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UNIVERSITY OF GJAKOVA
FACULTY OF PHILOLOGY
Department of English Language and Literature
DIPLOMA THESIS
SYLVIA PLATH AND HER POETRY OF CONFESSION
Mentor: Student:
Prof. Sazan Kryeziu Zana Shabani
Gjakovë, 2019
SYLVIA PLATH AND HER POETRY OF CONFESSION
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“The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
SYLVIA PLATH AND HER POETRY OF CONFESSION
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I, the undersigned Zana Shabani, student of the Faculty of Philology at the University of
Gjakova, with registration number 150204113, author of the written final work of studies,
entitled:
SYLVIA PLATH AND HER POETRY OF CONFESSION
DECLARE that:
1. The written final work of studies is a result of my independent work;
2. The printed form of the written final work of studies is identical to the electronic form of the
written final work of studies;
3. I acquired all the necessary permissions for the use of data and copyrighted works in the
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4. During the preparation of the written final work of studies I acted in accordance with ethical
principles and obtained, where necessary, agreement of the ethics commission;
5. I give my consent to the use of the electronic form of the written final work of studies for the
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7. I give my consent to the publication of my personal data included in the written final work of
studies and in this declaration, together with the publication of the written final work of studies.
Date: _____________________ Student's signature: _____________________
SYLVIA PLATH AND HER POETRY OF CONFESSION
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Acknowledgements
First and foremost, I would like to thank God Almighty for giving me the strength, knowledge,
ability and opportunity to undertake this research study and to persevere and complete it
satisfactorily. Without his blessings, this achievement would not have been possible.
Secondly I would like to thank my thesis advisor Prof. Sazan Kryeziu of Fehmi Agani
University. The door to Prof. Kryeziu’s office was always open whenever I ran into a trouble
spot or had a question about my research or writing. He consistently allowed this paper to be my
own work, but steered me in the right the direction whenever he thought I needed it.
Finally, I must express my very profound gratitude to my parents, to my partner and also to my
friends Zanfina, Fiona, Sindi , Vesa , Gabi , Rina , Ida , Blerta for providing me with unfailing
support and continuous encouragement throughout my years of study and through the process of
researching and writing this thesis. This accomplishment would not have been possible without
them. I will be grateful forever for your love.
SYLVIA PLATH AND HER POETRY OF CONFESSION
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Contents Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................4
Abstract .....................................................................................................................................6
Introduction...............................................................................................................................7
The concept of Sylvia Plath’s tragedy and the connection of her work ..................................8
People in her work .................................................................................................................. 10
Characters found in Plath's work........................................................................................... 12
Prevalent Themes in Sylvia Plath's work ............................................................................... 15
Imagery .................................................................................................................................... 21
How depression and suicide, in a way, were beneficial for Sylvia? ....................................... 24
What would have happened if Sylvia got cured? ................................................................... 27
Letters and the Journal ........................................................................................................... 28
Birthday Letters ...................................................................................................................... 29
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 30
References................................................................................................................................ 32
SYLVIA PLATH AND HER POETRY OF CONFESSION
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Abstract
Sylvia Plath undergoes thrilling distress, as the effect of moral weaknesses and tragic
flaw as well. She was unable to cope with disparaging, and this makes her commit suicide which
marks the end of her life. Plath had a disastrous and unhappy ending as depicted by her poems.
She happens to be a victim of social pressure whereby she comes across pressing circumstances,
for instance, the demise of her father. Her lyrics portray this. She is one of the best and most
widely studied writers popular in the twentieth century. Since her death in 1963, her different
images can be critiqued and show the variety of her work. This dissertation aims to explore more
on her tragedy and how it connects to her work. The thesis also elaborates more on how
individuals find themselves on Sylvia's work. It also elaborates on how her depression and
attempt of perversity were of importance to her writing in different ways. Also, imagery and its
correspondence with the suicidal topic will be a topic to discuss. Just like any other literary work,
her work involves some characters which mirror her life in one way or the other. The dissertation
will also explore more on use of themes and imaginations as she uses in her work. The thesis will
elaborate all these topics and a brief bibliography concerning her life. However, there will be an
encounter of depression and how it involves our being and an assessment of how it would result
if Sylvia Plath got cure from depression.
SYLVIA PLATH AND HER POETRY OF CONFESSION
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Introduction
Confessional poetry is an autobiographical mode of verse that shows the poet’s personal
troubles with uncommon frankness ; it is the poetry of private and personal experiences within
which different feelings and thoughts regarding traumatic experiences (e.g. death , morbid
conditions , relationships ) and emotional shocks are expressed in this kind of poetry , usually in
an autobiographical manner . The term belongs to a group of poets of the United States from the
late Fifties to the late Sixties. The best samples of confessional poetry are Robert Lowell’s "Life
Studies"(1959) and "For the Union Dead" (1964) that deal with his divorce and mental
breakdowns , Anne Sexton’s "Part way Back" To Bedlam" (1960) and "All My Pretty Ones"
(1962) that carry the concept of abortion and life in a mental home , John Berryman’s "Dream
Songs" (1964) on alcoholism and mental disease , Sylvia Plath’s Ariel poems (1965) on suicide ,
and W. D. Snodgrass’s "Heart’s Needle" (1969) on her divorce . The term “Confessional Poetry”
was first utilized by Rosenthal in 1959 in a review of Robert Lowell’s Life Studies. Though the
term is applied to Robert Lowell’s poems it is Plath who is understood as the best confessionalist
after the posthumous publication of her second poetry collection Ariel (1965) (Bloom, 2007, 7-8)
Sylvia Plath was born to white-collar guardians in Boston, Massachusetts, and she wrote
her first sonnet at the age of eight years old. Plath was, superficially, a perfect girl who was well-
liked in school due to her effort. Whereby she could manage to get straight A's, and she could
always earn top presents. She joined Smith College in 1950 when she previously possessed a
massive catalogue of poems as well as articles. Plath composed more than 400 sonnets at Smith
College. In the period of pre-summer, following her years at Smith College, after coming back
from a stay in the city of New York, she nearly won as to executing herself by the act of
swallowing dozing pills. Later, depicted this contribution in the novel titled The Bell Jar
conveyed in 1963. She had to have a period for recovery, and after this period, she proceeded
with her mission for unique and literary accomplishment. The treatment comprises
psychotherapy and electroshock. From Smith, she moved on with passing varieties and
accomplished summa cum laude in the year 1955 while charming a Fulbright honour to learn at
the University of Cambridge in England. At Cambridge University, she met her husband, Ted
Hughes, on February 26, 1956. They married in the same year on June 16. A poet on the rise, she
had her first accumulation of poetry, The Colossus, which got distributed in the year 1960 in
England. On the same year, she brought into the world her first girl child by the name Frieda.
They gave birth later after two years to a subsequent kid by the name Nicholas. Outrageously,
their marriage with her husband was self-destructing. After a short time in marriage Hughes left
her in 1962 for another lady and Sylvia fell into a profound misery. While fighting with her
mental sickness, she wrote The Bell Jar in 1963, which is her solitary novel. This book hung her
personal life and communicated about the mental breakdown of a lady. She disseminated the
story under the designated, Victoria Lucas.
Additionally, she made the verse that would make up the gathering Ariel (1965), which
later got discharged after her death. She ended it all on February 11, 1963. For some time, Plath
association with Hughes has to be the subject of the editorial, not always approving to Ted
Hughes. Women's activist specialists would generally find in Plath's perversity a rejection of the
SYLVIA PLATH AND HER POETRY OF CONFESSION
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desires set upon females in the mid of 1960s. Unlike other poets such as Gabriel Mistral or
Russian Ann Akhmatova, their reputations were reputable throughout their lifetime. Sylvia
Plath's celebrity arose gradually and rose after she died in 1963. The growth increased into a
magnitude of acquiring legendary status inspiring Critical studies, memoirs, biographies, among
others. Her rise was rapid to this iconic position. Her spouse poems dominate her as quite
insignificant but a poet with the potential during aftereffects of her death. This article explores
more in-depth into the work of Sylvia Plath and examines the way the characters she uses in her
lyrics reflects on her real life. Also, the paper discusses the most important themes and how
Sylvia Plath uses the imagery in her writing.
The concept of Sylvia Plath’s tragedy and the connection of her work
The work of Sylvia Plath, particularly poet writing, attracts the attention of a large
number of readers. She shows a single verse the power to list despair, violent emotions as the
fascination with death. Deeply, her writings revolve and explore her mental torment and her
marriage which was full of distress. Additionally, she talks more about her vague conflicts with
her vision and her parents. It is during her time at Smith College that we encounter her trying to
murder herself. Plath could record and keep a diary where the diary reveals the struggle that she
was passing through until the time she decides to commit suicide. Many of the realities behind
her life come to exposure after her demise. Sylvia’s relationships made her write some beautiful
things that till this day remain unforgettable. She was famous since her junior year at Smith
college, but when she wrote the “Initiation” story and she won the third place everyone knew
her. She started dating a young boy named Dick Norton and this was the time when she started
changing, in the beginning of November 1952 she started writing about suicide, in the same
period Norton was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was in a hospital at Ray Book in New York.
