CONCLUSION
The perfected woman in Sylvia Plath's poem "Edge" is
laid out in her death-toga, and her tired feet seem to be
saying: "We have come so far, it is over" (SP, p. 272).
Thus, as one draws near the end of one's critical journey
through the breathtaking poetic world of Sylvia Plath and
Emily Dickinson, one ciannot help feeling a sense of last
things, a sense of involvement with an inevitable drive
that takes one to the end of a whole universe of vital
feelings.
Yet there is a sense in which all is not over,
a sense in which what has preceded is just a beginning, and
one has to start all over again.
The conclusion, as in
Dickinson's descent through tolling spaces, hitting a·world
at every plunge, seems not to conclude at all.
This, indeed,
has been the burden of the present study, and one hopes that
the preceding chapters have succeeded in putting it across
in clear terms.
Poetry is a distinct practice with its own norms and
relative independence.
It is, however, a practice that is
baffling in its refusal to fit into any rigid theoretical
category.
of poetry.
Poetry is therefore always larger than any theory
This is not to belittle the importance of theory,
especially since what has gone before is in fact slightly
231
overburdened with it.
The point simply is that theoretical
frameworks are preceded by poetic constructs which accept as
models only a set of textual assumptions rooted in the material
nature of poetry.
And these assumptions, if analysed properly,
will definitely throw light on the process of poetic structuration.
This is what has been attempted in the foregoing chapters
which, proceeding with the notion that textuality is largely
a matter of material assumptions realized in concrete terms,
went on to show how Dickinson's and Plath's poetic texts are
structured alike, and how, despite obvious differences, they
display a more or less similar way of functioning.
The question
of meaning being inextricably bound up with that of structuration,
these parallel patterns impinge on the way one comes to semantic
grips with the texts, and one's reading is inevitably determined
by a -consideration of the way in which the open-ended structures
generate a freeplay of meaning.
The open-endedness comes about as a result of textual
processes.
One such process has to do with the question of
the controlling self in poetry.
It has been shown how the
speaking/writing subject in poetry is more an effect of poetic
discourse than a controlling principle.
contribute to this effect.
Several factors
Primarily, the conventional notion
of centred structure rooted in the centrality of being as
presenc·e is no longer a tenable hypothesis •. Derrida's
deconstructionist practice has succeeded in invalidating this
notion and proving that the structural centre is at best an
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absent presence.
Though Derrida's ideas are directly related·
to Western metaphysics,_ they have had a tremendous impact on
literary theory as well.
Derrida makes it clear that the
author's being never manifests as full presence in his/her
works and that writing is for ever subject to the dynamics
of differance which is a spatio-temporal movement including
both differing and deferring.
The poems of Emily Dickinson
and Sylvia Plath have been subj,ectt�d to such an analysis, and
it has been shown how the movement of differance operates in
their poems and how it decentres the subject of discourse.
The
11
buzz" and "flow" of Dickinson's and Plath's texts, thus,
go to prove the inadequacy of the conventional approach to
the problem of the subject and also suggest why it is dangerous
to equate the subject with the author.
It has been shown,
moreover, how the subject is decentred and thus loses the
supposed authoritarian control over the texts.
Such decentring,
in turn, helps the text derigidify itself and throw open the
doors of multiplicity.
In this connection, Roman Jacobson's distinction
between the subject of enunciation and the subject of enounced
has also been explored.
Such a distinction, apart from the
way it explains the non-singularity of the subject; also
grants the reader an important role in the production of
meaning.
It is this distinction which helps us, moreover,
to tackle the critical problem posed by Dickinson's and Plath's
"posthumous" poems.
In such poem£, the subject of enounced,
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is the persona who re-enacts her post-mortem experience;· but
the subject of enunciation is the reader who is responsible
for the text coming alive and who structures the text in its
plurality.
What follows from considerations such as these is
the picture of a poetic identity that is decentred, de-identified
and liberated from the repressive sway of uniqueness or
singularity; and this runs counter to the conventional belief
that a poet has a singular identity, a homogeneous self, that
is totally responsible for everything in his/her writings.
