Ac­ta hu­ma­ni­ta­ri­ca uni­ver­si­ta­tis Sau­len­sis. T. 13 (2011). 350–363.
ISSN 1822-7309
Re-Imagined Trees in Richard Wilbur’s “She” and
Sylvia Plath’s “Virgin in a Tree”
Irena RAGAIŠIENĖ
Vytautas Magnus University
Keywords: mythology, postwar American poetry, conformism, mythopoeia,
revisionist mythmaking.
Richard Wilbur (b. 1921) and Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) belong to the postwar
generation of poets whose works are characterized by “the direction in which
American poetry was to go within ten years after the end of the war: towards
mythology, the use of dream and archetype,” to quote Richard Gray (G r a y 1990,
220). The social and political context of the 1950’s is crucial to any understanding
of the abundant use of mythological imagery in the works by Richard Wilbur and
Sylvia Plath. According to Juliana Stevenson:
The end of World War II and the beginning of the 1950s saw a time of prosperity
and success in mainstream America. Less than a decade after the United States allied
with Great Britain and the Soviet Union, forming one of the most powerful forces
in history to defeat the axis powers in the war, the U.S. was deeply entrenched in a
nuclear arms race and ‘Cold War’ with the Soviet Union. As a result, the country put
on a collective facade of stability and strength to cover up many injustices that were
taking place during the time. Americans, equipped for the first time in a long while
with a good amount of money, flooded to the suburbs and replaced any sorrows they
might have had with material products and consumerism - creating an America of
conformity and extravagance (S t e v e n s o n ).
The politics of conformism was intertwined with intolerance for other
minded people. There was much emphasis on the fear of Communism which was
envisioned as a threat. The threat was related to the fear of destabilization of the
thriving economy of the midcentury America. This, it was claimed, would deprive
Americans of their prosperity. As stated by Richard Gray, “this was the period of
so-called ‘value-free’ sociology; much of the liberal intelligentsia acted on the
See also Linda Wagner Martin (W a g n e r M a r t i n 1992, 3–10); Pat Macpherson
(M a c p h e r s o n 1991, 1–41); Douglas T Miller, Marion Nowak (1977); Stephanie Coontz (1992).
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assumption that it was possible to exercise the critical function untouched by social
or political problems; and many poets <...> withdrew from active involvement in
issues of public concern or ideology into formalism, abstraction, or mythmaking”
(G r a y 1990, 215). Gray also notes that conformity for many Americans meant
repression of their anxieties related to the growing hostility between the United
States and the former Soviet Union as well as the fear of the nuclear war which
gained its impetus primarily as “fear of the potential nuclear capability of the
enemy.” This also meant that the fear of the enemy from the outside increased the
fear of “enemy within.” In everyday life, this fear manifested itself as restriction
of personal freedom, both in the public and private spheres, which on the federal
level was justified as a policy aimed at stopping the spread of Communism (Ibid.,
217). Roberto Naranjo holds:
Firm anti-communist demeanor was expected from everyone, particularly those
in government. <…> In such a fervent era of anti-communism, the junior senator
for Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, employed this hysteria to prosecute countless
government officials. To promote liberal ideas, civil rights advancements or possible
cooperation with communist states was enough to mark a person for persecution.
Changes in the ‘conformity’ of America however, did not occur until the end of the
1950’s, coming slowly at first (N a r a n j o).
The Cold War context and its rhetoric also affected definitions of gender roles
and family life. As argued by Pat Macpherson, a model of the nuclear family was
created; the individuality of whose members was defined “by means of sex roles”
(M a c p h e r s o n 1991, 3). Beth Bailey explains that “men and women usually
took distinct and different roles, with male breadwinners and female homemakers.”
She points out that “contemporary commentators insisted” that such gender
differentiation as regards public and private spheres “was based on the timeless
and essential differences between the sexes.” Such an essentialist approach to the
division of labour is conditioned by “the economic and social structure and the
cultural values of the postwar American society.” In turn, it “largely determined
what choices were available to American men and women” (B a i l e y 2008,
845). Many studies highlight that women felt discriminated by having to limit
their choices to the role of a “homemaker” in “the sexually charged, child-centered
family,” as Stephanie Coontz has it (C o o n t z 1992, 28).
In the post war American poetry, according to Richard Gray, the above
described tensions and anxieties “issued in a preoccupation with evil, the possible
eruption of weariness, guilt, and remorse, into the rhythms of routine experience.” Many poets wrote in the tradition of formalism seeking to dress the socially and
not infrequently politically rebellious subject matter of their poetry in “socially
established and accepted structures” (G r a y 1990, 216). By the late Fifties, nonSee also Betty Friedan (1963).
