International Journal of Psychosocial Rehabilitation, Vol.

24, Issue 02, 2020

ISSN: 1475-7192

Confessional Poetry with Reference to Sylvia Plath’s Daddy

1
Abdulrahman Sulieman Khaleel, Al-Iraqia University, College of Arts, Department of English
Abdulrahman.khaleel@aliraqia.edu.iq
2
Mohammed Abdullah Hussein, Asst. Lecturer, Samarra University, College of Education.
mohammedhussein@uosammarra.edu.iq
3
Rgwan Abdalhameed Shuash, Language Academy, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
rajwanhameed10@gmail.com

Abstract
This paper focuses on exploring the confessional poetry of the American poetess Sylvia Plath with
the main focus of her poem Daddy. Plath has been crucial to the development of the field of female
confessional poetry as well as to an awareness of its limits. Taking a modernist side, an analysis
of Sylvia Plath’s Daddy will be conducted in which Plath uses some techniques that are relevant
to the modernist revealing of explicit narrative method. Theoretically, the techniques used by Plath
contains the representation of an open personal horizons where foundations of original meaning
and interpretation exist. The epistemological level, irony, stream of consciousness and pessimism
will be examined to decide the authenticity of such terms as approval for the situation in this poem.
Keywords: Sylvia Plath, confessional poetry, epistemological level, irony, stream of
consciousness, pessimism.

Introduction
Certainly, the appreciation of the activity of technologies of writing is relevant to confessional
poetry. The emergence creativity of Plath, Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Anne Sexton is popular
in the scholarly imagination. Tracy Brain as interpreting of Plath’s poetry, argues that it can
sometimes be focused on authenticating representations of emotional extremity. However, after
centuries, the associations between creativity, individuality and feeling were reconfirmed by the
confessional poets as reacting against a social period of repressive subordination (Takolander,
2017).
It is argued that the work of confessional poets can be attributed to intense emotion that
meaningfully contributes to the powerful feeling of their authorship (Moffitt, 2005). In Poetic
Madness and the Romantic Imagination Frederick Burwick (2010) mentioned that the figure of

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the mad poet and the “furor poeticus” has a dignified cultural history. Plato and Aristotle were the
first critics who theorized poiesis as a form of madness, in which creativity was explained by
divine and frenetic inspiration.
The old notion of the furor poeticus was appreciated by the Romantic poets as a revolutionary
and liberating madness that could free the imagination (Burwick, 2010). This notion was
paradoxically given the logic of impersonal implicit in the original myth, by which a rise given to
a true individualism. Of course, the Romantic ideology of individualism gave rise to forms of life
writing. As Laurence Lerner (1972) argued that the individuality of a poet emphasizes an
individual closeness. Therefore, a speaker (a poet) is seen as a man who is speaking to people
with a genuine voice of emotion.
Albert Rothenberg (1990), in his “Creativity and Madness: New Findings and Old
Stereotypes” observed that psychoanalytic theories of creativity have become completely
ingrained in thinking about the creative process. Moreover, such theories have had a mystical
“belief in the unconscious roots of creativity” (p. 48).
Confessional poets who belong to the middle-class coterie have been influenced by the fields
of psychoanalysis and psychology (Lerner, 1972: 66). In other words, the confessional poets were
self-consciously and tactically mad. Undoubtedly, as great artists, confessional poets cannot be
isolated from the ways in which their art confirmed a culturally longstanding and powerful
association between creativity and madness.
For example, Rose Lucas argues in her essay on the poetry of Anne Sexton that “Sexton’s art
rises out of the oppressive and cathartic experiences of depression and the extreme manic breaks
for which she was repeatedly hospitalized and treated” (7).

Laurence Lerner’s View of Confessional Poetry

Alvarez (1986) as one of the defenders for the school, believes in the essentiality of the
confessional poetry as a response to our time:

If [McLuhan] is right, the old formal arts are no longer wholly meaningful and the
artists are in imminent danger of being made redundant. For the impact of the
’electronic culture’ threatens to shatter all the traditional disciplines which are
worked so hard for, and acquired only slowly and with much difficulty. Suddenly,
unexpectedly, they no longer seem of much use. To survive and communicate the
artist may have to abandon his inheritance, his training, even his habits of mind,

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and start again from the beginning…in the face of this threatening transformation
the Extremist style is the most courageous response. (Beyond all this Fiddle, p. 20)

