy housewife myth was perpetuated despite atomic anxieties and female discontent

being more apparent than ever. In Plath’s work, these cultural obsessions and phenomenons are held in tension

with a female voice of reason. When Nicholas King wrote of Plath in a 1962 piece featured in the New York

Herald-Tribune Book Review, he assessed that Plath wrote “with an objective language that is pure, drama-less, and

often arresting,” her “objectivity…more of an attitude than a conviction” (King). But King, and other reviewers

who put Plath in the same category as purely observational poets of the fifties, are incorrect in their assessment of

Plath’s poetics as “objective”. As a woman writing about gender and sexuality, Plath’s work is informed by her

own observations and opinions. Works like “The Applicant” force the reader to assume this point of view and

feel the weight of the decade. These

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works are not expressions of an “attitude” and they are not “drama-less”. They are filled with tensions and

complexities that Plath employs in an attempt to cultivate a cultural conversation.

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Chapter 5

Revolution as Salvation

It is evident that Plath’s work is both a byproduct of and a rebellion against the rigid structure of the postwar

era’s domestic model. The era’s subjugation of women produced a feeling of discontent that simmered just below

the surface for the entirety of the decade. This is why Friedan dubbed the malaise of the fifties “the problem that

has no name,” as the language and expression of such troubling ennui was inaccessible or undesirable to most

American women.

Though it may be clouded under guise of metaphor or satiric bite, this angst, confusion, and anxiety pervades

Plath’s poetry. As assessed, in poems like “Spinster,” “The Two Sisters of Persephone,” “Elm,” “Ariel,” “Daddy,”

and “The Applicant,” Plath undercovers Friedan’s “problem,” stressing the language of the feminine. She subtly

undercuts and derides masculine structures while producing speakers who are confined, trapped in their situations

or unable to find freedom even in isolation.

This is because for Plath and the women of the postwar era, a conversation on female liberation would not

come to a head until the revolutionary era of the sixties. In the 1960s, second- wave feminism developed from

the seeds of resistance into a full-blown movement. In 1966,

twenty-eight women (including Betty Friedan) formed the National Organization for Women, which aimed to

bring “women into full participation in the mainstream of American society” asserting that “We do not accept the

traditional assumption that a woman has to choose between marriage and motherhood on the one hand and

serious participation in industry or the professions on the other” (Greene 114). Alongside this demand for the

deconstruction of gender roles and the domestic model, second-wave feminism also called for mainstream

circulation of contraception, abortion rights, job training for impoverished women, a removal of all sex-based

educational boundaries, and the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. This groundbreaking movement

shattered the feminine mystique and gave women the ability to put a politicized name to the feelings that they had

internalized and blamed themselves for. This rejection of social norms and cultural convention is the

revolutionary step that the speakers of Plath’s poetry most desired – and feared was most unattainable.
 53

Sylvia Plath did not live to see the revolutionary women’s movements that her work anticipated. Consumed by

mental illness no doubt exacerbated by her feelings of being limited, restricted, passionless, and inadequate, Plath

took her own life in February of 1963. While it is indeterminable what effect the liberation of the sexual

revolution may have had on Plath’s work or life, it is evident that her work stands as a direct pre-cursor to this

cultural moment. Her praxis, at once informed by personal experiences and kept reliably generalized, generated

work that was unflinching yet pleading, a poet desperately wanting to lead a rebellion but trapped by her own

social conventions. In the Dictionary of Literary Biography, essayist Thomas McClanahan wrote:

At her most articulate, meditating on the nature of poetic inspiration, [Plath] is a controlled voice for cynicism,

plainly delineating the boundaries of hope and reality. At her brutal best—and Plath is a brutal poet—she taps a

source of power that transforms her poetic voice into a raving avenger of womanhood and innocence (“Poetry

Foundation: Sylvia Plath”).

With the benefit of modernity, it is indisputable now that Plath’s poems are works of cultural criticism, the

poetics of discontent. Plath’s “brutal” poetry was unafraid of exploring the depths of the “problem that has no

name,” even if women (Plath included) were unable to express these feelings individually. They are crafted in

response to the specific tensions of the postwar era and Plath’s resounding desire to break free from the bounds of

rigid singularities comes across in each stanza.

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In her seminal classic A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf, one of Plath’s literary heroes and greatest

inspirations, wrote, “Who shall measure the heat and violence of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled

in a woman’s body?” (Woolf). Plath, a poet who felt constantly trapped and confined by the limitations of

her gender on her art, her career, her sexuality, and, ultimately, on her life, was consumed by this heat and

violence. Her visceral work is reactionary and resistant, refusing to be stifled or fall flat. It rejects biographical

criticisms or assumptions, instead speaking entirely for itself. For Plath, and for her audience in the postwar

era, these poems offered a critical look at the inescapability of rigid femininity with a keen sharpness that

cut through the fugue of the feminine mystique.

“After all I am alive only by accident” ~ Plath’s Poetry of Depression.

From the very beginning of Plath’s career, her poetry presents concrete imagery and themes that, by the

end of her life, become her signature. In her first collection, The Colossus, Plath creates a “mythology”

(Norton 1996: 187) that shapes her poetry as a whole. In several of the poems found in later collections,

such as Ariel, Winter Trees, and Crossing the Water,

Plath’s mythological imagery is further developed. Furthermore, these collections express some of Plath’s

most personal experiences, such as depression, motherhood, male oppression, and the attraction to death

as an escape; the poet skilfully introduces such topics by using different poetic devices, such as

victimisation of the ‘I’ persona in the hands of a male figure, self-objectification, and equation of the

poetic ‘I’ and the setting of the poem, among others. The poems that are going to be analysed are “The

Hanging Man”, “Metaphors”, “Tulips”, and “A Birthday Present”. In these poems, Plath articulates

different aspects of her reality by using these devices, allowing a partial understanding of her tormented

psyche.

Butscher argues that Plath’s “The Hanging Man” is the poet’s “purest poetic effort to articulate her

psychological depression after her marriage” (2003: 331). “The Hanging Man” is an unusually short

poem that, in three couplets, condenses Plath’s energy and angst; moreover, the complexity of its rhyme,

AB CB AC, suggests an attempt to control her emotions throughout the poem. In the first two lines of the
 55

poem appears one of Plath’s most recurring images, that of a god-like figure abusing a powerless ‘I’

persona. “I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet” (l.2), says the speaker; the use of the words

“sizzle” and “blue volts” seem to be a direct reference to ECT, as the image of a “desert prophet” is

traditionally linked to madness. If one assumes this god to be a representation of Otto Plath and/or Ted

Hughes, it could be understood that Plath is blaming her depression on the devastating effect these

masculine figures had on her life. Furthermore, the word “roots” might be used here to imply a relation

between the god and the speaker’s origin, reinforcing the idea that the god is a representation of Otto

Plath. As a result of her depression, Plath suffered from insomnia (Butscher 2003: 114) and, obviously,

from general apathy. In the second stanza the speaker seems to be describing nights with insomnia when

saying that they “snapped out of sight like a lizard’s eyelid” (l.3); in addition, the unbearable boredom

that the poetic ‘I’ mentions could be seen as another description of Plath’s symptoms of depression. At

the end of the poem, the speaker says that “If he were I, he would do what I did” (l.6). Although unclear,

one might guess that the ‘I’ persona is referring to attempting suicide. The inability to sleep and the

unbearable boredom, symptoms of depression, could be the reasons why the persona attempted suicide in

the first place, and why the god is making her sizzle in blue volts, as in ECT.