Gray mentioned the early Robert Lowell and John Berryman as representatives of this
trend (G r a y 1990, 216). 351
Irena Ragaišienė
conformist attitude would be manifested in more overt ways such as “a gradual
slipping away from the formalism and abstraction – and, to some extent, the
conformism – of the postwar years and towards renewed feelings of freedom,
individualism and commitment” (Ibid., 218). Gray contends that “no cultural
development is seamless.” He also states that “re-inventing the old American
allegiance to the rebellious self, the weaving together personal and historical
traumas” combined into the expression of a standpoint toward “abundance and
anxiety.” These thematic spans constituted the main developments in American
poetry of the late 1950s (Ibid., 220).
Richard Wilbur is among the poets who remained attracted to the tradition of
formalism and mythopoeia even when others started to look for alternative ways to
express “discordancy of modern life” (Ibid., 221–223). The allegiance to form and
interest in perennial subjects encoded in archetypal and mythological motifs can
be explained by the great respect that poets of his generation had for the English
Metaphysical poets and by his own interest in releasing new meanings from the
description of everyday objects (Ibid., 221–223). Kathryn VanSpanckeren argues
that “many poets, including Brooks, Adrienne Rich, Richard Wilbur, Robert
Lowell, and Robert Penn Warren began writing traditionally, using rhyme and
meters, but abandoned these in the 1960s under the pressure of public events and a
gradual trend toward open forms” (V a n S p a n c k e r e n ).
Sylvia Plath represents the trend in the postwar American poetry that, according
to Richard Gray, showed “movement towards autobiography” wherein “poetry
became once again not a flight from personality but a dramatization, a reinvention
of the personal” (G r a y 1990, 223). Many critics regard Sylvia Plath’s poetry
as confessional, that is centred on the exploration and the representation of a
diverse, even the most intimate or painful personal experience, through the firstperson speaker. Unlike Robert Lowell, the originator of the confessional mode
of writing in American poetry, whose poetry is considered to be the “series of
personal confidences,” Sylvia Plath fictionalizes and mythologizes her biography
attempting, as it were, to explore her life within the framework of universal
experience delineated in biblical and mythological patterns. Plath’s treatment of
universal and cultural mythology is often read as revisionist mythmaking in terms
defined by Rachel DuPlessis (1990, 1985) Alicia Ostriker (1987), and Liz Yorke
(1991), to mention but a few. These critics suggest that when women turn to maledevised cultural and archetypal myths and literature, they find that their history is
distorted. When searching in the past, a woman poet often feels alienated from the
past and herself. Nevertheless, a return to myth from a new point of view allows a
For the discussion of Sylvia Plath’s relationship to confessional poetry, see Robyn Marsack (M a r s a c k 1992, 8).
Plath’s revisionist treatment of religious and mythological imagery is discussed by a
number of critics, e.g. Alicia Ostriker (O s t r i k e r 1987) and Jennifer Soutter (S o u t t e r 1990). For the presentation of Sylvia Plath’s biographical information see, e.g. Jacqueline Rose (R o s e 1991) and Anne Stevenson (S t e v e n s o n 1989).
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woman artist to become visible by affirming her subjectivity and constructing her
identity as a woman “usually by the simple device of making Other into Subject,”
to quote Alicia Ostriker (O s t r i k e r 1987, 216).
It is specifically the delving into myth as a heuristic device that unite Richard
Wilbur’s poem “She” (1958) and Sylvia Plath’s poem “Virgin in a Tree” (1958).
Both poems draw on the symbolism of the Tree of Life in the way they reflect on
the representation of woman in cultural and universal mythology. As a reminder,
Mircea Eliade writes that the “tree as symbol of life” evokes associations with
“inexhaustible fertility,” “absolute reality,” “the Great Goddess or the symbolism of
water” (E l i a d e 1958/1993, 221). The intension of the present paper is to discuss
poetic significations and ideological underpinnings encoded in the re-visioning of
this mythological and archetypal symbol in Richard Wilbur’s poem “She” and
Sylvia Plath’s “Virgin in a Tree.” My contention is that Wilbur’s engagement with
myth and archetype is more impersonal and focused on probing into the origins of
being. Plath’s poem, on the other hand, seems to illustrate to perfection the goals of
the revisionist mode of poetry as explicated by Alicia Ostriker: “Since the core of
revisionist mythmaking for women poets lies in the challenge to and correction of
gender stereotypes embodied in myth, revisionism in its most obvious form consists
of hit-and-run attacks on familiar images and the social and literary conventions
supporting them” (O s t r i k e r 1987, 216). The use of mythological images and
social codes in Richard Wilbur’s poem “She” may serve as an illustration of the
inevitability of such “sexual battle.” Wilbur’s poem written the same year as that
of Plath’s creates a sweeping picture of woman as a mysterious presence, inspiring
a desire to name her:
What was her beauty in our first estate
When Adam’s will was whole, and the least thing
Appeared the gift and creature of his king,
How should we guess?
