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UNIT 50 SYLVIAPLATHANDCONFE%
POETRY
Structure
50.0 Objectives
50.1 Introduction
50.2 Confessional Poetry
50,2.1 Tlie Be~iniung~ ,
50.2.2 The waste aid qralin
50.2.3 Tlie Origiiis df "Collfession"
50.2.4 Personal T11emes
50.2.5 Failed Relationships
50.2.6 Father Coiilples
50.2.7 Nervous Breakdowns
50.2.8 Suicide, Dentli. and Disease
50.2.9 The Desire to Shock , ,

50.2.10 The Question of Authcnlicity

50,2,ll Going Bcyond the Persoriol
502.12 Iilfluci~ceof Psychoniialysis
50.3 Sylvia Plat11
50.3.1 Her Lifc uid Works
50,3.2 Tl~ePoe~ils
50.4 Exercises in Comprehension
50.5 Let's Sum Up
50.6 Select Bibliography

50.0 OBJECTIVES

After reading this unit you will bc. avarc of the kind of poetry that was written in the
'sixties of the twentieth century. You will understand the work of Sylvia Plath and be
familiar with some of her represeiltative poems which will be critically analyzed.

50.1 INTRODUCTION

Sylvia Plath's work will be placed in the context of the Confessional Poetry of the
'sixties. As her work is heavily autobiographical, there will be an outline of the major
events of her lift: and how they influenced her poetic sensibility. This will be
followed by a discussion of some of her representative poems.

50.2 CONFESSIONAL POETRY

+h '

The Unit on'Philip Larkin told you something about the poetry of the 'fifties in Engla~ld
which came as a reaction to the dictates of Pound and Eliot and the "escesses'! of Djllan
Thomas. This reaction against the established, intellectual, academic poetq- took
another form in the u.$. A, and from there travelled to England with Sylvia Plath, The
poets involved in this reactionary mouenient came to be called the Confessiollal Poets.
Heading the group were Robert Lowell and Theodore Roethkc. Youiiger poets lilcc
Sylvia Plath and Anne Seston, who 9tydied with Lowell. leanled to write in t11c samc:
anti-intellectual, subjective style. SO did John Berryina~.Togctl~er.these poets
initiated a new trend in poetry, glorifying the personal and the private. cspressing thcll.
iiv~ern~nst secrets aloud for all to hear. W i % y l v i a Plat11 mmicd the Englisl~poet
'Ted J-Ii~ghcs
and cl~oseto nlakc her llome in the United Kii~gdom,tl~eCo~lfessional
~iiovcn~entno longer renlained confilled to t l ~ eAlllericall boundaries.

50,2.1 The Beginnings

Aroiui~dmid-century in the U.S,A.,a lot of clla~lgeswere imperceptibly taking placc.

Tllerc \itas no single. sudden. radical cllange; the changes that wcre gradually norlcii~g
tllcir \yay into the \/cry vitals of literature were slow but steady. The bcgillllillgs 0-f thc
cllntlgc ittay be discerned in the works of poets like Robert Lowell, Allen Ginsberg, 2nd
"I71codot.cRoctlAe. Eliot's theory of il~~personality no longcr seemed to be the divine
\\.oldpoets \\ere required to follo\v. It fell illto its proper place and calne to be
I-cgnrdedas just a theo~yand no more. Fro111tlie i~npersonalnlode there callle a shift
towards the personal mode; froill the outer waste land to the waste land within; from
global the~llesrelating to Jerusalem, Atl~ens,Vienna, London,,to themes related to t l ~ c
llcart and sou I of the poet.

'Tile )'ear 1959 illay be regarded as a watershed in tl~ehistory of literature for it was iB
this year that two inlportai~tevents took place wl~icllshaped the nature of poetry to bc:
\\,rittal subsequently, The first ofthcsc events was the publicatioil of life Stcr(1ies by
Kobcrt Lowell \vllich lleralded a new kind of poetry, lnarlti~lga significant departure
from the complex syn~bolisniand the for~nalla~lguageand style of T. S, Eliot.
Focusing attontion on his ow11self, Lowell chose to loolr inward ratl~crtl~anoutward.
Clonsequentl!,, his work nloved away fro111 the cl;lssical stance, bccomi~~g 1llorc
~~crsonal, illore privatc. Lowell became an iimpo~tm~t i~~fluence on tl~epoets of the
.sisties, bringing aboi~tan "i~ltensebreaktluouyh into very serious, very persenal,
cmotional experience" whicll hnd until the11been partly taboo, as Sylvia plat11 saw it,
S!:lvia Plath nnd Anne Sexton cmle under his direct influence when they attended
IJo\vcll'spoetry classes in Boston, They looked upon Lowell as a mentor.

