sylvia plath and the divided self.pdf

8/11/2019 Sylvia Plath and The divided self.pdf

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Mind Over Myth?: The Divided Self in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath

Taking its point of departure in the academic research she conducted for her undergraduate

thesis, The Magic Mirror: A Study of the Double in Two of Dostoevskys Novels, the

following paper will explore the theme of the divided self in the poetry of Sylvia Plath. It will

discuss the argument put forth by Judith Kroll in her study, Chapters in a Mythology: The

Poetry of Sylvia Plath, that Plaths use of this theme is based not on mental illness or

psychoanalysis, but rather on folk-tale, literature and myth (Kroll, 1976:266-7). In other

words, that the image of the divided self which Plath employs in her poetry may be seen as

the mythical archetype known as theDoppelgnger [or Double] (Levin, 1980:143).

In The Magic Mirror, Plath hypothesises that the literary phenomenon of the Double

is related both to contradictions in mans character and to the complex question of

identity (1989:2). How Plath, as a poet, approached this dichotomy and the impact [the

thesis] had on Plaths own developing tropology (Axelrod, 1990:203) will thus be the focus

of the following analysis.

Since the aim of this paper is to explore the inspirational source and the poetic

methodology of Plaths poetry based on her academic research, biographical material will be

referred to only insofar as it is relevant to the hypothesis outlined above, i.e. when it serves to

clarify poetic imagery or to support an argument. Excerpts from other works by literary critics

and by Plath herself will, however, be taken into account for reasons of perspective and in

order to shed further light on the theme of the divided self.

*


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Since the death of Sylvia Plath in 1963, analytical approaches to her work have been as

divided as the imagery of her work itself. Due to the fact that Plath committed suicide and

frequently used imagery of a psychological nature in her work, a great number of critics have

taken a biographical and/or psychoanalytical approach to her poetry. They have used Plaths

personal history as a primary guideline to clarify her poetic imagery. Although these

approaches were predominant among the first Plath critics, and remained popular with many

later critics, they are, as we shall see, precarious ones to adhere to.

In 1968, David Holbrook published his essay on Plaths work, R. D. Laing and the

Death Circuit, which was based on R. D. Laings study, The Divided Self. The latter explores

the psychological disorder known as the split personality, or schizophrenia. The reason for

Holbrooks partiality to this study and a subsequent biographical and psychoanalytical

approach to Plaths poetry is undoubtedly specific examples included in The Divided Self (e.g.

Holbrook, 1976:152n). A few of these examples bear a striking resemblance to the personal

history of Sylvia Plath that has been made accessible to the public (cf. e.g. Laing, 1990:160-

177). Holbrook uses some of these examples to support his argument that Plaths poetry may

be read as a testimony of her own alleged mental disorder.

In the follow-up to this article, Sylvia Plath: Poetry and Existence, Holbrook goes so

far as to call Plaths poetry psychotic:

There are certain poems in her oeuvre which distort reality and follow such a sick

logic that they must be declared pathological. My task must be to try to demonstrate thatthese are psychotic and why: and to try to demonstrate how and why the poet fell victim tothese tendencies. (1976:239)

Holbrook goes on to suggest that one [cannot] enjoy [a poem by Plath] without being

troubled by doubt, as to where it might be taking the reader in admiring it (270). In doing so,

Holbrook is committing a serious fallacy by equating the poet Plath with the woman Plath, as


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well as the various more or less troubled narrator personae of her poems, although there are

no substantial grounds for this assumption.

Recognising the inherent dangers involved in comparing or equating poetry to the

personal history of the poet, however, Judith Kroll subsequently published her study,

Chapters in a Mythology: The Poetry of Sylvia Plath. Krolls study appeared in reaction to the

numerous biographical and psychoanalytical analyses of Plaths poetry, which had been

published up until this date. Kroll argues that Plaths personal and psychological history is not

of primary importance when it comes to analysing her poetry, and that this approach, instead

of clarifying the poetry, draws the readers attention away from it (1978:1). Instead, Kroll

attempts to explore in depth Plaths academic research for her undergraduate thesis, The

Magic Mirror: A Study of the Double in Two of Dostoevskys Novels, to clarify much of

Plaths poetic imagery. Kroll points out that a profound knowledge of folk-tales, psychology,

and myth, drawn from the works of Sir James Frazer, Sigmund Freud and Otto Rank, and

studied for use in her thesis, enabled Plath to create a personal system of poetic symbols

based on mythical archetypes into which autobiographical or confessional details [were]

shaped and absorbed (1978:2).