While pregnant of her first daughter Frieda, Plath writes “Metaphors”; in the poem, Plath addresses the

conflictive feelings a pregnant woman has towards her future child. The structure of the poem, with nine

lines and nine syllables in each line, hints at the central topic of the poem; furthermore, the title of the

poem directly translates to “to carry” in ancient Greek.

Although the metaphors she uses to describe herself are apparently unrelated, as a whole they make an

obvious reference to pregnancy. The use of metaphors with rather negative connotations such as

“elephant” (l.2) or “cow” (l.7), show that the ‘I’ persona does not comply with the excitement pregnant

women are expected to present. Moreover, all the images she chooses are not valuable by themselves, but

by what they contain; for instance, an elephant is only regarded as valuable by its ivory, the same way a

purse is exclusively valued by the money it keeps. The possibility of seeing her identity reduced to her

role as a mother terrified Plath (Butscher 2003: 245); this is translated in the poem as the speaker feels

she has lost control and is only a “stage” (l.7) for someone else to come. The desolated tone of the poem
 56

is presented in the last line when the speaker states that “Boarded the train there’s no getting off” (l.9).

This line expresses the speaker’s lack of autonomy now that she is pregnant; whatever her feelings and

desires, she must carry on and become a mother, even if this endangers her other facets as a woman.

In “Tulips”, the intrusion of an unwanted bouquet of flowers in a hospital room forces the speaker to

recover from depression and continue living against her will. As the speaker herself, the hospital room is

described as being completely white, sterile, and lifeless. The redness and intensity of the tulips are a

disrupting force, symbolising the intrusion of life in a white room, where the ‘I’ persona is ready to die. In

addition, the nurses are described as identical seagulls; as is the case in “The Hanging Man”, this image

might be used to describe one of the effects of depression, the incapacity to find any stimulus as

everything looks unexcitingly the same. The state Plath describes here, as Norton argues, “[is] the

isolation of an individual who finds nothing in reality to correspond to her state of spiritual rapture, or

enthrallment” (1996: 186). One of Plath’s most prototypical themes is the self-objectification of the ‘I’

persona; in this poem, the speaker describes herself as a pebble, which is taken care of by the nurses as if

by the sea. Self-objectification and lack of agency are clear indicators of the state in which the speaker

finds herself; depression has worn her down to the point in which she is no longer human, she is a mere

pebble at the mercy of others. The effect that the tulips have on the ‘I’ persona is reflected in lines 31-32:

“I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted // To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty”; the

tulips, that she says “weigh me down” (l.43), break the monotony of the room with their vivacity and

prevent the speaker from losing herself into depression. As the ‘I’ persona is symbolically being brought

back to life, the tulips also become more definite and obtain a life of their own; in an imitation of the

flowers’ opening mouths, the ‘I’ persona’s heart “opens and closes” (l.63) again. To complete the cycle of

her rebirth, the speaker is symbolically “sunken” (l.57) in water that is “warm and salt” (l.65), as in

baptism. In “Tulips”, the reader is presented with a reality in which the ‘I’ persona prefers death to life,

although the intrusion of the tulips prevents her from fulfilling her wishes, forcing her to recover.
 57

In “A Birthday Present”, Plath uses the gift the speaker is about to receive, as a metaphor for death. The

tone of the first stanza suggests intrigue and unease about the present, which, by the second stanza, takes

life of its own. The present diminishes the ‘I’ persona by mocking and regarding her unworthy of such a

present; it suggests that she is victim of domestic violence, as she is “the one with black eye-pits and a

scar” (l.6), and that she is restricted by society, as she adheres “to rules, to rules, to rules” (l.7). The fact

that an inanimate object judges the ‘I’ persona might be a reflection of her insecurity and sense of

inferiority, as occurs when she is abused by a stronger figure or is self-objectified. Furthermore, the

poetic ‘I’ states that “I do not want much of a present, anyway, this year // After all I am alive only by

accident” (l.13-14); the explicit expression of apathy and the circumstantiality of her survival, suggests

the possibility of a failed suicide attempt. This theory is confirmed as the speaker states “I would have

killed myself gladly that time any possible way” (l.15). The contrasting of images such as “babies” (l.18)

and “dead breath” (l.18) are used to illustrate, once more, the conflict between life and death. This

conflict, one can guess, is won by death, as a “last supper” (l.26) and a “hospital plate” (l.26) are

mentioned, making death seem inevitably immediate. At the end of the poem, the ‘I’ persona’s

insecurities and sense of inferiority show up again, as she says than she will go unnoticed, “you will not

even hear me opening it, no paper crackle” (l.34). Her sense of insecurity is emphasized as she thinks that

the addresser of the present believes her incapable of doing as she says; she thinks herself so useless that

she does not feel able to go unnoticed when she wants to. The poem shows the painful state of a severely

depressed woman who thinks she has no value or ability, to the point she feels unworthy of death itself; as

Butscher argues, Plath’s poetry seems to have become a wound rather than an arm of self- defence (2003:

361). Sexton starts writing poetry as a means to battle depression. Her works are characterised by their

extreme crudeness and sincerity when tackling traditionally taboo subjects, such as suicide, addiction, and

menstruation, among others. Hume argues that some of the poems found in Live or Die anatomise “the

desire to die, the ways of doing it slowly, the post-attempt explanations” (2000: 27). In most of her works,

Sexton addresses one aspect or another of her depression. Nevertheless, these poems are re-creations of a

state of mind in which the poet was not in when writing, as otherwise it would not have been possible for

her to write them (Hume 2000: 29). The poems that are going to be analysed are “Wanting to Die”, “The

Addict”, “For My Lover, Returning to His Wife” and “Suicide Note”.

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Due to its straightforward approach to suicide, “Wanting to Die” is one of Sexton’s best-known works; in

the poem, the ‘I’ persona translates for the reader, in a raw manner, her wish to end her own life. By

answering a question outside the poem’s frame (Hume 2000: 22), the ‘I’ persona attempts to explain her

state. She cannot remember most days, as they are irrelevant and uninteresting, she is left “unmarked”

(l.2) by life; This overwhelming apathy is only broken by a “lust” (l.3) that invades her body, death.

Suicide is thus linked with carnal pleasures, which are sometimes considered to be irrepressible. In the

second stanza the speaker touches upon arguments in favour of life, “grass blades” (l.5) and “furniture

under the sun” (l.6) which evoke warm, pleasant images of daily life. Nevertheless, the persona uses them

to assert her intention to die, and in order to do so, she uses carpenters as a metaphor; she argues that both

carpenters and suicides wonder “which tools” (l.8) can be used to carry out their task, they do not stop to

think “why” (l.9). Again, suicide is an impulse, a lust that cannot be

explained from a rational standpoint. Furthermore, by mentioning carpenters, Sexton is regarding suicide

as a creation, a craft, rather than the ultimate form of self-destruction. Despite the obvious contradiction,

for the speaker death seems to be the only means of creation; it is indeed Sexton’s own experience of it,

who uses her depression and suicide attempts as raw material to elaborate and create her poems.

