ARIEL BY SYLVIA PLATH
Daddy
In Daddy, Plath explores the intense psychological traumas she is exposed to as a consequence of the memory of her father. Otto Plath - a German-born man with an authoritarian manner - died when she was just eight years old, scorching a sinister impression onto her mind that haunted her throughout her life. The oppressive nature of her memories of him is evocatively conveyed through the text, his menacing figure a ghost trailing her every written word. Composed in 1963, Plath uses the Jewish Holocaust as an analogy to describe the dominating effect he has on her psyche. She identifies the cruel German nature within her father, "With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. And your neat moustache..." and compares her internal sufferings and fear of him to the experiences of the Jewish Holocaust victims, "An engine, an engine, Chuffing me off like a Jew." Through these allusions, she is able to forcefully depict the horror of her psychological manifestations, and the fear she has instilled in a demon of her own mind's creation.
Expanding on this, the poem suggests a fear that delves beyond the obvious reading of her father. Having experienced the turbulent era that manufactured the savage events of World War II and the Holocaust, there are allusions throughout the poem to a fear of authority, a fear of physical or metaphysical figures that emanate dominating or tyrannical qualities, that possibly blossomed from this irrational and self-inflicted fear of her father's spirit. She compares her father to a number of powerful, formidable figures, including God ("Marble heavy, a bag full of God"), Hitler, the Devil ("A cleft in your chin instead of your foot") and a vampire ("There's a stake in your fat black heart"), all with negative connotations. At the time Daddy was written, the world had born witness to the most gruesome tragedies in history, all performed at the mercy of powerful and influential men. Plath has embodied the evil, heartless nature of these events and the men that conducted them within the ghost of her father.
The ending of Daddy suggests a rejection, an exorcism of the internal demons that have tormented her a lifetime that has allowed her to finally conquer the evil that pervades her mind. Contextually, we know she does this by committing suicide, and in the poem, I believe she performs a metaphorical suicide. Many interpretations of the symbolic "staking" of the "fat black heart" have suggested that she is finally eradicating the memory of her father after depicting him as a vampire. But the final line, "Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through," insinuates that despite this 'assassination', she still holds bitter resentment towards him within her. Perhaps it is not her father's heart she is staking at all, but her own, whose red prettiness had already been "bitten in two" and had been drained of "blood for a year". She is destroying her own black heart, fat with years of bottled emotions and inner torment, and "the voices just can't worm through," - her own heart must no longer bear the agony of her tortured soul. This is supported by the fact that, in reality, she meticulously kills herself in a manner that seems very calm and planned, as if she recognised that she was victim of emotional self-entrapment, that she was the creator of her own demons, where the only solution was to turn "the black telephone ('s) off at the root".
Expanding on this, the poem suggests a fear that delves beyond the obvious reading of her father. Having experienced the turbulent era that manufactured the savage events of World War II and the Holocaust, there are allusions throughout the poem to a fear of authority, a fear of physical or metaphysical figures that emanate dominating or tyrannical qualities, that possibly blossomed from this irrational and self-inflicted fear of her father's spirit. She compares her father to a number of powerful, formidable figures, including God ("Marble heavy, a bag full of God"), Hitler, the Devil ("A cleft in your chin instead of your foot") and a vampire ("There's a stake in your fat black heart"), all with negative connotations. At the time Daddy was written, the world had born witness to the most gruesome tragedies in history, all performed at the mercy of powerful and influential men. Plath has embodied the evil, heartless nature of these events and the men that conducted them within the ghost of her father.
The ending of Daddy suggests a rejection, an exorcism of the internal demons that have tormented her a lifetime that has allowed her to finally conquer the evil that pervades her mind. Contextually, we know she does this by committing suicide, and in the poem, I believe she performs a metaphorical suicide. Many interpretations of the symbolic "staking" of the "fat black heart" have suggested that she is finally eradicating the memory of her father after depicting him as a vampire. But the final line, "Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through," insinuates that despite this 'assassination', she still holds bitter resentment towards him within her. Perhaps it is not her father's heart she is staking at all, but her own, whose red prettiness had already been "bitten in two" and had been drained of "blood for a year". She is destroying her own black heart, fat with years of bottled emotions and inner torment, and "the voices just can't worm through," - her own heart must no longer bear the agony of her tortured soul. This is supported by the fact that, in reality, she meticulously kills herself in a manner that seems very calm and planned, as if she recognised that she was victim of emotional self-entrapment, that she was the creator of her own demons, where the only solution was to turn "the black telephone ('s) off at the root".
