The Iowa Review
Volume 8
Issue 1 Winter
1977
Sylvia Plath and Confessional Poetry: A
Reconsideration
M. D. Uroff
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Uroff, M. D.. "Sylvia Plath and Confessional Poetry: A Reconsideration." The Iowa Review 8.1 (1977): 104-115. Web.
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Article 36
13 The
of poetry
subject
and
poetic
be
may
inspiration
in poems
found
XX in The North Ship, and there is "that lifted, rough-tongued bell /
from
"Reasons
for Attendance"
in The
Less
IX, XVII,
and
(Art if you like)"
Deceived.
14Poem VI from The North
Ship; a similar loneliness is described in IV, XVI, XVIII.
15
Geoffrey
describes
Thurley
as
"failure"
the
theme
"great
The Ironic Harvest: English Poetry in the Twentieth Century
p.
147.
Calvin
Bedient,
in
gentler
tones,
to Larkin's
refers
of
all Larkin's
in
work,"
(London: Arnold, 1974),
"ancient
familiarity
with
de
feat" in his critical study, Eight Contemporary Poets (London: Oxford University Press,
1974), p. 70.
16 "No
Right of Entry," Phoenix (Autumn andWinter, 1973-74), p. 107.
17 David
poems
Notion
Timms
and
of
within
Development
in this
connection
"
collections."
in Larkin's
remarks:
'Church
Poetry,"
"Larkin
Going'
Phoenix
has
a fine
dramatic
sense,
'The
Revisited:
(Autumn
within
and
Building'
and Winter,
1973-74),
The
p.
15.
18 From
Kingsley
Amis's
"Against
Romanticism,"
a manifesto
poem
included
in New
Lines.
19
Philip Larkin, in Poets of the Fifties: Anthology of New English Verse, ed. D. J.
Enright (Tokyo: The Kenkyusha Press, 1955), p. 78.
CRITICISM
Sylvia
Plath
/ M. D. UROFF
and Confessional
Poetry:
A Reconsideration
the term, confessional
poetry, he had
career when Lowell
turned to themes
in a mental
and developed
confinement
hospital,
guilt, alcoholism,
to
in a way
in Rosenthal's
that intended,
the first person
view,
was careful to limit the
to
himself.
Rosenthal
the
of
poet
possibilities
point
as well because,
the mode but he did name Sylvia Plath a confessional
poet
at the center of her poems
in such
he said, she put the speaker herself
an embodi
a way as to make her
and
shame
vulnerability
psychological
was
ment
estimation
of her civilization.1
Rosenthal's
widely
accepted
uses autobio
out
first
Ted
who
Plath
that
Hughes
challenged
by
pointed
in a more
in her poetry
than Lowell,
details
emblematic
way
graphical
and more
that
Perloff
who
claims
Plath's
poetry
recently
by Marjorie
lacks the realistic detail of Lowell's work.2 If Hughes
and Perloff are right,
and I think they are, then we should reconsider
the nature of the speaker
to the poet, and the extent
to which
in Plath's poems,
her relationship
the poems are confessional.
When
in mind
of sexual
them in
M.
a
L. Rosenthal
first used
in Robert Lowell's
phase
104
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is
Plath's poems from Lowell's
the kind of
distinguishes
precisely
in
is
to
it
the
With
the literal
Lowell,
Rosenthal,
person
poem.
according
some of his auto
self. Lowell
himself has said that while
he invented
wants
the reader to feel it is true, that he is
he nonetheless
biography,
is to
the
Robert
Lowell.3
real
The
literal self in Lowell's
getting
poetry
as a
be sure a literary self, but fairly consistently
developed
self-deprecat
summer homes,
ex
comic figure with
identifiable
ing, modest,
parents,
at
addresses.
under
these
circum
When
he
discloses
periences
particular
stances his weaknesses,
his ineptitude,
his misery,
his inflicting
of pain
on others, he is in fact
or
is
information
that
revealing
prej
humiliating
an act
to himself.
udicial
In this sense, the person
in the poem is
making
of confession,
and, although we as readers have no power to forgive, Lowell's
manner makes
are not
to
it impossible
self-accusatory
judge. We
outraged
it
is
such
With
revelations.
but chastened
otherwise.
