American Literature--------------------------Sylvia Plath

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“I am nude as chicken’s neck, does nobody love me?”

Sylvia Plath was a poet who committed suicide in 1963 when she was 31 years old, leaving two children, and a body of brilliant work. She was at the height of her powers. There is some controversy as to whether the dramatic details of her death brought her to prominence, or whether her present acclaim is indeed due to her talent.

There is a need in most of us to think of the poet as sacrificial victim; as if the poet's unhappy history added additional weight to the poetry itself, surrounding her work with an ambiance of religiosity. Plath satisfies this need, though she herself would have been distressed by an audience drawn to her by morbidity.

Her work is incisive, bright, intelligent, not the least bit self-pitying in spite of its subject matter. She was full of life and had so much to look forward to that one can hardly believe, even though the evidence is in, that she chose to put her head into the oven like an unbaked loaf of bread. In-expert baker that she was, the loaf came out cold. No one could make a meal of it.

She of course had planned it that way, to remain undiminished and whole...but dead. Many of her poems were rehearsals for death. She had an obsession for knowing it; something like asking a stranger you are going to meet to wear a white carnation in his buttonhole so you will recognize him.

Her life is set into her work like great folk quilts put together from exquisite bits and pieces of discarded apparel. It is woman art, patiently made and true to herself. Malevolence visited itself upon her in ordinary surroundings:

She also found it difficult to reconcile the conflict between the lifestyle of a poet- intellectual and that of a wife and mother, so she wrote: "It's quite amazing how I've gone around for most of my life as in the rarefied atmosphere under a bell jar."



In her poem, "The Applicant," Sylvia Plath mocks herself as an "it," and wickedly satirizes the emptiness of women's lives:

“A living doll, everywhere you look
It can sew, it can cook... “

According to Lavers, Sylvia uses symbols and images in her poetry and sometimes universalizes her poetry and makes it difficult for her reader to comprehend her poetry.
Under the influence of Dylan Thomas and her husband Ted Hughes, she ornamented her inner feelings and also studying at Robert’s course enhances her vision while she was working as a clerk at Boston.

Sylvia at one hand is optimistic and on the other hand she is pessimistic, she herself says;

“It is as if my life were seen by two electric currents, joyous positive and despair negative, and at this time it is despair negative that is controlling me and I am flooded with it and almost hysteria.”

Sylvia had to face a lot of hardships in her life. Her parents are German and migrated to the USA. Her father mastered in honeybees and throughout his life, he deserted his family. Her mother Aurelia had to maintain a balance between demanding children and her husband. Also, birth of brother diverted her mother’s attention towards him and that made Sylvia’s life even more miserable. The death of her father broke her and throughout her life, she longed for the same love in every man she met. In her poem, The Bee Meeting, she says;

Being a writer, Sylvia was also loosely linked with confessionals, but it is her poetry that puts her on place among good poets and a literary persona and her recognition is due to poetry. She mostly expresses her inner thoughts and feelings in poetry but when she widens her canvas, it becomes hard for the reader to judge what is inside it. By the expression of herself that she gave in poetry, she can easily be called a narcissist.

“The death of her father impacted her in a way that after that she could not love anybody except herself.” (Gordan Maeyer)

Firstly her father’s death broke her and secondly, Ted’s disloyalty made the situation even worse.

“Ariel” is a beautiful example of depiction of her inner thoughts, actually, Arial is a poem about a horse ride may be Sylvia in 1954 but inwardly, the galloping horse represents her circumstances that had gone out of control. Also, it can also represent the suicidal urge that was slowly taking control of her.

Collectively, Sylvia had an obsessive compulsive behavior. She did everything in her life that she was obsessive with. She struggled all her life and when she got obsessed with the tough that her work was done in the world, she committed suicide. A person who could not bear any failure in academic life, could not sustain he pressure in practical life and ended it.

Ott Rank says,

“When a narcissist has a double loss as Sylvia did, he starts to love himself.”

Sylvia also had electra-complex and it can be seen in her poetry that the symbol of bee is source of power for her. She loved her father as much as she hated her mother. Both passions were on their extreme.

“She loved her father to an extreme and after her death, she could not love anybody.” (Robert Phillips)

Sylvia’s poetry, as earlier said, is a poetry of symbols and images, and apparent meanings are very simple, but when one tries to go deeper, it becomes harder and harder for the reader and her poetry becomes dimensional.

There is also some paradox in her poetry. “The Morning Song” is a good example. In this poem, Sylvia shows her a good mother, whose only aim in life is to give comfort to her child but in reality she committed suicide and left her children on the mercy of circumstances. Another depiction of the poem can be that Sylvia tried to show the qualities of a good mother and what qualities her own mother was lacking. She might show her inner longings to have a good mother but she did not having one.

Sylvia was a sensitive poetess and writes only her own experiences and inner feelings and her own wounds to the world that added to her height. When she thought that there was nothing left for her to do, she sailed to another world for new achievement.

“I do not love, I do not love anybody except myself and it is a harsh thing to admit. I am in affection of anybody who depicts my own world.” (Sylvia Plath)