Worrying extremely for a lot of things: for Norton’s sickness, for her college, for other activities
after college made Sylvia incredibly tired, so tired that she could not even sleep . This time she
felt useless , she put pressure on herself that much that she started calling herself names like : “
conglomerate garbage heap of loose ends” ( Journal,150) .She asked herself who she was what
was she doing , during this period Norton’s letters were more emotional than before.
Meanwhile in her winter holidays at Wellesley she started dating Norton’s friend Myron Lotz .
After two months without seeing Norton when she met him in Ray Brook, she stated in her diary
that she did not feel the same about him anymore. She went skiing while she was there and broke
her leg. And in “Bell Jar” she recreated the same scene with Buddy Williard . She used to
connect her broken leg with her break up with Norton she thought that even that her leg can still
be fixed it is not going to be the same as it was once.
Her relationship with Lotz was unquestionably crucial, he made her feel loved differently than
Norton, Lotz motivated her he gave her inspiration. In February 1953 she was also dating
Gordon Lameyer and ended up writing her villanelle “Mad Girls Love Song” having in mind
somebody else , Lotz.
“I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
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(I think I made you up inside my head.)”
She is having in mind Lotz even though she does not want to admit it even for herself so she tries
to hide it by saying that she made him up inside her head , she yearns to be intimidate with him
again , she fantasizes that they are back together.“ Mad Girl Love Song” brought something else
to Sylvia’s poetry, madness. Even though Sylvia had a close friend named Nancy Hunter she
never mentioned her in her poetry, but in her letters sent home to her mother she expresses how
much does she value Nancy and the way that she finds her, her double “her alter ego”
(Steinberg, 2004) .Later, after Sylvia’s death Nancy wrote “A Closer Look at Ariel: A Memory of
Sylvia Plath.”
It is evident in the letters lighting up the dull riddles of her disastrous relationship with
Ted Hughes. Her excellent work widely quite a bit of it revolves around after her demise (Brain,
2014). Also, it exposes more on her perception throughout the short adventure of her adult life.
Sylvia Plath met her husband Ted Hughes on 25, 1956 for the first time in February. It is a time
when we're at a party in Cambridge England. She describes how to interview in 1961 BBC
where the U.S. government there sent her in Cambridge for the endowment. She happens to read
some poems by Ted which impress her to the extent of seeking to meet Ted. After they meet, the
two saw a great deal of each other. A couple of few months after this fact, they have their
wedding and continued creating poems to one another. Later, they had a firstborn on April 31
1960. The following year, she delivered the kind prematurely, and then, a note to her advice-
giver uncovers Ted Hughes was thrashing her two days. A part of the lyrics that Plath composed,
for instance, "Parliament Hills Fields", explore more about the hardship and misfortune. After
the birth of Nicholas, their son in the year 1962, things get complicated.
“Brood, rooted in their heaped losses
Your cry fades like the cry of a gnat.
I lose sight of you on your blind journey,
While the heath grass glitters and the spindling rivulets
Unspool and spend themselves. My mind runs with them,
Pooling in heel-prints, fumbling pebble and stem.” (page 130, Collected Poems)
Even though she states in a BBC broadcast, “This poem is a monologue. I imagine the landscape
of Parliament Hill Fields in London seen by a person overwhelmed by an emotion so powerful as
to color and distort the scenery. The speaker here is caught between the old and the new year,
between the grief caused by the loss of a child and the joy aroused by the knowledge of an older
child safe at home .Gradually the first images of blankness and silence give way to images of
convalescence and healing as the woman turns, a bit stiffly and with difficulty, from her sense of
bereavement to the vital and demanding part of her world which still survives.”
They happened to spend a weekend with their friends and fellow poets David Wevill and his
partner Assia Wevill. Later, Ted composed in a poem that "The visionary in me became
hopelessly enamoured with her" and after some time, Ted set out on endeavours with Assia
Wevill. Plath and Hughes take an occasion in Ireland .It is just a couple of months in the wake of
the rally into Assia. Hughes went to London for an encounter with Wevill to whom he goes
abroad on a ten days trip through Spain the place where Hughes and Plath had their honeymoon.
SYLVIA PLATH AND HER POETRY OF CONFESSION
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When he arrives back home, he refuses to end his love affairs with Wevill, and as a result, it
tattered their marriage with Plath. In July 1962, they separated. Before and sometimes after,
Plath tries to kill herself. Throughout the sad winter time of 1962-1963, she lives in a flat with
her children working as a solitary mother to her little child and infant child as well. As popularly
known, killed herself while her offspring rested in an adjacent room. She did this in her kitchen.
The period between her confession of her healthier half relationship and her death was
remarkable of benefit, and she composed an essential part of the verse that gets put out in this
manner. A layman opinion concerning this would make one conclude that Sylvia Plath hard
encounters in life form the foundation of her writing as a poet-writer (Wagner-Martin, 2013). As
she alleges, her partner Ted Hughes was physically and mentally harsh during the most current
long stretches of their marriage relationship. It is revealed from progress of private letters by
Plath attention to her psychotherapist Dr Ruth Barnhouse. Most of her work mirrors the actual
world in which she is passing through, full of hardships and despair. Before she commits suicide,
she wrote those famous letters a week earlier before she terminates her life.
The only versions of Plath in her last months of life that not suppressed include the
messages sent to Dr Barnhouse. (The stimulation for Dr.Nolan in Plath's nonfictional novel The
Bell Jar). Sylvia Plath uses to create some of her best persistent poems; comprising one
published in 1965 the collection Ariel. The infidelity of Hughes with Wevill a husband to Sylvia
Plath is evident through the nine letters. In the group, Plath contains medical records from 1954.
The description concerning the physical abuse she underwent before she had a miscarriage of her
second baby in 1961 is in the documents in a message that is dated 22, September 1962. It is the
same month they had the separation. In some parts of her writing in sonnets, it addresses
untimely delivery, including Already your doll grip lets go and Parliament Hill Fields.
Personally, it is evident for one to say that much of Sylvia Plath work is under the influence of
her whole life. She uses to write her encounter in life. Her experience and her works connect in
different ways. Bloom, H.(2000)
People in her work
Sylvia Plath makes her first attempt of suicide at Smith College in her junior year as her
detail in the autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar. Based on this, it is obvious to come across
people trying to terminate their lives due to different reasons. For instance, she loses her father
by the name Otto during the time of publication of her first poem when she was eight years old.
Commonly, people sail under the same and also attempts to commit suicide. She also met her
partner at the University of Cambridge and married in 1965. Finally, we find that after the
marriage, she suffers a miscarriage, and this contributes to the separation between the two
spouses. In their marriage relationship, the marriage involves pressing issues, and they have to
separate in less than a period of two years after the birth of their firstborn. These are similar
issues that people find themselves in whereby irregularities in life makes marriage relationship to
come to an end, and finally, separation remains the solution. Her work encourages a lot. Those
reading the same should learn the fact that life is real, and sometimes it includes some
irregularities. Dealing with these issues, it is always advisable to make the right decision. Plath
goes back to London with her two children Nicholas and Frieda after they separate with her
husband, Ted Hughes. At this time, we encounter her remaining happy and contemplate this as a
good omen. Also, people find themselves being victims of the same circumstances, and it is
SYLVIA PLATH AND HER POETRY OF CONFESSION
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always good to stay courageous no matter hardships in life. Sylvia Plath later committed suicide
during the winter in 1962/1963 where everything remains harsh.
In living commemoration ill and possibly low on money she decides to commit suicide
on her kitchen.
In the same way, people fight and overcome depression, just like the case of Sylvia Plath
even though it is not the recommended way to do it. Instead of sharing what they feel and their
state conditions, some prefer using drugs with the perception that their situation will change and
that they will feel better. But this is not the way to do it since it makes things even worse than
before. The worst of all the things is committing suicide, just like Sylvia Plath did. As a lesson,
the best way to fight depression should be by everyone to take care of his or herself and adapt to
a lifestyle that is healthy among other solutions. Sylvia Plath uses exceptional symbolism, and
resonate tone to convey her thoughts of misery, blame, and scorn. When she firstly visit her
father's grave, and the annoying impacts the death of her father had on her. Sylvia delivers the
sonnet to her deceased famous, of whom Plath anchorages deep affection. In many of the
instances in the poem, she expresses her feeling. In one way or the other, the death of her father
seems to have killed her. Before her father dies, Plath "had nothing to do with guilt or anything."
She spreads the contentment she uses to have before her father dies. The part of the bargain
Plath's father makes he feels as if she has fallen "into the soil, into the dark hibernaculum."
together with her father, safe house of her "dress of guiltlessness." Plath contemptuously
represents the adverse scene of Azalea Path. The part of her father's tomb "imprints" itself upon
her contemplations in a severe way such that in her masterpiece, she summons every picture
deeply.
The ruined setting of Azalea Path, a "poorhouse, where the perished accumulate straight,
by walking to foot," is the habitation spot of her dad underneath a "dotted stone awry by an iron
fence" underneath "six feet of yellow rock." Azalea Plath leakages inauspiciousness, a home
where "no bloom breaks the dirt," and the "artificial petals trickle … red" in the "downpours."