Krolls study thus rejects that of Holbrook and other biographical and

psychoanalytical critics, in that its main argument is to read Plaths poetry not as testimony of

personal mental disorder, but rather as a series of poems which create an archetypal Ariadnes

Thread, and thereby become chapters in a mythology (Hughes qtd. in Kroll, 1976:6), i.e.

while the imagery of Plaths poetry may, at a first glance, seem to stem from personal

experience, it resonates much more deeply, namely in various ancient myths. Plath recognised

a correspondence between her personal experience and these collective mythical archetypes.

This gave her the opportunity to create a personalised system of symbols which she then

incorporated in her own poetic mythology.


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If Krolls theory is true, Plath probably found inspiration to personalise these myths,

and to mythologise her personal experiences, after reading chapter two of Otto RanksBeyond

Psychology, The Double as Immortal Soul. Rank claims that in giving the main folk-belief

a tragic [literary] form, the artist enables the public to feel sufficiently removed from the

irrational elements [of folk-belief] to dare vicariously to participate in them (1958:83). In

other words, the literary work assumes a double role. On the one hand, it appears to be

rational and therefore acceptable. On the other hand, it is implicitly irrational and archetypal,

and therefore, in Ranks evaluation, it engages the reader. In a sense, Ranks claim is similar

to Jungs theory of the collective unconscious, in which certain symbols are taken to be

universal archetypes which invoke the same emotional effect in all of mankind, irrespective of

age, nationality or social status. One of these archetypes is the shadow, Double or alter-ego,

which constitutes the dark or hidden part of human nature.1

In an interview with Peter Orr, Plath herself stated that her poems arose from

personal emotional experiences, but that she was a firm believer in the necessity of

[manipulating] these experiences in order to make them relevant to the larger things

(1966:169-70). Since so many critics have felt inclined to bring her personal history into their

analyses as the most important factor, one might argue that Plath did not fully succeed in this

endeavour. Nevertheless, as we shall see, Plath certainly did manipulate her experiences

inspired by the works of Frazer and Rank, thereby lending a broader perspective to her

creative output.

In her thesis, The Magic Mirror, Plath similarly distances herself from a

psychoanalytical approach to the theme of the Double, although she is aware that it is helpful

to have a certain amount of background in the psychological sources and symptoms of

schizophrenia in relation to the theme (1989:4). She continues with the claim that,

1Cf. Jolande Jacobi, 1976, C. G. Jungs Psykologi, (Copenhagen: Gyldendal). In particular pp. 130-135, on the

shadow as archetype.


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our chief problem here is not to diagnose mental maladies, imposing order from the

outside. Rather, we shall stress the intrinsic technique of the [work itself] and seek to find in

the concrete expression of divided character the abstract conflicts which are the polarities ofDostoevskys universe. (5)

Since Plaths literary universe is made up of extremely similar and perhaps even derivative

polarities, it would make sense to apply her academic approach to the analysis of her creative

work. This I shall proceed to do in the following pages.

*

Plaths knowledge of psychology derives, largely, from research conducted while writing her

undergraduate thesis, The Magic Mirror: A Study of the Double in Two of Dostoevskys

Novels. For this thesis, Plath studied essays by Freud and Rank on the literary phenomenon of

the Double (Plath, 1989:53-55).

Freuds essay on The Uncanny discusses the phenomenon of the Double as a

doubling, dividing and interchanging of the self (1985:356). The phenomenon was explored

in depth by Otto Rank, who claimed that the Double was synonymous with the immortal soul

of primitive cultures and ancient religions, as well as what he called an energetic denial of

the power of death (Rank qtd. in Freud:356). The Double was a spontaneous creation

designed to preserve the life of its host.

As we saw on p. 4 of this paper, in The Double as Immortal Self, Rank explores

the artist in relation to the phenomenon of the Double, how the artist must make his or her

work both personal and archetypal, in order for the work fully to engage the reader. Rank

goes on to expand his theory. In his evaluation, it is the unconscious desire of man to become

immortal, and this desire the artist uses when creating his or her persona. In a sense, the

persona then becomes the artists Double, thereby immortalising him or her.