l'ltc sccond important event tltat took placc in 19.59 relates to Allen Ginsberg, a poet
vcry different fro111 Lowell, who also undermined the esttzblisl~edpoetic norms of tlle
timc. but in his o\vn inanncr. A poetry rending by him, Gregory Corso, and Pctcr
Orlotsky at C:olun~biaUilivcrsity becanle a co~~trovcrsial public affair, "crnblc~~~atic
of
;L whole cra," as Morris Dickstein put it. Wit11 l~isreading of Howl, Ginsberg cliangcd
tllc vcry concept of poetry. Hitllcrto, if poetry was trcated as a literary constn~ct,with
Cjinsbcrg, it callle to be regarded as a pcrfor~~lal~cc, a ritualistic gcsturc acco~llpmicdby
music and dance. Discarding co~lventioilalfornls and the~nesGinsberg imparted to
11oett-ya ncw sense of frcedplll and spirit~~lal illtensity, taking it out of stuffy classroo~ns
on to the open staye. T11e work of Eliot and Po~uldrequired a vast body of critical
annotations and i~~terpretations to be colllprcl~endedf~llly.Besides, it had emerged as
an answer to cl~eneeds of a particular hour in histoqf:tllc second decade of the
t\\c~lticthce~itur)~ when, as a result of global wars, civilizations secnlcd to be breaking
apart. B), tl~clatc 'fifties the situation had changed.

50.2.2 The Waste Lnnd Within

It was Robert Lowell who first saw the horror, the boredonl, and the glory of Eliot's
waste land paralleled within the mind. Lifi? Stuclie.~comlects the nleatli~lglessi~ess
a ~ d
hollowvness ofthe outer world to the existing despair within. Unable to find order and
security in thc post-war world, Lowell looks for stability and reassurance in his family, .
his background, and the New England tradition represented by his ancestors. His
poetry: tl~usis a regressive movement, w a y frOm the broad canvas of the world to a
narrower, fmlilial canvas, But at all times Lowell retains his co~~y~~ondense attitude
wd kee~shis feet firmly rooted in the reality of everyday life, '
With Theodore Roethkc them is more of an escapist movement. The Lost So,?crnd
Other Poems was published in 1948 but its fill1 iiupact was felt only after thc
publicntipn of Lowell's Lijk Stullies. T l ~ cdiffereilrc between Lowcll and Roctl~kclics
111 that \vherens Lowell regresses into history -- family llistory and also autobiography
-- Roetlhe's es'cape is into the world of nature. It may be said that Roethkc's is a relil1.n
to Wordsworthiail ideals. But so, in a different m y . is Lowell's. If The Prelude is
Wordsworth's spiritual autobiography, Life Studies is a record of Lowell's cnlotioilal
history. As in Wordsworth, in Lowell's work. too, one inay easily detect the presence
of an "egotistical sublime." But not so in the case of Roetlk where the poet's
personality, more Keatsean, remains in the background while the pla~ts.roots. ind
creatures of tl1e greenhouse speak on his bel~alf,The personal voice. unlike that of
Lowell, speaks occasiollally but without asserting itself in too obtrusive a manncl..

50.2.3 The Origins of "Co~~fession"

The work of Lowell and Roetlke, and otlier poets like Sylvia Plath, John Berymal~and
h l n e Sexton, has come to be called "Confessional Poetry." a nomenclature that is 1nol.c
a label of convenience for critics. M. L. Rosentl~aldefined this form of poetry as that in
which "the private life of the poet, especially under stress of psychological crisis.
becon~esa major tl~e~ne" (as M.L. Roseilthal says. T11e word "confession" has a host of
connotations of which two may be cited for their relevance to the prcsellt contest: tllc
act of "confessing" and the intinlacy of experience. "Confessional" is related to
coilfessioils made in cl~urchin order to obtain absolution. Thus, it is a private
utterance, an admission of lapses, wrong-doings, and feelings one would not noimall!~
express in public, But,at the same time, it reinains an ~~ttermce 111ade before an
audiencc, in this case the father confessor. Confessio~lalpoetry should thus havc all the
ingredients of confession: it would pertain to private errors and omissions, fcars and
phobias. Above all, it must have its roots firnlly in tlie poet's biograpl~l*.It deals with
personal themes. The poet's self is the pivot around which his world revolves. It is an
expression of personality, believing the poct's individuality to be the first ~-ealitythat
must be reckoned with. Only after one has comc to ternls with one's t n ~ esclf can oilc
turn to look at the outside worId. So'tRe first task ofthe coilfessional pocts is to loolc at
the turbulence within the self, analyze the chaotic mass of thoughts and feelings. and
come to ternls with the~il.