Criticism in general tends to bestow on Dickinson and Plath
a single-phased identity which delimits the play of meaning
and
11
regularizes 11 the semantic flow of the texts.
hardly so.
But it is
The speaking/writing subject in Dickinson and
P1ath is never an innocent medium of self-expression; it is
at once an element of structuration and an effect of poetic
discourse and therefore varies from poem to poem.
In its
plurality it engenders an open-ended text which disseminates
meaning and opens up an abysmal depth.
The abyss, needless
to say, is the textual abyss from which structures and meanings
emerge.
In short, the speaking voice in the poetry of Emily
Dickinson and Sylvia Plath never forges a coherent, compact,
and consolidated consciousness that can function as an originary
presence.
The momentary disruptions in the text, owing to
the play of irony and the dynamics of differance, always
operate in such a way as to destabilize the text and undermine
the very ideas that are sought to be projected.
234'
Another important problem that has been analysed is
that of death in the poetry of Dickinson and Plath.
Its
rationale lies in the fact that Dickinson's and Plath's poems
on death are often virtuoso performances that make a valiant
attempt to mount a "unified" self onto a metalinguistic/
metafictional edifice.
But such attempts invariably fail,
or are partial successes, owing to the dominance of irony
and the movement of differance.
Death can never manifest
as full presence simply because it is the very antithesis
of presence; it is a nullifying force and always drives
toward absence.
As such, Dickinson's and Plath's poems on
death do not succeed in changing its colours and projecting
it as full presence.
And, since death is the basis on which
their texts seek to build a metaphysical edifice of immortality
and eternal presence, its significance can never be belittled
or ignored.
Besides it is one of the key elements of
structuration which critics always hold on to in order to
project a unified reading of Dickinson and Plath.
However,
the theme of death, though of suprc·me importance in any study
of Dickinson and Plath, never suffices to forge a unified
transcendental identity that will tide over the obstacles
caused by the differing/deferring character of writing.
Death
as a nullification of life, as a vehicle of destruction, is,
therefore,'always present only as an absence.
And the absent
presence of death runs parallel to the absent presence of
being.
The textual abyss thus opened up has been subjected to
235
a closer scrutiny from the point of view of poetic technique.
The prime c·oncern has been the question of how the Dickinson
and Plath texts are decentred through a manipulation of poetic
technique, especially line organization.
The material basis
of poetry is recognized in metre, and metrical adaptations
and experiments always leave their mark not only on the
structure of the text but also on its semantics.
In Dickinson
and Plath one finds a curious manipulation of metre which
throws light on the dialectic of form and abyss, of making
and unmaking.
And this is reinforced by a consideration of
the text as psyche.
Despite their apparent idiosyncratic nature, Dickinson's
poems are mostly based on certain hymn metres, especially the
Common Metre.
The Common Metre is not only a hymn metre, but
one which is used in ballads as well.
And an important quality
of the ballad is that it is more a pleasurable utterance than
a representation of a person speaking.
But Dickinson manipulates
the metre in such a way that its inner energies are exploited
to the full and a certain space is carved out for the subject
position.
Moreover, hymns and other types of religious verse
seek to delimit the play of meaning along the syntagmatic chain
by trying to keep the workings of the paradigmatic, or·
associative, axis in check.
In Dickinson, however, such
'011
attempt is not noticeable, with the result that the paradigmatic
axis, the storehouse of signifiers, comes into full play and
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generates a limitless set of readings.
Thus it is that
Dickinson manipulates the Common Metre and forces it to
lay bare the textual abyss that it ordinarily tries to
cover up.
What Emily Dickinson does to the hymn me�re is quite
the same as what Sylvia Plath does to iambic pentameter.
Though .Plath has experimented with a number of metric forms,
including such rigid forms as the sonnet, the villanelle and
syllabic verse, her best achievements are often found in
those poems which are in fact iambic pentameter cut up
arbitrarily and mercilessly so as to appear as free verse.