Sylvia Plath's assertion is apparent when she realizes that her father, whom she treasures and
here and there detests for separating her. It is shielded together with sick persons. It was as if his
life was of no importance than an insolvent.
She portrays her mother as a picture that openly stresses the passing of her superior half,
"envisioning him face down in the ocean." He attempted to alleviate Sylvia disclosing to her that
"he kicked the bucket like any man." She refers to the idea of her father's downfall "the gangrene
(which) ate him deep down," in the last appeal.
Additionally, she uses the imagery in most of her lyrics to disturbing effect through the
use of personal depictions and nature-based. This article explores more in-depth into the work of
Sylvia Plath and examines the way the characters she uses in her lyrics reflects on her real life.
Also, the paper discusses the most important themes and how Sylvia Plath uses the imagery in
her writing.
Plath was the offspring of Otto Plath, a German migrant and school teacher, and one of
his students, Aurelia Schober. Otto Plath was ailing from diabetes and was therefore requested
not to eat certain foods by his doctor. Nonetheless, he declined to avoid these foods, and thus, he
got contaminated with a sore on his left foot. Professor Plath neglected the pain until his foot
became overwhelmed with decay. The specialists at that point needed to sever his foot and after
that, his leg to spare his life. Unfortunately, he succumbed to his illness in November of 1940
because of intricacies emerging during his lengthy visit to the hospital. Sylvia was only eight
SYLVIA PLATH AND HER POETRY OF CONFESSION
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years of age at the hour of his passing. The acknowledgement that her father could have avoided
his demise left Sylvia with an impression of intentional deceit. As opposed to contacting
different people for relief, she detached herself with writing. Surprisingly, she published her
earliest poem at the mere age of eight years.
When it came to class, Plath was a splendid scholar and a determined trainee author. She
joined Smith College on a grant in 1951. This way, Sylvia Plath was a co-winner of the
Mademoiselle magazine fiction competition in 1952. The prize was guest editorship at the
magazine. At Smith, Plath realized substantial artistic, academic, and social achievements, but
she also experienced severe depression. On one of her journals, she expressed, “It appears as if
my life mysteriously kept running on two electric flows: cheerful, positive, and hopeless
negative” (Plath 1958). Sylvia attempted suicide after having discovered that she did not qualify
for the Harvard summer writing program for which she had applied. Plath resumed school the
next spring, wrote her honours proposal, and graduated with the highest distinctions conceivable
in 1955. Subsequently, she was granted a Fulbright grant to learn at Newnham College,
Cambridge.
Characters found in Plath's work
Through The Colossus, Plath investigated the identification and revivification of her dad. This
examination was at a period when she had returned to her country of birth. The title and the
subject of the poem hinted at the ancient Greek knowledge of the Colossus, which was a statue
that characterized a dead being. As Peter Steinberg states: It was her strongest poem and it calls
attention to her best subject: the mythology of herself and her father. The poem examined the
relationship Plath had between male and female, part of the lasting folklore of her
communications with men. The association between the statue and the attendant was like that
between an ace and his slave. Thirty years now, I have toiled, to dig from your throat (Plath: The
Colossus, 1959). There was an acknowledgement by the speaker of her subordinate job. The
determination likewise offered an illustration for Plath's own-constitution as an artist. The brutal
conditions of the initial segment were the underlying reason for the flawlessness acknowledged
in the last turn just before the stars and the dawn. Ted Hughes for The Colossus and other poems
stated that the only ones worth it were “The Manor Garden” which was written for their son and
The Colossus even that the story in Colossus is written in a weird way.
The Bell Jar served as a free hint into the inward existence of its author. Numerous scholars
speculate that Sylvia Plath wished to express more than past her torments through this work.
Caroline J. Smith discussed the women's activist subjects in Plath's work and how they
associated with ideas connoted in ladies' diaries of those days. Smith recorded a strong
repercussion of mixed messages contained in The Bell Jar. She was lighting up Esther's
synchronized bait and shock to the old ethical standards of women's' rights (Smith, N.D.). Martin
cited The Bell Jar's hero, Esther Greenwood, tension to escape routine womanhood. In following
up on this urge, Esther enjoyed club rehearses with her buddy Doreen and Lenny Shepherd.
There she discovered that to encounter the world outside the region of ladies' lunch get-togethers,
SYLVIA PLATH AND HER POETRY OF CONFESSION
13
a lady must welcome a male buddy (Plath; The Bell Jar, 1963). The prominently unforgiving
atmosphere of Esther's alleged bell jar mirrored the muggy conditions of her outside life. It filled
in as a topic for the internal anarchy Esther's outrageous outer proscriptions formed fashioned.
Toward the beginning of the book, Esther travelled to New York for a mid-year position
at Ladies Day production. She went to work for a prominent managing editor named Jay Cee.
Rather than savoring her stint, her experiences in New York left her similarly scared and
confounded. She later returned to Massachusetts, where she steadily surrendered to despair.
After she saw a family specialist, she alluded to a neighborhood advisor, Dr Gordon.
Nobody can tell for sure if Sylvia loved her mother or not, even that in Bell Jar where
she is represented by Ester Greenwood, it is crystal clear that she uses Esther to reveal the fact
that she hates her mother, like in one part in chapter 16 when she is talking to her doctor, when
her mother brought her flowers for her birthday:
That afternoon my mother had brought me the roses.
‘Save them for my funeral’, I’d said.
My mother’s face puckered, and she looked ready to cry.
‘But Esther, don’t you remember what day it is today?’
‘No.’
I thought it might be Saint Valentine’s day.
‘It’s your birth day.’
And that was when I had dumped the roses in the waste-basket.
‘That was a silly thing for her to do’, I said to Doctor Nolan.
Doctor Nolan nodded. She seemed to know what I meant.
‘I hate her’, I said, and waited for the blow to fall.
But Doctor Nolan only smiled at me as if something had pleased
her very, very much, and said, ‘I suppose you do’.
Even that in her journals she states that her feelings for her mother are mixed :
I may hate her, but that’s not all. I . . . love her too. ‘After all, as the
story goes, she’s my mother.’ ‘She can’t encroach unless you’re
SYLVIA PLATH AND HER POETRY OF CONFESSION
14
encroachable on.’ So my hate and fear derive from my own
insecurity. Which is? And how to combat it? (26 December 1958)
This includes a main motif in Bell Jar, growing up apart from her mother and her strong
bond with her dead father and the poetry that she has written for him make us see this mother-
daughter relationship as a very arduous even that she sees her father sometimes like a Nazi she
still compares him to a God but that does not happen with her mother Sylvia does not know how
to feel exactly about her. Some critics think that the mother-daughter relationship was dependent
from Sylvia and her state of mind while others think that her mother was the reason of Sylvia’s
suicide from the pressure that Aurelia made her feel, in order for Sylvia to have a happy family,
being happy herself, not concentrating a lot on her poetry , in terms that Aurelia tried to construct
her happiness made it get to this point.( Bassnet)
Esther promptly took a hating to Dr Gordon and kept on being disobliging throughout the
sessions. Accordingly, Esther experienced electroconvulsive treatment, which left her in shock,
more dysfunctional, and fixated on suicide. Esther later moved to a national mental institution
after a few ineffective suicide endeavors. She attempted to accomplish this by slitting wrists,
hanging, and overdosing on drugs. The tale finished rather openly by Esther organizing herself
for a meeting to decide whether she could leave the hospital and come back to class.
In the year 1962, September 12, Sylvia Plath made the verse that she, finally, chose to
give its title to her second collection of poetry, Ariel. Other than being the light substance finally
freed by Prospero in The Tempest, Ariel was moreover the name of a steed that Plath used to
ride. Like other poems that she wrote in the aftermath of the breakdown of her marriage, Ariel
changed a routine rural activity, horse riding, into an exciting story. Besides, she sensationalized
exciting, bewildering, and conflicting sentiments. Her usage of the term self-hurt close to the
completion inferred that Ariel served the role of instituting her motivation to gamble with death.
In his introduction to the United States release of Ariel, Robert Lowell portrayed her preceding
verse as playing Russian roulette with six shots in the chamber.
Ariel described the panic of a rough horseback outing and the emotional and passionate
change that the rider, and narrator, underwent as she confronted demise. The lyrics started with a
quiet balance in which nothing is occurring, until, the pony, Ariel tosses herself quick into a
charge. The speaker is hanging on with a death grip, unfit to get a handle on her neck. The slopes
and hills of the farmland are pouring past them. As she rode, she lost bits of herself, and shed her
previous existence and stringencies and got to be something new. She was converging with Ariel
and turning into the bolt that would take her to another life. The poem closed with the two
charging on into the consuming future that awaited them.
In Lady Lazarus, the storyteller is a woman, and that means dynamic power. The
depiction exhibits the astonishing thought of women even without the men. Her innovativeness
can draw the view of a group of spectators who stay throughout passing and her rebuilding. Lady
Lazarus is a ladies' extremist showing the abuse that women face, and men willingly partake.