According to the ‘I’ persona, suicides are still-born children that had not died, however death is a “drug”

(l.20) to which they are addicted, even as children. The persona’s body is described as a prison, and death

awaits to free her “breath” (l.27) from it; death is the means to freedom and healing of wounds, ironically.

In the final lines of the poem, the ‘I’ persona “becomes part of the recollected experience, and it is now

through her disappearance that the poem persuades. True to its subject, the poem has become a kind of

suicide attempt” (Hume 2000: 25). “Waiting to Die” condenses the suicide’s language and translates it so

the reader can understand; regarding it as a lust, an instinct, and an addiction, Sexton manages to,

somehow, rationalise and explain what for everyone else seems irrational and unexplainable.

Sexton’s depression has devastating effects on her life. From a relatively young age, she is addicted to

sleeping pills, which she uses in several occasions to attempt suicide. As it occurs in “Wanting to Die”,

Sexton exposes in “The Addict” her addiction to sleeping pills and death “in small amounts” (l.37) in an

attempt to translate it to a language the reader can understand. In the first stanza, the ‘I’ persona declares
 59

herself “the queen of this condition” (l.6), and in a mocking tone wonders how come others ask she has

become an addict. This ritual she practices “each night” (l.3) is her way of “staying in shape” (l.14) for

death. As Wedding claims, “Sexton magnifies death to make it both omnipresent and ubiquitous [...] sleep

is a recurring trope for death in Sexton’s work, and the poet uses her sleeping pills as a way to ‘practice’

dying” (2000: 142). The speaker’s commitment to sleeping pills and death is described as sacred,

unbreakable and attached to religious images; for instance, the ingestion of pills is both a “marriage”

(l.29) and a “black sacrament” (l.44). Furthermore, a ‘black sacrament’ is a satanic-like ritual whose aim

it is to bring death upon a chosen victim; in this case, one reckons, it is the ‘I’ persona herself. The

concept of pill ingestion as a religious ritual appears again in the sixth stanza, when it is described as a

“ceremony” (l.45); after this, the ‘I’ persona lies on her “altar” (l.50), “elevated” (l.51) by the effect of

these drugs. The constant reference to religious themes links the speaker’s death and a state of holiness;

hence, sleeping pills are the ‘I’ persona’s means to reach a sort of nirvana that brings her serenity and

peacefulness by giving her a small taste of death. In the final stanza, the speaker recites the

colours of the pills she has taken and says “fee-fi-fo-fum” (l.55), giving the impression that she has

having hallucinations before passing out. In the final line, the speaker feels “numb” (l.57), suggesting that

she has already lost consciousness. As in “Wanting to Die”, death and suicide seem to be much more than

an irrational act, but something more similar to a cult to dying and self-destruction. By the end of both

poems, the ‘I’ persona enacts what she was expressing throughout the poem, that is, death.

As Wedding argues, Sexton’s poetry presents some of the symptoms of her depression (2000: 141). In

“For My Lover, Returning to His Wife”, the apparent sense of worthlessness and inferiority shown in the

poem are part of what is known as “arbitrary inference” (2000: 141). The ‘I’ persona feels anguish as she

realises that she will never be a match to her lover´s wife, and constantly compares herself to her. The

initial lines of the poem describe the lover´s wife, who has been made for him, “she is, in fact, exquisite”

(l.6). The wife is idealised from the very beginning, which is due to a distorted perception of reality; even

her children are described as “cherubs drawn by Michelangelo” (l.20). The ‘I’ persona describes herself

as being “momentary” (l.9), a “luxury” (l.10), which is dispensable. In contrast, the other woman is “more
 60

than that” (l.13). Despite her condition as a mistress, the speaker seems to have given up the man she

loves, not even trying to hold him back. In addition to the traditional view of mistresses as indecent

women, the language the speaker uses to describe herself seems to be depreciating. As Wedding argues,

this suggests that “Sexton finds it almost inconceivable that she could be loved, cherished, and valued as

anything other than an interesting diversion and a sexual object, always in a subordinate relationship,

always ‘the other woman’” (2000: 142). Hence, in this poem Sexton expresses feelings of worthlessness

and dispensability, result of depression. The ‘I’ persona feels as an unwanted mistress, who stands no

chance against a legitimate wife. This conviction is so strong, that she does not even try to fight for her

lover’s affection, letting him go while sinking in self-depreciation.

In “Suicide Note”, Sexton attempts to express, once more, her wish to commit suicide; Hume argues that

“this poem which presents itself as a ‘note’ before killing oneself is actually a highly formalized poetic

epistle, written to a constructed self as much as to another addressee” (2000: 27). By using the images of

worms in mares’ hooves and young girls’ blood, which represent the intersection of fertility and decay,

the speaker concludes that for her, it is “better” (l.1) to die than to live (Hume 2000: 27). For the poetic

‘I’, it would have been “better […] not to be born” (l.10-11) in the first place. As she explains that she

“will enter death” (l.22), this seems to be the ‘I’ persona’s only way to safety. Death is her means to avoid

suffering, as she

says that “even the wasps cannot find my eyes” (l.26). In the fifth stanza, the ‘I’ persona mentions Jesus

“before he grew old” (l.45) riding into Jerusalem “in search of death” (l.47). The speaker seems to use the

Christian tradition to create a biblical justification for suicide; in claiming Jesus’s arrival in Jerusalem as a

search for death, the ‘I’ persona’s suicide should be acceptable in the eyes of God and society. The poetic

‘I’ claims that she does not “ask for understanding” (l.50), even though she is trying to explain her

tendency towards death; suicide is described as an instinct when compared to the moths being “forced

[…] to suck on the electric bulb” (l.66). The persona argues that, since everyone will have to face death

one day or another, she would rather choose when to go “carried by that toy donkey” (l.74), as Christ did.

In the final stanza, the ‘I’ persona reassures the reader that she does not expect her death to have any

extraordinary effect on either the exterior world or herself, “I do not even expect my mother’s mouth […]
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New York City will not mind” (l.81-88). In the poem, the ‘I’ persona rationalises and explains her wish to

commit suicide. Death it is a scape from a painful life, full of disease and degeneration. Even though she

is aware her death will neither change the world, nor take her to any form of paradise, it is her wish to die.

“Wanting to Die”, “The Addict”, “For My Lover, Returning to His Wife”, and “Suicide Note” tackle

different issues that tormented the poet, allowing the reader to relate them to Sexton’s mental illness. It is

difficult to discern between the ‘I’ persona and author in poems with such a visceral voice; nevertheless,

they remain two separate entities. In these poems, Sexton seems to use poetry as a statement of intent

rather than a means to fight her depression; as Schessler states, both writer and poetic ‘I’ “turn away from

the ‘real world’ hope for healing and slide deeper into the space of madness” (2002: 217).