50.2.4 Personal Themes

The themes, thus, are invariably related to the poet's growth and childl~ood.A
comparison may be drawh with the autobiographical mode of Wordsworth. I11 The
Prelude, Wordsworth presents a long, chronological account of his cvolutioil froill a1
ordinary boy to a sensitive poet, He takes up sclected "spots of time," kcy il~oi~~cnts
that stand out in his meniory, analyses their importance and coiltrib~~tio~ltowards the
making of the poet he grew up to be. The work of the confessional poets is siillilar in
the sense that they, too, look back at the past, picking out significant ~no~llents
in their
experience. But, unlike Wordsworth, their main concern is not with the road taken to
fame and glory. Rather, it is the paths taken to neuroses and emotio~lalbreakdowns
that fslscinate them, They all seem to look back totally mesmerized. emmining c v c n
hurdle encountered, every landmark on the way. There is total self-absorption. not just
a commemoration of the flattering moments of personal history but also the ignoblc.
humiliating and demeaning experiences.

50.2.5 Failed Relationships

The Confessional Poets speak of persolla1 fhilures: failure. for $stance, in establishing
meaningful relationships with others, Robert Lowell, in "Man and Wife" (Lije SZrrt1ic.v) '
speaks ofthe failure of marriage. Th? fault lies somewhere in the inability to
communicate with his wife, Another poein in Life Studh is significantly cntitlcd
"To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriaget' where the hllsband

drops his home disputes, '

and hits the streets to cruise for prostitutes,

free-lancing along the razor's edge.
 Lowell locates the causes of the breakdown of communicatioil within the psyche: it is a
ccrtain inadequacy in an individual that prevents hiin from reaching out to others and
establishing a meaningful relationship with the world outside. Lowell is coilcerned
'with pinpointing the exact nature of such an inadequacy.

Sylvia Plath

Lowell speaks of failure not only in marriage and sexual relationships but also in filial
duties. In "Home After Three Months Away" he mentions his daughter. Again, there is
a Eailure in communication: Lowell is aware that he has failed somewhere as a father.
And once again, the reasons lie within: the mental collapse that he suffered is the
invisible divider, keeping him away from the child. There is 'desire, there is love, but
there is at the same time a crippling force that nullifies all positive efforts towards
establishing a rapport with others. Lowell's technique is the reverse of Eliot's: he does
not objectify experience. On the contrary, he portrays it as it is, naked, raw, and
elemental. This is style that Eliot would have criticized the way he..cfdcized Humlet
and its problems for lacking an "objective correlative", motion, as Eliot sees it, illust
be expressed through a suitable objective correlative, an external object that becon~es 41
 ~~lu~icrrtists/ symbolic of tlie emotion to be conveyed. But Robert Lowell would rather speak of h i s
Post-n~otlernists experience directly.

50.2.6 Father Complex

Ted Hughes

Failed filial relationships in confessional poetry take on another fonn. this time the poet
, I
in the role not of parent but offspring: the child mourning for a lost father. The t h e i l ~ c
is not new. Eliot often makes a reference to Ferdinand of The Tempest: weeping o v e r
..,
!.I
the supposed demise of his fither and Ariel's consoling dirp,e is repeatedly invoked:
(

"Full M o r n five thy father lies ...." Robert Lowell speaks of a strained relationship
. :,I
i
.%
with his father, and so does Theodore Roethke. Sylvia Plath, John Berlyina~,and
. Anne Sexton, all seems to suffer from a hther coillplex. Their attitude vacillates
.. ,
. I , L
between adoration and abhorrence. It is, no doubt, a part of the natural process that
.., , 42 they, as members of the yoinger generation, sl~ouldoutlive their parents. But their
s,.,.~ response to their bereavement is unnaturally intense. There is an illability to accept t l ~ c :
i I,
;'.I
 loss of the father, a failure to cope with a world renloved Er.0111 his benign influence. I11
fxt. so deep is the sense of loss tlnt the poet is lcft at a, breaking point, teetering
between sanity and a total loss of enlotional balance.

50.2.7 Nervous Breakdowns

Thc theme of mental collapse, which is partly the result of parental loss, is dcalt \\ it11 by
Anne Sexton who remembers her fatller wit11 pangs of a guilty conscicncc. She
considers herself a failure not sinlply as a daughter, but also as a mother. The motl~er
of two daughters, Seston could never forgive herself for being a failed parcnt. as shc
thought. At the same time, she i~ratiollallyblamed 11el-selffor the death of llcr parents.
Such feelings of guilt are recounted in the poenls of Ilb Bedlam and Purt Wa.y Uaclr.
Lo\\ ell speaks of his mental breakdown in "Home After l r e e Months Awaj " and
"Waking in the Blue." Roetlke and Rerrynlan, too, frequently refer to thcir ilervous
brcakdowns ~unabashedly.In fact, Rocthkc even seems to glorify nmdness: "What's
~nadnessbut nobility of soul 1 At odds with circumstance."