The verse demonstrates that women are walking wonders. Plath delineates women as people who
need to act customarily, directed by the showing of Lady Lazarus' determination to die. This
delineation drives her to discuss authentic conditions, just like the suicide attempts she reveals.
SYLVIA PLATH AND HER POETRY OF CONFESSION
15
The passing imagery portrays the chronicled fiascos of the overall population that the women
need to get liberated. The quality and adaptability of Lady Lazarus radiate women in a positive
light. They show that women have control. Plath takes the negative social speculation identified
with women who are dynamic and should be independent. She, at that point, goes it to the
positive picture of women who voice their decisions and grasp what they need. It outlines
women as unfathomable. To propel the force of women, Plath uses considerations that get
viewed as frail, given their association with suicide. Women can change a hindrance to a touch
of breathing space. For instance, the use of tarot cards as opposed to gigantic guns exhibits that
women can fight with the most limiting of instruments.
The Bee Meeting
Some parts in the Journal are very interesting where scenes and the incidents are presented later
in her poems. One beautiful day of June, more precisely 7 Junev1964, Sylvia starts the page on
her diary with the title Charlie Pollard & the beekeepers, which was seen as a connection with
her “bee” poems, but mostly with “The Bee Meeting” . In her journal she explains how she and
Ted rush to go to local Devonshire beekeepers meeting, she writes in detail about everything
even about the characters , she even points out how they gave her clothes and a hat. As many
biographers have stated bees were significant to Sylvia because her father wrote about them and
was an expert. In the “Bee Meeting” the author manifests herself as a victim who was sacrificed
and where the borrowing of a snok becomes part of a ritual like she is getting sacrificed. The
villagers gather in an outstanding ceremony which the author does not understand.
Written in October a couple of months after June1965 for which she wrote in her journal, from
the poem we understand how Sylvia had the special skill to describe an ordinary day and make it
extraordinary. Even though everyone who reads the Ariel poems understands them differently
notably the five bee poems , for which Susan R. Van Dyne stated that she sees those poems as a
passage from a state of passivity to hope. Bayley, S. and Brain,T. (2011)
Prevalent Themes in Sylvia Plath's work
Throughout the entire existence of American writing, the poetry of Sylvia Plath has the
most erratic themes. Pundits even today are endeavouring to comprehend what she expected to
pass on. In case her poetry is confession booth, by then, what does she have to concede? The
issue of vulnerability in her work manufactures the intricate nature. Pundits similarly as
understudies of writing find no other course but to significantly think about Plath's work to
fathom her attitude towards her family and followers.
Death, destruction, disillusionment, and mental violence are common themes in the
poems of Sylvia Plath. She additionally discussed feminism, problems of women, and double
standards of the modern society, attitude of male sex towards females, and insecurity of women.
She moreover explained current individualistic issues, for instance, absence of correspondence,
despair, imprisonment, and passionate misery. Death was one of the most prominent subjects in
the poetry of Sylvia Plath. She had felt it eagerly when she attempted suicide. She understood
SYLVIA PLATH AND HER POETRY OF CONFESSION
16
that demise was a verifiable truth recognized by everyone; so, she conceptualized it. She could
express it fit as a fiddle of words.
“Two views of a Cadaver Room” , “ A Birthday Present” “ Edge” and “I am vertical” show
various perspective towards death. The poem “Two views of a Cadaver Room” shows a
pessimistic point of view towards death. This poem tells us about a relationship of Sylvia and a
young medical student. Her boyfriend and some of his friend together with Sylvia go in an
operating room where some students where preserving a corpse. Sylvia and her boyfriend were
terrified. From the narrator we can spot to views of death: the romantic view and the physical
view. One view is expressed from the cadaver room conflicting the romantic one of death which
is presented in a picture , which displays two lovers which even that they are in a place that is
destroyed they are still in love. This poem is separated in two parts, the first one creates a futile
atmosphere, in which things are described in a “dissecting room” which indicates a mood of
despair. She shows it comparing the cadaver with a burnt turkey:
The day she visited the dissecting room
They had four men laid out, black as burnt turkey,
Already half unstrung. (II.1-3)
Dissecting room indicates dehumanization. The poet compares death with the dissector, within
which it takes off the spirit out of the body as did the doctor in dissecting the key constituents of
bodies. Death here represents a terrific force that annihilates man's life. The
dissecting room is the epitome of scientific area, that is to say death’s house.
The second part is the opposite of the first part, it presents a couple which ignores death and their
ignorance puts them in a tragic end.
Two people only are blind to the carrion army:
He, afloat in the sea of her blue satin
Skirts, sings in the direction
Of her bare shoulder, while she bends,
Fingering a leaflet of music, over him,
Both of them deaf to the fiddle in the hands
Of the death’s-head shadowing their song. (II. 13-19)
They are so naïve and ignore the reality same as the couple in the Brueghel picture. The only
way to give up on the unavoidable death is to give up on life itself.
SYLVIA PLATH AND HER POETRY OF CONFESSION
17
Another dramatic monologue is “A birthday Present”. The persona is curious to know his
friends gift. Her friend, the object and the speaker “talk” in the kitchen. She wonders what
present may be “bones” “a pearl button” “an ivory tusk”. These things are all white, these three
white objects all suggest death because they were part of living organisms. At the end of the
poem the speaker shows that the birthday presents aren’t the symbols of death but death itself.
If it were death
I would admire the deep gravity of it, its timeless eyes.
I would know you were serious.
There would be a nobility then, there would be a birthday. And the knife not carve, but enter
Pure and clean as the cry of a baby,
And the universe slide from my side.
(II. 52-58)
This poem dramatizes that her birthday is her death. The drama of this poem is frightening
because it transforms a happy occasion into suicide. Plath's second perspective towards death is
that it should be chosen by the individual himself as a way of self-destruction, instead of acting
as a horrifying exterminating force. The poet aims to point out the suffering and agony of the
persona in choosing death as a method of liberation of the antagonistic world of the person. It is
this perspective that dominates in Plath’s poem “Edge” which is Plath’s last poem. According to
Seamus Heaney, the poem was a suicide letter. The death here is a negativity that renew, it is not
an imaginary death but a figure of imagination itself. The speaker feels the misery is over:
The illusion of a Greek necessity
Flows in the scrolls of her toga
Her bare
Feet seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over. (II. 4-8)
The “bare feet” symbolizes the lack of immunity and protection. The tone indicates the
willingness to accept death as an escape of the aggressive world. The persona feels very lonely in
the world, no one cares for his death not even the moon “'The moon has nothing to be sad about/
Staring from her hood of bone”. Therefore she thinks that she will have a new beginning through
death.
SYLVIA PLATH AND HER POETRY OF CONFESSION
18
In “I am vertical” death is reflected as a means of rebirth. As her background of her poem, she
sets images from nature. This use of nature shows death not as a horrible as others think. The
persona feels rejection when 'the trees and flowers have been strewing their cool odours. I walk
among them, but none of them are noticing.' She wants to be united with nature through death,
the nature that symbolizes tranquility and serenity. 'Then the sky and I are in open conversation'
the word sky gives death a sense of elevation and spirituality. She is not satisfied from her life
and takes death as a means for recognition
And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:
Then the trees may touch me for once,
and the flowers have time for me. (II. 19-20)
The theme of the poem, The Colossus and Other Poems, was death as well as grief for her dad.
She compared her dad to a statue, a reminder of a fallen god. It was not the physical loss of her
dad that vexed her but instead the disappointment of the passionate wellbeing. She attempted to
repair her missing trust in endeavouring to deal with the crumbled statue. The tone of the poem
was that of misfortune and grieving. Sylvia Plath was depleted by her supported endeavours to
comprehend the figure that remained before her. She attempted various methods to incite an
answer yet just received nonsense consequently. Half-satiric, Plath was disheartened by her
undertakings to understand the certainties about the figure. Incomprehensibly, she claimed that
the statue could have been a prophet that barely talks. She made a considerable effort to
safeguard the rule in not too lousy structure yet ends up to be of deficient significance to do as
such.
In the book, The Bell Jar, the themes of mental illness and change bring out a profound
sense of gloom, defeat, and irritation in the audience. Not everyone has slipped into lunacy like
Plath, yet here and there, we have felt a touch of despairing. The Bell Jar identifies with the
reader along these lines, enabling them to understand such confusing sentiments. Plath
communicated that each individual had a bell jar, and through total determination, one could
escape it. The subject of femininity empowered lasses of all ages. The world nowadays could be
poles apart from the 1950s. Nonetheless, ladies are still attached to certain expectations. Plath's
resistant sexual orientation perspectives inspired young ladies and women to move out of their
comfort areas and embrace their genuine personalities.
