Writing Back: Gothic Imagery in Sylvia Plath as reaction against patriarchal oppression (original) (raw)
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Gothic Elements in Sylvia Plath's Poetry
Orpheus Noster, 2023
Gothic fiction and its preoccupations with the terrifying continued to hold sway over the collective imagination, inspiring writers well beyond the age of Romanticism. American writers, in particular, found the Gothic genre a fertile ground for psychological exploration. This paper argues that Sylvia Plath deployed Gothic themes and motifs in some of her late poems to explore the constraints and fears attached to women’s condition in the early 1960s. This paper offers close readings of three poems – “The Moon and the Yew Tree,” “Little Fugue” and “Death and Co.” – in which images of churchyards and corpses, the threatening return of the past, the terror of approaching madness, a sense of isolation and a fear of entrapment within the female body constitute the Plathian Gothic. Despite their Romantic sensibilities, the poems still remain relevant to their era through their accessible language and the psychological states of mind they conjure up through their images.
European Scientific Journal, 2014
Sylvia Plath's poems mirror the ideological aspirations of its social context, and the construction of identity in her works falls under the impact of their specific contemporary historical context. The bulk of her aesthetic production reflects the ideologies of the Civil Rights Movement and its aim to elevate the cultural autonomy of American women. One of the major characteristics of this era roughly the 1960's and 1970's, is women's endeavor to break out from the dominant patriarchal appropriation. This study purports to investigate some selected poems by Sylvia Plath and how these poems represented Plath as a relentless feminist writer and activist until her death. The study follows the development of the poet's identity from a helpless object into a fighter who tried to win all her wars against the male sex. A large number of Plath's poems deals with the feeling of women, treated as an object, a commodity, not allowed to be an independent person.
ELEMENTS OF SECOND-WAVE FEMINISM AND EMOTIONAL BANKRUPTCY IN THE POETIC WORKS OF SYLVIA PLATH
SSB, 2019
Sylvia Plath's distinction as one of the most captivating and heart-rending women writers of the 20th century is well-known, as is the work which won her literary respect and a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1982. Plath is also hailed as a leading figure of the confessional poetry movement and an important feminist writer. The aim of this paper is to study the elements of second wave feminism and emotional bankruptcy in Sylvia Plath's selected poems and works. It examines Plath's poems The Applicant, Daddy and Lady Lazarus in the context of the second wave of feminism. Though she never considered herself a feminist, her poems reverberate with criticism and dislike of the predicament of women in 1950's.
MODERNIST PATRIARCHAL DISCOURSE IN SYLVIA PLATH'S SELECTED WORKS
2022
The present paper entitled 'Modernist Patriarchal Discourse in Sylvia Plath's Selected Works' looks closely at the way canonical Modernism tried to preserve its gendered aesthetic bias by shutting off the voice of the woman writer. The paper examines with especial attention the short stories, novel and prose writings of Plath. It shows how in these writings Plath is highly alert to the imprisonment of the woman poet in the 'bell-jar' (Plath) of male formalistic objectivity. Primary aim of this paper is to identify the split within a woman between her biological entity and her literary self and explore how the latter is found to disintegrate among the commonly accepted aesthetic ideals that are relegated to modernism and are often used to define Modernism. For methodological purpose, this paper refers to the much celebrated, anthologized and influential essay 'Tradition and Individual Talent' in which T. S. Eliot rooted the individual author in the soil of tradition. This move keeps the woman writer as an outsider to artistic experience, for the tradition hardly allows space to the relatively new figure of the modern woman writer. Additionally, I have employed concept of Virginia Woolf, Edith Sitwell, Djuna Barnes and Gertrude Stein for a separate tradition of woman's writing, a history and future of literary forms and preoccupations particular to woman's minds and bodies. It alludes to Woolf's vision that women should not collaborate with the patriarchy, but should form 'societies of outsiders' to resist the configuration of male politics.