The person
Plath,
by
in her poem calls certain people
but her characters
lack
father or mother
are
and Mrs. Lowell.
of Commander
the particularity
They
generalized
not real-life
that Plath manipulates
types
people,
figures
dramatically
are such types,
in order to reveal their limitations.
because
Precisely
they
the information
that Plath reveals about them is necessarily
prejudicial
some readers who react with
to what
and has consequently
misled
hostility
she has to reveal. Elizabeth
and claims
Hardwick
calls her lacerating
that Plath has the distinction
of never being in her poems a nice
person.4
is not a perfect
in a poem,
niceness
While
standard for judging a person
Hardwick's
reaction and that of many
other critics who
follow her reveal
are
to her. Plath's
the particular way in which Plath's revelations
prejudicial
so much as
not confess their
do
outraged
speakers
misery
they vent it, and
to
this attitude, unlike that of Lowell's
makes
them
characters,
susceptible
we
rather severe critical
at
if
look
the
of
strategy
judgments. However,
arrive at a more accurate
in
the poems, we might
estimate
of the person
them and of her relationship
to the poet.
"I think my poems
come out
Sylvia Plath herself has said,
immediately
sensuous
I
must
I
and emotional
of the
have, but
say I cannot
experiences
are informed
cries
the
from
heart
that
with
these
sympathize
by nothing
a knife, or whatever
it is. I believe
that one should be
except a needle or
even the most
able to control and manipulate
like
experiences,
terrifying,
sort of experience,
one should be able
this
and
tortured,
madness,
being
to manipulate
with an informed and intelligent mind."5
these experiences
we set
is
Plath and Lowell
The difference
between
clearly outlined when
this statement next to Lowell's account of how he came to write confessional
in Life Studies he
the poems
poetry. He says that when he started writing
had been doing a number of readings on the West
Coast and found that
he was
his poems,
the meter,
simplifying
breaking
making
impromptu
What
105
as he read. He claimed
that poets had become proficient
in forms
changes
to make a
and needed
back
into
Ufe."
Studies
Life
may be
"breakthrough
read as that repossession
of his own life, and its mode
is
confes
properly
sional because
both in the poems and the prose of that volume
the suf
fering and victimizing
speaker searches through his own pain in order to
some
truth
about
the nature of his experience.
Plath's
perceive
speakers
make no such search. They are anxious
to contain
rather than to under
stand their situation. When
Lowell's
says, "My
speaker in "Skunk Hour"
not
mind's
some kind of desolate
right," he expresses
By
self-knowledge.
Plath calls the maddened
woman
in "Miss Drake
to
Proceeds
contrast,
novice
In
"No
those
elaborate
Which
rituals
the
mal
/
/
Supper,"
allay
ice / Of knotted
table and crooked chair." Both characters may be mad
but their strategies
differ. Where
Lowell's
character
his weak
confesses
a ritualistic
all
in
her
ness, Plath's character
employs
energies
maintaining
She seems in a perverse way
to act out the
defense
against her situation.
of
the
must
whose
informed
and
mind
program
poet
intelligent
manipulate
its
is in fact a strange
There
be
experiences.
terrifying
correspondence
tween Miss Drake's methods
is
and those of her creator. Miss Drake
superb
in
inventive
her fears, and skilled at con
ly sensitive, wildly
objectifying
a vast distance
Miss Drake
between
and
trolling them. But there is also
the poet, a distance
that may be measured
the
of
by
techniques
parody,
that Plath employs
in
is
her. There
caricature,
hyperbole
characterizing
see
comical
in
Miss
about
"can
Drake
who
nick
the
something
perversely
of time / How perilous needles grain the floorboards."
If Miss Drake's
rigid
it is fair to say that she does not engage our
efforts are not quite ridiculed,
in the way
that Lowell's
(who may
sympathies
speaker in "Skunk Hour"
also be ridiculous)
does. She has been distanced
from us by the poet who
sees her as a
reflection
of herself,
the manipulative
grotesque
employing
an
of
the
mind
uninformed
undefined
terror, channeling
strategies
against
what might have been creative energy into
pointless rituals.
to
is an
"Miss Drake Proceeds
the
Supper"
early poem but it reveals
own
in
her
way in which Plath controlled her
experiences
poetry.
terrifying
and later speakers who demonstrate
She did so by creating characters
the
in
mind
the
from
embattled
Far
which
the
for
way
operates.
speaking
are
which
versions
the
of
poet,
they stage crazy performances
parodie
act. Through
terror may
shows how
them, Plath
imaginative
grip the
and render it rigid. Through
mind
her speaker's projective
she
fantasies,
own
her
of
control
and
the
darker
understanding
hysterical
projects
subversion of the imagination. While Miss Drake's
of its perilous
knowledge
to hold off her fears, the poet who created
elaborate rituals are designed
own
in the act of the poem, however
her is handling
indirectly, her
fright
a
means
woman
is
of madness. What
for the mad
of
ening knowledge
106
for the poet a means
it. The
becomes
of controlling
experience
avoiding
in
unlike
the
reveal
Plath's
them,
poems,
speakers
terrifying
self-knowledge.