50.2.8 Suicide, Death, and Disease

Whm these Clonfessioilal Poets speak oftheir brcakdowvns and personal faili~res.the!.
I sceln to be drq~mlmore and more dcep into sorrow and despair. Not surprisingly, thcir
thougl~tsoften turn to self-destruction. Self-m~nihilationor suicide fornls a major
theme in their poeins. 111their personal lives, too, illost of thenl remained Suicidal.
Sylvia Plath. Anne Sext~n,and John Berryinan died self-inflicted dcatl~s.111 the works
of the other confessional poets, too, suicide and dcath arc always around t l ~ ccorncr.

It is not simply death that their poctry speaks of. It also dcals tvith physical sickness.
disease and decay. Consequently, a lot of unromantic clclnclll crccps illto poetry. As
Robert Phillips puts it, there is no longer any "poetic" or unpoetic" material, nothiil~is
taboo 111confessional poetry. Lo\vcll speaks of myopia, Rocthkc of hydrotherapy.
Seston of thc personal, private espcricnccs of being a woman, of topics as controversial
as ~nast~~rbation or i~~enstniation. The ugly and thc grotesque inspirc poetry in tllc samc
nlanner as the beautifill and the good.

50.2.9 The Desire to Shock

The desire behind such poetry is the urge lo sl~ock.This desire to s11ock is manifested in
thc use of ullconventional themes, o~ltspolienlanguage, aid expressions of ul~co~~taincd
fury. All this requires courase atld it is courage that the confessional poets lay claim to:
the courage to come face to hce with reality, no matter what the consequences, no
nlatter how painful the experience. I11 this coimection a refcrcnce may bc n~adcto
Sexton's epigraph to To Bedlam and Part Wcy B c ~ \vl~icl~
k is a quotation froill a lcttcr
to Goethe from Schopenhauer:

It is the courage to make a clcan breast of it in the face of evcry

question that makes a philosopher. He must be like Sopl~oclcs'
Oedipus who, seeking eniightetlrnent concerning his terrible fate,
pursues his indefatigable inquiry, even when he divines that
appalling horror awaits him in the answer. But most of us carry in
our hearts the Jocasta who begs Oedipus for God's sake not to
inquire further.

The poet is forever seeking answers to questions that plague him on inalters peltailling
to his identity and situation in a larger scheme of things.

50.2.10 The Question of Authenticity

Ho~vevcr,after reading the work of Lowell, or Sexton, or the other confessioilal poets,
tl~cquestion that arises is: how much of their work is related to a~ithcnticespericnce?
 How n l ~ ~ of
c hit is fiction? "Confession," after all, is assumed to be true. But not so in
the case of these poets. It is not always first-hand experience that the poets write of.
"There is a good deal of tinkering with fact," as Robert 'Lowell explained in ail
interview. Such a statement, combining fact with fiction, answers many other doubts
that may arise regarding the nature of confessional poetry. It should simply sound as if'
it were true, says Lowell. Sexton, for instance, brings in a lot of fictitious events and
esperieiwes into her work and yet her work reads like an authentic accoullt.

50.2.11 Going Beyond the Personal

~f confessional poetry were simply "confession," the admission of private guilt. sorron:
alld loss, ~twould have a very limited appeal. For one wearies of hearing the pr~vatc
\hining and moa~ingof individuals dissatisfied with their lot. But, the work of thc
pocts of the 'sixqies has a wide appeal for several reasons. Because of the "I", the first-
person singular orientation, the poetry conveys a sense of hmediacy and urgency.
Collfessional poetry has a lot in coinmon with the dramatic monologue, exploring as it
does the labyrinths of the mind, diving into motives and intentions. In the use of the
first person singular there is another advantage: it is like one person talking to anothcr.
a sl1ariig of confidences, an "I" engaged in a conversation with "you." It also
encourages the imaginative identification of the reader with the writer. so that it a
easicr to understand and respond to the sufferings of the poet / narrator. At the same
time, despite the personal tllemes, there are certain devices by which an rzttclnpt is inadc
to impart some kind of universality to the poetry. "Cries of the heart:" as Sylvia Plat11
calls them, would have a limited audience. So, the poet son~etin~es uses a persona that
is universally recognized and accepted. In Sylvia Plath's w e , for example: the poet
often evokes the figure of Electra, borrowed from Greek n~ythology.The poent
add^,"' she says, is spoken by "a girl with an Electra complex." Other confessional
pocts adopt different devices. John Berryman creates a private persona for the sanc
effect and makes use of the third person singular. His Dream Songs arc the raniblirlg
thouglrts of a certain Henry wllo is a device that provides an aesthetic distance betuccn
the poet and t l ~ experience
e he writes of. In the guise of Henry, Berryman feels fiec to
speak of experiences tlnt would otl~erwisebe hard to recount in t l ~ first
e person.
Lowell tries to ensure a wider appeal for his poetry by establishing a link between
private experience and public. Events from history and politics are brought into the
poems and related to individual experience. This linking of the personal with the public
helps to situate the experience in a particular locale and time. The poet is thus scen not
as an independent entity detached fioni the rest of the world, but, paradoxically,as a
private individual in a public milieu. So Confessioilal poetry is not simply confession:
it seeks to establish connections between the outer and the inner world of man.