The Applicant
Saturated with satire and mocking disdain, Sylvia Plath's The Applicant ingenuously highlights the callous attitude society had adopted towards marriage and gender roles in 1950s and 1960s society. The poem's very title implies this, 'the applicant' suggestive of a job interview, or a careful selective process of choosing a most suitable candidate. Its beginning, "First, are you our sort of a person?" sets the conversational and detached tone that pervades the entire work. The cold and interrogating nature of the language typifies the pragmatic, emotionally detached stance on love and other fanciful inclinations that had developed throughout the world, with marriage becoming a means of material rather than spiritual gain. Plath also scorns the manner in which woman have assumed an obsequious and subservient role in the functions of society, pandering to even the most transient of male requirements and demands. She metaphorically compares an unmarried woman to a doll, whose "head, excuse me, is empty," patiently waiting for a male counterpart to graciously bestow life within it. She suggests that these dolls are pliable and docile, ready to be shaped by male hands and ideals, "Naked as paper to start, But in twenty-five years she'll be silver, In fifty, gold." Plath is despising the role of obedience women have accepted, and the unimportant and insignificant attitudes with which women were regarded in such a male-dominated world. The fifties and sixties in America marked the rise of the domestic goddess, a role that coincided with the mass production of commercial cleaning goods and electrical appliances. Plath mocks the development of this 'motherly-domestic-housewife', and makes light of the superficial institution that marriage has become.
Beneath the feminist tones of contempt and derisive geniality, however, is a deeper cynicism of the empty nature of society itself. Insinuations are made throughout of a broken population, compensating for a loss of emotions with trivial and insignificant objects. The line, "Do you wear a glass eye, false teeth... Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch, Stitches to show something's missing?" alludes to a deeper universal tragedy that is concealed beneath the poem's facetious disguise. Writing during a time of recovery from some of the most horrific events in history, Plath is using physical objects to imply a certain psychological degradation of modern post-war society. In stating, "rubber breasts or rubber crotch", she is highlighting the loss of true sexual passion, desire and love, implying that it has been replaced by a counterfeit facade of detached interest. This is vital to the message Plath is attempting to convey, for, if society has foregone love, then it has also lost its ability to feel empathy and compassion, and has thus become a state of mindless and purposelessness existence.
Sylvia Plath's The Applicant is a comical reflection of the emotional deprivation of society. It reveals the expectations placed on young women; the empty and compliant mindsets they were forced to adopt in order to acceptably participate in society. However, there is also a sense of defiance within the poem, her mockery suggesting rebelliousness to the gender code. As we know of Sylvia Plath, her life would not have been considered orthodox. Plath has clearly articulated what society expects of young women, and her consecutive suicide attempts and raging, confessional poetry could be her making a stance against the 'status quo', which is reflected within The Applicant.
Beneath the feminist tones of contempt and derisive geniality, however, is a deeper cynicism of the empty nature of society itself. Insinuations are made throughout of a broken population, compensating for a loss of emotions with trivial and insignificant objects. The line, "Do you wear a glass eye, false teeth... Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch, Stitches to show something's missing?" alludes to a deeper universal tragedy that is concealed beneath the poem's facetious disguise. Writing during a time of recovery from some of the most horrific events in history, Plath is using physical objects to imply a certain psychological degradation of modern post-war society. In stating, "rubber breasts or rubber crotch", she is highlighting the loss of true sexual passion, desire and love, implying that it has been replaced by a counterfeit facade of detached interest. This is vital to the message Plath is attempting to convey, for, if society has foregone love, then it has also lost its ability to feel empathy and compassion, and has thus become a state of mindless and purposelessness existence.
Sylvia Plath's The Applicant is a comical reflection of the emotional deprivation of society. It reveals the expectations placed on young women; the empty and compliant mindsets they were forced to adopt in order to acceptably participate in society. However, there is also a sense of defiance within the poem, her mockery suggesting rebelliousness to the gender code. As we know of Sylvia Plath, her life would not have been considered orthodox. Plath has clearly articulated what society expects of young women, and her consecutive suicide attempts and raging, confessional poetry could be her making a stance against the 'status quo', which is reflected within The Applicant.
Fever 103°
Using strong biblical allusions, Fever 103° evocatively depicts Plath's psychological ascendance from subjugation to liberation as she battles a fever. Juxtaposition is a key theme that permeates this poem, contrasting significant ideas such as heaven and hell, destruction and rebirth and purity and corruption. The opening line, "Pure? What does it mean?" establishes the moral ambivalence within her that she explains throughout the poem by comparing metaphysical but inter-reliant opposites - 'yin and yangs', so to speak. She begins by describing Cerberus, the Greek mythological keeper of the gates of Hell, as "dull, fat Cerberus who wheezes at the gate. Incapable of licking clean the aguey tendon, the sin, the sin." Plath feels herself on the precipice of hell, standing at its gate and discovering that her sins and tortuous feelings are not eradicated. She pulls herself from this dark abyss, eventually rising "To Paradise", or to a form of heaven where she is liberated from immorality and emotional agony.