“Out of the ash I rise” ~ Plath’s Resistance Poetry

Plath’s marriage comes to an abrupt end in 1962 when she discovered Hughes had been cheating on her.

Plath’s psychological state was fragile at the time, so the added pressure of the separation and all the

consequences it carried with it, pushed her to the edge again. However, Plath takes advantage of her

turbulent situation and writes some of her most famous poems, which would be later included in Ariel. A

clear change of tone takes places in the poems Plath

writes during this prolific period, the ‘I’ persona of her poems becomes much more audacious and

belligerent, rising to fight the demons that terrorised Plath. In poems such as “Stings”, “Daddy”, and

“Lady Lazarus” Plath rebels against the oppressive forces that have conditioned her whole life and have

brought her to the situation she finds herself in, creating the figure of the ‘bitch goddess’; as Butscher

argues, Plath transforms her sense of desolation into a powerful rage that shapes and characterises her

literary production, while helping her “[to] keep clinical madness at bay” (2003: 328).

In October 1962, after moving to London with her children, Plath writes “Stings”, the third poem of the

‘bee sequence’.2 “Stings” has no regular rhyme, and it is formed by twelve quintains, composed by lines

of different lengths, often enjambed. By using the figures of bees and the beekeeper, the poem explores

the relationship between men and women, especially in the marital context. The poem seems to narrate
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the quest of the ‘I’ persona to recover her identity, embodied in the queen bee, after losing it in a

relationship. As the speaker herself has lost her true self, the queen bee is described as old and “Poor and

bare and unqueenly and even shameful” (l.19). All the other bees are regarded as “unmiraculous women //

Honey-drudgers” (l.21), pitiful slaves to the wishes of the beekeeper. Women, as bees, have been forced

to work as servants for their husbands. The ‘I’ persona confesses “I have eaten dust dust // And dried

plates with my dense hair” (l.24-25), and as a result of this submission she has “seen my strangeness

evaporate” (l.26). Being subjugated to a man has changed her, she is no longer a queen bee or a poet, she

has sacrificed her own singularity to her marriage. The speaker mentions “A third person” (l.38), which is

a possible reference to the father figure that “now is gone” (l.40) and is used by Plath as “a great

scapegoat” (l.41) for her childhood traumas. Despite this account, by the end of the poem the ‘I’ persona

recovers her ‘queenly’ self and is empowered. As in “Lady Lazarus”, the ‘I’ persona recovers from her

state and is reborn as a fierce, powerful female figure that succeeds in her quest to overcome her situation

as a victim and becomes an avenger; “now she is flying // More terrible than she ever was, red // Scar in

the sky, red comet // over the engine that killed her” (l.56-59). As Perloff argues, most of the poems

found in Ariel, emphasise the struggle and revenge of the ‘I’ persona, her outrage after the discovery that

the beloved is the betrayer (1986: 11).

In “Daddy”, as well as in “Lady Lazarus”, Plath uses Holocaust imagery to represent her own internal

suffering. In this poem, the ‘I’ persona rebels against the male figure that Plath first introduces in “The

Colossus”; as Aube affirms, “Plath’s most highly anthologized poem, ‘Daddy’, is an example of

confessional poetry that discusses taboo emotions in regards to family and relationships” (2010: 11). The

speaker describes her father as a “black shoe” (l.2) in which she has lived as a “foot” (l.3), suffocated for

thirty long years. In order to escape her father’s oppression, the speaker should symbolically kill him, but

“he died before I had time” (l.7). As Otto Plath, the ‘I’ persona’s father died when his daughter was a

child, causing her a trauma that still haunts her. The ‘I’ persona reveals that, out of fear, she could not

speak to him “The tongue stuck to my jaw” (l.25). “I think I may be a bit of a Jew // I have always been

scared of you” (l.40 – 41, emphasis original), says the speaker, and goes on to attaching Nazi elements to

the image of her father, such as “Luftwaffe” (l.42), “neat moustache” (l.43) and “Aryan eye” (l.44). Thus,

according to her own reasoning, the ‘I’ persona is, figuratively, of both Jew and Nazi descent; as Plath
 63

herself states “In the daughter the two strains marry and paralyze each other – she has to act out the awful

little allegory once over before she is free of it” (qtd. in Plath 2004: 194). Later in the poem, the figure of

the oppressive husband is embodied in “The Vampire who said he was you // And drank my blood for a

year // Seven years, if you want to know” (l.72-74). The ‘I’ persona not only rebels against the figure of

the father, but also the husband, rejecting any kind of patriarchal oppression. In the final lines of the

poem, the poetic ‘I’ is finally freed, she says that “there’s a stake in your fat black heart” (l.76); the

Vampire is dead, she leaves the shoe, and victorious states “Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through”

(l.80). Norton claims that “Daddy” “is about the recognition of one’s own unrealistic expectations of a

father and/or authority figure and how this ‘Colossus’ must be destroyed in order for the ‘dutiful

daughter’ to free herself from the need for a hero and disappointment in anything less than perfection”

(1996: 198).

“Lady Lazarus” is Plath’s most characteristic poem; the poet explained it by saying that “The speaker is a

woman who has the great and terrible gift of being reborn. The only trouble is, she has to die first. She is

the Phoenix, the libertarian spirit, what you will. She is also just a good, plain, very resourceful woman”

(qtd. in Curley 2001: 213). The title, which refers to Lazarus from the New Testament, points in the

direction of the main topic of the poem, that is, resurrection. As most of Plath’s poems it is written in free

verse, although it is divided in twenty-eight tercets. “I’ve done it again // one year in every ten // I manage

it” (l.1-3) says the speaker, referring to her unsuccessful suicide attempts, and the consequential

‘resurrections’.

The poetic ‘I’ is self-objectified and dehumanised, “My right foot // A paperweight” (l.6-7) “My face a

featureless, fine // Jew linen” (l.8-9); as seen in previous of Plath and Sexton’s poems, this self-

depreciation is a clear indicative of depressive tendencies. Furthermore, the contraposition of “Nazi” (l.6)

and “Jew” (l.9) within the ‘I’ persona herself are found in “Lady Lazarus” as well as in “Daddy”, and it

seems to have the same destructive effect on the speaker. The speaker then talks about her past suicide

attempts, saying that “The first time it happened I was then // It was an accident” (l.35-36), referring to

the time when 10-year-old Plath almost drowns in a swimming accident. “The second I meant // To last it
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out and not come back at all” (l.37-38), the second time Plath almost dies in her first suicide attempt, in

which she took a sleeping-pill overdose and crawled under her house. The ‘I’ persona is so used to dying

and coming back to life that she says, “Dying is an art” (l.43); in the same tone as Sexton’s “Wanting to

Die”, death becomes a way of creation, the poet herself is the proof as she is using her experiences with

death to produce her poetry. There is a tone of despair when she says that every time she comes back to

“the same place, the same face, the same brute” (l.52); no matter how many times she tries to die, she will

still be in the same situation. However, the speaker says “I turn and burn” (l.71) and “You poke and stir”

