The poetry of Sylvia Plath

Literature and Psychology explores the relationships between text and reader as well as relationships within the text, with particular emphasis on emotion/affect. One central thematic focus of the course, in addition to affect, will be trauma–an experience of maximal affect and long term disruption. Whether we read to escape, to discover or even to fulfill requirements, we have a purpose, a motive, and more than likely some expectations. Moreover, we have a number of years of existence during which time we have adopted a large variety of rules, and we are likely to apply those rules to any new system we encounter. Generally speaking ,Sylvia Plath is one of those feminists who have sought to represent the suffering of women in a particular world. Focusing on feminist issues through the lens of her own experience, she was equally driven by a desire to achieve this while coping with a desperate lack of self-confidence and low self-esteem. The loss of her father at an early age contributed to her fears of abandonment and insecurity. The point that will receive much emphasis throughout the present paper is her psychological state and its drastic consequences. Nearly all her poems convey a sense of melancholy, gloom and death. In a case like this, poetry is a kind of temporary bulwark against mounting despair and pain.

Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 2014

This paper analyzes Sylvia Plath's obsession with death as manifested in her life and poetry. Through her overt display of this obsession in many of her critically acclaimed poems, she provides a poignant and compelling case study exemplifying Freud's theory of a death drive which both conflicts and combines with more agreeable, pleasure-seeking life instincts. Because of her writing's aesthetic value and historical importance, her compositions can be seen as an outstanding example of Freud's concept of "sublimation": the conversion of antisocial tendencies into positive cultural contributions. However, Plath herself eventually succumbed tragically to the dark forces which haunted her life and poetry. Plath's multiple suicide attempts testify to her real-life compulsion towards death, while her poetry includes both direct references and numerous thinly-veiled metaphors. Notably, the parallels to Freud's theories are more nuanced than simple self-destructive tendencies sublimated into beautiful art. These sublimations also reveal Freud's concept of "overdetermined" multiple meanings and include abundant examples of identity "transference". She furthermore reaffirms the death drive as something trapped in repetition seeking restoration of a prior undisturbed state. Finally, her poetry explicitly expresses the ambivalent feelings due to such sublimated, overdetermined symbols which unite the contrasting and converging forces of the life and death instincts. Thus, this paper argues that Plath's poetry attests to both general and specific aspects of the psychological conflicts postulated by Freud's theories of co-conspiring antithetical instincts.

University of Karbala , 2020

The present article is to appear the Sylvia Plath‟s psychological traumas in light of the psychological analysis theory, and how they reflected in some of her confessional poems. The article is divided into two divisions: First one is the psychological dilemmas because of traumas, male dominance, and social pressures. The second is public disclosure of her controversial circumstances and her desire to commit suicide repeatedly. The study emerges Freud‟s interpretation of Electra complex and the congruence with the case of Silvia Plath. According to Ted Hughes, she uses autobiographical details in her poetry more figuratively than Robert Lowell (1917-1977) who does in his works. Plath's confessionalism was clearly expressed in her famous poems just like "Daddy", "Electra on Azalea Path" "Tulips", "Lady Lazarus", and "Full Fathom Five" which are explained and covered in this paper to reflect also the dominance of men and her passion towards her father at the same time. Finally, a conclusion is summed up the results at the end of this study.

Journal of University of Garmian, 2020

One of the most outstanding poets, novelists and short story writers in American literature is Sylvia Plath (1932-1963). A confessional poet whose texts are genuine in style and subject matter. Death is a dominant theme in the poetry of Sylvia Plath. She had dealt with this topic from various perspectives. Her father's death left her dejected. Besides, her husband's betrayal made her more forlorn and desperate. All of these events in her life caused her mental state disorder and this is clear in the poems I chose to analyze, "Daddy", "Lady Lazarus", and "Edge". This paper examines Plath's depiction of death in her poetry and the illustration of death related to her biography. It also aims at presenting the existence of death in her life and the absence of the fear of death in her poetry as well; which is her observation of death. Moreover, it will examine how Sylvia Plath"s mental state did affect her works and how it is important for the reader to know the background of Sylvia Plath to understand her works. Hence, the paper will start with introducing her style of writing. Then, the paper analyzes the selected poems accordingly. For this purpose, the paper will give a deep dive into the selected poems of the poet"s posthumously poem collection book "Ariel", and conclude the overall picture of each poem for better understanding the reasons behind the poet"s behaviors. Finally, the paper concludes the findings of the study.