International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature
Written in the last two years of her life, selected poems of Sylvia Plath such as, “The Jailer”, “Three Women”, “Fever103°”, “Purdah”, “Daddy”, “Lady Lazarus”, and “Edge” reveal that the speaker’s inevitable movement towards her final suicide is rooted in her enslavement by men in society. This is observed by reading these poems in the light of Simon De Beauvoir’s dichotomy of master-slave in The Second Sex, with application of terms like “the other”, “realm of the women”, “double demand”, “servant”, and “enchantress”. In this article it is argued that the speaker manages to reverse the dichotomy and becomes the master of her own fate by committing suicide. To the best of my knowledge the application of De Beauvoir’s theory to the above-mentioned poems has not been done before; therefore, it can shed new light on how power relations between men and women are reversed in these poems.
'THE MOUTHS OF CORPSES': DEATH, FEMININITY AND THE GROTESQUE IN SYLVIA PLATH'S POETRY
Odisea, 2015
The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical review on Sylvia Plath's representation of womanhood and the archetypes of femininity in her poetry Here, I will provide an analysis on Plath's imagery related to female genitalia, fertility and infertility, menstruation, and motherhood On the other hand, I will focus on the presence of female figures related to popular culture and the grotesque, inspired by other traditional forms associated to witchcraft and sorcery This way, I intend to illustrate how Plath expresses her feelings and emotions on the experience of being a woman by using these poetics images of femininity and the female body
‘Las bocas de cadáveres’: muerte, feminidad y lo grotesco en la poesía de Sylvia Plath
2015
The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical review on Sylvia Plath's representation of womanhood and the archetypes of femininity in her poetry. Here, I will provide an analysis on Plath's imagery related to female genitalia, fertility and infertility, menstruation, and motherhood. On the other hand, I will focus on the traditional forms associated to witchcraft and sorcery. This way, I intend to illustrate how Plath expresses her feelings and emotions on the experience of being a woman by using these poetics images of femininity and the female body.
Social Status of Women in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath
2013
Sylvia Plath, a name that could never be forgotten. She is remembered as a brilliant American poet for the bulk of touching poetry she had left drawing most out of her own tragic life. Up to the very last moment, she led an unfulfilled life. She disliked of being a woman specifically due to the constraints the society imposed on her gender. Her soul thrived to leap far beyond this uncultured patriarchal system. As a young and growing poet, she strongly believed in the capacities in terms of what women could achieve. Her powerful, sometimes violent verses transparently express her anger towards social injustice caused to women. Her poems bring to light the defects of the patriarchal society in which she had lived. Poems like Daddy, Ariel, Jailer and Pursuit echo her struggles against the male-dominated society. In this way, her verses express the need for emancipation of her gender socially and politically. This paper aims at finding how Plath has successfully incorporated the social...
Gothic Imprints in Plath's Poetry
2014
Gothic literature is a combination of romance and horror, flourished during the eighteenth century. Gothic literature includes features like supernatural events, haunted castles, and the protagonists persecuted by a powerful villain. It displays the imagination of the human mind that brings unthought-of images from nowhere. Haunted setting and sentimentality of the speaker's mind over death or dead body are common aspects of Gothic literature. While writing about her own experiences Sylvia Plath evokes the sense of fear and horror with the intensity of Gothic literature. This research study has been focused on her selected poems and has analyzed her poetry from it based on Gothic conventions. Her poetry speaks about brutal imaginations which haunt. Establishing a female speaker who is entrapped in a patriarchal society is helpless and with her such expressions she generates a sense of terror among the readers. Mental suffering of female and trauma she faces in male-dominated society are combined in the merciless voice of a female speaker. The combination of the haunted female mind, helpless captivated females and mass killing give the feeling of a thrill as in Gothic Literature. Sylvia Plath, who preceded the confessional genre of the twentieth century, also has Gothic imprints in her work. She presented her haunted mind and man is that source of terror in the haunted mind. Unlike conventional Gothic Literature Plath’s work terrifies the readers with walking dead. She talks about resurrection after death, her showcase of fascination towards death exemplifies the Gothic imprints she has in her poetry.
The Death of History: Gender Configurations and Historicist Context in Sylvia Plath’s Poetry
in Sylvia Plath's Poetry is an attempt of an analysis of Sylvia Plath's poetry which manifests a complete breakdown of the sustaining faith in the male. By The Male, we mean the cultural burdens that were enacted upon the feminine. Our paper is centered on the Genesis of the pains and struggles of the poet, whose agony is not only personal, but also spiritual. The poet is