50.2.12 Influence of Psychoanalysis

Dealing with the innennost recesses of the mind, it is but natural that these poets show
the ii~fluenceof psychoanalytical theories tliat have come to stay in the twentieth
century. Aulc Sexton's work is a good illustration of this point. As the critic Robert
Phillips points out, there is a strong Jungim influence in her work. In her
T~~nsforrn~tion~ of the illnoc~lousfairy tales of the Grinml Brothers, Sexton resorts to
psychoanalysis to interpret, in a1adult way, stories that were originally meant for
children. Psychoanalysis inay also be applied to the strong sexual imagery that is found
in the work of Plath, Benynan, Lowell and Roethke.

50.3 SYLVIA PLATH : HER LIFE AND WORKS

111 order to ~tnderstandthe poetry of Sylvia Plath (1933 - 63), the'we nced to be awarc
of at least three cnicial biographical facts which cast their shadow on her work: one, t11c
44 premature death of her father when she was barely eight; two, the separation fro111her
husband, Ted Hughes, who took on tl~erole of a htl~ersurrogate; and, three. her
 sLl~cjde attempts, the first unsuccessfi~lone at the agc of twenty-onc. and the final
s ~ ~ ~ c c s atteillpt
s f i ~ l in her thirtieth year. 011these three events is based the mqor poetr!
of S\ lvla Plath, its cries of hclpless rage altentat~itgw~tllgloo~llydespalr, its nnrc~ss~stic
coll&nl n ~ t lthe i individual self colouring all tliemes and subjects she cllooses to ~ r i t c
of

Plati~'sfirstcollectio~lof poenls, The Colossus, published ill 1956. comprises poe~ns

tlla may best be described as "apprentice poems" because they seen1 docile, ncll-
behaved, and contain no iilllovatio~lsand surprises. Tme, they give some cvidence of
her po~tic.tale~~t,but are too self-consciously thesaurus-oriented to be trcated as ~IILIC~I
Illore than clcver exercises in verse that one would perhaps write to please an exacting
me~ltor.It \?ins the poetry of the last ~llo~lths of her life in which Platli lct go of all
restraints md. without bothering about irrelevant concebis, spoke in a higlily
individualized voice. These powerful poems are collectcd in Arid,publislicd
postl~umousl~~. The poems in between these two voluines belong to a transitory plinso
and are collected in Crossing the Wuter and Wirtta. 7?ees. There is also a fictioilalizcd
autbbiography entitled The Bell .lor, that Plat11 published under the pseudonym of
Victoria L u c s in 1963, and a collectio~lof short stories and prose picccs, ,lokt?r~y
Pmic attd the l3ible qf Dreams. It is on these few volu~nesthat S!llvia Platli's fa'ame
rests today. Tlle Platli cult flourished iii the 'sixties, after her suicide, and fanned tlie
feminist movement, h 11s cooled since tllell and we may now make an ob-jective
assessment 'of the merits of Sylvia Plath's~acl~ievc~~~ents.

50.3.1 The Poems

' "The CO~OSSUS"

Sylvia Plath's first volui~leof versc is appropnatclj. called Tile Colossus. Altliough
Platli does not refer to it, the title brings to mind thc ~vcll-known1111csFro~ll
Shakespeare's Jzliitls Cciescir, describing the eponymous hero of thc play: ",..Why. 111~1.
lic doth bestride this narrow world / Like a colossus." Tlle reference is to tbc
1cgendaj? bronze statue of Apollo at Rhodcs. It is such a gigantic fisure that towers
ovcr the landscape of Sylvia Plath's early ~vork,representing ilonc othcr tha11t11c poet's
I
dead father, 111uchinisscd, illuch gricved for. It is thc abscilcc of the father that sliapcs
n~uchof Platll's work. Her poe111s record her reaction to this irreparable pcrsonal loss.
The rcaction takcs on many forms: soillctilllcs the poct sccills lo acccpt ~twith
resignation whereas on other occasions shc rages against thc iil.justicc of having to lose
a parent. Thcre is a sensc of shock and betrayal, an occnsioilal rcfi~salto come to terms
with the reality of death.

i The fither's absence is one that grows like a trec, as a later poeill puts it. It grows to tlic
towering height of a colossus, soinctimes seen as n"Man in Black," or as a cn~cltyrant.
Thus he is not just a beilevolent father-figure, but also a inalcvolent forcc portending
doom and destruction. The poet's attitude towards this colossus is a11 a ~ ~ b i g ~ iOIIC
ous
111the first place, because it is modelled 011 her fatl~er,there is a filial amclu1ient ancl
I love. But. at the sarllc time, because the father, by dying. lias deserted his child, therc IS
I a resentment against him, Such are the dichot0111ousfeelings that Plath exprcsscs in
relation to her father through the colossus image.