In the lyric Daddy, Plath continued to explore and examine her daddy issues. She wrote
the lyric on October 12, 1962, just before committing suicide. The poems were then
disseminated after death in Ariel in 1965. In spite of most of Plath's stanza rotating around the
demise of her late father and her relationship with him, this sonnet possibly was the most open
one. When we analyze Plath, we often incorporate ourselves with the psychological pieces of her
relationship with her father. Regardless, the title gives off an impression of being unreasonably
wistful and idealistic for any mental thoughtfulness. Daddy was perhaps Sylvia Plath's most-
famous sonnet. It gave rise to a grouping of different reactions. This acknowledgement was from
women's rights fighters praise for its untainted furiousness towards male prevalence, to keenness
at its utilization of Nazi allegory. It has been investigated and rebuked by hundreds and a few
analysts and kept up as maybe the best instance confessional poetry.
SYLVIA PLATH AND HER POETRY OF CONFESSION
19
Theme advancement in the poem, Ariel, was phenomenally beneficial. The verse reveals
the terrible and hopeless mindset of the artist towards life. It is about cynicism and suffering. The
subject of loneliness commanded every single other theme so far as the topical theme of the
poem is concerned. The artist felt sadness, which extended her hatred towards her father and life
partner. Her father ignored her in this cruel world to persevere. Her better half previously gave
her craving for new life yet, thus put her mind in an astounding situation. Her significant other,
like her father, furthermore dismissed her for standing up to the difficulties of life. Henceforth,
clearly, despite death, she also talked about grief in this poem. Sylvia Plath's imagery, her
statement utilization level, and style were outstandingly expressive in this poem. A most critical
segment, which the intellectuals have recognized was the use of representation; the craftsman
deliberately and eagerly used this imagery to put her inward conflicts before the readers.
In short, the poem was profoundly inventive but was also mentally consistent with nature.
The artist's close to home agony and corporate sufferings are apparent in it. She discussed the
relationship of the rider with the steed, and the horse can assume her to a position where there
are no more agonies and sufferings. Without a doubt, when she discusses darkness, it implied
that expectation had blurred in her life. She purposely needed to go in the dark as it offered
harmony to her brain. Her heart was brimming with gloom on account of her dad's prior death
and her husband's departure from her life. Sylvia Plath lived a short life, and even in this short
life, joy was a rare episode for her. Plath kept on investigating her self-destructive musings and
inclinations in the poem Lady Lazarus. The lyric "Lady Lazarus" reflects Plath's obsession with
death and suicide. There are a couple of various ways the subject of death gets evoked, some
quick and some reflecting Plath's unique prototypical imagery and obsessions. The title itself
draws out the Biblical figure of Lazarus, who passed on and was raised from the dead by Jesus.
The storyteller is someone who had gotten protected after a failed suicide undertaking. She is
lashing out at people who saved her life. Sylvia was comparing herself to Lady Godiva , who
rode her horse naked , this allusion has a great importance in this poem . Lady Godiva was the
wife of a English lord, who set a high tax for his folk and to lower the task he made a deal with
his wife, if she rode the horse naked around the place then he would lower the tax. Everyone
agreed not to look at Lady Godiva except one man called Tom or as they named him “Peeping
Tom”. This relates to Plath’s poem that she is not only riding the horse for her own pleasure but
she knows that she is doing something bigger, this associates with Plath’s and Lady Godiva’s
feminine independence from the patriarchal force .Anthony Libby different than other critics
thinks that this poem is not so much about preoccupation about death , the way he sees Ariel is
like a description of love making , the imagery as he says of the horseback riding mixes and then
gives to the morning love making and orgasm:
I foam to wheat a glitter of seas
the child’s cry
Melts in the wall,
Can only happen in the bedroom and the poem ends in suicidal thoughts not that she is
afraid of losing herself to a certain man , because there is not a man mentioned in the poem , but
she is afraid losing herself into the world .Women's freedom rights groups consider the lyric to
be an outline of the clashes of women in a mostly male-driven culture. The advancement of a
SYLVIA PLATH AND HER POETRY OF CONFESSION
20
male specialist god by a woman proclaims the independent power of women. The verse implies
how lively domination endeavours to cover female power, yet finally, through her restoration, is
conquered. She understands that when she resuscitates, a man will claim her. The overall
population, moreover, considers her to be an article rather than a person. Along these lines,
suicide transforms into a technique for accomplishing self-rule.
Sylvia Plath isn't influenced by her significant other so far as subjects of physical abuse
and gore in her poem are concerned. Rarely, readers find any physical assaults in her verse, yet
mental fierceness is reliably there. Furious conflicts between the heart and brain are plenteous in
her poems. She has passed on various profound messages to her readers through her stunning
work. Therefore, a significant report of her work life is required to understand subjects in the
verse of Sylvia Plath.Plath furthermore tackled issues of feminism in her poem, Mirror.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish. (page 154,Collected Poems)
The principle thought of the sonnet comprises the writer's furious endeavours to handle
squeezing issues associated with maturity. As needs are, the Mirror and the Lake get exemplified
as they give legitimate reflections and help her to audit her state. The harsh truth of a propelling
age combined with the dreary obligations of local life were factors, not promptly acknowledged
by Plath. Frequently, poetry served to be the most proper mode for an uncovered articulation of a
divided heart. Plath's disposition towards maturing featured her enormous dread of
disconnection, as well as her urgent quest for self-reflection. Furthermore, these two factors
piercingly uncover the male commanded society to which she had a place. In this regard, her
composing has frequently been said to contain feministic attributes. (Bassnett, S.)
Some other genuine subjects in the poem of Sylvia Plath, which I believe are huge, are
frailty and depression. After her father's passing, she was temperamental about her future. This
unsteadiness extended when she got ambushed. In the wake of meeting Ted Hughes, she found a
passing alleviation, yet it was not everlasting. Talented yet tormented by her evil spirits, Sylvia
Plath's underlying relationship with life partner and individual author, Ted Hughes, was ruled by
Ted's goal and accomplishment. In the extensive early stretches of their marriage, Sylvia
required inspiration and gradually detected Ted's betrayal. The critical question was whether
Ted's extra-matrimonial endeavours were the result of Sylvia's instabilities or whether her life
partner's philandering exacerbated Sylvia's developing sadness. A little while later, he left her,
and she again ended up insecure.
These ups and downs throughout her life made her relentless; accordingly, she needed to
end her life. It was merely towards the end when segregated that Sylvia truly explored the dull
complexities of her soul. She, at that point, formed the ground-breaking, unbelievable poem that
SYLVIA PLATH AND HER POETRY OF CONFESSION
21
earned her prominence. The poem "Bee Meeting" outlines the frailty of the author. In this
production, she expressed, I am bare as the chicken neck, does nobody cherish me? (Plath,
1960). I am exposed as chicken neck suggests that she had no security by any means.
Notwithstanding the association of such a critical number of people, she was distant from
everyone else and did not have a sense of security. Regardless of the organization of such a
significant number of individuals, she was distant from everyone else and did not feel safe and in
these last lines
I am exhausted, I am exhausted—
Pillar of white in a blackout of knives.
I am the magician's girl who does not flinch.
The villagers are untying their disguises, they are shaking hands.
Whose is that long white box in the grove, what have they accomplished, why am I cold.
She tells everyone that she is tired of all the things going on, Plath is obviously the pillar
of white maybe literally or metaphorically reminiscent of the ‘pillar of salt’ that was Lot’s wife
in Genesis 19:26. Lot’s wife was struck dead for disobeying God; so this means that some fate is
in store for Plath and she somehow feels like she has sinned .The villagers represent the people
who don’t support Plath and she isn’t a part of the bee colony or the villagers , and the cold
mentioned at the end is of course death and her coffin waiting for her .Robert Phillips for this
poems says; “If the central figure of authority, the Queen, is her father, then the daughter/worker
must die after the incestuous act, as she does at the conclusion of “The Bee Meeting” and as
Plath did at the conclusion of her suicide attempts. The long white box in the grove is in fact her
own coffin, only in this light can the poem’s protagonist answer her own questions. “What have
they accomplished, why am I cold.”
Imagery
It was while in England that Plath distributed her first verse book, The Colossus and
Other Poems. She employs the use of symbolism wonderfully in this book. All through the
poem, there are pieces of information that the book was a representation of a lady experiencing
emotional hurt expedited by the demise of her dad. The title and the subject of the poem alluded
to the old Greek information of the Colossus, which was a statue that portrayed a dead being.
The stanza further alludes to the Colossus that was on the island of Rhodes. The stone got
viewed as one of the seven wonders of the old world. In the poem, Plath utilized the Colossus to
connote her effort to recreate the father whose nonappearance lingered so much in her life.