(l.74), the fire apparently purifying her, destroying her physical body, which had been corrupted. “Herr

God, Herr Lucifer // Beware

//Beware” (l.79-81), warns the speaker as she rises again, preparing for revenge. As a Phoenix, the

speaker says “Out of the ash // I rise with my red hair” (l.82-83), being re-born, stronger than ever. As she

swears revenge by stating “I eat men like air” (l.84), the ‘bitch goddess’ is ultimately born, in same way

the ‘queen bee’ is born in “Stings”

During this period, Plath writes her most famous, and probably, most powerful poems. Norton suggests

that, during these months, Plath’s inspiration is a consequence of her new sense of purpose after

separating from her husband; having to re-build her life again, she must have felt that she has nothing else

to lose “and throws the gauntlet of inhibition” (1996: 186) enabling her to produce such intense poetry. It

is known that at the time when these poems are produced, Plath is suffering from a fatal depression again;

however, her works present a strength and a revolutionary tone that make seem almost impossible that

she would commit suicide only a few months after. “Stings”, “Daddy” and “Lady Lazarus” show, using

different devices and metaphors, a very similar testimony, the rebellion of the ‘I’ persona against the

oppressive forces, usually male, that have conditioned her life. By re-enacting her suffering in each of the

poems, the ‘I’ persona is renewed, finds her strength again to free herself. Plath seems to use this poems

as a means to battle her depression, putting into paper what she

expected to achieve; as Butscher puts it, “It is likely that Sylvia’s behaviour here, as with almost

everything she had ever done, was a conscious and rather brave attempt to fight despair and mental
 65

paralysis – to construct an alternative self, a more sophisticated Sylvia who could laugh at her own

inadequacies” (2003: 103).

“The blood jet is poetry, There is no stopping it” ~ Plath’s Final Poems

The final months of Plath’s life were terribly tough for her, and although she tried to reach out for help,

she did not succeed. Despite her continuous struggle, neither therapy nor poetry could save her, and Plath

eventually committed suicide. Plath’s most optimistic and positive works are often eclipsed by the halo of

her suicide and her ‘depression poems’. However, this is not the rule, and even in her final poems, one

finds both positive and negative themes, which represent her poetry and life much more faithfully. As

Kroll argues, most of Plath’s final poems, contain elements that point in the direction of rebirth and

transcendence as the ultimate objective of death (1976:129). “Poppies in July”, “Child” and “Edge” are

the poems that will be analysed.

“Poppies in July” is a rather short poem written in free verse. Except for the third stanza, which is a

tercet, the poem is formed by six couplets and a final single-line stanza. Although the title evokes images

such as summer, nature, passion, and light, the content contradicts all of these images. The poem opens in

a playfully tone, “little poppies” (l.1), contrasting with the rather violent “little hell flames” (l.1). “Do you

do no harm?” (l.2), asks the speaker, wondering whether the poppies will actually burn, since they flicker

like flames. As in “Tulips”, the poppies and their redness represent life and passion; thus, when the ‘I’

persona states “I cannot touch you” (l.4), an alienation between the self and life is implied. Furthermore,

the image of a field of flames is reminiscent of the traditional concept of Hell. The comparison between

the poppies and “the skin of a // mouth” (l.6-7) introduces a certain eroticism, which is confronted with

violence as the next line states “A mouth just bloodied” (l.8). In addition, by saying “Little bloody skirts!”

(l.9), the speaker is making a link between female and blood, denoting a certain anger or disgust towards

the blood coming from the female body, such as in menstruation. The image of flames and hell puts the

‘I’ persona in a context of eternal suffering, who, in search for something that eases her pain, asks the

poppies “Where are your opiates, your nauseous capsules?” (l.11). As hers is a psychological wound,

invisible from the outside, drugs seem to be the only option left to reduce her pain. In line 14, the speaker
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makes reference to another drug that can be extracted from poppies, “Or your liquor seep to me, in this

glass capsule”

(l.14). The mention of a glass capsule is reminiscent of Plath’s novel The Bell Jar, in which a

metaphorical bell jar encapsulates the main character, separating her from the world. The ‘I’ persona is

alienated from life, and her psychological pain is unbearable, yet invisible. As a consequence, the poetic

‘I’ seeks oblivion in the drugs that can be derived from poppies, which are “dulling” (l.15) and “stilling”

(l.15), similar to the effects of Sexton’s sleeping pills in “The Addict”.

Among all of Plath’s poems, “Child” is one of the most touching pieces, since she addressed it to her

new-born baby just two weeks before committing suicide. The poem, composed by four tercets in free

verse, is clearly divided by an antithesis, which changes the way in which the reader sees the whole poem.

In the first stanza, the ‘I’ persona describes the “clear eye” (l.1) of her son, which is “one absolutely

beautiful thing” (l.1). By stating that she wants to “fill it with color and ducks // and the zoo of new” (l.2-

3), the poetic ‘I’ is suggesting her desire to make her child happy and show him the world. The images

she uses before changing the tone of the poem are pleasant and sweet, mentioning flowers such as

“snowdrop” (l.5) to evoke a sense of purity and innocence. However, as Tunstall argues, “Plath's

inclusion of pools, ducks, and flowers pulls ‘Child’ in the direction of the bucolic, while the final descent

into darkness and despair is closer to anti-pastoral” (2009: 231). What her child sees “Should be grand

and classical” (l.9), but she cannot prevent him from seeing “this troublous // Wringing of hands” (l.10-

11) and “this dark // Ceiling without a star” (l.11-12). These final lines alter the way in which the reader

perceives the whole poem, instead of a hopeful beginning it appears as a despairing one, “nothing is as it

should be: ‘I want to fill it with color’ (but cannot), ‘images / Should be grand and classical’ (but are

ferocious and inappropriate)” (Tunstall 2009: 242). In lieu of showing her son the wonders of the world,

she cannot help offering him the complete opposite, that is her own mental instability and gloominess.

Hence, even the eye of her child, which seems to be the only beautiful thing she can see at this point, is a

painful reminder of her failure as a mother.

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One of Plath’s final poems, “Edge”, is extremely peculiar for its representation of a woman who has

recently committed suicide. The poem begins with the description of a woman’s corpse who is

“perfected” (l.1) in death and has a “smile of accomplishment” (l.3). The body of the woman is linked to

classical art, implying that now that she is dead, she resembles it. Her whole body is apparently relieved

to be dead as, in addition to her smile, her feet seem to be saying “We have come so far, it is over” (l.8).

Her two children are coiled, one

at each of her breasts, as white serpents that return to her body and are transformed into “petals

// Of a rose” (l.14), regarding them as an extension of herself. There is a recurrent use of element of

colour white, such as “white serpents”, “milk”, and “hood of bone”; this insistence on colour white seems

to emphasize the coldness and stillness of the setting, but also the purity and calmness of this event, as

death has released the speaker. Nihilistic thoughts are suggested as the speaker says that “The moon has

nothing to be sad about” (l.17) as she is “used to this sort of thing” (l.19); her death will not alter the

universe, as it has no relevance for no one but herself, everything will go on as usual. As the focus shifts

to the moon in the last two stanzas, Butscher argues that despite the death of one of Plath’s ‘selves’, “Art

will endure […] including Sylvia’s own poetry – the bitch goddess self and myth – despite the death of

the other self, the flesh and blood mother, the sacrificial lamb, a woman killed by a male reality and

culture” (2003: 362).

