Marriage And Domesticity In Morning Song By Sylvia Plath

Robert Browning provides a critical view of gender and power relations in his dramatic monologues “Porphyria’s Lover” and “My Last Duchess.” The dramatic monologue, as S.S. Curry has written, "reveals the struggle in the depths of the soul” (11). Browning delves into the minds of characters to show their conceptions of women and ideas of power. He explores the mental processes of the characters, and invites readers to question societal ideas of power and gender. The mental pathologies of the speakers is emphasized, which forces readers to examine the sanity of their own notions of gender dynamics.

In a world where showing a bit too much shoulder was forbidden, came Susan Glaspell. Glaspell was an American playwright, born in the cruel times of oppression. This influenced women’s opinions on certain subjects which caused them to be silenced by fear of rejection from society. “A Jury of Her Peers” was based on an era where women felt as though it was unreasonable to speak up if they felt it was not absolutely dire. Harboring these pent up feelings could cause a person to act antagonistic. Minnie Wright was an example of this. She killed her husband and was subjected to the judgement of her peers. As the group investigated Mr. Wright’s death, there were two stories unraveling. The in depth explanation that the women figured out and the simplistic version the men had seemed to pick up (Glaspell). People would benefit from reading this story to begin to understand the struggle of what this and other women had gone through. Penn Manor American Literature students would benefit from having Susan Glaspell’s story “A Jury of Her Peers” in their curriculum because of how she expressed feminism through her writing at a time when it was new and discouraged; her ability to emphasize the themes with her settings and characters; and her literature that follows a protagonist that navigates through a sexist world.

Plath and Hughes also share effective use of parallelism within their works to express how social expectations affect their personal lives . Plath uses parallelism to let readers understand how social expectations suppress her ability to experience life at it’s fullest claiming “[Plath wants] to be free – free to know people and their backgrounds – free to move to different parts of the world so I may learn that there are other morals and standards besides my own”. Plath also expresses her fear of marriage, as she asks herself, “What is best for me? What do I want? . . .” then states, “I am not as wise as I have thought. . . . I love freedom . . . I can now see, as from a valley, the roads lying open for me...”. Plath feels restricted as a female to her home, and feels that she cannot explore the world, since she “must” live out the rest of her life as a housewife; stuck inside and enslaved to her husband. However, Plath stands up and admits her lack of wisdom, then realises that once she finds what she really wants, the roads of opportunities open up, breaking through the social expectation of wifehood. Alike Plath, Hughes uses parallelism to

Ever since the days of World War I, women have been seen as second rate to men. They had to live up to many social standards that men didn’t have to and had strict guidelines on how to live their lives. This all changed when modernism deliberately tried to break away from Victorian Era standards in which women were subjugated to a lot more scrutiny. Ezra Pound, who was a large figure in the modernist movement, captured the spirit of the era in his famous line “Make it new!” Consequently, many writers started to experiment with many different and wild writing styles, which led to the short stories and poems we have today. The stories The Wife of His Youth and Mrs. Spring Fragrance were all written in this era of modernism. While they are written in a more traditional style of writing, both these stories have strong implications on feminism from the viewpoints of both male and female writers.

It can be difficult for a persona to understand a different perspective. The 1914 blank verse poem, Home Burial, by Robert Frost explores the death of a child and the consequences of this disturbing event on a mother and father. The poem is set at the burgeoning of WWI in pre-war western society. At its core this text explores the gender stereotypes of its time. The mother and father embody the two differing representations of grief over their child’s death. After a brief introduction, the text consists of mostly dialogue which gives the audience an insight into the emotional rift between two personas and their different experiences in dealing with the emotional consequences of death. The husband questions the emotional response of his wife using a demanding tone, desperate to try and understand the reasons for her longing actions “What is it you see From up there always- for

Great writers convey their message without bluntly stating it to their audience. Hardy’s insightful poetry conjures the minds of his audience and encourages them to reflect on how inhumane the social classes were and how poorly women were treated without every saying it. Because of its’ simplicity and relatability Hardy’s clever use of an everyday conversation between two women is more powerful than any lengthy lecture or straightforward statement he could have given.