This title p0e111of The Colos~sz~~s (l?IJP129-30) speaks of a dilapidated fallell stah~cof
gigantic proportions, with weeds and wild grass growing all over it. Plat11 establishes a
contrast between past glory and prescnt dow~fall,and also betwcen the big and the
I
I small. Presented in the same framework as tile fallen god. is a dii~ii~~litivc perso~ia.
\v110. in contrast with the massive stable, is "'an ant in mour~lmg."and m11st tcnd it as
best as she can. I11 the contrast between the statue's bulk and the attcndsnlt's pwliness
one is reilliilded of Swift's portrayal of Gulliver in the land of Lillipt~tiai~s.Thc
relationship between the statue'a~ldthe atteiidant is akin to that bctween a nlastcr and
his slave, the latter in servile obedience to the forilier: "lliirty ycars no\v I llavc
laboured 1To dredge the silt from your throat.'' There is an acceptailcc by the spcrtkcr
I

I
of her inferior role. Engaged in a thankless job, with no hoyc of ever being ficc of it.
she resigns herself to fate:

My hours are married to shadow.

No longer do 1 listen for the scrape of a keel
On the blank stones of the landing.

It is a private experience that Plat11speaks of but she takes it beyond personal histol>
and gives it universal dimensioils by en~ployingtlle Electra 111yth with thc referc~lccto
the Oresteia.

It may be noted that Plat11 is here dealing with the lost father theme. Loss of the fitl~cr
is one of the many autobiographical subjects tllat Plat11 writes her poetry on. But shc
tries to impart a universal applicability to thc experience through the usc of myth. For
this reason, the fhther is visualized as a Greek God as in "Full Fathom Five."
Elsewl~ere,for tlte same effect, she evokes the Electm myth to describe the relationship
between herself and her fither.

"Daddy"
"Daddy," a late poem, is one such example. In a note to the poem, Platll herself draws
our attention to the co~iilectionw~ththe story of Electra:

[The poenl] is spoken by a girl with an Electra Co~llples.Her bthcr died'whilr she
thougllt hc was God. Hcr case is complicated by the fact Ulit her father was also a
Nazi and her 111otllcrvery possibly part Jewish. In Ule daughter the two strains milrr3
and pardyse each other -- slle Ins to act 0111 the acvlul little allcgory oncc over before
she is free of it. (CPP 293)

This statement is important for several reasoils that may apply to the other poeins of
PIatl~as well. In tlle first place, we may note the deliberate effort to go beyond thc sslf
by employiilg on the one hand Greek nlyth and, on the other, events from world histon
(the Nazi-Jew animosity). Secondly, it is easy to disc en^ thc aularencss of
psychoanalytical theories and their application to personal relationships. This poem
speaks of the father-daughter relationship but in another p o a l ~("Medusa" for instculce)
it is the relationship with the motller that the poet is concerned with. In yct anotl.rer
poem, it may be the runbig~~o~ls mother-child bond that she focuscs 011(as in "Lesbos").
Tllird, tlle poem takes a close look at not just the relationsl~ips,but thc clllotional
complexities of a person, the existence of opposing forces within onc's psychc. the
good and the bad, the gentle and the harsh, the Jew and the Nazi. And finally, Plath's
note puts forward a subtle suggestion that poetry, in its most powverful forn~,is a
ritualistic gesture. It is an exorcism of the domoils that haunt the poet. It is the~apeutic*
it has a cathartic effect. In such poems there is generally an inner, psychological
co~~flict the persona is engaged in.

"Daddy," speaking of the two conflicting strains within the girl which mam. and
paralysc each otlxr, deals with such a conflict. Plath is here dealing with the i~~flue~icc
of heredity on an individual as these psychological tensions are hereditan.. a legacy
from the Electra-like girl's mixed parental backc. ~und,part Nazi. part Jewish. Give11
such a parentage, the girl cannot help being a .c . in1 of clashing cllaracteristics, But.
often, the opposing forces within the self do no1 owe their origin to fanlily history: they
are ingrained in human nature, It may be noted, however, that, the lines of "Dadd).,'
though they stom1 and curse against one who has betrayed the persona could only be
uttered by one who cares, one who hah loved deeply and tn~ly,a ~ \v)~q d llm,becn l~urt
because her love has come to nothing. Such are tl~eanlbivalent feeliilgs that "Daddy"
expresses against the dead hther,

"Lady Lazarus":
In "Lady Lc?zarus" Plath speaks of her previous suicide attempts. Biograpli~~~l
accounts of Sylvia ~lat11tell us how the poet was foscii~atedwith the idcn of d!.ing and
r\ttemptdsuicide more than once. This is a passion she shared with her friend, the poet
Anne Sexton who admits that they often talked about dying: "We talked death with
burnt-up intensity, both of us drawn to it like illoths to an electric light bulb. Sucking
on it!" Sex?on has immortalized their camaraderie in her famous poem, "Wanting to
Die" wllich explains the inorbid attraction of death:

Since you ask, most days I cmlot remember.