In her poems, Plath is not concerned with the nature of her
experience,
in
in which
she is engaged
the way
the mind deals
demonstrating
or circumstances
extreme circumstances
to which
it responds with ex
cessive
or
The typical
is to
strategy of her speakers
sensitivity.
heighten
same
at
time to intensify
and
the
the
exaggerate
experience
ordinary
mind's manipulative
skills so that fathers become
Fascists
and the mind
that must deal with
the image it has conjured up becomes
ritual
rigidly
istic. In her early poems, Plath stands outside
and judges her characters,
not only of madness
caricatures
but of its counterpart,
drawing
hysterical
As
to
write
continued
she
she began to let the characters
however,
sanity.
in caricature,
and hyperbole
which
speak for themselves
parody,
they
use not as vehicles
of judgment but as inevitable methods
of their per
formances. When
terror stiffens and
that must deal with
the mind
rigidi
means
will
its
natural
become
of
ties, parody
expression.
to Supper" and her late poems, however,
Between
"Miss Drake Proceeds
in which
to its terrors. In
Plath explored
another way
the mind
responds
what has been called her middle
in a kind
Plath
became
interested
period,
of character who had been exhausted
not
her
and
fears
could
control
by
For
the
insomniac
of
"Zoo
Wife"
lies
awake
experience.
example,
Keeper's
over her
at night
and
the
horrors
of
her
grievances
thinking
particular
zoo full of "wolf-headed
husband's
fruit bats" and the "bird-eating
spider."
as the
to her husband
is as
Her response
hyperbolic
hysterical
spinster's
in an
no
disdain
for love's slovenliness
early Plath poem but she has
to deal with
it nor barricades
to hide behind. Rather,
rituals with which
she says, "I can't get it out of my mind." All she can do is "flog apes owls
bears sheep / Over their iron stile" and still she can't sleep. Again,
in "In
cannot handle memories
that "jostle each other for
somniac," the mind
face-room
like obsolete
film stars." The speaker's "head is a little interior
of grey mirrors.
down an alley / Of di
/ Each gesture flees immediately
its
and
Drains
like water out the hole
/
perspectives,
significance
minishing
at the far end." It is in these poems and others like them of this
period
in his more
that Plath's speakers sound most
like Lowell's
exhausted
and
even here Plath focuses on the function
or
moods
nonfunc
yet
despairing
tion of the mind rather than on the meaning
of the experience.
As Plath turned into her later period
in a poem
such as "Tulips" the
seems
to
of
her
the
welcome
loss
of
control
that had harried
poem
speaker
in this poem, she claims to be
the insomniacs. As she goes into the hospital
and she hands herself over to the
learning peacefulness,
hospital attendants
nurses
to be
in
propped up and tended to. The
bring her numbness
"bright
to the anethesia,
she claims that she
needles,"
and, as she succumbs
only
rather
with
107
to be utterly
she does not rest in that attitude
empty. However,
comes
room and its anesthetized
out
she
of
before
the
very long
operating
state and
to confront her pain. Her first response
is to
begins reluctantly
wanted
that the tulips hurt her, watch her, that they eat up her oxygen.
complain
between
the speaker claims a correspondence
the tulips' redness
But, when
and her own wound,
to function again, first
her manipulative
mind begins
in negative ways,
in a
itself by objectifying
its pain. Then,
tormenting
brief
but alarming
the pain but with
overcome but
only
her own emptiness
in herself
accept
return to her. The
works its own cure.
it can also
hearts. What
emptiness.
the tulips not only with
reversal, the speaker associates
the heart so that the outside
threat and power are not
subsumed. Because
the speaker here has so exaggerated
and the tulips' violence
and vitality,
then
she must
now
the attributes
she has cast onto the tulips which
heart blooms. Here,
mind
for once, the manipulative
If the supersensitive
can
turn
mind
tulips into explosions,
reverse
the process and turn dangerous
animals
into blooming
it cannot do,
is
the
claim,
accept utter
despite
speaker's
It cannot refuse to be excited
it does not
flowers
that
the
by
want.