Virtutis Incunabula, 2016

This study is a descriptive literary analysis aimed to appreciate and evaluate the four selected poems of American author Sylvia Plath using the Psychoanalytic Approach in literary criticism. The said approach in evaluating and interpreting literature is based on the theories of Psychoanalysis founded by Sigmund Freud, as well as from other theories from other schools of thought in psychology. The poems, chosen based on the publication and creation dates, underwent literary analysis and criticism using the Psycho-criticism model of Charles Mauron. The said process includes close reading of the materials, locating symbolisms and metaphors, interpreting symbols akin to a dream-like sequence, juxtaposing symbols and literary devices, and synthesizing common and recurring themes. Another methodology used in the study is the process of three C's for data analysis by Marilyn Lichtman. The process mentioned above synthesized the recurring and common themes of the selected poems. Description, analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and interpretation were conducted using quantitative data derived from Plath's posthumously published poetry anthology, Ariel. The analysis showed the author's creative process as strong implications of Electra complex, manifestations of fear and desire concealed through symbolisms and metaphors, and obvious tendencies to feminism. Further recommendations for the study include analysis of local and contemporary authors and a sample lesson plan in teaching literature while integrating behavioral and humanistic studies. The study advocates a more in-depth understanding of how literature works in a psychological point of view, a more humanistic view in interpreting and appreciating literary works, and an opportunity for an inter-disciplinary approach in research.

Jung says, "We are confronted, at every new stage in the differentiation of consciousness to which civilization attains, with the task of finding a new interpretation appropriate to this stage, in order to connect the life of the past that still exists in us with the life of the present, which threatens to slip away from it." (Jung, 1968, para. 267) This quote by Jung refers to the archetypal patterns that are the enduring expression of our perennial dilemmas. These are enacted in through the collective unconscious and have powerful influences on our personal lives. The world with its diverse cultures repeats these patterns on individual and societal levels. In this article we explore those patterns related to disenchantment and the search for self as revealed in the poetry of Sylvia Plath. The archetypal patterns and symbols in her poetry are expressions of the psyche's continual potential for transformation. These are the timeless expressions of the psyche and as such explain why her poetry has such an impact half a century later.

Journal of Management Practices, Humanities and Social Sciences

This paper intends to investigate the meaning-making process in Sylvia Plath's poetry by employing Wolfgang's theory of Aesthetic Reader Response. Since female writing is characterized by a strong emotional appeal, especially for a female reader, the research is an attempt to explore the meaning-making process in Plath's poetry that how and why it (female writing) is appealing to the female reader in particular, and to the male reader in general. The analysis is anchored within Wolfgang Iser's theory of Aesthetic Reader Response. His theory postulates that the importance of literary work does not entirely lie in the meaning that the text beholds within it; instead, it depends on the interaction of the text with the reader that is helpful in the establishment of a new meaning. The present paper attempts to reveal this ideal relationship between a female poet and a female reader in the meaning-making process. The research uses a descriptive cum analytical method. Since the study intends to explore and investigate the aesthetic appeal and response that the profoundly emotional poetry of Sylvia evokes in the reader, the linguistic and stylistic choices will remain the focus. So, the research, at times, falls into the category of stylistic analysis. This article demonstrates how a female writer/poet offers a crucial understanding of the relationship between 'ecriture feminine' and the emergence of meaning. The research will provide future researchers with an opportunity to explore the meaning-making process in ictional work by female authors from the standpoint of female readers.

IASET, 2022

Sylvia Plath was a powerful and respected poet of the twentieth century. Plath had a following in the literary community by the time she took her own life at the age of 30. Her work drew the attention of a large number of readers over the years, which saw in her singular verse an attempt to catalogue despair, violent emotion, and a death obsession. Despite all of her popularity for her amazing work, the question remains: was she happy? Why did she end her life so soon? What prompted her to take such a bold step? To discuss this, I've chosen Sylvia Plath's life journey and her psychological behaviour had an influence on her works.