This allegory did not imply surrender but affirmation by the speaker that her subject and
the means she needed to make something of herself, were at hand. The Colossus gave a
remarkable case to consider the issue of how to translate verse that appeared to signal towards a
biographical setting. The primary artistic strategy utilized by Plath was extended and regularly
phenomenal symbolism. A reader could quickly agree to a speedy allegory that likens an
SYLVIA PLATH AND HER POETRY OF CONFESSION
22
individual with a statue. Be that as it may, Plath enabled this representation to stun the reader
when she kept up on focusing her attention on the comparison for the entire poem. For its
subject, the poem could have easily turned into a chilling or emotional piece. Due to the
overstated nature of smugness, the poem got shielded from issues characteristic to a poem about
grieving a parent. The eccentricity of her comparisons undercut the poem's seriousness
Plath kept on expressing her utilization of symbolism in her one novel, The Bell Jar. At
first, she had circulated the book under the false name, Victoria Lucas, in 1963. The story
investigated Plath's trials and failures in her way to recuperation from the eyes of the novel's
focal character, Esther Greenwood. By the use of tone, allegory, and illustrations, Plath rethought
the activities that occurred in the midsummer of her junior year in school. Plath exploited these
scholarly strategies to concentrate on subjects of insanity, change, and femininity. The Bell Jar
trailed the life expectancy of Esther Greenwood, a splendid young lady, and an aggressive
creator. Sylvia Plath's use of modesty and illustrations in The Bell Jar solidified lunacy more
theoretically accessible and enamouring to the masses. This delineation, at last, prompted the
allure of insanity in contemporary society.
Stupendously, numerous events in the publication mirrored those of the life of its author.
Both the writer and her fictitious character lost their fathers at their infancy, and both were expert
poets who were famed for winning awards and grants. Furthermore, somehow alike to Esther,
Sylvia underwent electroshock treatment. She went missing after a suicide attempt; afterwards,
she got admitted to hospital for psychiatric therapy.
In another event, Plath used a picture to portray Esther Greenwood's lunacy in a faintly
beguiling manner. This usage of imagery was during Esther's flashes of appearance concerning
what she needed to do with her life. Esther endeavoured to express her character all through the
course of The Bell Jar. She contrasted her existence with a fig tree outlined in a story she had
perused lately. She was relating it loaded with large open doors, all parting out before her. From
every outlet open to Esther, a splendid future hailed and winked (Plath, 1963). These open
entryways contrasted from a future character as a magnificent instructor to a perky homemaker
to an Olympic group champion.
Daddy was a blood-raising piece of poetry. Its old imagery, the invocation of Jewish
suffering, and dangerous nature could check it a strongly unbalanced perusing logical. The
sonnet transfers Plath's journey of managing her dad's approaching statue that kicked the bucket
when she was only eight years old. She characterized herself as a harmed individual and him as
restricted figures, containing a Nazi, evil spirit, and vampire .She herself explains "Daddy" in a
BBC interview as :
A poem spoken by a girl with an Electra complex . Her father died while
she thought he was god . Her case is complicated by the fact that her father was also a Nazi
and her mother very possibly part Jewish . In the daughter the two strains marry and
paralyze each other_ she has to act out the awful allegory once over before she is free of it
(Axelord: 24) . At last, as a reestablished figure, her life partner, whom she has additionally
needed to kill. In the end, it is unclear whether she suggests she has gotten her correspondence
through to him or whether she is finished thinking about him.
The storyteller endeavours to kill herself multiple times, i.e., once every ten years. She
has done it again for the third time, once being coincidentally and the other time being deliberate.
Her recuperation from that third endeavour is painted as a disappointment while her endeavoured
suicides get portrayed as accomplishments. Biting the dust is shrewd, and she is excellent at it.
SYLVIA PLATH AND HER POETRY OF CONFESSION
23
Since death gets described as an art, there are crowds to death and restoration. She ends her life
as a type of discipline to the spectators who drives her to do it. The extremist group gets a warm
welcome yet additionally gets denounced for its wild impulse. The readers can be said to be a
piece of the group. This analysis is because he peruses the lyric to see her haziness. She makes a
hypothesis that her spectators get invested to the degree that they would part with a lot of cash to
look into her heart and scars.
The spider and the bee have a highly fascinating influence on her views. These “male
haters” of Nature are very frequently mentioned in her poems. The “spider” and the “bee” as
both symbols and images hold for Sylvia an unique feminist significance. She mentions the
words “bees” and “bee” 17 times trying to identify herself as this productive insect as they have
the ability to build up and existence which is male- free, and she does not hesitate to say that:
Into which, on warm days,
They can only carry their dead.
The bees are all women,
Maids and the long royal lady.
They have got rid of the men,
The blunt, clumsy stumblers, the boors. (Wintering)
A great achievement towards attesting the female potential is “bees got rid of the men”,
establishing a sound community ruled by discipline and regularity. To point more, Sylvia’s
interest in bees proves her wish of retaliating the male apparatus of subjugation, practiced by her
own family patriarchy. Sylvia wants to be the queen of her world and draw lines of others
destiny: I want, I think, to be omniscient … I think I would like to call myself the girl who wanted
to be God…
Other than the bee imagery, that of the spider pervades Sylvia’s poetic discourse. In
comparison with the bee the spider is an ugly insect, but it inspires her reactionary views against
male presumptions. The word “spider” and its derivations are brought up 19 times through her
poetry. The spiders same as bees are all “women” i.e. widows or female insects. Spiders for Plath
symbolize the power of creating through destroying (Totem,1963).Through their internal power ,
spiders can diligently and silently reproduce and change other objects , this as Plath sees it is
female determination:
Widow. The bitter spider sits
And sits in the center of her loveless spokes.
Death is the dress she wears. …
( Spider, 1956)
Plath's appeal to the damaging capacities of each the spider and also the bee should not
be held as her entrenched would like to impose death or destruction upon others. It is clear
enough that she desires to underline the competence women have and that which is neglected by
masculine prejudice. As did her life, Plath's poems show a woman's tremendous need for
psychological, temporal, and physical during which, for time and space in which to breathe,
during which she will be able to be herself without pressures from society, fathers, husbands, and
children. Her poems show the requirement to escape from the frustrations a lady endures in her
responsibilities amid the hive-like frenzy of demands from others. In her poems “Wintering," and
SYLVIA PLATH AND HER POETRY OF CONFESSION
24
"The Beekeeper's Daughter" Sylvia portrays the serenity of virginity and desolation in a world
without men.
How depression and suicide, in a way, were beneficial for Sylvia?
In the early 20th Century, there was a female poet who was intentional and straight to the
point with her writing. Her name was Sylvia Plath- shadowed by bouts of depression which
started at an early age and was the leading cause of her demise. On October 27, 1932, she was
born to Otto Plath and Aurelia Schober in Boston. Her first years were hard as her father ruled
the house with an iron fist. Her poem 'Daddy' that she wrote, later on, shone a light on her
feelings regarding her father. He died in 1940 from diabetes and Plath was left very upset. In
1942, the family relocated to Wellesley due to financial difficulties. She explains in one of her
writings how she shut off most of her first ten years from her mind in a bottle, not to get reached.
At age ten, she was exhibiting potential at being a great writer and had published poetry in a
children magazine. She had started journal writing at age eleven ("Sylvia Plath,").
Plath joined Smith College in 1950, after finishing high school. In college, she became an
active poetry writer and got a job at Mademoiselle Magazine where she was a guest editor.
Unfortunately, this was the time when her depression started, which by the time Sylvia was 30,
set in motion her committing suicide. She had her first trial at death in her mother's house on
August 24 1953. She took an excess of sleeping pills which she survived and stayed in the
hospital for six weeks. She was diagnosed with mental illness and was treated using
electroconvulsive shock therapy and insulin shock treatment. She found it to be both a blessing
and a curse to have survived. After her surgery, she returned to continue her schooling and got
granted scholarship at Cambridge University following her excellent performance academically.
She met her husband, Tom Hughes, here at a party, and they wed in July 1956, after only
knowing each other for five months ("Sylvia Plath," 2017).
She graduated and went back to Smith College and started working there. She and her
husband later moved from the USA to Boston. She started working as a receptionist at
Massachusetts General Hospital and at the end of the day often went to seminars where she met
fellow poets. She talked to them about her depression and these poets usually pushed her to write
more. Her grief got bad again and had to go back to psychoanalytical treatment. They happen to
have a daughter, Frieda Hughes on April 1960, come October the same year, she published her
very first poetry collection called The Colossus. February 1961, she lost her unborn baby two
days after Hughes had been violent on her, this she had told her therapist. She started writing the
novel, The Bell Jar, which included all the traumas she had faced from her early years to her
current marriage. The book was signed off under the alias Victoria Lucas, completed in August
1961. They relocated to Devon, and their apartment was now being paid for by David and Assia
Wevill. They got a son called Nicolas Hughes on January 1962 which was followed by another
trial at suicide that failed after she tried veering her car off the road into a river.
Six months later, she found out that her husband had been unfaithful with Assia Wevill
and they annulled their marriage in September. Plath poured herself into pouring her everything
into writing poetry, another collection of poems called Ariel, which was notably her last work.
She went back to London with her children, at that time the area was experiencing severe winter
and the children were often sick. The above issue plus her financial and emotional issues
catapulted her road back to even severe depression. The Ariel consisted of 26 poems which she
SYLVIA PLATH AND HER POETRY OF CONFESSION
25
finished writing in 1963 but get published in 1965. Two years after her death; before which she
had tried killing herself several times but had failed. She recounted her depression as a phase
marked by constant agitation, suicidal thoughts and inability to cope with life. Her friend, John
Horder, had her get antidepressants and got a nurse to come to stay with her and her children as
Plath was highly unstable. She had sleepless nights and often woke up too early ("Sylvia Plath,"
2017).