an unusual poem in Plath's work not because
it demonstrates
"Tulips" is
to torture itself (which is a com
how the mind may generate hyperboles
mon strategy of Plath's
but because
it shows how this generative
poems)
as
as
a
a
is not
have
well
function.
negative
faculty may
positive
"Tulips"
a cheerful poem, but it does move
to
from
from cold
numbness
warmth,
to love, from empty whiteness
to vivid redness, a process
manipulated
by
seems
the associative
The
imagination.
speaker herself
surprised by her
own
on a tentative note,
toward the far
gifts and ends the poem
moving
of health. Despite
this possibly
however,
away country
hopeful
ending,
in which
in
the body of the poem demonstrates
the way
the mind may
its
it.
pain
tensify
by objectifying
What
takes place in "Tulips" in a private meditation
the
(and perhaps
accounts
a
more
is
for
mind's
the
much
ferocious
privacy
given
pliancy)
treatment
in the public performances
of Plath's late poems. It is in fact the
on
sense of
that calls forth the rage of the speakers
public display
being
to perform,
in these late poems. Forced
elaborate
rituals.
they develop
a
cure.
a
curse
not
become
In
Their manipulative
"The
Tour,"
powers
no
"in slippers and housedress
with
the speaker, caught
lipstick," greets
aunt who wants
her maiden
"to be shown about":
with mock hospitality
is
this
"Do step into the hall," "Yes, yes,
/ Not a patch on
my address.
a
to become
victim of the aunt's
your place, I guess." Instead of refusing
to it. After apologizing
the speaker readily assents
meddlesome
curiosity,
that
for the mess, she leads her aunt right into it, showing her the frost-box
that exploded,
the sink that ate "seven maids
and a
the furnace
bites,
108
she warns the aunt, "O I shouldn't put my
plumber." With mock concern,
in that" "O I shouldn't dip my hankie
in, it hurts!" "I am bitter?
finger
a
I'm averse?" she asks,
second her polite mask but resuming
for
dropping
in her refrain, "Toddle on home to tea now." The speaker
it immediately
the aunt's curiosity,
turning it back on itself by maintaining
manipulates
a tone of insistent
to jeer
forced
and
that is designed
courtesy
intimacy
aunt
the
brazen
exhibition
house
from
of
the
of
the
open
ingly protect
to contrast her own
to
horrors. She appears
domestic
dreary
appliances
as
wears
costume
her aunt's exotic possessions
she
(the gecko
jewelry,
are
her Javanese
and monkey
but actually
her machines
trees);
geese
a
she
in
and
her
aunt's
different
tamed
decora
unlike
"wild,"
says,
way
tions. However,
when
she calls herself "creepy-creepy,"
she seems to have
assumed her aunt's gecko-like
qualities. The staginess of this speaker, her
all provide
insistent
italicized
sentences,
words,
exclamatory
rhyming,
not only a grotesque
reflection of the aunt's alarm, but also suggest a kind
to manipulate
of hysterical
control. The
the aunt is
speaker's
ability
own horrors,
a more
to
to manipulate
sinister ability
matched
her
by
locate them in furnace and stove, and there to give them a separate identity.
is extremely
like Miss Drake's,
her fears.
Her mind,
skilled at objectifying
its most
The poet who
mind must manipulate
felt that the intelligent
in
also knew that the deranged mind
could operate
terrifying experiences
such a way as to hold off its terror, separate itself from the agony it suf
at the end
that process. When
fered, and the speaker here exemplifies
warns
over
"can bring
the aunt not to trip
the nurse-midwife
who
she
the dead to life," she points to the source of her misery,
the creative prin
an
part of the
objective
ciple that has itself assumed
identity and become
mess. The midwife,
like a poet, delivers
life with "wiggly fingers," and she
has in fact been very active in endowing
dead household
appliances with
a
now
out.
too
cast
if
but
has
been
destructive
she
energy;
livery
In this speaker who can not only caricature
her aunt with
the "specs"
as well
as her
and "flat hat" but also her own creepiness
"awfully nice"
a
too inventive
Plath
of
creative
the
faculties,
presents
portrait
damning
to say that this
It is not quite accurate
mind
that exults in self-laceration.
unaware
of her own strategies because
she is supremely
self
speaker is
or
is
others
but
have
been
them.
devoured
she
Where
conscious;
trapped by
nor
a
lives
shocked
with
neither
but
she
on,
despairing
repelled,
charged
that
she
Her
nurse-mid
energy
against herself.
deploys finally
hysterical
is eyeless.