I walk in illy clotlung, unnwked by that voyage.
Then the iriost unnaineable lust returns....
: (Anne Sexton)

The lust is thc self-destructive passion, the desire to annihilate oneself, to return to an
inanimate state, This is a passion that Sexton shared wit11 Sylvia Plath. Platli's iirst
suicide attempt was almost successfU1, but slle was discovered in the nick of timc.
hospitalized and saved. The scars, physical and psychological, were to remain forever.
'.Lady Lazams," written almost a decade afier the abortive suicide attempt, recouilts thc
csperience with all its intensity:

It is a personal experience Plath speaks of but again it is given a wider applicability.

Tl~istime sllc invokes an Egyptian myth: the legendary Phoenis who periodically
destroys herself and then is rebonl from the ashes.

It is easy to scc that Plszth is inspired by her own csperience: striving for dcath time and
again, and tl1c11 being syn~bolicallyreborn. But the Pl~oenismyth places it at an
aesthetic distance. And again, private suffering is equated with events of public
importance: the suffering of the Jews, for instance: "my skin / Bright as a Nazi
lampshade," .... "My fhce a featureless, fine / Jew linen." When parallels are tl~us
drawn with the sufferings of a sect1011of humanity discriminated against, tl~ercis some
attcnlpt at universality. However, tlie autobiographical clcnzeilt in the pocni is s t r o n ~
and Sylvia Platll's poeins remain, despitc her attempts to camouflage them, a record of
scars gathered over the years in her short life span. "Lady Lazan~s,"like "Daddy,"
speaks of an autobiographical experience even though .there is an attempt to go bqrond
autobiography.

What "Dadd~."and ''The Colossus" have in common is the underlying tllemc of

boildase and slavery. It is without exception, a wolllan who is made to take on a
sr~bservientrole in Plath's poems. T11c victim cxprcsses a reseilhnent against the
patriarchal authority that the father or thc husband represents. Between tlze victim ancl
the oppressor there is sill uneasy powcr relationship. At first hcrs is an attitude o f
passivc acceptance of the infcrior role, as in "The Colossus." ~he'womanin Plath's
poems, who is more a slave than a companion, stroi~glyreseilts having to adhere 'Yo
nlles, to rules, to rules" laid down by the master 1 husband. Jn the later stages of the
relationship, llowever, there is a change and thc woman, having decided not lo let
herself be tyrannized any more, eizlerges as a fiiry to wreak vengeance on the mc11 who
have victimized hcr. In "Daddy" it is the fathcr whose memory holds her in tlxall and
wvl~ichmust be shaken off if the protagonist is to breathe freely again. The stiuggle in
Plath's poems is against the phallocentric point of view wllich sees woinen as marginal
characters and the relationship of the sexes as one of power and denial. But such a
relationship cannot be a permanent one for a time coines when the victim must, risc in
revolt.

"Purdah":
111e tmnsfilation of woman from n~e~akling to superwoman is best charted in Platll's
12oern entiiled T ~ r d a h "where the female protagonist, throwing off all shackles, trics to
shakc off the hegemonic centre of inale dominaiice:

Thc doll-lilcc bride is n~etainorphosedinto a lioness that brings about the death of her
oppressor. It) the Bee poems of:Plat@the militant wuman is represelited b! the tlying
, 'i
 queen bee. and in "Ariel" by the shooting arrow and the "dew that flies." Fl!,ing is
woman's gesture of defiance, her bid for total emancipation.

Sylvia Plath. no inatter what her subject, a cut thu~llb(in "Cuf"), defermed babies (ill
"T~didomide"),a fever (in "Fever 103OS'), an adventure on a nrnaway horse (in
"Ariel"), or sr Inorbid facination with death (in "Edge"). always writes as a cvoman.
She writes of personal experiences but she llas a placc in poetic tradit~on.She maltcs
use of myth but she brazks with the nlythic tradition of Eliot.. She does tr! to nlovc
from the personal to the impersonal/p~blicstance. but the autobiographical ele~nciitIn
her work is so strong tlnt she is unable to rise much abovc the self. Emotion is
presented directly most of the time in her work, or sometimes tliroush the fliins? veil of
a persona. There is no objective correlative in Eliot's sense. True, we may takc the
flying bee or the horse as symbolic figures, but they are not objective correlatives as
Eliot would have them. "I ~ i u sfly
t around,-' "I nust shriek," says the poet. This is
closer to the passionate intensity of romantic poetry that goes "I fall up011 ,the thorns of
life, I bleed"....The work of Sylvia Plath, thus, picks up stray strands of earlier
traditions and weaves out of them a distinctive fabric.