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But Rank warns against [clinging] to the easy belief in an immortal Double by

indulging in mere self-admiration (1958:98). Rather, the artist should work for [this]

immortality by creating lasting achievements (99). Ranks hypothesis is extremely similar to

a statement by Plath in her interview with Peter Orr, personal experience [in poetry]

shouldnt be a kind of shut-box and mirror-looking experience. I believe it should be relevant,

and relevant to the larger things (1966:169-170). In other words, Plaths intentions comply

with Ranks suggestion that personal experience is not sufficient material for the poet; the

personal and the universal (or archetypal) must necessarily be combined to create evocative

poetry. It may be argued, then, that Plaths lasting achievement was her ability to combine

the personal and the mythical in her poetry, thereby endowing this with a timeless and

relevant literary effect.

As for Ranks suggestion that man, and in particular the artist, desires to become

immortal, it is, to a great extent, speculation, but in Plaths case, it is also a natural inference.

A quote from Plaths short essay, Context, supports Ranks hypothesis in its obvious

reference to the desired immortality of poetry: I am not worried that poems reach relatively

few people. As it is, they go surprisingly far; if they are very lucky, farther than a lifetime

(1979:93). Plaths poetry has unquestionably achieved this kind of immortality, to such a

degree in fact that critics continue to be fascinated both by the effect of the poetry on the

reader and by the origin of this effect. I shall now return to a detailed analysis of this origin.

The fact that the Double phenomenon preoccupied Sylvia Plath not only in her

academic work but also in her creative work is evident when we look at the imagery and the

metaphors she employed in her poetry. Already in her early work, there are obvious examples

of a marked preoccupation with the Double as literary phenomenon. In Plaths poem, Two

Sisters of Persephone (Plath, 1981:31)2, for example, the first two lines set up the dichotomy

2All poems referred to throughout this paper will be taken from: Sylvia Plath, 1981, Collected Poems,(London:

Faber & Faber).


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between a self and its replica:

Two girls there are: within the house

One sits; the other, without.Daylong a duet of shade and lightPlays between these.

The type of image which occurs here can be found in several of Plaths early poems, but,

perhaps most notably, it recurs in the poem Plaths husband and posthumous editor, Ted

Hughes, regarded as the turning point of her poetic career, the poem in which Plath developed

a distinctly personal voice (Newman, 1971:192), Poem for a Birthday. This poem is

subdivided into seven poems of which the sixth, Witch Burning, contains the line: I inhabit

/ The wax image of myself, a dolls body (135). The poetic imagery here is quite clear: the

body is a lifeless shell which the soul inhabits and gives life. It is likely that Plath drew this

image from another important source, namely Sir James Frazers, The Golden Bough. In this

study, Frazer describes the beliefs of primitive cultures to whom the soul was seen as a

separate entity from the physical body, yet simultaneously living within it (1990:178). But I

shall explore Frazers influence on Plath in depth later on in the paper.

In Chapters in a Mythology, Judith Kroll hypothesises that the persona of Plaths

poetry has a true and a false self (1978:10). The false self is the exterior self, the physical

body, the hollow self from which the true self must break free or emerge. The true self is the

immortal self. In Witch Burning, then, the body of the persona, the wax image or dolls

body, constitutes the false self. The I of the poem is in turn the true self, latent and waiting

to emerge (Kroll,1978:11).

It is this struggle between the true and false self, between the Double and its origin,

which becomes the prevalent theme in many of Plaths subsequent poems, i.e. the struggle of

the true self to shed its shell. This struggle is evident in the poem In Plaster:


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I shall never get out of this! There are two of me now:The new absolutely white person and the old yellow one,

And the white person is certainly the superior one. (158)

Note the desperation of the persona in these lines. As the poem progresses, the tone of the

persona changes from despondent, to hopeful, to confident in the final line: One day I shall

manage without her. The true self is ready to break free of its confinement and believes in its

ability to stand on its own, i.e. without the superficial support of the false self.

The white person or plaster of the poem is the false self which prevents the true

self from emerging. But while the true self most likely can exist on its own, the false self

cannot exist without the presence of its counterpart, and in this way, the true self may literally

be seen as a host for the false self:

Without me, she wouldnt exist, so of course she was grateful.I gave her a soul, I bloomed out of her as a rose (159)

The image of the soul as a rose echoes that of the poem, The Stones, in which the soul as a

rose is housed by a reconstructed self (137). At the beginning of In Plaster, the true self

is weak and powerless, but gradually it blooms with confidence until it is convinced of its

own strength and ability to conquer the obstacle of the false self which encapsulates it:

Im collecting my strength, one day I shall manage without her,And shell perish with emptiness then, and begin to miss me. (160)

The encapsulation of the true self (or immortal soul) can also be found in Plaths use

of glass imagery. In the poem The Other, glass acts as a barrier between the personas

selves:

Cold glass, how you insert yourself

Between myself and myself. (202)


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Here, the persona is frustrated by the division of the self. This suggests a desire to reconcile

the two fragments, as opposed to the true selfs desire for independence in the poem, In

Plaster. In the poem, Mirror, glass both hides and reflects the personas true self:

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,

Searching my reaches for what she really is. (174)

The persona is both fascinated and abhorred by the image of the true self, which in final line

is described as a terrible fish. Thus, there is certain ambivalence between the desire to shed

the false self or to hide behind it, so to speak.