In the poems that have been analysed, one finds several different themes that point in opposite directions;

however, a general tone of melancholy and calm hopelessness is one of the common denominators

between the three of them. In both “Tulips” and “Child”, the speaker seems to be in some sort of

psychological pain, tormented by the effect it has. On the one hand, the ‘I’ persona in “Tulips” hints at

her alienation from life, letting the reader know that her wounds cannot be seen, and this just makes it

more difficult for her to find a way to ease the pain. On the other hand, the poetic ‘I’ in “Child” is

concerned that her son, instead of learning from her and having a happy life, sees her suffering,

consequently failing to raise him as she wishes she could. In contrast to these two poems, “Edge” seems

to have a much more calmer tone; describing the corpse of a woman who has committed suicide. There is

a sense of comfort in the release of death and the idea that the rest of the world will just go on. Norton
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states that “In Plath’s work from this period, we see degrees of mania and depression located in specific

instances of guilt and betrayal and moments of sad tranquility located in observations of nature […]

Plath’s Ariel has been described […] as ‘reading like a fever chart for melancholy’” (1996: 185). In

conclusion, these final poems contrast with her ‘resistance’ poems, as instead of a wish to rebel and get

revenge, one finds a tone of resignation and acceptance. In other words, the ‘I’ persona seems to have

embraced her imminent death, which she regards as a release from mortal suffering.

Anne Sexton, Resistance and Suicide

“Live or die, but don’t poison everything” ~ Sexton’s Resistance Poetry

Both Sexton and her poetry have often been wrongly categorised as being utterly crude and depressive.

Although the use of her personal suicidal tendencies is one of the most famous traits of Sexton’s poetry, a

large part of her poetry explores very different aspects of life as a means of therapy. Even after his death,

Sexton’s father has a deep negative impact in her life, which worsens her mental state quite seriously. In

addition to this, Sexton often sees herself trapped in a world where she is expected to conform,

exclusively, to her ‘holy’ role as a mother. Throughout her life, Sexton uses poetry as a means to come to

terms with her own reality, which is the only way she has to move forward and create a new self. In this

section, “The Truth the Dead Know”, “All My Pretty Ones”, and “Her Kind” are going to be analysed in

relation to Sexton’s fight against depression.

A few months after her parents’ death, Sexton writes “The Truth the Dead Know”. In the poem, Sexton

includes a dedication to both her mother and father and their actual birth and death dates. This dedication,

at the beginning of a confessional poem where the death of the parents is the central topic, gives the

impression of an almost inexistent division between author and ‘I’ persona. As the poem begins, the

speaker refuses to follow “the stiff procession” (l.2) of her parents’ funeral to the gravesite, walking away

while saying “Gone” (l.1), and glancing back at the coffin. Instead of this, the ‘I’ persona drives “to the

Cape” (l.5) with a third character, presumably a lover. Escaping to the beach in lieu of following the
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funeral procession may be a reference to the ‘I’ persona’s refusal to follow her parents’ steps in life,

deciding to live her own life. When talking about Plath and Sexton’s poetry, Harris states that “Both poets

have discovered in their parents’ deaths the reality of loneliness and realize that they now can be free of

the very ones who caused their loneliness and can attempt to progress with their lives” (1999: 19). Now

that her parents are buried, the ‘I’ persona says “I cultivate // myself where the sun gutters from the sky”

(l.6), despite the pain of their death, she is free of the control of her parents and can develop as she

wishes. However, nature becomes rather violent towards her, as “wind falls in like stones” (l.9),

insinuating the speaker’s sense of guilt as she is ‘benefiting’ from her parents’ death. She asks to herself

“And what of the dead?” (l.13), answering “they are more like stone” (l.14), they neither suffer nor feel

anymore. Furthermore, they “refuse // to be blessed” (l.15-16), echoing the speaker’s refusal to follow the

procession to the grave. In conclusion, the speaker begins a journey of self-discovery after her parents’

death which, although painful, enables her to get away from their control and do what she

wishes. Nevertheless, guilt and sorrow are still there, as her parents are gone for good and have leaft her

with a bittersweet feeling.

“All My Pretty Ones” chronicles, in five ten-line stanzas, the scrolling of the ‘I’ persona through the

belongings of her recently deceased father. As the ‘I’ persona looks at these items, she finds different

objects such as “a gold key” (l.6) and “boxes of pictures of people I do not know” (l.9) which are kept in

“the yellow scrapbook that you began // the year I was born” (l.21-22). Added to the fact she does not

appear in any of her father’s pictures, the speaker shows a certain discomfort as the belongings she finds

come from a past that she had no knowledge of. These memories are painful to her, so she decides to get

rid of all these objects and “throws them out” (l.20). This action becomes a sort of ‘exorcising process’,

progressively liberating her from the resentment she feels towards her late father after a whole life of

neglect. The ‘I’ persona decides, while looking at a picture of her father, to “fold you down, my drunkard,

my navigator, // my first lost keeper, to love or look at later” (39-40); as a mantra, this sentence begins the

speaker’s healing. For the first time, the roles have been swapped, and now it is the ‘I’ persona who is in

position to choose when to pay attention to her father, as he did when she was a child. In spite of this, the

tone becomes disturbed again as the speaker reads a “five-year diary that my mother kept” (l.41).
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Through the diary, the speaker finds out how, due to his alcoholism, her father ruined most of his

relationships. Nonetheless, the speaker rises above this, proving that she has got over her father’s death,

stating that “Whether you are pretty or not, I outlive you, // bend down my strange face to yours and

forgive you” (l.49-50). The healing and personal growth that begins in “The Truth the Dead Know” is

completed here, as despite her father’s flaws the ‘I’ persona is able to forgive her father, ultimately

freeing herself by doing so.

