In this essay, Parvin Ghasemi discusses Sylvia Plath’s poetry in regard to the violence, rage, and self-hurt seen throughout. He progresses through “The Colossus,” “Daddy,” “Medusa,” and “Ariel,” which I have linked in between paragraphs. As I read this essay, I felt as though having a reading of the poems helped understand his critical analysis better than just reading about how he tied the ideas together.
Ghasemi begins with discussing Plath’s background, which as a confessional poet, is important to her writings. Due to Sylvia’s past, critics believe that her father’s early death contributed to her fresh understanding of the world. Her lens of the world changed drastically, but this allowed her to create writing that had not been done before. Her understanding of the modern woman was from a distance in regard to traditional aspects of womanhood, which including matters such as motherhood and domesticity. She saw these two as “obstacles in the way of creative imagination of the modern woman artist who attempts to explore pure feminine experiences” (Ghasemi 285). We see violence, rage, and self-hurt throughout her poetry in successful attempts to portray the feelings behind motherhood, domesticity, and mental health when society tries to impose roles on to an individual who does not want them, or at least seem them in the same light. Plath looks to find herself through these poems, a shared experience that most woman can attest to.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/89119/the-colossus
Ghasemi begins to discuss the father figures that are supposedly represented in Plath’s works. In “The Colossus,” the broken statue, which is unable to be put back together, describes a past that is unable to be recreated. She is searching for feelings among the ruins, not just the pieces of the statue, feelings that are believed to be in relation to paternal love and approval. Discussing her use of imagery, Ghasemi points a comparison to the shadows and sunlight. In this poem, the Colossus casts shade over her, while she lives shadow he casts. With other poetry she had released, she compared creative and her composition ability to the sun. This draws a line between the patriarchal idea casting a shadow over her life, dimming both her creativity and her creation of literature. As the Colossus casts a shadow over her, so do the father-husband that is in her memory. She begins to have a different relationship with her language in regard to both words and rhythm throughout this poem, creating a close-knit tie to conversational language over traditional “cooked” language. This father/daughter relationship is brought into the next poem, “Daddy.”
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48999/daddy-56d22aafa45b2
“Daddy” shows a woman who is unable to gain her own independence in relation to her voice or identity. She alludes to Electra, which helps us as readers understand the relationship and view of her father. Plath “…uses the father/daughter relationship as a smaller model to show the relation between man and woman and, in a wider scope, the position of the woman as an artist in a patriarchal system” which ties in to a large portion of her writings. Understanding the Greek myth regarding Electra allows the reader to better comprehend how the transfer of affection and feelings from father to husband in her poetry. Expressing anger and bitterness at the male power in an intense way, she denounces male authority repeatedly. She explores both the love and hatred she has for her father, while creating a dramatic piece of her private life. The constraint that the patriarchal system has over Plath is shown through the angered speaker of “Daddy” and her rebellious actions toward that of speaking out. Plath continues to discuss how her production of poems and a voice of her own is a struggle, though it is the only way to identify herself. She writes to prove her womanhood and her identity as individual, as it had been silenced for a long time. Her use of language juxtaposes her more complicated adult voice with childlike diction. She uses nursery rhyme like structures to tell an intense, “horror” story (Ghasemi 291). In the poem, the subject marries the demon- vampire as a reference of joining with her father as “The girl cannot rejoin her father; she is not accepted by the patriarch order; therefore, she annihilates her own body both in her work and real life, in order to get back to her father…” (Ghasemi 292). Though the demon-father has incarnation, we understand that this is a wish upon her dead father to be reincarnated, yet it is through the husband. Plath once again uses the black imagery to refer to her father and husband. She moves into another aspect of the demon’s description, referring to him as a German Nazi officer, which helps emphasize the patriarchal society and the silencing of any voices in opposition of their viewpoint. The others in this society are seen as a female voice and she compares the man and woman to the dehumanization of Jews through this. As Plath was partly Jewish, she has a deep-rooted connection to both the othering of her nationality and her sex.
https://allpoetry.com/poem/8498465-Medusa-by-Sylvia-Plath
In the next group of works Ghasemi discusses, they introduce Plath’s relationship with her mother. As we have seen she leans toward an Electra Greek myth-based relationship with her father and mother, she uses the poem “Medusa” to refer to her mother. She uses the monster of Medusa to show the “patriarchal brutal annihilation of women’s bodies and souls” inferring the modern woman is this way (Ghasemi 294). Who she is becomes controlled by men, just as Medusa’s fate was. Using her mother’s overwhelming attachment as a base in this, she expresses the reality of her relationship with her mother, explaining how she feels that her mother’s selflessness is more of a burden than actual care. In the beginning of “Medusa,” she rejects the mother-monster figure that appears at the beginning of the story, revolting against the submissive feminine element, the passivity of woman, and their self-sacrifice paired with annihilation in their social lives. As both a mother and daughter, Plath has a connection to these issues, using “…the rejection of mother-Medusa is the rejection of the portrait of woman as the other, especially the monstrous other, in the patriarchal system” (Ghasemi 296).
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49000/lady-lazarus
Ghasemi then refers to Plath’s reoccurring theme of death and rebirth, or reincarnation. She refers repeatedly to Lazarus throughout her letters and journals, even titling one of her poems “Lady Lazarus” keeping in line with her emphasis of women and the suffering in a patriarchal society. Her anger, pain, suffering and want for revenge is resurfaced throughout the poem yet her strong, sure voice is what overtakes the patriarchal society, as the speaker relates herself to the Jewish victims in the Holocaust. She discusses her suicides as almost regular, routine activities yet in a light form language wise. In the poem, the speaker has been resurrected and has vengeance on those who made her a victim. The speaker’s new life is based on hate and flourishes only through that lens. Once again toward the end she references both the man-burning machines of the Holocaust and the Phoenix, representing birth after death and resurrection with eternal life.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49001/ariel
He rounds out this essay on “Ariel” which presents the speaker as a “…persona transcend[ing] the gender category as the woman…” (300). As the speaker is God’s lioness, death, rebirth are seen again in the poem, but the clash of Plath’s metaphorical universes are represented through how the woman is freed from domestic chores, responsibilities, and boundaries of sexism through this. A lion is represented as power, freedom, and even resurrection and life after death, creating the speaker to go through a metamorphosis into a new spiritual world. As the speaker rides toward the sun, we see her alluding to the dark and light like she does in “Colossus” and “Daddy,” once again tying in the patriarchal society not being able to win in the end over her creativity. The woman in this poem represents what Plath wants which is “…the long wanted freedom of Plath’s poems; she transcends the real world that is depicted as cruel, unsympathetic, and even murderous, a world governed by men, to a world of magical power, rebirth, and spiritual freedom, the inner world of the rebellious female personas…” (Ghasemi 301).
This article really stood out to me because Sylvia’s work is renown in the English world, yet I had never read anything from or about her. Two poems on this weeks readings were mentioned in this article, which probed me to read it. Though it’s 20 pages, it did not feel like much as Ghasemi explained how she shows her rage, violence, and relationships with her parents throughout her poems. The imagery and analysis helped me understand “Daddy” and “Lady Lazarus” more while seeing first hand how she truly is a confessional poet. As some individuals tend to form to certain ideas but not others, she uses her life experiences to paint vivid, intense feelings while addressing topics like the patriarchy and her heritage.
Ghasemi, Parvin. “VIOLENCE, RAGE, AND SELF-HURT IN SYLVIA PLATH’S POETRY.” CLA Journal, vol. 51, no. 3, 2008, pp. 284–303. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44325429. Accessed 16 Sept. 2024.
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