She too can only see herself now as others see her. Her
wife
is a subversion
her own suffering
of the poet's cre
ability to manipulate
a means
it becomes
ative powers;
of holding
off rather than exploring her
situation.
A
quite
different
manipulator
is the
109
speaker
in "The Applicant"
who
to be a comic figure,
in her machinations.
Unlike
the
reveling
in "The Tour," she seems to speak for others not for herself.
She
starts out with the characteristic
of the convention-loving
woman,
question
our
are
sort
interests
is not
of
What
she
her,
"First,
reveals,
you
person?"
someone
from
ask
what we might
who
the
would
that
expect
question,
appears
woman
social
of her marriage
but rather her physical
parts.
qualities
applicant,
"Our sort of person" has no glass eyes, false teeth, rubber breasts,
stitches
on that score,
to show
Once having
assured herself
something's missing.
she presents her applicant's
not only the tra
hand in marriage,
promising
that it will "bring teacups and roll away headaches"
but
it will even "dissolve of sorrow." Then, as if this "guaran
teed" emotion might
be too much
for the man,
"We make
she confides,
new stock from the salt." Such economy,
such efficiency,
this marriage
broker seems to cluck. The woman
you tell it"
"willing" "to do whatever
man who
can be
turns
to
Next
the
like the
the
speaker
easily recycled.
woman
is "stark naked." Instead of putting
him through the same exami
nation of parts, she quickly offers him a wedding
suit, "Black and stiff,"
a
reuse
as
can
funeral shroud. She adopts the familiar tone of the
that he
services
ditional
that at the end
("How about this suit?" "Believe me, they'll bury you in it.") that
into that of the mortician.
the suit, the girl, the deadly
Suddenly
are all one,
like a tomb, equally
convention
of marriage
"waterproof,
fire and bombs
proof / Against
shatterproof,
through the roof." The sub
excess of her
over as her sales
is hastily
versive
here
promises
passed
excuse
is
"Now
continues:
the
me,
/ I have
your head,
empty.
pitch
ticket for that. / Come here, sweetie, out of the closet." What
she presents
is "A living doll" whose
increase with each anniversary,
value will
paper
at first but silver in 25 years and
at 50 years.
gold
It might
that "The Applicant"
to
be argued
does not properly
belong
in which
Plath exposes
the mind's manipulation
those poems
of terrifying
After
the marriage
contracted
all, marriage?and
experiences.
especially
a conventional
not
should
fears or
here?is
which
affect
the
arrangement
man
or emotions
woman.
or
In
of either the
the
the
addition,
passions
tailor
shades
from the situation
she directs. These
speaker here appears safely removed
comes
do not explain the tone of the poem which
facts, however,
through
it?" This
in the insistent refrain, "Will you marry
speaker who has "the
and consoling
comic
ticket" for everything
seems, despite her all-knowing
as
in
to
her
answered.
other
anxious
have
the
pose, very
question
Again,
the nature of the speaker in "The Applicant"
poems we have discussed,
attention
than it has received. What
she says is obvious
deserves more
a
woman
I
it?
have
called
her
her
she
does
but
say
although
why
enough
sex is nowhere
her
calls
the
because
of
identified
(she
language
partly
man
woman
and
of
her
claim
because
"sweetie" and the
partly
"My boy")
110
can sew, cook and "talk, talk, talk" (no man,
I believe
that her applicant
have considered
that last feature a selling point)
but chiefly be
outcome
she seems to be extremely
for the successful
concerned
to
of her
is like the
make
She
herself
any
willing
applicant.
applicant
to any demands
in order to strike a bargain. Hers
claim and to accede
is
a pose of course, but it is the
woman.
Like the
pose of the compliant
in
torment
her and
who
of
flowers
the
that
patient
accepts
"Tulips"
gift
in "The Tour" who
the niece
to
her
aunt's
the
detested
visit,
responds
on
a situation
in
here
insists
the
of
which
demands
speaker
participating
it is a mode
at
she finds abhorrent. Her only recourse
for dealing with
scorn
which
Yet
she is particularly
behind
the
and
the
skilled, burlesque.
is another
like hysteria,
that expresses
itself
scoffing
feeling,
something
in her
seems
sexual
She
the
stereotypes
repeated
question.
trapped by
would
cause
she parodies.