Plaths preoccupation with the mirror as a metaphor in the struggle between the true

and false self emerges also in her academic work. In her thesis, The Magic Mirror, which

incorporates the image in its title, Plath also discusses the conflict between the true and false

self, but she uses the terms real and counterfeit (1989:10). She describes the conflict

between the selves as an inner duality [which] becomes a duel to the death (10). This

conflict is, in Plaths critical evaluation, a fundamental search for identity in which the two

selves must necessarily coexist in a balanced form in order for their host to survive; it is a

reconciliation of [mans] various mirror images [which] involves a constant courageous

acceptance of the eternal paradoxes within the universe and within ourselves (52).

In this quote, Plath emphasises the ambivalence outlined above, in relation to the

struggle of the selves, namely that a reconciliation of the true and the false self involves

courage. It is not easy nor necessarily pleasant to be confronted by ones true self or mirror

image. In the poem, Mirror, Plath also points out that the mirror is the most revealing of

factors, since it is truthful and unmisted by love or dislike (173); a mirror does not lie as

the mind is prone to do. This deception of the mind may indeed be what divides the self in the

first place. Not liking the self it sees, the mind projects a Double or false self as a dummy,

which serves to protect the true self from scrutiny.


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In her creative work, however, Plath seems eventually to have rejected a

reconciliation of the fragments of the divided self (Kroll, 1978:170). The desirable outcome is

now not so much a balance between the selves as it is a complete shedding of the inferior

false self, because a life lived by the false self, is not life but an intolerable death-in-life

which can be overcome only by dying to that life (Kroll, 1978:12). Thus for the persona, the

aim is to become all soul, all true self. This aim is conceivably even more courageous than a

reconciliation of the true and the false self, since it entails that the true self has nothing to

support it or to hide behind.

Plaths last poems depict the shedding of the false self via their images, e.g. the

sheeted mirrors featured in the poem, Contusion (271). The doubling of the self ceases

and the false self disintegrates and is shed like an old whore petticoat as in Fever 103

(232), or in onion-like layers of old bandages, boredoms, old faces as in Getting There

(249). When the false self is shed entirely, Plath uses the metaphor of the new-born baby. The

personas self is reborn and assumes its true manifestation: Pure as a baby (1981:249).

*

In 1953, Plaths mother gave her Sir James Frazers anthropological study, The

Golden Bough. This study had previously inspired modernist poets such as T. S. Eliot and W.

B. Yeats. It also became a major source of inspiration for Sylvia Plath in both her creative and

her academic work. In a letter to her mother, Plath writes, Your book gift, The Golden

Bough, comes in handy, as it has an excellent chapter on the soul as shadow and reflection

(Plath, 1978:145).


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Although modern anthropologists tend to reject Frazers study, as Steven Gould

Axelrod argues, that rejection need not concern us, as it would not have concerned Plath;

she was more interested in the book as a rich work of the imagination than as science

(1990:204). The chapter of Frazers study which Plath refers to in the letter to her mother is

The Perils of the Soul (Frazer, 1990:178-194); it contains numerous images concerned with

the soul and the phenomenon of the Double, which recur both in Plaths thesis and her poetry.

In The Golden Bough, Frazer relates various folk-tales and primitive beliefs in which

the soul is considered a Double, the man inside the man (1990:178). He writes, for instance,

that the Hurons believed [the soul] was a complete little model of the man himself (178),

and the Baganda believed that every person is born with a double (40). To all of the

primitive beliefs which Frazer describes, it was important to protect this soul or Double in

order to preserve life. Protection of the soul simply meant keeping it inside the physical body.

As Frazer states, [t]he soul is commonly supposed to escape by the natural openings of the

body, especially the mouth and nostrils (180). Kroll points out (1978:80) that this image

appears in Plaths poem Last Words, in which the soul is seen as untrustworthy: It escapes

like steam / In dreams, through mouth-hole or eye-hole (172).