“Her Kind” is formed by three septets in ABAB rhyme; every stanza break is punctuated with the refrain

“I have been her kind”, which gives name to the poem. In each stanza, the speaker embodies a different

facet, which as a whole makes reference to the different roles women have in society; as Pollard argues

“[she] puts on three costumes in three verses – witch, housewife and adulteress – mirroring and mocking

‘This is Your Wife’ rhetoric with the line ‘I have been her kind’” (2006: 4). In the first stanza, the ‘I’

persona says she is “a possessed witch” (l.1) that during the night flies “over the plain houses” (l.4). The

adjectives used to describe her, such as “out of mind” (l.6), give the speaker a threatening look, which is

maintained during the poem. This could be interpreted as the view society holds on women who step out

of their role as housewives. As Sexton does when becoming a poet, the speaker

is freed from the constrictions of her role by becoming a witch, although this evolution supposes a threat

for society, which ‘turns’ her into an outcast “that is not a woman, quite” (l.6) (Pollard 2006: 4). In the

second stanza, the speaker assumes the role of a housewife, even though she keeps the appearance of a

witch. She has “found the warm caves” (l.8), filled them with different domestic items and “fixed suppers

for the worms and the elves” (l.11). She performs her duties as a housewife, although they are adapted to

her extraordinary nature. In the final stanza, the speaker embodies an adulteress, that “waved my nude

arms at villages going by” (l.16). She is a survivor, despite the fact that “flames still bite my thigh” (l.18),

and “ribs crack where your wheels wind” (l.19), which were tortures used to kill and purify witches in the

middle ages. The witch, housewife and adulteress are all different aspects of the same woman, she is all

of them. As she states that “A woman like that is not ashamed to die” (l.20), she is reasserting her own

strength and independence, proud of living her own life despite society’s judgement.
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In the analysed poems, there are two main topics that the poet deals with, the loss of her parents and self-

acceptance as a multifaceted woman. Both “The Truth the Dead Know” and “All My Pretty Ones” are set

in the aftermath of the death of the ‘I’ persona’s father, which does not appear as having had a good

impact on her. In order to rise as a new liberated person, the ‘I’ persona has to use her new position of

power to cast out her feelings of guilt and resentment, since coming to terms with reality is the only way

to change it. In “Her Kind”, the speaker rebels against the social constrictions women suffer and identifies

with the three main roles women have been attributed to throughout history; namely witch, mother/wife,

and adulteress. As Plath’s “Lady Lazarus”, this gives place to an omnipotent female figure that rises from

her ashes to fight the system that attempted to destroy her. As Barnard argues “[Sexton] is not ashamed of

her descent into madness; she wants to tell about it, partly to rid herself of memories, partly to help other

women faced with the same cultural pressure” (qtd. in Norton 1996: 8).

“I’m a baby at war” ~ Sexton’s Final Poems

Despite spending a long time thinking about it, divorce is not what Sexton expects. After the death of her

parents, the loss of her husband and the increasing distance with her daughters diminish Sexton’s chances

of recovery in case of a new mental breakdown. In her last works, Sexton keeps her personal and direct

style, and despite her several addictions and

delicate mental state, her production maintains its previous quality. Among other themes, divorce and the

nature of humankind are central in her last period. In some of Sexton’s final poems the image of God

becomes increasingly relevant, imbuing Him with maternal, nurturing and accepting qualities (Norton

1996:17), which contrast with the Christian tradition. “February 21st”, “Whale”, and “The Rowing

Endeth” are the poems that are going to be analysed.

“February 21st” is divided into two irregular octaves with ABCABCDD rhyme. The poem tackles the ‘I’

persona’s sorrow and regret after divorcing her husband only a week ago. The subheading of the poem,

“The day is favourable for teamwork”, seems to convey in a positive tone a rather pessimistic message:
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life is not easy if you do not have a partner. In the first line, “The photograph where we smile // at each

other” (l.1-2), the speaker seems to suggest that her happiness has been left behind as it was dependent on

her husband, who is now gone. Although referring to the photograph, when the speaker says “It lay

unkissed all week” (l.3), it gives the impression that she is talking about herself, since now that she has

lost her husband, she lies alone in bed. In the second stanza the ‘I’ persona conveys her feelings after the

divorce through a series of metaphors. She stresses her present vulnerability and disorientation by saying

“I’m not a war baby. I’m a baby // at war” (l.9-10); in addition, her angst and despair are represented by

“thumbs” (l.10) that grow in her throat and suffocate her. As the photograph is associated with “mad

burlesque” in the final line, the “darkness” (l.14) that the speaker feels is associated to a relapse of

depression as a consequence of the divorce. Despite all this, the ‘I’ persona does not address her

husband’s feelings in the poem. Norton, however, does not see this necessarily negative, as he claims that

“this reflects the speaker’s egocentrism; not once in the poem does she consider the effect that the

separation may have on him […] it is actually a pretty accurate portrayal of the self-centeredness of a

woman who sees herself as half of a couple” (Norton 1996: 171).

The topics of death and suicide are of central importance for Sexton’s poetic production. Harris argues

that for most of Sexton’s life, she would focus on “the opposite of living” (1999: 4) as “even though

living, to some, may be good, ‘living’ is not what she wants” (1999: 6). Nevertheless, even in some of

Sexton’s late poems, such as “Whale”, one can appreciate that this is not the case. “Whale” is a poem in

which the speaker addresses a dying whale to elaborate on her own thoughts. Despite the initial bleak

image of a dying whale, and the use of terms such as “dead harbour” (l.1) and “killers dressed in black”

(l.13), the poem seems to have a slightly positive undertone. As the ‘I’ persona puts herself in the shoes of

the

stranded whale, she reasons that as she is not a fish, she must have “had enough of // holding your breath

under water” (l.6). Applying this reasoning to the speaker, she sympathises with an animal that due, to her

nature, she had to pretend to be something that she was not, eventually rebelling against it regardless of

the consequences. The speaker seems to aim to prove that “we are not sufferers of God” (l.9), expressing

her wish to take hold of her own destiny, defying tradition and society. The social critique becomes more
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obvious as the speaker says “we are sick of writing checks, // putting on our socks and working in the

little boxes // we call office” (l.14-16). This is the system in which, as the whale, the speaker has to hold

her breath under. The description of offices as “little boxes” (l.5), reminiscent of coffins, tighten the link

between this system and death. Hence, the whale could be regarded as a the ‘I’ persona’s double, both of

them attempting to escape a world they do not feel as their own.

“The Rowing Endeth” is the last poem from the collection The Awful Rowing Toward God (1975). In

this poem, the ‘I’ persona narrates the ending of her journey, presumably life, as she reaches the “dock of

the island called God” (l.2). The search for God has been long and harsh, as she arrives “with blisters that

broke and healed // and broke and healed” (l.7-8). As in previous poems, Sexton’s addressing of death,

though direct, is not gloomy; as McGrath argues, the poems in The Awful Rowing Toward God are

“poems of freedom and power that confidently propose an alternative to life and its suffering in the

embrace of death and God” (1988: 151). Once on the island, the speaker finds God, and they “squat on

the rocks by the sea

// and play – can it be true- a game of poker” (l.15-17). By winning God with “a royal straight flush”

(l.19), Sexton seems to be stressing the importance of the individual, although one cannot escape fate as

God also wins with a “five aces” (l.20). The poetic ‘I’ says that “He starts to laugh” (l.27) and “the

laughter rolling like a hoop out of His mouth // and into mine” (l. 28- 29). The laugh seems to evidence

the unity between God and the speaker, which could be used by Sexton to imply that divinity is found in

every individual, rather than in an external entity. Furthermore, the ‘I’ persona draws attention to the

absurdity of life, death and the quest to find meaning in any of these as she says that “The Absurd laughs”

(l.34) along with them. In the final stanza, the ‘I’ persona seems to come to terms with the absurdity of

human existence and the difficulty to find any plausible meaning to attach to it, as she says “I with my

royal straight flush, // love you so for your wild card, // that untameable, eternal, gut-driven ha-ha // and

lucky love” (l.36-39). As Norton states, The Awful Rowing toward God “is an effort to understand the

meaning of these experiences and decipher their value in life as a whole, no matter how horrific those

experiences may be” (1996: 226).