The
an internal debate.
the fact that this is
this poem hides
into the
fear that has driven the "sweetie"
of this
the manipulations
closet and the boy to his last resort also propels
is
Here
mind
the
shrewd if too agreeable woman.
again
controlling
using
to compartmentalize
its situation.
its powers
rather than explore
as Plath's
state
serious consideration
has been given
"The Applicant"
same
not
to
in
ment on marriage
it
the
does
the
herself
way
poet
point
yet
ventriloquism
The sexual
of
and Wife"
does. Its characters
to
any specific event in Plath's ex
unparticularized
to do
in order
Its
sexual
(the girl willing
perience.
stereotypes
anything
to marry
to be married
if he can be convinced
and the boy only willing
a worthwhile
a
are
that he will
get
by
speaker
product)
manipulated
over her but
control
whose
tension-filled
reveals not only their power
can manage,
the terror that informs them. This
but she cannot
speaker
escape her situation.
that,
are
for example,
Robert
Lowell's
"Man
and unconnected
in two other late poems,
between
poet and speaker
relationship
more
is
Lazarus"
and
somewhat
because
"Lady
"Daddy,"
complicated
in Plath's biography,
these poems do call upon specific
incidents
her sui
the poet with
the
cide attempts
and her father's death. Yet to associate
as many
critics have done, does not account
for
fact
the
speaker directly,
of caricature,
that Plath employs here as before the techniques
hyperbole,
the speaker from the poet and at
and parody
that serve both to distance
the same time to project onto the speaker a subversive variety of the poet's
own
In "Lady Lazarus,"
of the speaker is peculiar
the nature
strategies.
someone
our
to attempt
notions
of
and defies
suicide.
prone
ordinary
a
is
in the
is not
of triumph
Suicide
joyous act, and yet there
something
that she has done it again. The person recovering
from
speaker's assertion
a suicide
as this
so
cannot
she
be
confi
is,
says
attempt,
speaker
possibly
that her sour breath will vanish
dent at the very moment
of her recovery
The
111
in a day and that she will soon be a
woman. Nor could she have
smiling
to characterize
the presence
of mind
those who surround her as a "peanut
crowd" and her rescuers as enemies. And finally it seems psycho
crunching
for the suicide victim to have the energy to rise at all
logically
impossible
less to threaten to "eat men
like air." The per
against other people, much
son who
so
not
to
does
here
situation
her
but to control it.
speaks
explore
She is first of all a performer,
different
she adopts many
and, although
is
she
for her control not only of herself but of
roles,
chiefly remarkable
to work on those who
the effects she wishes
surround her. She speaks of
a
in
herself
herself
that
hyperboles,
calling
"walking miracle,"
boasting
an art she does "ex
she has "nine times to die,"
is
that
exclaiming
dying
in broad
that "the theatrical
/ Comeback
well," asserting
ceptionally
day"
knocks her out. Her treatment of suicide in such
terms amounts
to
buoyant
a
own act. When
of
her
to
victimiza
she
her
suicide
the
compares
parody
tion of the Jews and later on when
she claims there is a charge for a piece
of her hair or clothes and thus compares her rescued
self to the crucified
or
is
Christ
in
she
She employs
saint,
martyred
engaging
self-parody.
to
its "brute / Amused
these techniques
the crowd with
partly
defy
shout: / 'Amiracle!'"
and partly to taunt her rescuers, "Herr Doktor"
"Herr
as their
an
a
nor
her
is
who
She
neither
miracle
Enemy,"
regard
"opus."
and
in
fends
off
she
those
who
would
her
this
But
the
opus,
way.
regard
as well;
have
another
function
to
the extent
techniques
they display
own
which
she can objectify
ritualize
her
her
herself,
fears, manipulate
terror. Her extreme
in fact is intimately
with
her sui
entwined
control
cidal tendencies.