2017

The life and work of Sylvia Plath has been of great interest since her suicide in 1963. While her poems and short stories had been published in a variety of journals and magazines before her death, it was not until the posthumous release of Ariel that Plath's true depths were discovered by a large audience and she gained popular acclaim. Critics now claim that The Colossus and Other Poems was Plath's discovery of her own voice and her taking on of "the world of what is important to her" (Kendall 9), but that it is Ariel that unrepentantly reveals Plath's true emotions (Butscher 341). The "Sylvia 1 " identity that arose from the ashes of Plath's suicide was someone new to critics and friends alike-as Bere says, there are "obvious discrepancies between the [public] Sivvy of the letters 'singing' her 'native joy of life' and the violent, destructive poet of Ariel" (Wagner-Martin 61); however, there is something undeniably real about the "Sylvia" that appears in Ariel. The Ariel Sylvia was not the put-together Sylvia that would have tea in one's living room nor the doting daughter who would write letters home from England nor Hughes's Sylvia who "had a great capacity for happiness" (Becker 48). Instead, Ariel's "Cut," "Edge," and "Daddy" focus on death, hatred, and pain-not topics someone "remorselessly bright and energetic" (Butscher 341) would fixate on. While some artists have placed their identity farther from their work, Plath is known for her confessional style poetrya form of poetry which, according to Steven Gould Axelrod, consists of three essential elements: "an undisguised exposure of painful personal event. .. a dialectic of private matter with public matter. .. and an intimate, unornamented style" (Axelrod 98). Unlike other styles of poetry that are set apart by form or specific themes, confessional poetry is defined by the author's "expression of personal pain" such as "destructive family relationships; traumatic childhoods; broken marriages; recurring mental breakdowns; alcoholism 1 "Sylvia" refers specifically to Plath's identity, whether that be a false or true identity. It does not speak to Plath's work or legacy, but rather, who she was as a person. Daly 3 or drug abuse" (Collins 197). Born out of feelings of lost individuality that arose in the 1950s and 60s, confessional poetry aimed to "embody the individual perception in direct ways," setting itself apart from previous forms because "rather than creating masks or different personae, they [confessional poets] began to speak from a position which was unambiguously their own" (Collins 199). For these reasons, writing confessional poetry requires an understanding of one's own suffering, along with an ability and willingness to capture that personal pain in an honest and vulnerable form of poetry-after all, it has been coined "confessional poetry" because it requires that the author "confess" painful truths regarding him or herself. A single glance at poems such as "Daddy" and "Lady Lazarus" shows that Plath was a textbook example of the confessional poether writing (especially at the end of her life) focused on her own painful struggles with loss, a dying marriage, mental illness, and other challenging areas of her life. One such autobiographical poems is "Words heard, by accident, over the phone," a poem that discusses Plath's actual experience of answering the phone and having her husband's lover ask to speak to him. The poem describes the speaker receiving a call from an unnamed individual who asks, "Is he here?" It is a seemingly harmless question, but the poems describes the words as "plopping like mud," implyingin a heavy-handed fashionthat there is something about these words in this context that is dirty and sullies the speaker's home. The speaker then asks, "how shall I ever clean the phone table?" (Plath, Collected Poems, 202), bringing to light the speaker's desire to clean her household of the incident, which she considers to be filthy and unhealthy. It also demonstrates a hopelessness that this stain could ever be removed from them, as the speaker finds no answer for how to clean the phone table. As is typical of confessional poems, there is very little masking of the real-life event in this poem, and the speaker is not invented, but rather is interchangeable with Plath herself. Just like the speaker Daly 4 in the poem, Plath historically answered the phone in 1962 only to have Assia, Hughes' lover, ask her "Is he here?" about Plath's husband. As demonstrated by "Words heard, by accident, over the phone" above, Plath adopted a very personal style of poetry, tying her poems to her identity in a way that many authors would not dare, and bringing her identity into the spotlight with the success of Ariel. Like "Words heard, by accident, over the phone," countless other poems by Sylvia Plath including "Suicide off Egg Rock," "Edge," and "Cut" are inspired by her experiences. For this reason, it can become easy to view her poems as biography or fact, when they are actually creative works. While it is true that Plath's poems are often emotionally relevant to her, the emotions that she conveys were never meant to be expressed as singularly her own. Rather, she intended to write poetry that would echo both her own emotions and the emotions of her audience. The sheer number of drafts