According to Frazer, hooks were particularly common instruments used by various

groups of primitive peoples to hinder the souls escape from its physical confinement

(1990:180). The image of the hook likewise appears in a number of Plaths poems. Certain

critics have suggested that, to Plath, the image of the hook has negative connotations, that it

represents something undesired which ties the persona to life (e.g. Annas, 1988:83). This

interpretation is not impossible to support, if we agree with Krolls theory that Plath

increasingly used the idea of the shedding of the false self or physical body as the most

desirable outcome in the individuals struggle for identity.


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It would be logical to presume that the preservation of life is a positive action. But

for the persona longing to die and shed his or her exterior in order to be reborn, the physical

world is an obstacle to be overcome, rather than an attribute which one needs to preserve

(Kroll, 1978:167). For it is only after the false self is cast off that the true self can emerge, and

only in rebirth can the latter self exist in its ideal form. Thus, the hook may, indeed, be

interpreted as an obstacle, hindering the emergence of the true self.

One of the poems in which Plath employs the image of the hook is also one of her

most poignantly rebirth-oriented poems, Ariel:

Nigger-eye

Berries cast darkHooks

Black sweet blood mouthfuls,

Shadows (239)

The tone of these lines is ominous and threatening. It seems as if the persona is being hooked

to life while simultaneously being driven forward into a suicidal death and rebirth in the red /

Eye, the cauldron of morning (240). The image recurs in the poem Elm:

I am inhabited by a cry.Nightly it flaps out

Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

I am terrified by this dark thingThat sleeps in me; (193)

From this image, it is possible to draw the conclusion that the cry is the soul, or true self,

seeking its physical manifestation, without which it cannot exist.

This image contradicts the interpretation of In Plaster on p. 8, in which the true self

was confident that it could exist on its own. However, as we saw, it is only in the act of

rebirth that the true self obtains its actual manifestation. Thus, we may conclude that in order

to become all true self, the false self must necessarily die along with its counterpart in order


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for the latter to be reborn and subsequently to re-emerge in its true form. Moreover, we shall

see that Plath explored different possibilities in trying to resolve the conflict between the

selves. In her final poems, she even distanced herself from the necessity of rebirth. As Kroll

puts it, the need [Plath] now felt seems not to have been rebirth or triumph in terms of the

drama [between the selves], but to inquire whether it might be possible to detach herself from

it (1978:173).

According to Frazers interpretation of primitive beliefs, the soul or Double often

took the form of its owners shadow (consider also the image dark thing in Elm above),

which in turn precisely reflected the state of its host, and which was so intimately bound up

with the life of the man that its loss [entailed] debility or death (1990:191). Or, as Rank puts

it in relation to the Double as immortal self, the killing of the alter-ego invariably leads to the

death of the hero himself, that is, suicide (1958:92). In the case of Ariel, suicidal death is

exactly what the persona strives towards. As we established in the paragraph above, without

death there is no opportunity for the rebirth that takes place at the same time as the personas

collision with the red / Eye, the cauldron of morning (Kroll, 1978:180-185) from which the

true self emerges.

Holbrook claims that no rebirth in fact occurs in the red eye. He takes the literal

definition of the cauldron as truth, that it suggests something hostile or malignant (1976:

152n). In doing so, however, he misses the point, namely that according to the belief systems

of various groups the cauldron bears positive connotations. Consider, for example, this line

from Robert Graves study of poetic myth, The White Goddess: the cauldron of Caridwen

was no mere witchs cauldron. it was the cauldron of rebirth and re-illumination

(1999:88). Elsewhere in the study Graves calls Caridwen the goddess of inspiration (68). The

metaphor of the cauldron would therefore not, as Holbrook claims, constitute a threat in

Plaths poetic mythology.


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The White Goddess was another major inspirational source for Plath after Hughes

introduced it to her (Kroll, 1978:40). According to Graves, the effect poetry has on its reader

is ultimately bound up with what he calls a single poetic theme, which revolves around life,

death and resurrection (24). Graves writes: Perfect faithfulness to the Theme affects the

reader of a poem with a strange feeling between delight and horror (17). If a poet manages to

achieve this effect via his or her poetic imagery, Graves claims, he or she has successfully

invoked the White Goddess, who is the embodiment of the Theme. The concept of the White

Goddess intrigued both Plath and her husband Hughes and inspired them in their work to

create poetry with mythical roots (Kroll, 1978:40).