This group of poets are fundamentally modern for Alvarez because they extend the area of
poetry to allow the alienated consciousness of those living the era of metropolises, psychoanalysis
and concentration camps. A term of ‘breakthrough’ is not accidently Alvarez’s favorite term of
praise for this group. For him, these poets or as he calls them ‘the extremist poets’, and their value
comes as a result of their being striving for colonizing new knowledge for poetry. Plath has been
praised by Alvarez as breaking even further through: “Just as Lowell’s poetry is an extension of
the Romantic agony into modern, analytic terms, so Sylvia Plath’s is a logical extension of
Lowell’s explorations: she simply went further toward he had already taken” (Fiddle, p. 17).
Such breakthrough has resulted as an evaluation of ambivalence for poetry, which is both a
sign of people’s spiritual dissatisfaction and a creation of something valuable as it is able to express
it with such perfection. Contrastively to Alvarez, Davie (1966) confesses in “Sincerity and
Poetry”, wishing to abandon the solidly achieved consensus of opinion about poetry and the
criticism of poetry’; this is the rule (sic) ‘that the “I” in a poem is never immediately and directly
the poet; that the poet-in his- poem is always distinct from…..the poet as historically recorded’.
Commenting on confessional poetry, Davie (1966) says that it is associated with view that
poetry is an individual statement not as twentieth-century horrors. This means that confessional
poetry is not separable from the poet’s biography, an idea that has been with us ever since Lyrical
Ballads. The age of war, psychoanalysis and urban distress produce confessional poetry to
emphasize the poet’s individuality. Such an emphasis existed with us in the different Victorian
world of peace, retrenchment and reform.
Lerner (1987) said that confessional poetry beings as a practice to the subject of individual
poems. However, for example in Snodgrass’s The Double Image when we try to say why, two
reasons can be noticed. Firstly, the lack of the factual element, as she gives an element of
biography, mentions the members of her family, and the time and place of many episodes. This is
what is meant by ‘confessional’. Secondly, there exists the nature of experiences of misery and
humiliation. For her, to confess pain and joy and to experience that her suffering to be deprived in
her dignity. The focal point to some confessional poets is the importance of pronoun courage.
Adrienne Rich (1967) in this regard, comments in her sequence, “Snapshots of a Daughter-in-

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Law”, ‘I hadn’t yet found the courage to do without authorities, or even to use the pronoun “I” –
the woman in the poems is always “she”.

To write of a confessional poem is seen as an act of courage. Then, this act will be similar to
the already surveyed material to constitute the subject matter of Sexton’s poetic world. By using
narrative courage, a retelling to be allowed for a particular incident(s) in all their details with the
inclusion of the factual details that give a real form to an episode. It does not matter as if such
details are an invention or truth. They can be as exactly as the type of decision used either by the
first or third person. Then, the courage required can be called either the courage fact or that of a
pronoun.
Here, drawing attention to poetic strategy can be done by choosing the phrase of ‘pronoun
courage’. The imagery to confess the feelings of disgust, self-hatred and despair are all found in
the poems. By this imagery, these poems are made full of challenge, which again shows courage,
however, with little difference that can be called emotional courage (Lerner,1987). This courage
is a source of motivation of a confessional poet to speak out his\her voices (emotions and feelings).

Confessional Poetry by Women Poets in Postmodern Era

As a post-independence literature appeared and was filled with the hopeless search to identify the
lost identity of the self. The use of the term ‘confessional poetry’ was for the review of Robert
Lowell’s Life Studies. Sylvia Plath, as an American confessional poet and a student of Lowell,
said, “I’ve been very excited by what I feel is the new breakthrough that came with” (p.20). In
“Life Studies” Robert Lowell (2007), said that such powerful breakthrough into the serious, the
personal and the emotional experience which has been felt as partly taboo.
The focus of this genre is on extreme moments of the poets and their personal experiences.
As a result, this poetry arose in the 1960s in the American society. The rapid changes made in all
sectors of life by which cultural discontinuity in America has occurred. This change created
detachment between two generations. So, the collapse of social lifestyle occurred because of this
miscommunication and generation gap (Molesworth, 1976).
One significant point is that, though confessional poetry is associated with male poets like
Lowell, Berryman, however, many critics regarded it as specifically associated with women’s

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writing. Through this genre, female poets explored the way they bring out issues of their personal
experience and gender identity to attain self-identity (Glaser,2009). The aim of female
confessional poets is totally different from male poet as these males’ purpose is to move beyond
their self- deprecation.
A point here is worth mentioning that since confessional poetry of women has been concerned
with confessing feelings that are not supposed to be felt. Therefore, it is done against the notion of
expected behavior by a man. This man is a lover in the poems of the confessional poets; however,
he may be another brutal man. The man who expects of the woman’s discipline, subjugation and
obedience, of the sexual or the social kind. The poet’s father made the woman choose her destiny.
Hence, male’s brutality does not only come in one flavor as far as the confessional poets are
concerned. But rather they rebel against all of them by writing material which is characterized of
being shocking, brave, and ruthless.
It is very significant to discuss the way individualism was expressed by these women. While
the poets deal with individual experiences, in a passionate way to explore their selves, they are still
connected to the community-based ideology that their culture has so instilled into the
subconscious.

