The Strong Sense Of Motherhood, By Sylvia Plath

The theme in this poem shows this mother in many ways, is mourning the loss of children aborted for whatever the reasoning. This is known by the statement made in line 22 “Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate”. She also mourns the loss of things that will not reach their potential, such as the sound of a babies’ cry, and voice or even the loss of tears. Another conflict that emerges in the poem is the desire of the mother to do what is best for her children and the finality of her decisions.

Sylvia Plath and Gwen Harwood tell two very different stories of parental relationships, Mother Who Gave Me Life praising Harwood’s mother and speaking with love and affection, whereas Plath’s Daddy is full of hate for her father. These reflections on the poet’s parental relationships are made using imagery, symbolism and tone.

Thus, the woman states that the professional who handles childbearing establishes a strong emotional connection with a patient in the initial stages of their acquaintance, which promotes a feeling of security and harmony. The character’s recollections account for a hearty atmosphere that encompassed the room when she was giving birth to her offspring.

The spacing and structure of the poem is set up to allow flow and momentum in the poem and its narrative. The speaker’s voice is present with emotion as emphasised in a natural rhythm of thought offering an honest and bare interpretation of motherhood. The open “blank space” of the poem encourages a calm and breathy atmosphere, fulfilling a mood of tranquility and bliss. Each stanza is short with a couple quick fragmented thoughts before closing each section with the power of a single word. Each stanza breaks apart a separate thought filled with a loving passion the speaker uses to stress the beauty, wonder, and over-flowing love present in motherhood. To better the structure, the poem itself is broken into three parts, each representing a stage of motherhood. The first segment of motherhood that is represented is during the moments while the baby is still in the womb and the mother waits in anticipation for the baby to arrive. This “honeymoon” phase is expressed with a tone filtered through a perception of rose-coloured glasses and excitement as the mother is in utter bliss to carry a life into the world. The

The first stanza of the poem the speaker starts out using the word “you”. By using second person point of view the speaker appears to speak directly to the reader. “You remember the children you got that you did not get” (Brooks 2), here the speaker uses the term “children” to refer to her aborted children, which also gives them an identity. Brooks uses throughout the poem the word “children” instead of “fetuses” which gives the speaker the image of motherhood and a person compared to inanimate object. These are the children she has lost. The speaker goes on throughout this stanza to express to the reader all the things “you” will never get to experience with your children because of the decision to have an abortion. “You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh, / Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye” (Brooks 9-10), here the author uses metaphors about food, “snack of them” and “gobbling mother-eye” to illustrate the speakers yearning for motherhood that will never be. This is the only time in the poem other than the title that Brooks will use the word “mother”, all else will be implied that the reader is a mother to

In this stylistic analysis of the lost baby poem written by Lucille Clifton I will deal mainly with two aspects of stylistic: derivation and parallelism features present in the poem. However I will first give a general interpretation of the poem to link more easily the stylistic features with the meaning of the poem itself.

I’ve killed two-- The vampire who said he was you”. The powerful imagery of these

The Bell Jar is a novel written in, 1963 written by Sylvia Plath. It is a story about a girl who under goes many traumatic life events that had the destiny to make or break her. The things she used to enjoy in life are no longer bringing joy to her life. She can’t find anything that gives her the will to go on. The Bell Jar is a story that will take reader on a journey with a girl who lets the gender roles of 1950s get the best of her. She lets people tell her what she can and cannot do and loses what it means to become your own person. The Bell Jar teaches the audience about the expectations, opportunities or restrictions on American Women in the 1950’s. As gender roles have become more diverse between a man and a woman, it is still more

Over six million innocent lives were taken during the Holocaust. It had a significant effect on much of the world’s population, and it still has an impact to this day. In Sylvia Plath’s poem, “Daddy”, she shows her emotions for her father, Otto Plath. Sylvia Plath lost her father at eight years old when she still had much love for him (Famous People “Biography”). After a number of years, hatred is built up inside of Sylvia towards her father. When her father first died, she loved him and she grieved over her father’s death. After years of confusion, she eventually decided and wrote, “Daddy, Daddy, you bastard, I’m through” (Line 80). In “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath, the author resents her father and husband so much that they are comparable to Nazi Germans, showing her feelings for them through poetic devices.

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.

Maya Angelou said, “To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow” (Wanderlust 1). The relationship a mother has with her child transcends all other relationships in complexity. Maternity largely contributes to the female identity in part because the ability to sexually reproduce is uniquely female. With this ability often comes an unparalleled feeling of responsibility. That is, mothers experience an inherent desire to protect their children from the world and guide them through life. Serving as a child’s protector then transforms a woman’s perspective, or the female gaze. While these protective instincts often arise naturally, they are also reinforced by the ideas society’s perpetuates about motherhood. Globally, women are expected to assume the roles of wives and mothers. The belief that motherhood is somewhat of a requirement assists in the subjugation of women and reinforces a plethora of gendered stereotypes. While some women enjoy the process of childrearing, others feel that having a family comes at an irreparable cost: losing sight of oneself. In response to the polarized views surrounding maternity, several authors have employed different writing techniques to illustrate the mother-child dynamic. Through the examination of three narratives, spanning fiction and non-fiction, one is able to better define maternity and the corresponding female gaze in both symbolic and universal terms.

Esther Greenwood, the main character, is the most obvious comparison to Sylvia Plath herself. Esther is a troubled girl who is gifted with intelligence and scholarships to fancy schools and opportunities, but still finds herself in a pit of depression she can’t crawl out of. Both Esther and Sylvia are extremely intelligent, Sylvia being gifted with an IQ of 160. Sylvia shows her descent into depression through Esther, gradually getting worse and worse as she goes through college and realizes she has no idea what to do with her life.

An analysis of poems discussing the different ideas of infancy and what infancy and childhood means to different people. The ideas of infancy vary across the poems from being a curse to the family to being a blessing from the heavens or even a key to break out of the boundaries set by reality. The poets use various literary devices such as metaphors, similes and different poem structure to convey the message that they carry. Each poem has its own viewpoint on infancy. On the whole four of the poems, “Infant Joy” –William Blake, “You’re” – Sylvia Plath, “Once upon a time” – Gabriel Okara and “Piano” by D.H. Lawrence all have a more positive view towards infancy whereas, “ Infant Sorrow” – William Blake and “Prayer before birth” – Louis MacNeice show a more pessimistic side towards infancy. Despite the fact that each poem has its own different point of view on the subject of infancy, they all seem to share one thought which is the fact that infancy represents innocence and in some cases a fresh start.

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.”