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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


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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

https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1385044


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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:


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

written final work of studies and clearly marked them in the written final work of studies;

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

detection of content similarity with other works, using similarity detection software that is

connected with the study information system of the university member;

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: _____________________


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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.


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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


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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.


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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


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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.


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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


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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


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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,


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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


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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.


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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


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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.


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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.


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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.


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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


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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


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


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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.


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


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


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


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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.


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


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


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


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


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.


32

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Bassnett, S.-Sylvia Plath_ An Introduction to the Poetry ,(2nd

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MACMILLAN

Bayley, S. and Brain,T. (2011) Representing Sylvia Plath- (1st ed.) United States of America

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Brain, T. (2014). The Other Sylvia Plath. Routledge.

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Poetry Foundation. (2019). The Colossus by Sylvia Plath. Retrieved from

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Steinberg, P. (2004). -Sylvia Plath (Great Writers)

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Sylvia Plath Harper Colophon Books(1981) -The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath ,

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diploma thesis - filologjiku.uni-gjk.org...diploma thesis sylvia plath and her poetry of confession...

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