Resemblance had to wait
For separation, and in such a place
She so partook of water, light, and trees
As not to look any one of these.
He woke and gazed into her naked face.
(W i l b u r 1963, 19)
The opening word of the question “what” and the spatial arrangement of the
pronouns create an enigmatic impression. The extensive use of pronouns “he,”
“we,” and “she” speak of a concealed relationship. Woman’s otherness may be read
through the opposition of “she” to “he” identified with the collective “we” in “our
estate.” The poem starts with an allusion to Genesis and the origin of the world
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in which “she” personifies the union of a primordial pair − “water” and “light” −
which gave birth to the world/nature − “trees.” The narrative of creation expressed
in natural symbolism is interwoven with Christian symbolism and a mythological
allusion to the Goddess suggested by the reference to the feminine as “A shape of
plenty with a mob of grain,” controlling the concentricity of life cycles, despite the
male desire to dominate woman:
But then she changed, and coming down amid
The flocks of Abel and the fields of Cain,
Clothed in their wish, her Eden graces hid,
A shape of plenty with a mob of grain,
She broke upon the world, in time took on
The look of every labor and its fruits.
Columnar in a robe of pleated lawn,
She cupped her patient hand for attributes,
Was radiant captive of the farthest tower
And shed her honor on the fields of war,
Walked in her garden at the evening hour,
Her shadow like a dark ogival door,
Breasted the seas for all the westward ships
And, come to virgin country, changed again −
A moonlike being truest in eclipse,
And subject goddess of the dreams of men.
(W i l b u r 1963, 19–20)
Although woman is endowed with generative power and is envisioned as the
Tree of Life, her reality is perceived as created by a male/law – she is a “creature
of his king.” Her mysteriousness and the secret powers of the female body provoke
man’s fear; thus, he suppresses her agency under “Adam’s will” and subverts
her subjectivity into a passive reflection, a mirror of man’s creativity and his
imagination. She is “Clothed in their wish,” and her body (“her Eden graces”) are
hidden. In the following lines, the poem rather freely links a number of enigmatic
references to convey the development of the psychological and social reality of the
perception of woman, various roles that she was made to play, and the functions
she exercised for men. The poem emphasizes the perception of woman, not as a
conscious being, but as a passive object (goddess of dreams, figurine on ships,
prisoner to be protected in towers, woman as the cause of wars, or a captive of
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar have pointed out that the dominant literary images of
women are distortions of the notion of womanhood; they are but projections of male imagination (G i l b e r t, G u b a r 1979, 49).
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male desire). The “she” of the poem is linked to the sphere of darkness, and her
shadow is compared to “a dark, ogival door,” which is an allusion to feminine
bodily contours. The corporal implications are reinforced by the image of the door,
which may be read as a translation of woman’s birth-giving organs into an elevated
euphemism. The comparison of woman to the door also suggests that, through a
communion with woman, man can enter transcendental dimensions and regain
his lost wholeness. Simultaneously, these metaphors, which create the male-made
image of woman as symbol or myth, are contrasted with man’s fear and anxiety
“to find you as you are”:
Tree, temple, valley, prow, gazelle, machine,
More named and nameless than the morning star,
Lovely in every shape, in all unseen,
We dare not wish to find you as you are,
Whose apparition, bidding time until
Desire decay and bring the latter age,
Shall flourish in the ruins of our will
And deck the broken stones like saxifrage.
(W i l b u r 1963, 19–20)
The enigmatic and diverse nature of the feminine expressed in images of
different registers − the mythological (Biblical?) “tree,” “temple-machine,” “prowgazelle” − reveals man’s desire to explore, control, and master the feminine.