The reason is simple and clear.
She uses iambic pentameter
so that she can capture the lub-dubb of the heartbeat (which
this particular metre is supposed to capture effectively) and
effect an identification of the reader with the speaking
voice of the poetry or its represented presence; and she
cuts up pentameter so that the activity of the signifier
could be effectively decontrolled.
Thus, by having it both
ways, Plath's texts offer a rich plurality which is exploited
to the full in generating_ a whole lot of diverse readings.
Both Dickinson and Plath, therefore, first break up
the respective metric patterns that they work in, and such
breaking of form radically dismantles the texts and opens up
the textual abyss within.
The dialectic of making and
unmaking, of form and abyss, is thus easily noticeable in
the way Dickinson and Plath manipulate the hymn metre and
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iambic pentameter respectively.
This problem has also been
analysed from the point of view of text as psyche.
The take-off
point here is the Lacanian insight that the unconscious is
structured like language and that the signifier-signified
dialectic of structuralist linguistics has its psychoanalytic
counterpart in the unconscious-conscious dialectic.
Thus it
has been shown how the large number of suspended, free-floating
signifiers in the poetry of Dickinson and Plath indicate the
remarkable sway of the unconscious over the texts, and how,
as the conscious is pushed back and the ego denied its proper
function, repression is kept to a bare minimum, resulting in
the freeplay of meaning and a dangerously chaotic and
destructured text.
This has been analysed not in terms of
psychoanalysis, but in terms of technique, that is, through
a consideration of the way in which the signifying chain
prod uces along the syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes a
multiplicity of meanings that destroy the text's singularity
and open up the abyss within.
Here, too, Dickinson's and
Plath's texts display remarkable parallels.
Another set of parallels has been identified in the
language of Dickinson's and Plath's poetry.
It has been shown
how femaleness is an operational element of textuality and
how the texts of Dickinson and Plath reveal a marked feminine
bias.
The question of women's language is yet a matter of
controversy, though it is becoming increasingly clear that
women's use of language is perceivably different from men's
238
and that it is possible to identify those features of a person's
writings which are quite clearly gender-marked.
Exclamations,
semi-confidences, incomplete sentences, passive verbs, ellipses
and juxtapositions, tag questions, metaphoric and imagistic
peculiarities, syntactic equivocations--all these together mark
the feminine gender of literary texts.
The poems of Emily
Dickinson and Sylvia Plath have been found to carry such
gender-marks, and that too in a more or less similar fashion.
It has not been the intention of the present study, however,
to argue the case for a pure feminine language, though it is
undeniable that the language currently in use is "contaminated"
by male usage.
Besides, there is a sense in which language
becomes in the hands of the patriarchal powers-that-be an
instrument of oppression and exploitation, not to say of
mindless discrimination.
It is in such a politico-cultural
context that the debate concerning language gains in importance.
Yet to declare that there is something like a pure female
language would be quite foolish, for language today can never
totally escape from patriarchal colourings.
There is no pure
genderlect as such, what obtains instead is a genderlect­
sociolect complex.
It is important, however, not to ignore
the genderlect part of it, which, in a sense, affords a basic
linguistic identity to the text.
In Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath, apart from the
linguistic and syntactic features which are gender-marked, one
finds a preponderance of images that are quite clearly
gender-specific.
And these images--most of them drawn from
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the domestic world--go to prove how they respond to specific
situations in more or less similar ways.
Besides, there is
a general tendency to break away from the well-worn ideals
of diction, which, when carried to an extreme, sometimes
threatens to subvert the signifying process.
Thus one comes
back to the question of female authorship which has remained
a problematic in spite of serious attempts by noted critics
and theorists to come to grips with it.
Anyhow, a comparative
study of the textual process with respect to male and female
writing does not fall within the purview of the present study
and, therefore, it has been thought sufficient to restrict
the study to an analysis of the definite ways in which
Dickinson's and Plath's poems register the impact of their·
gender-determined status.