Interestingly, Plath uses the bombings of Hiroshima with both positive and negative connotations. Personifying it as a "devilish leopard," that is "greasing the bodies of adulterers Like Hiroshima ash and eating in,", she portrays the agonising doubts and sin she is feeling through the destruction caused by the nuclear bomb, reflecting how this moral turmoil is internally annihilating her. However, as she reaches a realisation of purity and goodness, she transforms this nuclear idea into a symbol of new identity and rebirth "I think I may rise- The beads of hot metal fly, and I, love, I am a pure acetylene virgin." She attributes the reawakening of a pure sense of self to the explosion of the Hiroshima bomb, thus reversing the destructive insinuations she implied before. This has caused much controversy, as she applies such positive connotations to an event that devastated countless lives, and was a catastrophe in human history.
Another aspect of Fever 103° is the patriarchal gender roles that accompanied Plath's era, a societal attitude that Plath was exposed to throughout her marriage to Ted Hughes. In the centre of the poem is a dramatic change of tone, "Darling, all night I have been flickering off, on, off, on. The sheets grow heavy as a lecher's kiss." A lecher describes a man 'given to excessive sexual indulgence'. Sexual allusions here incorporate the idea of male dominance and female dependence, this corruption of natural equality and abuse of beauty and delicacy another burden added to her emotional torment. She is also highlighting the deep betrayal she felt on discovering that Ted had numerous affairs while they were married. She usurps this corruption by identifying herself as "too pure for you or anyone" and "infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive." Plath is empowered by her femininity, defying the societal 'status quos' of female behaviour by liberating herself from male sexual entrapment. This idea is reinforced by the second last line, "My selves dissolving, old whore petticoats", as petticoats represent traditional, constrictive and old-fashioned female ideals and standards. She again juxtaposes two polar opposites, innocence and corruption, and overpowers both of them, resulting in a renewed identity.
Plath's empowering and transcendent piece reflects a defeat of moral ambiguity and ambivalence, representing a superior and rediscovered version of herself. It is essentially a optimistic poem, one that incorporates strength, passion and conviction in one's moral character and judgment.
Interestingly, Plath uses the bombings of Hiroshima with both positive and negative connotations. Personifying it as a "devilish leopard," that is "greasing the bodies of adulterers Like Hiroshima ash and eating in,", she portrays the agonising doubts and sin she is feeling through the destruction caused by the nuclear bomb, reflecting how this moral turmoil is internally annihilating her. However, as she reaches a realisation of purity and goodness, she transforms this nuclear idea into a symbol of new identity and rebirth "I think I may rise- The beads of hot metal fly, and I, love, I am a pure acetylene virgin." She attributes the reawakening of a pure sense of self to the explosion of the Hiroshima bomb, thus reversing the destructive insinuations she implied before. This has caused much controversy, as she applies such positive connotations to an event that devastated countless lives, and was a catastrophe in human history.
Another aspect of Fever 103° is the patriarchal gender roles that accompanied Plath's era, a societal attitude that Plath was exposed to throughout her marriage to Ted Hughes. In the centre of the poem is a dramatic change of tone, "Darling, all night I have been flickering off, on, off, on. The sheets grow heavy as a lecher's kiss." A lecher describes a man 'given to excessive sexual indulgence'. Sexual allusions here incorporate the idea of male dominance and female dependence, this corruption of natural equality and abuse of beauty and delicacy another burden added to her emotional torment. She is also highlighting the deep betrayal she felt on discovering that Ted had numerous affairs while they were married. She usurps this corruption by identifying herself as "too pure for you or anyone" and "infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive." Plath is empowered by her femininity, defying the societal 'status quos' of female behaviour by liberating herself from male sexual entrapment. This idea is reinforced by the second last line, "My selves dissolving, old whore petticoats", as petticoats represent traditional, constrictive and old-fashioned female ideals and standards. She again juxtaposes two polar opposites, innocence and corruption, and overpowers both of them, resulting in a renewed identity.
Plath's empowering and transcendent piece reflects a defeat of moral ambiguity and ambivalence, representing a superior and rediscovered version of herself. It is essentially a optimistic poem, one that incorporates strength, passion and conviction in one's moral character and judgment.