On the day she took her life, February 11 1963, the nurse appointed to her arrived, but
there was no one to welcome her. She called on neighbors to assist her in opening the door.
When they got in, they found Plath dead in the kitchen having died from carbon monoxide
poisoning. She had immersed her head into the oven and had left the gas switched on. Plath was
found with her head thrust into an oven with the gas lit. The kitchen window was open, and the
kitchen door was closed and sealed off using tape and a towel to prevent her children from
succumbing to the fumes in their sleep. The time of her suicide is said to be at 4.30 am, at age
thirty. Concern got raised on whether she wanted to die, but on how far the reports said she had
put her head in the oven. And confirmation from her therapist on her final visits, all the doubts
elevated. She once summed up her depression and feelings of despair as "Owls talons clenching
my heart". Plath was laid to rest at West Yorkshire. Due to the absence of a will, all her
possessions were given to her husband.
Plath was a phenomenal poet and prose writer, who after her demise became most
successful. Her writing was inspired and driven mainly by the eventualities of her own life, and
the rollercoaster of depression. She centered all her focus on putting her feelings to paper and
therefore explaining the talons of depression vividly. She was generally someone in touch with
her emotions. As seen in one of her writings where she wrote a poem, Cut after cutting her
thumb ("Cut by Sylvia Plath,"). In the 20th Century, they had not discovered much about mental
health, and there was so much stigma around such cases and people who went to therapists or
mental institutions for treatment. At the time when Plath was alive, little people know how to
deal with depression and mental illness in general. According to her found journals, the diagnosis
that came from her writings was that she most likely suffered from manic depression. It is in the
case of her entry in 1958, where she explains she only felt two emotions: a joyous positive and
despairingly negatives waves.
Manic depression is commonly known as bipolar disorder, a mood disorder that exists
between emotional extremes of manic (extreme highs) to hypomanic (extreme lows). However,
Plath experienced frequent hypomanic episodes that tended to extend for long extended times.
Bipolar is mostly found to be as a result of genetic heredity as seen in the case of Sylvia's son,
who also suffered from depression and died from suicide. Malfunctions cause the disorder in the
production of hormones by neurotransmitters and brain circuits that deal with the production of
hormones serotine, dopamine and noradrenaline that mainly affect our emotions ("Overview of
Bipolar Disorder," 2008). The malfunction in the creation of the emotion hormones leading to
depression is the leading cause of Plath’s exceptional writing. Plath got treatment in the form of
therapy, insulin shock and electroconvulsive shock therapy which did not help much in her
treatment. Her depression seemed to get worse as the days went by. ("What Is Depression? ,").
The maniac depression mainly is centered on a malfunction in the brain. We can see that
Plath has a rough time dealing with her thoughts or generally her mind. In her
work, Apprehensions, she asks rhetorically if the is a way out of the brain. Most of Sylvia works
were the description of turmoil in her mind, and events in her life that contributed to her
depressive episodes. Therefore, it is right to say with no doubt that indeed, her struggle with
SYLVIA PLATH AND HER POETRY OF CONFESSION
26
depression and suicide were the main reasons why Plath wrote masterpieces. At the age 8, when
her father died from diabetes, Plath wrote prose titled I thought I could not be hurt, where she
talked about her feelings on her father's death. On her first tragic encounter with life, we can see
the onset of her turning to write as an outlet as Plath would for the rest of her life. The novel, The
Bell Jar got written as she was dealing with the trauma of marriage a few months after her first
attempt at suicide. The book gets written under a character with the name Esther Greenwood
who throughout the book suffers predicaments. Similar to events in Plath's life, from losing her
father to being married to an abusive husband. She also talked about the gender imbalance at the
time where she felt they were mistreated (Alves, 2016).
The Bell Jar, of 1961 get written when she had suffered a miscarriage due to quarrels
with the husband. The name of the book is "The Bell Jar".
After the options of Diary of suicide or "The girl in the mirror". The last title depicts that
she was indeed writing about her own life, alluding to the use of the mirror. However, knowing
that the events of the book are quite similar to her own life experiences and would affect the
people in her life. She chose to use an alias Victoria Lucas to hide her identity, which was a fail.
The book's plot includes the main character Esther Greenwood, who loses her father at age ten.
She moves towns often and seems not excited by her existence and life in general. As she is
studying literature in college, she is deeply troubled by gender inequality.
Where women get discriminated upon, and her depression sets in, followed by an attempt
to take her own life at her mother's house. The book's title is symbolic in terms of being under a
bell jar, suffocated due to lack of air. The Bell Jar is representing depression, which she had
succumbed most of her life. Gill, J. (2008) Aaron Beck, a relatively a good poet too, explained
Plath's suicide and depression as directly linked to her perfectionist self and her inability to
handle failure. It is evident where even the minimal setbacks and events sent her plummeting
down to depression.
Her work Lady Lazarus from 1962, part of her Ariel collection, she speaks of being
like a cat with nine lives to die. She puts herself as the Biblical character Lazarus who died and
came to life. And just like a cat with nine lives, she escapes death quite often in her failed suicide
attempts. She talks of herself having attempted suicide at ages ten, twenty and thirty having
survived all. She harbours a hopeful tone where, like Lazarus, she had a chance to live but had
failed to elude the turmoil of existence. She narrated of herself as a woman cursed with the gift
of rebirth. The conclusion of the piece of writing says "Out of the ash/ I rise with my red hair/
and I eat men like air." This being in the collection of the poems she wrote after her divorce from
her unfaithful husband and a few weeks before her final successful suicide. Bloom, H.(2007)
Some of the letters that she wrote home when she was in school get added as her
works. They were titled Letters home, published in 1975 and were submitted by her mother. The
letters showed a vivid depth of the turmoil of her mind. She offered them to counter the
questions that arose after the novel The Bell Jar. Plath's diaries get revealed as she had started
writing journals since her young age to adulthood. Hughes is the one who after being granted
possession of all of Plath's belongings, submitted the journals to his children before he passed
away. However, he did not offer all of the journals, as he destroyed most of the works she had
written before her death. Since they were too dark for his children. It is an assumption at this
time Plath was at her lowest; therefore, she must have been raw and too real in her writings.
SYLVIA PLATH AND HER POETRY OF CONFESSION
27
What if would have happened if Sylvia got cured?
Most depressed individuals usually are in tune with their emotions; therefore, they tend to
express their feelings more vividly than people with normal hormonal levels. Plath's works, for
instance, bore vivid and very emotionally expressive words. And explanations that thoroughly
explained what she was feeling and the thoughts that mostly clouded her (mind Keller, 2013).
Her works are full of so much gloom as in her writings in Lady Lazarus, where she says, "Dying
is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well." Here she is agreeable to the idea of
death has tried committing suicide severally. Her work also has a lot of negative vocabulary that
includes words like never and nobody all through her works (Alves, 2016). In her previous
work, Daddy, she talks to her dad and in writing says, people never liked you. If by any chance
the treatments she was getting worked, to alleviate her depression, it is right to say that coming
up with such masterpieces could be hard. It is mainly in the case of her earlier treatment after her
first suicide attempt. Her deep emotional connection to the tragedies in her life might not have
affected her in such deep depth .She would have better coping mechanisms for the events.
Poets and analysts, analyzing her work, tried to view her work from her point of view.
A. Alvarez, Plath's friend, expressed that her actions, mainly Ariel, portrayed that she felt
that death and poetry were the same things. She often wrote as though she was already dead or
someone has written the works outside of herself. He came to conclude that Plath's creativity,
perfectionism and high intelligence were surely her downfalls. Thomas Mc Calahan observed
that from her writings in Ariel, she must have clouded with feelings of loneliness and constant
insecurities. Her imagery was a total alienation from herself. And based all her works on the
pain, she felt that was eating her up within . Modern-day feminists insist that her depression
stemmed from the unrealistic standards that get set for women at that time and the injustices that
get placed on the female gender in the 20th Century. It is from her brutal father to unfaithful
violent husband, down to the expectations of her as a single mother.
Charles Newman finds that Plath wrote about death as if it was liberating. It was as the
final step she had to take to alienate herself from herself, her mind and life in general. Her works
were mainly centered around her constant need to die or her continuous need separation from her
thoughts. Had she found a way to do so, she would have been at a better place than suicide
would not have been a viable option to her. In most of her works, she alluded herself as a part of
nature or other traumatic events of history. Once, she compared her mind to the Nazi reign as
being a place of pure torture. Her husband, Ted Hughes, thought that Plath's work was full of
emotional depth and that she wrote as though she was demon-possessed. In the work Words, she
talks about how even though a poet can be able to express themselves in writing, they can never
escape the pangs of depression. ("Short Analysis of Sylvia Plath's 'Words" 2019) The work was
written a few days before her death, and she believed it would stay forever
When the question of whether depression and suicide were beneficial to Plath's writing
gets raised, then yes is the answer. Writing to her was a form of outlet that helped deal with
feelings until the event of her death .Where she had succumbed to her dark thoughts. She delved
into poetry and prose writing all through her life, and in the works she produced, all of them
revolved around times when she was at her lowest. Through her actions, she gave a clear picture
of how depression and mind of an individual are at the period. Her curse of being entirely in tune
with her emotions is what made her writings great. And this being in tune is as a result of the
intensity of the way she felt those emotions, in this case, her major lows, depression. Her works
are still high at the moment as they were at the time of her death. They shed a much better
SYLVIA PLATH AND HER POETRY OF CONFESSION
28
picture of how the mind of someone with mental illness works, and how the fact impacts on their
writings. If Sylvia Plath gets cured of depression, as early as it had started, she would have
probably famous as she is now.