"ARIEL":
Ariel was the name of the horse on which Plath went riding. Ted Hughes, in his "Notcs
on the Chronological Order of Sylvia Plath's Poems," tells us that on onc occasion tllc
'horse bolted and the poet was almost throun off the saddle. It is such an experience of
being astride a ninaway horse tlmt the poem "Ariel" describes.

What Plath writes is not straightfoward, uncomplicated verse. [t has man!.

dimensions. There is an attenipt to relate private csperie~lceto public espericnce. So.
personal experience, injury and hurt are viewed in a much larger contest. The stati~ig
point of a Plath poem may be a personal event, but it is related to an event of global
significance in such a way that it grows rapidly to bigger proportions and finally has a
comnlon application. This is a technique Plath learned from Robert Lowell.

--
50.4 EXERCISES IN COMPREHENSION I

1. How did Confessional Poetry differ from the kind of poetry that I V ~ Swritten in
the early decades or the twentieth century?

[In order to answer this question you should refer to that section of the unit that .
speaks of how the Confessional poZts focus on personal themes rather than public
ones. This was against the theory of impersonality advocated b!, T. S. Eliot. I
I

2. Analyze critically the role played by Sylvia Plath's father in hcr poems.

IRefcr in particular to "Thc Coloss~ts"and .'Daddy." Relate it to thc fhtl~cr

18 fisntion t'oiind,i~ithc jvork of otl~crconfessional pocts. (
 3. With refcrence to tlle poems you have read, trace the development of Sylvia
Plath's persona froin a docile, subnlissive woinan into a fi~ryraging for rcvenge.

( Bcgiiining with "The Colossus." you will discuss "Daddy," "Ariel," and
--Purdah." You may also wish to read up 'T11e Applicant," tlie Bee Poems and
"Pursuit." (

4. Show how death and suicide are iinportant themes in Sylvia Plath's poems.

[First you will speak of the tendency among Confessiol~alPoets to speak of these
subjects. Then you will refer to Sylvia Plath's morbid fascination wit11 death, her
obsession with self-annihilation. and her suicide attempts. Then you will focus on
"Lady Lazarus" in particular. You tilay also wish to focus on the concluding
lines of "Ariel." Other poeills.you may read are "Deatli and Co.," "The Arrival
of tlie Bce Box," and '-Purs~~it."]

50.5 LET'S SUM UP

Now that jlou have read this unit, you slzould be able to
1
Understand what is meant bjr Confessional Poetry.
1 Write about the main themes that inspired the Confessional Poets.

I
I
1
Assess the importunce of Sylvia Plat11 in the huentieth-centu~vpoetic
traclition.
Be ji~nzilicrrwith some of her important poems.

50.6 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

PRIMARY SOURCES

Plath. Sylvia. Collected Poenis, ed. Ted Huglies. London: Faber. 1981.

---. Johnny Panic nmi the Bible of Dreams: Short Storie,~,Prose and Diary fi~ccrpt~v.
Ncw York: Harper, 1979.

---. Le1ter.v Home, ed. Aurelia Plath. London: Fabcr, 1977.

SECONDARY SOURCES

Aird, Eileen M. J'yIvi4 P/oth. New York: Barncs and Noble, 1973.

Alexander. Paul, ed. Ariel Ascending: W~itingsanhozlt ,Qlvicr I'lc~th. Ncw York: Harpcr
aid ROW,1985.
 Barnard, Caroline King. ,S'ylvin Plath. Basingstolce, Hampshire: Macmillan. 1 987

Butscher, Edward. S')lvin Plc~th:777e Wornon nnd the Work. New York: Dodd. 1077.

Juhasz. Sumlnc. Naked cind Fiery firms: Modern Amerimn Poetry hjl Wol71cn.New
York: Octagoi~,1978.

Lane, Gary, ed. $11vio Ploth: Nca Vlcws on the Poetry., Baltiillorc: Jolu~s~ o i k i n s
University Press, 1979.

Melander, Ingrid. The Poety ofSyLvin Plnth: A Stzmdy qf'7he177es.Stockl~olm:

Alinqvist and Wiksell, 1972.

Ne.vvinan, Charles. The Art of SJ)lvinPlath: A S~v~nposizon.

Bloomin~onand LOII~OII:
Indiana University Press, 1973.

Phillips, Robert. The Confissional Poets. Carbondale: Southern Illillois Press, 1973.

Uroff, Margarct Dickie. Sylvia Plat17 and TedHzlghcs. London, etc.: Uuiversity of
Illiilois Press, 1979.

Some more poems for fi~rtherreading