Sylvia Plath: Research Paper

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

Majority of her poems dealt with depression, anxiety and death. Plath has dealt with many

Within Plath’s first poem “Metaphors” she uses the metaphor “I am a riddle in nine syllables” (1) and describes her changing body during her pregnancy. This poem describes how she is a pregnant mother struggling

In 1963 on a cold winter day of February 11th, Sylvia Plath ended her life. She had plugged up her kitchen, sealing up the cracks in doors and windows before she was found with her head inside of her gas oven inhaling the dangerous fumes. She was only thirty years old, a young woman with two small children and an estranged ex-husband. A tragic detail of her life is that this is the second time she had tried to commit suicide. Plagued with mental illness her whole life, which is evident within her poetry. She would write gripping, honest portrayals of mental illnesses. Especially within Ariel, the last poetry book she wrote, right before she took her life. Although it’s hard to find a proper diagnosis for Sylvia Plath, it is almost definite that she at least had clinical depression with her numerous suicide attempts and stays in mental hospitals undergoing electroshock therapy. Sylvia Plath is now famously known for her writing and the more tragic parts of her life. Such as the separation from her husband, Ted Hughes, mental illness, etc… Plath may not have intended for her life and art to become inspiration to many people but that has become the end result. Sylvia Plath writing shows symptoms of her suicidal thoughts. To study specific moments in Sylvia Plath’s life, it can be connected to certain writing’s of her’s, such as “Daddy”, The Bell Jar, and “Lady Lazarus”.

Similarly, Plath’s poem ‘Edge’ illustrates how patriarchy seizes the identity of woman, leaving them to be nothing but sexual entities. ‘The woman has been perfected’, society has shaped her into being socially and sexually pleasing. She has been moulded, making her ‘perfect’ to the naked eye, a ‘flower’, a ‘rose’, a ‘Greek necessity’ with no identity. In the second stanza the speaker states that the ‘body wears the smile of accomplishment’ she is now socially accepted.

Sylvia Plath was an American Poet who was renowned for poetry mostly in the United States. She, however lived a difficult and depressing life which led to a few futile suicide attempts, but ultimately led to a successful suicide attempt leaving her children to live on without a mother. This end result was due to a multitude of issues in her life from Sylvia’s sanity. She wasn’t the most stable child. Her marriage also played a role in her suicide. Her successes weren’t acclaimed until after her death, when a majority of her work was released. There were two major aspects to her life: her poetry and her sanity. These three combined make up a majority of Sylvia’s life.

Throughout the novel, Sylvia Plath emphasizes the curious similarity of physical and mental illness as if to say that both are symbolic of a larger condition which is our life today. In the novel, Esther noticed that everyone she knows sits under bell jars of a sort. However, Plath is no sentimentalist and knows quite well that her

For example, in the first stanza of the poem, Sexton invokes the objects that women are classified into, such as “my mouth and my breasts … [and] the cosmetics and the silks” (3-4). Sexton furthers this with how she was “tired of being a woman” (1) and “tired of the gender things” (10). As the poem progresses into the second stanza, Sexton’s dream sequence, the theme of gender roles remains prevalent. The poem delves into the injustice that women face in a world controlled by man, citing the martyr and Catholic Saint, Joan of Arc, who was put to death with one of the charges being wearing men’s clothes. In addition, Sexton’s will to rid herself of gender is also clear in the third stanza, which she writes “I lost my common gender and my final aspect. / Adam was on the left of me / and Eve was on the right of me” (28-30). This may be interpreted as a metaphor, as Adam was the first male and Eve the first female human created by God as told by Christians, by placing Sexton between them, it could be said that Sexton is neither male nor female, but one who is freed from gender. The entire poem and many of its literary devices resonates strongly with the poet’s message; her hate of gender roles and identities. As such, Sexton effectively sent her central argument to her reader.

Wrapping up, Lamia shows how male idealization imposes on and limits women’s sexual identity. Against general readings of Lamia’s sexual character as the root of evil, what the analysis denotes is that Lamia places the spotlight on Keats’s sympathetic but ambiguous representation of Lamia. Though the ambiguity is recognized, the nub of the argument is that Keats does not portray female sexuality as demonic—women as the Other which may be allegorically extended to all those common people who had been Othered in England during the Romantic

In the 1930s many life altering events were occurring, like the Great Depression. During that time some 13 to 15 million Americans were unemployed and nearly half of America’s banks had failed. These events led to many hardships and widespread unemployment and poverty. While these events were occurring, Sylvia Plath was born on October 27, 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts. Her parents met while her mother, Aurelia Schober, was a student at Boston University, where her father, Otto Plath, taught German and biology. The two were married in January 1932, and had Sylvia nine months later. Since she was born while the Great Depression, was occurring, one could say her life was not off to a great start and the ending of her life was also not ideal.

By just reading Sylvia Plath’s works of writing, it is apparent that she had an infatuation with portraying negative and brutal thoughts. For example, her poem “Daddy,” she clearly expresses her rage towards her deceased father. The poem is full of contradiction and the interpretation is up the reader. Pieces like this gives insight into Sylvia’s mental sanity, which was questioned at times. In her early

Sylvia Plath lived a life with death following her. Plath presents a character named kindness as a symbol of death in the first line of her poem, Kindness. The character's purpose is to reflect Plath’s internal struggle. Sylvia Plath’s “Kindness” represents her depressive thoughts of suicide through the poems dark, deathly tone.

According to Allen Ginsberg’s quote, “poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does”, the common poet “makes the private world public”, or in other words, processes his or her personal life into stanzas of interconnected words. Bearing this in mind, Sylvia Plath, alias Victoria Lucas, was an American poet who portrayed an entire life soiled with problems regarding Ted Hughes (her ex-husband), Otto Plath (her father), and herself in between the verses of her poetry through the use of literary devices. In order to understand the subjects, language, tone, and purpose of her poetry in maximum depth, readers

Wrapped in gaseous mystique, Sylvia Plath’s poetry has haunted enthusiastic readers since immediately after her death in February, 1963. Like her eyes, her words are sharp, apt tools which brand her message on the brains and hearts of her readers. With each reading, she initiates them forever into the shrouded, vestal clan of her own mind. How is the reader to interpret those singeing, singing words? Her work may be read as a lone monument, with no ties to the world she left behind. But in doing so, the reader merely grazes the surface of her rich poetics. Her poetry is largely autobiographical, particularly Ariel and The Bell Jar, and it is from this frame of mind that the reader interprets the work as a

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.”