Richard Wilbur’s description of woman may be read through the lenses of Frieda
Fordham’s discussion of the Jungian vision of the archetypal anima:
In different eras the image may be slightly changed or modified, but some
characteristics seem to remain almost constant; the anima has a timeless quality −
she often looks young, though there is always the suggestion of years of experience
behind her. She is wise, but not formidably so; it is rather that ‘something strangely
meaningful clings to her, a secret knowledge or hidden wisdom.’ She is often
connected with the earth, or with water, and she may be endowed with great power.
She is also two-sided or has two aspects, a light and a dark, corresponding to the
different qualities and types of women; on the one hand, the pure, the good, the
noble goddess-like figure, on the other the prostitute, the seductress, or the witch.
(F o r d h a m 1966, 53–54)
Although Wilbur attempts to penetrate into the enigma of the archetypal feminine,
the last stanza holds out the possibility of “our will” being broken to mythologize
and to transform woman into symbolic representation; it will be “in the ruins” of
men’s will. Then, in these “ruins,” she will flourish into the real plant – breaking
through the old, oppressive images. Woman will then be closer to what she really
is, rather than the man-made representations and interpretations. The inability to
solve the riddle of femininity may be related to the fear of exhausting the images
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Irena Ragaišienė
that constitute the feminine as a perennial enigma, which has always been a
potential source of imagination and creativity. As regards woman’s creativity, it
seems to be limited to the generativity encoded in mythology of the Tree of Life,
which is biological rather than creative fertility.
As to the dissemination of the tree metaphor in Plath’s oeuvre, it may be
pertinent to refer to Constance Scheerer, who provides a profound discussion of the
metaphoric significance of, what Ted Hughes has called Plath’s “deathly paradise”.
The critic points out that she has found many poetic visions of trees in Plath’s early
poems which prefigure “twenty-eight or thirty ‘garden’ poems in The Colossus”
(S c h e e r e r 1977, 168). Following Scheerer, it may be stated that in the poems
built on the tree and, by implication root metaphor; for example,” On the Plethora
of Dryads” (P l a t h 1980, 67–68), “The Manor Garden” (Ibid., 125), and “Elm”
(Ibid., 192), the presence of trees − conventionally symbolic of development,
protection, the life force, and creativity − and root − an incarnation of regeneration
in the iconography related to the Tree of Life − suggest a relation to the world
through biological and cultural ancestors − family trees, literary predecessors,
and religion. The metaphoric configurations of these poems reinforce psychomythological significations of this image, described in analytical psychology as
a symbol of a state of rootedness in the self. The tree and the root are among
the most important symbols associated not only with psychological evolution but
also with artistic creation. Within this analogy Plath bridges aspects of the tree
symbolism as self-evolution with its meaning used by the Romantics as the tree of
The reflections of the impact of the father’s death on the development of Plath’s personality and her creative career have been discussed by a number of critics, e.g., Liz Yorke
(1991), Jacqueline Rose (1992), Steven Axelrod (1990), Janice Markey (1993), and Robyn
Marsack (1992).
In the study on “The Philosophical Tree” Jung describes the symbol of the tree in terms
of psychological development and views the tree within the context of mythological and
alchemical parallels. The description of the psychological processes include the union of
opposites through the integration of the unconscious often symbolized by roots (CW 13,
Jung 272–273).
Gaston Bachelard emphasizes that the root is a multi-referential “dynamic image,” which
represents a convergence of oppositional meanings conditioned by their location at the
intersection of the two worlds − the chthonic and the celestial. Both these complexes of
meaning emphasize the integrative quality of the tree and its ability to merge dialectical
opposites. This, in turn, gives birth to a proliferation of images, activates the imagination,
and inspires a production of new ideas, condensing the aerial and the earthy qualities in
complex metaphors because the root as a “strange opaque mirror” “doubles every aerial
reality with a subterranean image.” In emphasizing the vertical or transcendent nature of
the creative process, Bachelard also points out that “the root is animated paradoxically in
two directions, depending on whether we dream of a root bearing to heaven the juices of
the earth, or of the root going to work among the dead, for the dead ...” Bachelard holds that
“The old root − in the imagination there are no young roots − will produce a new flower.
The imagination is a tree. It has the integrative virtues of a tree” (B a c h e l a r d 1987,
84–85).