Graves concept of the White Goddess consists of a complex web of images and

myth, which is impossible to boil down to a satisfactory summary for this paper.

Nevertheless, there are clear links between Graves study and Plaths poetic imagery, as we

have just seen in connection with the poem, Ariel. This further supports the argument put

forth in the introduction that Plaths imagery was of mythical, as opposed to psychoanalytical

and personal, origin, and not solely, as Holbrook claims, testimony of a disordered mind.

In The Golden Bough, Frazer mentions a similar death to that of the persona in

Ariel:

A medicine-man caught the spirit just as it was about to plunge into the sunset glow,which is the light cast by the souls of the dead as they pass in and out of the underworld,

where the sun goes to rest. (1990:183)

Although Frazer does not literally mention rebirth, it is implied in the description of the souls

passing in and out of the underworld. In using the image of the rising sun, as opposed to the

setting sun described in the quotation above, Plath effectively creates an image which

plunges her persona into simultaneous death and rebirth.

Frazers chapter, The Perils of the Soul, is concerned with the soul as reflection.

As we have previously seen, toward the end of her poetic career, Plaths poems show an


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increasing reluctance towards a reconciliation of the fragments of the divided self and opt

instead for a complete shedding of the false and physical self (cf. p. 10). Here it was also

noted that Plath was preoccupied with the image of the mirror in relation to the struggle

between the selves. The sheeted mirrors mentioned in this connection lead directly back to

The Golden Bough:

The reflection-soul, being external to the man, is exposed to much the same dangers as the

shadow-soul [which] explain[s] the widespread custom of covering up mirrors or turning

them to the wall after a death has taken place in the house. It is feared that the soul,projected out of the person in the shape of his reflection in the mirror, may be carried off by

the ghost of the departed, which is commonly supposed to linger about the house till theburial. (1990:192)

If indeed the ideal for the true self was to shed its false shell in Plaths mythology, this may

conceivably be what occurs as the mirrors are sheeted in the imagery of the poem

Contusion (271). In contrast to the imagery of Ariel, in which the soul and true self tries

first to hang on to life with the aid of hooks and which then is hurled into simultaneous death

and rebirth, the imagery of Contusion indicates no such hope. The heart shuts and the

soul abandons its physical manifestation entirely; it can therefore no longer exist, unless it is

reborn, but there is no suggestion in the poem that it will be (Kroll, 1978:172).

This more dark and hopeless vision of the emergence of the true self is prevalent in

Plaths final poems. It is tempting to agree with Holbrook and draw a parallel to the

knowledge we have of Plaths history, namely her suicide. But by focusing solely on the

poetry, it is possible to conclude that Plath was merely exploring other ways to resolve the

struggle between the fragments of the divided self, as she indeed had done before, i.e. by

moving from reconciliation to division and rebirth of the self. Whichever way we choose to

look at it, the fact that Plath obtained her imagery from Frazers Golden Bough remains

obvious.


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Another example which supports this theory can be found in Plaths poem, The

Rabbit Catcher (193-94). In her psychoanalytical study The Haunting of Sylvia Plath,

Jacqueline Rose picks up where previous critics left off, by analysing the poem as Plaths

autobiographical description of life with Ted Hughes. Roses main argument is based on the

assumption that the poem describes a rapist, that the imagery of the poem has obvious sexual

connotations and that the rapist in question is likely to have been Hughes (1991:135-143).

This is, however, precarious speculation on the part of Rose. Her hypothesis is by no means

objective, nor is it relevant. A far more likely interpretation of the poem is that Plath once

more was inspired by a passage from The Golden Bough, which describes how sorcerers from

primitive cultures function as so-called soul-catchers (Frazer, 1990:187). According to

Frazer, these men make it their profession to set traps for souls and upon capture to store them

in asylums. They cannot be blamed for their actions. But, as Frazer continues,

there are also wretches who from pure spite set bait traps with the deliberate purposeof catching the soul of a particular man; and in the bottom of the pot are knives and

sharp hooks which tear and rend the poor soul, either killing it outright or mauling it so as toimpair the health of its owner when it succeeds in escaping and returning to him [theowner]. (188)

The rabbit catcher may thus be seen not as a rapist in the form of Ted Hughes, but rather as

Plaths poetic version of a soul-catcher who catches the soul of the persona, thereby killing

[him/her] also (Plath, 1981:194).

