In the 1950’s, American poetry began to evolve into a new style known as Confessional poetry, which involved a more personal approach to poetry and broached topics such as sexuality, death, and personal relationships. The movement encouraged an unconventional expression of thoughts and emotions. Filled with images of death and anguish, Sylvia Plath’s work falls perfectly into this line of poetry. Having committed suicide at the age of thirty-one, Plath’s final collection of poems, like most of her work, details the depression that led to her untimely death. Plath’s depression greatly influenced the content of her work. She conveyed feelings of entrapment in society that was deemed an inappropriate topic for women. However, it was this candid and uncensored quality of work that made her an icon of the confessional movement. Some considered her later work to be too graphic, as it often detailed suicide, sexual relations, and -on many occasions- concentration camps. However, like all …show more content…
The two met during their time at Boston University, while Aurelia was earning her Master's degree and Otto was a professor at the university. They were married in January of 1932, but their marriage was brief due to Otto's untimely death in 1940. His death sparked a depression in Plath that would become a lifelong struggle, and influenced the content of her later work, most noted in the poem “Daddy” (Poets.org). The poem blurs the line between speaker and poet, and is believed to be based on Plath’s short relationship with her father, among others. However, not all of Plath’s work was so grim - From the age of eleven, she kept journals and wrote poetry depicting the beauty of nature, maintaining a childlike innocence through her work that provides a stark contrast to her present-standing reputation (Orr). It wasn’t until her father’s death that her depression sparked a shift in her
In the short story “Initiation” author Sylvia Plath suggests that conformity, although the societal norm, is not always as grand as it is made out to be, while also suggesting that even though conformity typically hinders one’s self growth, there are times when the fear of conforming can make one’s sense of self stronger. These two ideas together show that Plath uses this short story to convey the message that even though conformity is not inherently a positive thing, it can drive a person to look in on themselves and develop a unique identity. Plath uses symbolism, and character introspection to assert this idea.
There is no shortage of media encouraging adolescents to ‘be themselves’, promoting self-worth regardless as to what others think. While many may be fed this message throughout music and film, rarely ever is it conveyed to actually have a lasting effect on one’s personal views quite like Sylvia Plath’s “Initiation”. Although formulaic, Plath’s uniquely optimistic short story warns against an obsession with belonging, and explores the importance of individuality through the protagonist Millicent Arnold’s gradual character development, from a self-conscious teenage girl to a stronger and more confident individual.
In the middle of the poem, she begins to refer to herself as a Jew, and her father the German, who began “chuffing me off like a Jew…to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belson.” What Plath’s intent here is to allow us to understand that her father was a German, and she relates his behavior as a person to a Nazi. But later, she becomes more enraged, and strips the title of God from her father, and labels him a swastika and a brute. “Every woman adores a Fascist” is Plath’s way of ...
In American society, the common stereotype is that the father has the role of the dominant figure in the household. Sylvia Plath and Sharon Olds may come across as two seemingly different poets, however, they are really quite similar, especially in their driving forces behind their writing styles in poetry. The lives of Plath and Olds are both expressive of the realities of a father-dominated family, in which both of these poets lost their fathers at a young age. This is significant because both poets have faced a similar traumatic event that has had everlasting effects on their adult womanhood, which is reflected in their writings. For both these woman, their accesses to father-daughter relationships were denied based on life circumstances. Ironically, their fathers were their muses for writing and are what made them the women they are today.
Plath never got over the loss of her father and her failed marriage to well known poet Ted Hughes. She wrote, "Me, I never knew the love of a father, the love of a steady blood-related man after the age of eight .... I hated men because they didn't stay around and love me like a father" (cited in Hughes & McCullough, 1982, pp. 266267). In an article, Jon Rosenblatt describes her poetry by saying “Whether the poems take place inside a house or in the countryside, the identical metaphorical relationships are established between a vulnerable speaker and a destructive environment.” By the end of “Daddy” the speaker comes off as a force to be reckoned with and her message is final
Sylvia Plath was born on 27 October 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts. Plath’s father was a very strict man with dictatorial attitudes that stuck with and scarred Plath. Her father died due to complications with his diabetes when Plath was only eight years old, inspiring her poem “Daddy” (Academy of American Poets). “Daddy” is one of her most famous works that basically declares her hatred for her father.