In the three poems analysed, “February 21st”, “Whale” and “The Rowing Endeth”, Sexton conveys
 74

different aspects of life in quite divergent attitudes. Sexton uses her recent divorce as the main motif of

“February 21st”; this is the only poem of the three in which a defeatist tone prevails, as the reader

encounters no hope of progression. “Whale” has an apparent bleak tone due to the imagery related to

death and the sense of not belonging; however, it presents a surprising strength in her wish to take the

wheel out of her own destiny and break away from the expectations of society, whatever the

consequences. In “The Rowing Endeth”, Sexton introduces an ‘I’ persona who rises above resentment

and protest; by acknowledging the absurd nature of life, its hardness, beauty, and peculiarity, she

manages to make peace with herself and the world. As Norton argues “Luckily for Sexton […] her

repressed anger opened up into understanding and a satisfying career, in which her formerly ‘buried self’

was resurrected, confessed, and became strong enough to deal with personal difficulties and embrace the

continual need for peace” (1996: 25). Despite the bleakness of some of the topics in her final poems,

Sexton seems to be indefatigable and quite vibrant. In contrast to Plath’s ‘farewell’ tone, Sexton’s ‘I’

persona remains critical and active most of the time, even when she reaches the coveted end of her life.
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CONCLUSIONS

Due to the nature of Confessional poetry, many scholars consider that Plath and Sexton blend author and

‘I’ persona in their works, especially when they address topics such as suicide. However, these poets use

their personal experiences and emotions as a source of inspiration for their creative productions, although

these are not the final elaborated product that the reader encounters. Norton argues that if one equates

Confessional poetry with suicide instead of looking at it as a technique used to connect ‘I’ persona and

reader, the result is the stereotyping of confessionalism as a narcissistic and self-indulgent movement

(1996: 30). Furthermore, the high level of dramatisation and elaboration in the poetic production of

Confessional poets, despite the use of first-hand experiences, is undeniable. Hume defends this position

by arguing that these poems re-create different states of mind in which very difficultly anyone would be

able to write or produce any sort of poetry (2000: 29).

Topics such as suicide, depression, euthanasia, and sexism are certainly of key importance in the poetry

of both Plath and Sexton; furthermore, the poets approach these concepts to the reader, allowing them to

understand and relate to their own psychology through poetry. Thus, Plath and Sexton use their literary

productions to denounce controversial topics to the public. For instance, Plath develops on the feelings

that arise from depression and hospitalisation in poems such as “A Birthday Present” and “Tulips”, giving

an artistic first- hand account of ‘what it feels like’. In “Wanting to Die”, Sexton presents the reader with

the wish to end one’s own life, doing so in such a masterful manner that it enables the reader to

sympathise and understand the ‘I’ persona’s position. Regardless of the centrality of these topics, the

poets deal with a wide range of other aspects of their lives, such as motherhood, marriage, addiction, and

the relationship with their progenitors. For instance, Sexton tackles addiction and substance abuse in “The

Addict”, whereas in “Metaphors”, Plath addresses the speaker’s fears of loss of identity as she becomes a

mother. In works such as “All My Pretty Ones” and “Daddy”, the two poets address their relationship

with their respective paternal figures; in doing so, they attempt to come to terms with their late-fathers, a

necessary step in order to overcome the traumas they caused.

 76

The approaches to death and suicide these poets take differ greatly from the ones belonging to traditional

Western discourse. Instead of attaching connotations of finality, suffering, and unpleasantness to them,

they portray death as a means of escaping their internal suffering, as well as a form of progress and

rebirth rather than self-destruction and stagnation. In poems such as “Edge” and “The Rowing Endeth”,

death is presented as the final step in a harsh life; instead of being melancholic or dramatic, these poems

are characterised by the sense of calmness and healing after death. Death is, rather than a frightening

prospect, a recomforting one. Moreover, by comparing suicides to carpenters in “Wanting to Die”, Sexton

presents death as a means of creation rather than destruction. For Plath and Sexton, death is not

necessarily the end of their lives, but also the source of a large amount of their poetry; thus, death can be

seen as a method of both destruction and creation at the same time. In “Stings”, “Lady Lazarus”, and “Her

Kind” death by burning has the opposite effect than expected, and the ‘I’ personas re-emerge as

empowered ‘bitch goddesses’ that defy and take revenge against the patriarchal system that oppressed and

killed their ‘true selves’. Hence, the authors use death as an intermediate, and necessary, step between fall

and recovery. This premise is clearly seen when the ‘I’ persona in “Lady Lazarus” narrates her own

rebirth and prepares for revenge, as she says “Out of the ash // I rise with my red hair // And I eat men

like air” (l.82-84).

The representation of depression and suicidal tendencies in their poetry is much more than a self-pitying

mechanism for these poets. In their ‘depression poems’, the writers uniformly describe depression as

inexorable and crippling, as it is seen in “Tulips” and “The Addict”. They use poetry as a system to

convey their struggles, mental states, and feelings, allowing them to fight off depression in a more

effective way. Therefore, they present the reader with the possibility to get under their skin and

understand this psychological condition. Through poetry, these authors to tackle different issues and

come to terms with reality, using it as a therapy in order to accept their past and rebel against the system

that thrust them to suicide. Moreover, they create an alter ego that plays diverse functions, from

expressing their darkest wishes of self-destruction, to exposing them in an ‘accessible manner’ for the

reader, while exorcising their own demons and creating a new self that rises and fights for their lives.
 77

Both Plath and Sexton mark posterior writing up to today, as they inspire and empower several present-

day female writers, such as Anne Birch, author of the play Anatomy of a Suicide (2017). Hence, as a

suggestion for further research, it would be interesting to carry out a study on the representation of

depression and suicide in 21st century writers, as well as to which extent these are or are not influenced

by Plath and/or Sexton. This might lead to interesting conclusions on how the legacy of these authors

shapes present-day feminist writing or how the public reacts to delicate topics such as depression and

suicide nowadays. In addition to this, the relationship between motherhood and depression in the works

of these two poets would be an enthralling topic to research on as well.

To conclude, Plath and Sexton are much more than depressed writers with suicidal tendencies; they are

daughters, sisters, students, mothers, wives, lovers, patients, and poets that set a precedent in modern

poetry by developing the confessional movement. By using previously taboo topics, these poets start a

literary and personal revolution, producing some of the most remarkable poems of the 21st century. In

these poems, their mental states are put into words for the reader to understand and in some cases relate to

them. Death is often transformed so it becomes a source of creation and empowerment, offering them a

new voice that allows them to speak their minds and be heard. Thus, poetry is used by these poets as a

means of rebellion, denouncement, self-explanation, and therapy. Despite their tragic deaths, Plath and

Sexton are ‘reborn’ thanks to their poetry, fulfilling their objective to transcend their limitations as

women, and become world-acclaimed poets.

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