The suicide is her own victim, can control her own fate.
to this desire,
If she is not to succumb
in the elaborate
she must engage
on
time
in
ritual which
all
the
the
mind
the
of
would-be
suicide by
goes
to destroy
which
she allays her persistent
act is the
wish
herself. Her
means
a situation
of dealing with
face. Her
is
she cannot
control
only
not sane but hysterical. When
the speaker assures
the crowd that she is
"the same, identical woman"
after her rescue, she is in fact
telling them
she
and
could
the
her inmost fear that
probably will do it again. What
the speaker sees as a return to the
crowd takes for a return to health,
that have driven her three times to suicide. By making
conditions
perilous
a
out of herself
and by locating
the victimizer
outside herself
spectacle
in the doctor and the crowd, she is casting out her terrors so that she can
control them. When
she says at the end that she will rise and eat men Uke
is
she is only boasting)
her de
she
air,
(and again perhaps
projecting
struction outward. That last stanza of defiance
is in fact an effort of the
mind
to triumph
over
speaker's
tone
terror, to rise and not to succumb
to its own
victimi
zation.
The
is
hysterical,
triumphant,
112
defiant.
Only
once
does
it when
that underUes
she drop this tone to admit the despair
she says,
"What a trash / To annihilate
each decade." Otherwise
she maintains
her
accents
to
in
that
frenzied
self-control
from
range
gaiety
rigid
spiteful
threats. Although
her situation is much more extreme than those social oc
casions of "Tulips," "The Tour," 'The
it is like them not of her
AppUcant,"
own
to die. Her response
She has been rescued when
she wanted
making.
is perverse.
She does not welcome
the
her rescuers, nor does she examine
condition
that forced her death wish;
her fate and
instead
she accepts
comes
control. The effort of her act which
presents herself as in complete
in
tone
is
it
her
intense
without
would
she
because
yet necessary
through
have to face the fact that she is not in control. Her performance
is a de
fense against utter desolation.
Here
is
mind
its
the
again
manipulating
own terrors. Plath was no
as
we
to
said
this
have
method,
before,
stranger
a
she works here with
but while
control and
hysterical
parallel between
the first as a mad
reflection
creative
of the second.
control she presents
is "No novice
rituals"
/ In those elaborate
speaker like Miss Drake
are
so
in
main
absorbed
that allay her terror yet her tremendous
energies
no reserve with which
to understand
has
that
she
she
them
taining
why
sees herself as a victimized
as she does. When
or
she
Christ,
Jew
performs
in self-parody but the extremity of her circumstances
she may be engaging
does not allow her to reaUze it. The poet behind
the poem is not caricatur
as she had Miss Drake;
is
Lazarus
she
rather
allowing Lady Laz
ing Lady
arus to caricature
in which
herself
and thus demonstrating
the way
the
turns
mind
rituaUstic
the fact that "Lady Lazarus"
against horror. Despite
the poem tells us Uttle more
than
draws on Plath's own suicide attempt,
The
a newspaper
account of the actual event. It is not a
confession.
personal
it does reveal is Plath's understanding
of the way
the suicidal per
What
son
thinks.
is an even more
treatment
of the same process.
"Daddy"
complicated
The poem opens with the daughter's
assertion that "You do not do, you do
we find
not do." But if
Daddy will not do, neither will he not not do, and
to deal with a
Plath trap, forcing herself
this speaker in the characteristic
an account of a
so much
situation she finds unacceptable.
"Daddy" is not
its own suf
of the mind confronting
true-life situation as a demonstration
it
to
feels
that
which
The
controlled.
and
control
by
simpUstic,
trying
fering
insistent rhythm is one form of control, the obsessive
rhyming and repeated
to charm and hold
she attempts
short phrases are others, means by which
even
more
is
off the evil spirits. But the speaker
crafty than this technical
at
Uke a poet and she
She is skilled
image-making
expertise demonstrates.
can
extreme
her images with
facility. The images themselves
manipulate
us of her sense of
are
tell
what
and
for
being victimized
important
they
ease
is
than
actual
but more
the
the
victimizer
swift
image
significant
113
she can turn it to various uses. For example,
she starts out
a
as
a
in
foot
the black shoe of her
prisoner
imagining herself
living Uke
she casts her father in her own role and he becomes
"one
father. Then
a
as
toe
is
Frisco
seal"
and
then
she
for
his
/
foot,
grey
quickly
Big
looking
his root. Next he reverts to his original boot identity, and she is the one
"A cleft
with
"The boot in the face." And
he returns with
immediately
in your chin instead of your foot." At the end, she sees the villagers
stamp
on him. Thus she moves
to booter as her father reverses
from booted
ing
the direction. The mind that works in this way is neither logical nor psycho
it is simply extremely
In
images.
adept at juggling
logically penetrating;
own
can
is
in
ter
her
She
control her
fact, the speaker
strategies.
caught
rors
seems to have no understand
into
them
but
she
images,
by forcing
with
which
her wild
she identifies
ing of the confusion
image-making
betrays. When
herself as a foot, she suggests
that she is trapped, but when
she calls her
In the same way, when
break down.
she
father a foot the associations
as a
caricatures
and herself
she
her father as a Fascist
Jew,
develops
are not
reversed when
associations
of torture which
she reverses
exactly
and calls herself
the killer of her vampire-father.