Confessional Poetry: Voice of Oppressed Women

Female poets deal with confessional poetry as a way of exposing their psyche. Through it, woman
poets seek self-definition. The struggle of the female poets is to connect the name that was set for
her by the society and the one that is supposed to be given by themselves. Through this genre of
poetry, personal trauma, childhood suppression is vented out by their poetry. In Sylvia Plath’s
poetry both mental and physical sufferings can be found, which reflects her agony. In Plath’s book
of poetry, The Ariel, she deals with her suffering for being a woman, (i.e. her mental sickness, the
urge to find the “Self of Plath”).
Confessional poetry as the poetry of the personal. M.L. Rosenthal commented that “In the
confessional poems the private life of the poet himself, especially under stress of psychological
crisis, becomes a major theme” (Perloff 471).

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The Poem: Daddy

Daddy is one of Plath’s most quoted poems and it is the most important treatment of the father
symbol. It is the best one of her poems. In this poem, Sylvia admits that she is afraid of her father.
This reference leads to prepare the reader for the allegory that is to come. Plath describes her note
that the speaker here is a girl, which she speaks about her father’s death, while she regards him
like a god. Plath’s ideas are intricate due to her father’s being a Nazi and her mother was a Jewish.
This poem opens with a reference to her father’s black shoe and how his daughter has lived as a
foot as she says: (60)
“You did not do, you did not d
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo (61)

Actually, Plath’s father was not a Nazi and even her mother was not Jewish. The historical
references made Plath dramatize her rebellion against her father’s oppression. Plath characterized
her situation in what is called “nursery rhymes” and recalled her father as a “panzer-man” or
“gobbled-goo”. (62) Ibid (p.50)
In Daddy, Plath seeks to get a relive and she kills her father's memory. She does that by a
metaphorical murder, she says:

“Daddy, I have had to kill you

You died before I had time…
Marble – heavy, a bag full of God
Ghastly statue with one grey
Big as a frisco seal” (63)
Ibid (p. 51)

Plath has written many confessional poems to dramatize the war in her soul. This poem, starts with
the opening image that her father as an "old shoe" according to Freud’s writing. This poem is full
of darkness and there are many terrible things, she says:
“You stand at the black board, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,

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A cleft in your chin instead if your foot,

But no less a devil for that, no not,
And 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 black, back, back to you”. (64)
Ibid (52).
The sexual pull appears as the degree of Plath’s suffering from her mental illness. Plath
confesses after failing to escape from her suicide attempt. She gets married to Ted Hughes who is
a black man for seven years. In this poem, metaphorically, she kills her father, her husband and all
men. Daddy is a rejection poem and she turn back on the modern world. So, her rejection to the
family and society leads to the rejection of the self. (65).
Plath’s suicide is predicted with the symbolic annihilation. Such as Totem and in the statement
of human fascination with death. Plath feels with terror at death; therefore, she becomes a romance
with it. Freud believes that the aim of life is death or a word of resistance or survival…. while
Plath's life is poetry and poetry for her becomes death.
In Daddy, Plath expressed her true feeling about her father while there were many references
that had written to illustrate a great feeling of hatred toward her father. She mentioned her fears of
her father and how he had treated his daughter. This poem explained the struggles in Plath's life.
So, she had many conflicts in her feeling. Path confessed her conflict feeling about men and death.
By this way, Many of Plath's poems had influenced by death of her father and her divorce from
her husband.
These struggles left Plath with a feeling of triviality toward men and one of them is her father.
In this poem, Plath reflected her inner hostility in the light of the treatment she had received. The
language of this poem starts to exclude babies’ speech for developing an exclusive vocabulary of
venom. This method deals with the image of the father. In this poem, Plath produces the
combination of colloquialisms with Latin language to present the aesthetic, formal and linguistic
changes in order to give a new immediacy to her work.
Conclusion
It can be said that the confessional poetry encompasses both Plath’s longing to her father. As a
fact, confessional poetry is a removal of the mask from the face to reveal their true feeling.
Therefore, for gaining insight into social and psychological happenings, confessional poetry plays

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the important role of analysis. The progress of the poem reveals that the ‘I-speaker’ has appeared
to affirm the true feelings of her towards her father as well as the fear that she has been through,
that is portrayed as Nazi, torturer and she step by step become able to say her feelings in a more
clear and coherent manner. As a poem, Daddy represents the anger exists within humans
accompanied with great clarity. In the poem, the ‘I-speaker’ is exploring the real images of fear
that have been encountered by her and sustain he her to gain her independence. At the same time,
Plath has emphasized the family in her writings, which seems to shift from parents’ poems and in
the direction of children. This poem is a representation of the heart of Daddy to express and explore
how parents shape a focal view point no longer of the child but of the adult.
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