A noteworthy link to Graves may also be observed. According to Graves, the hare is

a sacred creature; it represents the transformed soul of a young person trying to escape a man,

but who, after a relentless chase, is caught and mauled (1999:405). This further emphasises

the fact that the metaphor of the rabbit catcher ought not to be interpreted as Plaths personal

experience; as we have seen previously, there are no grounds for such assumptions.

Plath employs a similar metaphor to that of The Rabbit Catcher in The Jailer

(226-27). In this poem, the persona similarly dies by a captors hand: I die with variety /


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Hung, starved, burned, hooked. The final line, what would he / Do, do, do without me?

finds the persona expressing what scant pride he or she has left. If we regard the jailer as

another Frazerian soul-catcher, this final question, posed by the persona, confirms his or her

importance, i.e. without the persona, the jailer would have no profession, a soul-catcher can

obviously only be a soul-catcher if there are souls to catch, and if he succeeds in catching

them.

From the examples above, it is evident that Plath was extremely familiar with the

anthropological studies of both Frazer and Graves. It is therefore natural to draw the

conclusion that it was from these sources she sought, found and adapted material for her

poetic imagery, just as Judith Kroll suggests in Chapters in a Mythology.

*

In an attempt to explore the theme of the divided self in the poetry of Sylvia Plath, I have

looked at the academic research Plath conducted while writing her thesis, The Magic Mirror,

as well as at the critical analyses of David Holbrook and Judith Kroll, two critics who are

extremely divided in their opinions regarding the analysis of Plaths poetry. In order to sum

up, I shall begin by looking at Holbrooks biographical and psychoanalytical approach.

Biographical criticism is a complex genre in the field of literature because it

necessitates drawing conclusions about the authors life, however fallible these conclusions

may be. The danger lies in equating the authors life with his or her literary accomplishments.

The danger of psychoanalytical criticism is similar in that it often involves an analysis of the

authors mind as opposed to the authors work. These dangers arise because whoever

undertakes the task of this type of criticism automatically assumes that the source of

information which he or she uses to support an argument is transparent, i.e. that it provides


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immediate access to the mind of the author, whether the source be a poem or a historical

record. Therefore, neither the biographical nor the psychoanalytical approach is remotely

satisfactory.

Realising this fact, Holbrook attempts to justify his approach by admitting that he is

extrapolating from the poems to the person, and [that] there may be, or may not be,

confirmation or illumination from biographical facts (1976:1). As readers of Plaths poetry,

this confession is of very little use to us. If Holbrooks were the ideal way to proceed in

analysing poetry, no interpretation whatsoever would be questionable. This idea is, of course,

ludicrous. Moreover, by juxtaposing Holbrooks approach and hypothesis with that of Kroll,

who assumes that Plath was inspired by Frazers study, the conclusion would be that, in view

of the fact that primitive peoples are superstitious, they are in fact borderline schizophrenics,

just as Holbrook assumes Plath to have been. This idea is, likewise, impossible to support.

There are, of course, always several versions of the truth, and only so much evidence

can be effectively researched. Each critics version of the truth tends to appear as the truth

until another critic presents an alternative interpretation. It follows that there will be widely

differing interpretations of what took place in a persons life. As for the mind, it is an

impossible area to analyse satisfactorily, even if the person in question were available for

consultation or observation. This leads us to the question of what is in fact a satisfactory

approach to the poetry of Sylvia Plath.

The question we, as readers or critics, must ask ourselves in this situation is whether

or not we would in fact reach the same conclusions as a biographical or psychoanalytical

critic, such as Holbrook, if we knew nothing whatsoever about Plaths personal history. It is

unlikely that we would, since the poetry itself offers no concrete answers which beyond any

doubt indicate that Plath was, indeed, psychotic or otherwise mentally disturbed. Plaths

poetry may well be seen as a testimony of personal anguish, if we compare it only to what


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limited and subjective knowledge we have of her life. A far more satisfactory approach to

Plaths poetry, however, is to read it as the result of a writers informed artistic restructuring

of mind and myth as a complete and inextricable entity.

The apparent despair of her last poems has often been connected to the suicide of

Sylvia Plath. It is, of course, difficult to distance ourselves from this kind of interpretation,

when we are familiar with certain details surrounding Plaths personal history. We should,

however, once more remind ourselves, as readers and critics of Plaths poetry, that a lacking

knowledge of Plaths personal history would not necessarily lead us to these conclusions.

Thus, if instead we regard Plaths final imagery as a step further in her exploration of the

theme of the divided self and the struggle between the two towards either division or

reconciliation, we may conclude that, as a poet, Plath was constantly experimenting with

possibilities to resolve the conflict.