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Re-Imagined Trees in Richard Wilbur’s “She” and Sylvia Plath’s “Virgin in a Tree”
poetry. In some poems, the conceptual aspects related to the tree as a source of the
self are evoked through alternative metaphorical figurations.10
Sylvia Plath’s poem “Virgin in a Tree” (P l a t h 1980, 81) is based on the
picture of Paul Klee, according to Paul Alexander (A l e x a n d e r 1991, 215). As
stated by Marcel Franciscono, Paul Klee’s etching Virgin in the Tree (1903) belongs
to a group of works that were inspired by the “familiar store of late nineteenth
century imagery on the nature of woman and her place in society which he had
used for his earlier projects” (F r a n c i s c o n o 1991, 48). Carola GiedionWelcker quotes Paul Klee to explain the origins and the meaning of the picture:
“Technically this [picture] represents a step forward because of the use of lines of
various weights … <…> The young lady, as behooves a virgin, is waiting for a
suitor acceptable to a society of burghers. She grows older but not prettier” (K l e e
qtd. in G i e d i o n-W e i c k e r 1952, 13). Giedion-Welcker further states that the
picture can be regarded as an “allegorical grotesque. But the subject matter was as
acute a concern as form. In The Virgin in the Tree the contents is an ironical protest
against the moral sterility of the bourgeois society in which the artist lives. As in all
the other drawings of this phase, there appears in his treatment here a pronounced
element of burlesque” (Ibid., 13–14).
Paul Alexander holds that the works of Paul Klee, Henri Rousseau and Giorgio
De Chirico helped Plath overcome a protracted “writer’s block”: “she had written
eight poems, all of which came to her so effortlessly she seemed to be transcribing –
not writing – them” (A l e x a n d e r 1991, 215). The poem “Virgin in a Tree” was
the first in this series. Like Paul Klee, Plath questions or rather ironizes social norms
and rules that govern woman’s behaviour and sexuality, in particular. In “Virgin in a
Tree,” the significations embedded in the meaning of the tree intertwine with those
in Polly’s Tree (P l a t h 1980, 128–29) or “On the Difficulty of Conjuring Up a
Dryad” (Ibid., 65–66) and “On the Plethora of Dryads” (Ibid., 67–68) where the
tree stands for both a desire to create and the poet’s not infrequently failing struggle
to bring forth literary foliage or to nurse the roots of the self. In these poems, the
relationship to the self is seen as a consequence of the problematic relation to
the world conditioned by Plath’s personal traumas and her ambivalence regarding
gender roles imposed on women by her society. Rewriting the iconography of the
tree, then, for Plath, may be treated as involving a shattering of patriarchal myths
that define the roots of femininity, which in “Virgin in a Tree” (Ibid., 81), Plath
ironically categorizes as – a “tart fable” that “instructs / And mocks!” The fable
that the poem attempts to re-vision is that of Daphne and Apollo:
10
Here’s the parody of that moral mousetrap
Set in the proverbs stitched on samplers
Approving chased girls who get them to a tree
And put on bark’s nun-black
See also Irena Ragaišienė (2004, 2009).
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Irena Ragaišienė
Habit which deflects
All amorous arrows. For to sheathe the virgin shape
In a scabbard of wood baffles pursuers,
Whether goat-thighed or god-haloed. Ever since that first Daphne
Switched her incomparable back
For a bay-tree hide, respect’s
Twined to her hard limbs like ivy: the puritan lip
Cries: ‘Celebrate Syrinx whose demurs
Won her the frog-colored skin, pale pith and watery
Bed of a reed. Look:
Pine-needle armor protects
Pitys from Pan’s assault!
(P l a t h 1980, 81)
The myth of Daphne and Apollo describes a nymph’s choice to become a tree
rather than become a possession of the god Apollo. This way she escapes what
appears to be an inevitable rape.11 Meredith Powers states that the myth of Daphne
and Apollo, like the absolute majority of patriarchal myths, presents the male god
as heroic while
[w]omen are functionaries, backdrops in a mythology which insisted, sometimes
with notable aggression, on the metaphoric centrality of the hero. Explication
has perpetuated the bias. Daphne did not cleverly escape a villain, she “refused
the call.” Yet what of Daphne’s view of the experience? What she resists is the
questionable privilege of being raped by the god. The rewards inherent in such
a violent rite understandably escape the girl. In modern times rape is recognized
as an act of violence, of demeaning violation; the raped person is a victim, yet in
myth it is accepted as a conduit to divinity or a variation on the marriage ceremony.
But the women of myth do resist. Is that not archetypal behavior? Daphne fled, as
did Arethusa and Britomartis; each clearly preferred metamorphosis and each was
assisted in her escape by a shadowy goddess. But Daphne’s version of the event is
not told (P o w e r s 1991, 4).