Letters and the Journal
We should first raise a question to ourselves: what are the journals of Sylvia Plath? For a
few, they were a personal place wherever poet wrote regarding her thoughts and daily activities:
an interior, discursive monologue on literature, relationships, travel, arguments, friends, and a
swarm of further topics. They act as a secure refuge in which the identity of the author is
captured created, forgotten, and recreated.
Truly, the journals are a writer's notebook where Plath seizes concepts, scenes, and
people with the intention of later using them in poems, stories and novels. They function as an
artist's sketch pad occasionally, as the facsimile reproductions of Plath's sketching demonstrate.
Plath used her journal as a general notebook and as a letter book. Even as Plath used her journal
as a pantry, we her readers have several uses for it also. The papers to follow show us pantry-
raiding. Nearly all writing on Plath uses her unabridged Journals in some fashion. And if it does
not; it should. In conjunction along with her letters, these documents act as an autobiographical
resource. From her Journal we understand Sylvia as a person and we can go deeper into her
poetry and interpret it in the correct form if we already know what is the story behind it .
It is almost the same with her letters, Sylvia’s letters as we know where published after
her death and not all of them It is worth recalling that Letters Home was also significantly edited
by Ted. While Aurelia inflated the text, Hughes cut it down. Neither of them let Sylvia speak for
herself.
Janet Malcolm describes letters as ‘the fossils of feeling’, thereby placing the biographer
in the role of an archeologist, trying to reveal the artists life.
Sylvia used letters a lot, she was a mistress of flirting and keeping her boyfriends
dangling, as it can be seen in her letters to Myron Lotz, Richard Norton , Gordon , Lameyer and
Richard Sasson. She often coped her letters and used them later in her writing. We have the exact
example with Richard on 6 March and 16 April 1956, where she tells him of her struggles to
regain her soul and free herself from loving him. Sylvia writes of “living now in a kind of hell”
when he rejected her. And after that she copied these letters into her journal and on March 1956
when thinking about writing a novel she wrote: “use Sasson letters”. We know that mostly
“Letters Home” were her famous letters, they were the ones sent to her mother. The satisfactory
letter relationship was not the same as the real relationship because in her the letters she sent to
her mother Sylvia is trying to do this façade of a happy, loving daughter. Whereas she wrote to
her friend Ann Goodman: “I’ve got to pretend to her that I am all right and doing what I’ve
always wanted to do - - - and she’ll feel her slaving at work has been worthwhile” (p.255).
Later in her journal Plath questions: “What is the mature thing to do with hate for
mother? As seen later she never made up her mind about it. She continued to “keep” a
satisfactory relationship by letters. She also in a notebook dated on 27 December 1958 she tells
more for her letter – writing relationship: One reason I could keep up such a satisfactory letter-
relationship with her while in England was we could both verbalize our desired image of
SYLVIA PLATH AND HER POETRY OF CONFESSION
29
ourselves in relation to each other: interest and sincere love, and never feel the emotional
currents at war with these verbally expressed feelings”
The fact that Letters Home was edited by her mother, it is crystal clear that in it had some
painful memories. The book’s notes, introduction and the novel like structure is something
readers can not ignore. And it is seen from many like an attempt from Aurelia too bring to
herself, family and readers the version she loved best.
Family letters for Sylvia are not a practice of good writing but to keep good family
relations.
Birthday Letters
Ted final collection of poetry is “Birthday Letters” it was published in 1998. It contains
eight poems and it is seen as the most successful work of Hughes, it is considered that Birthday
Letters is a response to the suicide of Sylvia and the release of the collection made readers look
deeper into Sylvia’s and Ted’s marriage. The collection received the Forward Poetry Prize, The
Whitebread Poetry and the T.S Eliot Prize for Poetry. Ted starts the collection with Fulbright
Scholars, the poem recollects the time Ted first saw her, it describes how he saw a picture of
Sylvia in the newspaper (Fulbright Scholars) but he can not remember if he saw her too.
Not
Your face. No doubt I scanned particularly
The girls. Maybe I noticed you.
He talks in detail about her features and how he felt towards her at the beginning of their
relationship. Then he continues describing how he buys a peach, tastes it and admits “ignorance
for the simplest things” as a statement referring to Plath and the fruit .
In the poem “The shot” Ted used imagery of a bullet describing the possible reasons for Sylvia’s
suicide. He states that her “Daddy” is the guilty one, the one behind the gun. Thinking that her
fathers death is the source of Sylvia’s depression. The shot also compares Sylvia to a “high
velocity bullet” as her career and talent have proven to be “Alpha”. He takes away the
responsibility from him for Sylvia’s suicide.
Life after death from the first lines can be suggested that it is addressed to Hughes wife, the
poem describes how her children and Hughes are living after her death, it talks about the banality
of everyday life. The first stanza describes the emotions of her one year old son as he cries
repeatedly for her, he describes his features:
So perfectly your eyes,
Became wet jewels,
Then he mentions their three year old daughter and how she is becoming more silent from the
pain of losing her mother. He also explains how unsuccessfully he is trying to mend her and uses
the metaphor of a wound to show her pain, the pain which is not going away from her :
Day by day his sister grew
Paler with the wound
SYLVIA PLATH AND HER POETRY OF CONFESSION
30
And later how he himself feels, like life is slowly draining out of him, he would rather be death
then face this misery. Even though he should try to be strong for his children he feels like an
infant himself, hopeless and powerful just like his babies “in our separate cots”
The second part of the poem describes the night, where the family likes to sleep in order to
escape from the pain. When the wolves surround their house and howl Hughes speaks to them
and believes that it is a sign that Plath is with them.
Ted, in these poems gives us another version of Sylvia’s life and writing that can be described as
life enhancing. Therefore he gives her a new life, as a poet and as a human.
Conclusion
Plath has regularly related to the confession booth society of poems. One explanation
behind this portrayal was that she wrote widely of her own life, her thoughts, and stresses.
Pronounced artiste both crafts their art and gets shaped by it too, and Plath was always
endeavouring to distinguish herself through her composition. Plath delineates her conflicting
sentiments of affection and hates for her dad, her fight with depression, and ensuing suicide
endeavours in vivid details. She can connect with her readers by depicting otherwise taboo issues
in an exaggerated and often amusing manner. She attempted to manage her evil spirits and tried
to work through her perilous associations. Plath's verse catches the fear at the core of all of us.
These fears include those of disappointment, the fear of misery, and the fear of ending up in a
sorry circumstance and being not able to pay our way back to reasonable sufficiency. The most
significant part of her poems insists on the requirement for purification, i.e., passing pursued by
the resurrection
On another level, her pieces and stories give a sensitive understanding of broad
vulnerabilities. They do this by showing the reactions of a crude, nerved, hyperaware individual
to a reserved, if not unfriendly condition. Plath's most grounded works summon model figures
and stories. They do this in a way that reenergizes early youth pictures of the malicious parent,
the human repentance, and a wide range of death-bearers. Elaborately, the poems changed as her
emotional intensities developed. Her underlying set of verses was delicately designed gems with
cautious utilization of rhyme in her work. However, as her psychological condition intensified,
the poems started to become brutal and forceful, reflecting her current circumstances. The verses
were far less pictorial while being more direct and personal. As time went on, the line between
the allegories and the genuine obscured as she moved toward her final act of suicide.
Sylvia Plath was only 30 years old when she ended her life. Since her demise, she has
gotten raised to the status of ladies' activist symbol and pioneer woman craftsman. Certified
SYLVIA PLATH AND HER POETRY OF CONFESSION
31
intellectuals may quibble with the fan clique that has developed around Plath. However, her
poetry is breathtaking and pivotal, and it gets commonly perceived as the most convincing
American work of the twentieth century. In 1982, she turned into the first craftsman to be
granted the Pulitzer Prize after death, for her collection of verses.
All in all, we see that Plath utilized a great deal of symbolism and metaphors to pass on
her message. This symbolism is believed to connect her fictional characters to her reality. Also,
she utilizes these symbolisms to express the subject of loss and demise, particularly concerning
her deceased dad. Despite being mentally troubled, Plath found ways to pass on her emotional
agony to the reader. In a way, as terrible as Plath's psychological breakdown seemed, it made her
work more genuine and engaging to her audience. She found an uncanny method to cause
individuals to examine matters that seemed taboo then, i.e., mental health. Even while dealing
with mental illness, she also figured out how to advocate for ladies' rights through her
publications. Sylvia Plath will forever, and indeed always is the creator of confessional poetry.
SYLVIA PLATH AND HER POETRY OF CONFESSION
32
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