"About." Personal Blog, n.d. Web. 15 Nov. 2015. [When finding an explanation for the similarities between the writers, it is important to play close attention to biographies. In case the psychoeconomic factors that Ruonco describes are true, then biography constitutes most of the development of the Sylvia Plath affliction. Moreover, the biography provides an insight into the views of the author for a better and more accurate understanding of her poetry. Furthermore, it is imperative to use her auto-statement since she referres to her "muse" as something out of her control which can be traced to Kaufman's
A phenomenal writer’s work generates a powerful bond between their words and the reader. This is factual of Sylvia Plath’s poetry. It contains universal, timeless themes of depression and death that, in these dejected days, many people can relate to. Sylvia Plath was a confessional poet whose oppressive life led to her relatable story. She wrote many astonishing poems, such as “cut”, “Among the Narcissi”, and “A Birthday Present” that all chronicle and showcase her struggle for a release from the suppressed world she subsisted in, a world that many remain to live in today. Sylvia Plath’s poetry narrates both her distinct, individual story and yet universal tale of a woman who searches for a way out of her depressed state of mind.
Since she was so young she never got to work out her unsettled feelings with him. Even at age eight, she hid when he was around because she was fearful of him. When she was in his presence his strict and authoritarian figure had left an overpowering barrier between their relationship. Sadly enough by age eight Plath instead of making memories with her dad playing in the yard she resented him and wanted nothing to do with him (Kehoe). These deep-seated feelings played a major role in Plath’s poetry writings.
In Plath's "Daddy," written just before her death and published posthumously, the most readily accessible emotion is anger, and much of the poem is couched in autobiographical allusions. Plath's own father died of a gangrenous infection, caused by diabetes he refused to treat, when Plath was eight years old, and his death was "the crucial event of her childhood" (Baym 2743). Plath makes personal references to her father as a...
Giles, Richard F. “Sylvia Plath.” Magill’s Critical Survey of Poetry. Ed. Frank N. Magill, b. 1875. Pasadena: Salem Press, 1992.
“Dying is an art, like everything. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I’ve a call” – Sylvia Plath. Sylvia Plath was born in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts on October 27th, 1932 and died in London, United Kingdom on February 11th, 1963 at the age of 31 years old. Sylvia is well known for her astonishing poem such as “Lady Lazarus” and “Daddy”. Her parents were Aurelia Schober, who was a student at Boston University and Otto Plath, who happened to be Aurelia Schober’s professor at the time (Academy of American Poets). “In 1940, when Plath was eight years old, her father died as a result of complications from diabetes. He had been a strict father, and both his authoritarian attitudes and his death drastically defined her relationships and her poems—most notably in her elegiac and infamous poem "Daddy."” (Academy of American Poets).
Sylvia Plath has brought the attention of many Women’s studies supporters while being recognized as a great American poet. Most of her attention has come as a result of her tragic suicide at age thirty, but many of her poems reflect actual events throughout her life, transformed into psychoanalytical readings. One of Plath’s most renowned poems is “Daddy”. In this poem there are ideas about a woman’s relationship with men, a possible insight on aspects of Plath’s life, and possible influences from the theories of Sigmund Freud.
Through her dark and intense poetry, Sylvia Plath left an eternal mark on the literary community. Her personal struggles with depression, insecurities, and suicidal thoughts influenced her poetry and literary works. As a respected twentieth century writer, Sylvia Plath incorporated various literary techniques to intensify her writing. Her use of personification, metaphors, and allusions in her poems “Ariel,” “Lady Lazarus,” and “Edge”, exemplifies her talent as a poet and the influence her own troubled life had on her poetry. According to “Sylvia Plath” Sylvia Plath struggled with severe depression throughout her life.
Sylvia Plath’s confessional poem is a free formed twenty line poem consisting of ten couplet stanzas which illustrate death as a state in which our imperfections are ignored. The subject of the poem is a woman who has been ‘perfected’ in death, having been released from her own personal suffering. For Plath death seems to be an achievement and just like the woman in the poem, Plath feels she will ultimately become ‘perfected’ when she too is dead. By not using the first person, Plath causes ‘the woman to become depersonalised’ and as a result the woman is distanced from the reader. This could possibly foreshadow how Plath herself, was withdrawing from life and people as she became more engulfed by depression and anxiety.