The
identification
can
in
and
her
categorize
manipulate
feelings
name-calling,
speaker here
in images, but these are only techniques,
and her frenzied use
in rituals,
in the absence
she employs
of them suggests that they are methods
of any
other. When
she says, "Daddy, I have had to kill you," she seems to reaUze
and to understand
of the exorcism
the necessity
the ritual
she performs,
and the swift switches of images do
but the frantic pitch of the language
not confirm
its
The pace
of the poem
reveals
any self-understanding.
a
a need
as one driven
need
for
control,
by
hysterical
complete
speaker
such control she will be destroyed.
that stems from the fear that without
is the perfect
Her
vehicle
of expression
incantatory
simple,
monologue
for the orderly disordered mind.
the
Plath called these poems "light verse." "Daddy"
In talking to A. Alvarez,
its nonsense
not seem to fall easily into that category despite
rhymes
nor
It
is
decorous
neither
and rhythms, its quickly flicking
images.
playful.
or solemn.
its subject, neither
is it
On the other hand, given
ponderous
no
no
no
into
it
the
all
Above
offers
evidence,
speaker,
insight
mitigating
we
is
clear
if
consider her
Plath's classification
perhaps only
justification.
a
version of the poet. The speaker manipulates
her terror
parodie
speaker
in
delivers
and
thus
herself
verse"
in singsong
that em
"light
language
off its subject. For all the frankness
its craft in holding
of this
ploys
the
it
and
dark
that
the
poem,
name-calling
blaming,
feeling
pervades
is undefined,
The poet
held back rather than revealed by the technique.
the speaker's strategies because
this speaker knows
who has created
they
does
114
the
between
of her own, and that is the distinction
serious poem.
speaker's "light verse" and the poet's
and hysterical
From her earUest madwomen
virgins to the late suicides
characters whose
Plath portrays
and father-killers,
stagey performances
in their rituals,
are subversions
of the creative act. Absorbed
they confess
a
into Ufe. In
are not anxious to make
back
breakthrough
nothing. They
a
are
in
barricade
their
fact,
against self-revela
erecting
energies
engaged
artist stems
creative
of
the
tion. Plath's fascination with this parodie
image
If she reveals
of the mind.
of the machinations
from a deep knowledge
If
in these poems,
she does so in the grotesque mirror of parody.
herself
as
own
said
she
emotional
these poems come out of her
experiences,
they
she chose to
cries from the heart. Rather,
did, they are not uninformed
characters who could not deal with
deal with her experience
by creating
their failure. These
their rituals demonstrate
theirs and through
poems,
the
Uke the speakers in them, are superbly controlled; but the poet behind
to manipulate
the tone, the
immense
control
uses
technical
her
poem
in order to reveal
of the speakers' language
rhythm, the rhyme, the pace
assertions
truths about the speakers that their obsessive
deny.
are a
version
perverted
NOTES
IM.
25-89.
2 Ted
terly, 7
L.
The
Rosenthal,
Hughes,
"Notes
New
on
Poets
(New
York:
Order
the Chronological
Oxford
of
Press,
University
Sylvia
Plath's
1967),
Poems,"
pp.
Tri-Quar
(Fall, 1966), 81-82, and Marjorie Perloff, The Poetic Art of Robert Lowell
Cornell
(Ithaca:
University
3 Frederick
"An
Seidel,
in His
Time,
of the Artist
Lewis,
1970),
4 Elizabeth
Press,
1973),
with
Interview
ed. Michael
pp. 181-183.
Robert
Lowell,"
London
and
Robert
in Robert
Boyers
A
Lowell:
York:
(New
Portrait
David
272.
p.
rev. of The Bell
Jar and Crossing
Hardwick,
17
Review
12,
1971),
pp. 3-6.
of Books,
(August
5
ed. Peter Orr
in The Poet
Plath
(London:
Speaks,
Sylvia
1966), p. 169.
115
the Water,
Routledge
The
&
New
York
Kegan
Paul,