Introduction: Conflicting perspectives are different points of view expressed and influenced by ones context and values. “Birthday Letters” by Ted Hughes is an anthology of poems challenging the accusation that he was responsible for his wife, Sylvia Plath’s death. The three poems The Minotaur, Your Paris, and Red are an insight into Hughes justification of the death of Plath using a very subjective and emotive poetic form. The poems possess many deliberate techniques such as extended metaphors, connotations, diction and juxtaposition to encourage the audience to accept his argument that he was not the one to blame for this world renown tragedy. The poem Daddy by Sylvia Plath also displays conflicting perspectives of the

As is inherent within the tradition of confessional poetry, a subgenre of lyric poetry which was most prominent from the fifties to the seventies (Moore), Sylvia Plath uses the events of her own tragic life as the basis of creating a persona in order to examine unusual relationships. An excellent example of this technique is Plath’s poem “Daddy” from 1962, in which she skilfully manipulates both diction, trope and, of course, rhetoric to create a character which, although separate from Plath herself, draws on aspects of her life to illustrate and make points about destructive, interhuman relations. Firstly that of a father and daughter, but later also that of a wife and her unfaithful husband.

“I am no bird and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will” (Bronte, Jane Eyre 293). In the Victorian time period Charlotte Bronte lived the unequal life as a woman, like many others. The only difference is Bronte did not believe in living in inequality, and she wrote about her hardships in her literature. In her book, Jane Eyre, the reader can see many similarities in her main character’s life and her own. Jane Eyre has many ways of showing how Victorian women were expected to be and act, included in the life of Jane. Bronte also continues her portrayal of the inequality of women and the decision of love versus autonomy through two of her poems, “Life” and “The Wife’s Will.” Charlotte Bronte displays the inequality in life of women in the Victorian era by taking her life and revitalizing it into themes of her works, by providing a journey of discovery of love or autonomy.

Inspired by their true-life memories, Plath and Sexton explore a variety of themes in their poems. They both have different aspects of the relationship between a father and a daughter. The fathers in Sexton and Plath’s life had a major position and made an influence on their life and in their

There is a distinct contrast between appearance and reality, which works to reinforce the idea of confining individualistic behaviours to retain the ‘pattern’ of society. In stanza two, she says that “tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes/ (there is) not a softness anywhere about (her)” (lines 16 and 17) when she’s wearing “only whalebone and brocade” (line 18.) The term ‘whalebone’ refers to a whalebone corset, which is a very hard material that is restrictive to movement. By describing her actions as ‘tripping,’ a modern day feminist reader is reinforced that she is not coping in her current lifestyle where she is limited to living in a strict manner. In the next stanza, she says that “underneath (her) stiffened gown/ Is the softness of a woman” (lines 32 and 33.) This develops the idea that the way she dresses is a deceiving appearance, because she is not as stiff and stable on the inside as she comes across on the outside. Deep down she is soft and sad, in mourning of the loss of her lover, yet she cannot express these emotions due to the expectations and restrictions of women during the Victorian era.

Sylvia Plath?s poem "Daddy" describes her feelings of oppression from her childhood and conjures the struggle many women face in a male-dominated society. The conflict of this poem is male authority versus the right of a female to control her own life and be free of male domination. Plath?s conflicts begin with her father and continue into the relationship between her and her husband. This conflict is examined in lines 71-80 of "Daddy" in which Plath compares the damage her father caused to that of her husband.

How Sylvia Plath's Life is Reflected in the Poems Daddy, Morning Song, and Lady Lazarus

Sylvia Plath’s poetry is well known for its deeply personal and emotional subject matter. Much of Plath’s poetry is confessional and divulges the most intimate parts of her psyche whether through metaphor or openly, without creating a persona through which to project her feelings, and through the use of intense imagery. Plath’s attempt to purge herself of the oppressive male figures in her life is one such deeply personal and fundamental theme in her poetry. In her poem, “Daddy”, which declares her hatred for her father and husband, this attempt is expressed through language, structure, and tone. (Perkins, 591)

Sylvia Plath had the ability to get emotional responses through her word-pictures and poems. Plath was also able to create a picture from her trip to Spain, tied up ships, or even a beautiful beach setting (Magill 2225). Spring of 1959, Plath randomly wrote “Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dream,” a first-person short story that is written in a voice that resembles terror (Hughes 1). Plath later work shows the strong dissatisfaction of her dreams. Plath dreamt of discovering cheerfulness through work, marriage, and family, which was a disappointment, caused by a miscarriage and appendectomy, her divorce, and mood swings. Plath felt defenseless to men and apocalyptic to natural forces, mainly death (Draper 2734). Plath’s post-obituary writings imitate the persisting importance in her work. Three Women: A Monologue for Three Voices (1968), originally published on British Radio in 1962, discusses pregnancy of three women (Draper 2735). Plath was inspired to write “The Jailer” which was about her husband who drugged then raped her. Plath eventually became “The Lever of His Wet Dreams.” The exact prodigy occurs in most of her confessional poems, mainly in “Daddy” (Magill 2224). Plath’s tone changes throughout most of her poems (Magill 2228). In “Daddy,” Plath tells about herself being rebellious in her poems (Magill 2229). “No writer has meant more to the current feminist movement.”