At times, Plaths poetic imagery leans towards reconciliation and what she herself

called a courageous acceptance of the eternal paradoxes within ourselves (1989:52), at

other times, the imagery focuses on a division of the selves sometimes with the hope of

rebirth and sometimes with the despair of finality. Whichever way we choose to look at it, it

is evident that the various sources from which Plath drew her inspiration each provided her

with her a different solution in relation to the struggle of the self with the self. The solution

we see in her final poems is, perhaps, a melancholy and dark one, and this may or may not be

a result of her personal state of mind, as Holbrook suggests. If Plath had not committed

suicide we might have witnessed her discovery of an entirely different solution to the struggle.

For obvious reasons, however, we cannot know this. Therefore our task as readers and/or

critics must be to look at the work itself and to see what it conveys about itself as art and not

about its author. In his chapter, There Are Two of Me Now, Steven Gould Axelrod comes

to the following conclusion:


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[Plath] had located her double not in her mother or husband, not in an other at all, but in her

creativity, which was marked by her texts. Her way of observing momentous change was

through the Frazerian metaphor of death and resurrection. (1990:212)

Although he at times still has tendency of extrapolating from the poems to the person

(Holbrook, 1976:1), Axelrod makes a valid point.

When we look at Krolls approach and take Plaths academic research into account,

we immediately discover striking links and similarities between Plaths poetry and her

research material. From the examples outlined in this paper, it is evident that Plaths academic

research had a profound impact on her own personal interest in folk-tale and myth and that

this subsequently permeated her artistic work. To such a degree, in fact, that an Ariadnes

Thread of images related to the theme of the divided self is clearly detectable throughout

Plaths poetry. To use one of Plaths own metaphors, one image hooks itself to the next,

thereby creating Plaths poetic mythology, which is personal and archetypal at one and the

same time. Plaths is a unique mythology which is based on personal experience, yet whose

images consciously branch out and resonate far deeper in mans collective unconscious than

they appear to do on the surface.

On reading the works of Frazer, Graves and Rank, and comparing the imagery

present in these studies to the imagery in Plaths poetry, there should be little or no doubt as

to the validity of Krolls claim, namely that a vital source of Plaths inspiration was located in

myth, and not solely in her own mind. Plath may well have been a troubled individual, but as

a poet, she was extremely conscious of her poetic methodology; she recognised certain

aspects of myth which corresponded to her personal experiences. In other words, Plath

personalised the mythical and mythologised the personal. Perhaps the reason why the images

of Plaths poetry continue to fascinate readers is because, as Rank says, they are fundamental

to mankind.


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Bibliography

Annas, Pamela J. 1989.A Disturbance in Mirrors: The Poetry of Sylvia Plath. Westport,

CN: Greenwood Press.

Axelrod, Steven Gould. 1990. There Are Two of Me Now. In Sylvia Plath: The Wound

and the Cure of Words. Baltimore: The John Hopkins UP, pp.178-236.

Frazer, Sir James. 1993. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. Hartfordshire:

Wordsworth Edition.

Freud, Sigmund. 1985. The Uncanny. The Pelican Freud Library. Trans. and Ed. James

Strachey et al., vol. 14. pp. 339-376. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Graves, Robert. 1999. The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth. New

York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Holbrook, David. 1968. R. D. Laing and the Death Circuit.Encounter, 31.2, pp.35-45.

---. 1976. Sylvia Plath: Poetry and Existence. London: The Athlone Press, University of

London.

Jacobi, Jolande. 1976. C. G. Jungs Psykologi. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.

Kroll, Judith. 1978. Chapters in a Mythology: The Poetry of Sylvia Plath. New York:

Harper Colophon Edition.

Laing, R. D. 1990. The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness.

Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Levin, Harry. 1980. The Power of Blackness. Athens, OH: Ohio UP.

Orr, Peter, ed. 1966. The Poet Speaks. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Plath, Sylvia. 1981. Collected Poems. London: Faber & Faber.

---. 1979.Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams. London: Faber & Faber.


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---. 1989. The Magic Mirror: A Study of the Double in Two of Doestoevskys Novels.

Rhiwargor, Powys: Embers Handpress.

Rank, Otto. 1958. The Double as Immortal Self. InBeyond Psychology. New York:

Dover Publications.

Rose, Jacqueline. 1991. The Haunting of Sylvia Plath. London: Virago Press.

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