The politics of genderlect can indeed be a launching
pad for a consideration of the text as history, for which
might use the term
11
sociolect."
one
The term has been used,
however, in the present study not in its strictly linguistic
sense, but in the broader sense of a language that is historically
determined, or, in other words, a language which inevitably
displays historical inscription.
This has proved of immense
help in coming to grips with the texts of Dickinson and Plath
in terms of history, though the intention has not been to
undertake a historical or sociological analysis of the poems.
On the contrary, in keeping with the post-structuralist notion
240
that there is nothing outside of the text, history has been
treated as residing within the space of the text in the form
of traces.
The study has therefore addressed itself to the
question of how the historicity, the worldliness, of the text
can be considered at the level of writing.
Consequently, it has been shown how, contrary to popular
belief, there is a great deal of history in the poetry of
Emily Dickinson.
The Dickinson myth, treating her as the
belle of Amherst leading a hermetic life, has thus been called
into question.
It is amazing that, excepting one or two, her
critics have so far p lid scant attention to the fact that she
was at the height of her creativity during the time of the
American Civil War.
in a significant way.
War therefore figures in her poetry
It supplies the texts with a fund of
images, it brings in intimations of mortality, and, above all,
it functions as a basis for textuality .
All this proves that
despite her much publicized, almost mythicized, status of a
recluse, Dickinson does see "New Englandly, 11 and that her
poetic texts do not conceal the impact of the "glorious"
American dream and the high-falutin ideals of an acquisitive
society.
Sylvia Plath's poems also reveal similar historical
inscription, with the aftermath of Hiroshima, Auchwitz and
.IJachau leaving its imprint on th.e texts in no uncertain terms.
It has been made clear, thus, how both Dickinson's and Plath's
texts bear traces of the history of their times and how these
traces appear in more or less similar ways.
From this one
241
realizes how both of them react in a similar way to certain
historical situations specific to their times.
From the materiality of history one would like to move
over to the non-material world of spiritual transcendence
which, however, fails to appear as full presence in the texts
owing to a variety of factors.
And one such factor is the
comic mode that operates in Dickinson and Plath.
The incongruity
of the approach has its justification in the incongruity of
the problem under discussion.
It is this incongruity which
helps the texts deconstruct themselves and make themselves
incapable of uttering transcendental truths.
Comedy has been
seen here not as something that produces laughter and fun but
as that irrepressible force that looks at the sheer absurdity
of the human condition and laughs the ultimate laugh of the
doomed.
Such laughter is basically incongruous, and in its
wake come the incongruous images that bespeak the textual
process that is at work.
Owing to such laughter and such
images, the poetic texts of Dickinson and Plath find it
impossible to assert metaphysical truths unequivocally.
The
problem of belief in their poetry, or the problem of tran­
scendence, therefore, is beset with the problem of comedy.
It is a pity that critics have so far paid scant attention
to the comic elements in the poetry of Emily Dickinson and
Sylvia Plath.
Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath, two of the greatest
American women poets, thus, share a set of common features
which are remarkable for their diversity and range.
Their
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p oetry reveals in a more or less similar fashion the textual·
process by which identity is decentred and the text split open
and laid bare.
Together their poems show how the speaking
voice in poetry can never function as an originary presence.
Together they prove how differance operates in writing and
what its consequences are.
Together they enable one to perceive
the textual abyss from which structures and meanings emerge.
Together they throw light on the dialectics of making and
unmaking, of form and abyss.
process of textuality.
Together they display the psychic
Together they show how femaleness is
an operational element in the works of women writers.
Together
they illuminate text as history and reveal the principle of
historical inscription.
And together they tell how the comic
mode undercuts the spiritual/metaphysical yearnings of the
texts.
Thus, Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath, though highly
individualistic in their own ways and though separated by a
period of not less than a hundred years, have an underlying
commonness which highlights a shared poetic sensibility.