Plath’s poem may be read as deferral of this privileged point of view. The poem
also suggests an intertextual dialogue, in Julia Kristeva’s sense with culturally
dominant discourses that identify women’s natural roles exclusively within the
range of symbolism pertaining to the Tree of Life. Pat Macpherson writes that
women of Plath’s generation were expected to accept their society’s definitions of
‘naturalness,’ which implied compulsory motherhood, domesticity, and supporting
For a more detailed description of the myth, see Pierre Grimal (G r i m a l 1951/1990,
119-120).
11
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Re-Imagined Trees in Richard Wilbur’s “She” and Sylvia Plath’s “Virgin in a Tree”
the husband’s career.12 What is more, young women were encouraged to be
attractive; thus to be active consumers of products produced by the beauty industry.
On the other hand, there was much emphasis on virginity; premarital sex was
considered sinful: “‘purity’ [is] the wife’s coin that buys her husband’s ‘respect’”
(M a c p h e r s o n 1991, 8–16). The standards regarding purity and chastity,
however, did not relate to men. Sylvia Plath tackles the question of the double
standard in her semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar. Casey Montgomery
writes:
In Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, there are feminist undertones throughout. While
the book itself was published in 1963, at the beginning stages of the feminist
movement, it is set in 1953. The novel deals with many topics that are still of interest
today. The double standard between premarital sex for men and women is one such
issue. Esther, a character based on Plath herself, found that her boyfriend had slept
with a waitress during the summer. This event ultimately makes her question the
contrasting principles on the view of sex for an unwed woman versus that of an
unwed man. She sees this idea as hypocritical and faulty. In an attempt to equalize
herself and protest this crucial double standard she set out to lose her virginity. Near
the end of the book she does so to a Professor at Harvard University during one of
her stays at the hospital. The idea that she refused to bow to this double standard and
actively set out to undermine it was a widespread reaction to many things during the
initial feminist movement in the 1960s (M o n t g o m e r y ).
In “Virgin in a Tree” the irony invested in the description of the virgin’s body
and the perception of her life as wasted (“dour-faced, her fingers / Stiff as twigs,
her body woodenly // Askew”) invokes intertextual links with Plath’s poems “Two
Sisters of Persephone” (P l a t h 1980, 31) and “Spinster” (Ibid., 49) which may
be read as a parody of those dogmas, which claim that it is devotion to a man (and
to the body) that leads to eternal bliss (or birth of children). Alternately, it is the
denial of the body that leads to the “graveward,” that is, to the world of shades,
Hades, where the “wry virgin to the least” becomes a victim of worms that invade
her body and cause its decomposition. 13
In this article, the treatment of the tree in the mythopoeia of two midcentury
American poets has been examined, and the socio-historical specificity of the
period as well as the major developments of American poetry after 1945 has been
presented. The analysis highlights traces of negotiation with conventional meanings
of the tree inherited from culture and mythology. It is argued that Richard Wilbur’s
“She” tends to resort to the traditional association between woman and the Tree of
See also Stephanie Coontz (C o o n t z 1992, 31–32).
To Janice Markey, the opposition developed in the poem “Two Sisters of Persephone”
“appears very much to be a Lawrentian/Woolfian dichotomy. The reference to Persephone
further opens up the poem − the writer is equated with the Persephone banished to the underworld for the winter months, while the ‘natural’ woman is the Persephone whose return
to earth reinstates the earth’s fertility” (M a r k e y 1993, 139).
12
13
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Irena Ragaišienė
Life. On the other hand, Wilbur lets his object speak and release new meanings.14
Plath both displaces the traditional connotations of the tree with reference to her
gender experience and attempts to re-imagine their original significations largely
within the framework of the Daphne myth which she re-visions through the lens of
cultural mythology and gender roles prevalent in the midcentury America.
References
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Irena Ragaišienė
Irena Ragaišienė
Poetinės medžio reikšmės transformacijos Richardo Wilburo eilėraštyje
„Ji“ ir Silvijos Plath eilėraštyje „Skaistuolė medyje“
Santrauka
Pagrindinės sąvokos: mitologija, šeštojo dešimtmečio amerikiečių poezija, kon­for­
mizmas, mitologija pagrįsta poezija, revizionizmas poezijoje.
Straipsnyje nagrinėjamos medžiams suteikiamos reikšmės pokario laikotarpio ameri­
kiečių autorių Richardo Wilburo (1921) eilėraštyje „Ji“ ir Silvijos Plath (1932–1963)
eilėraš­tyje „Skaistuolė medyje“. Pateikiamas šio laikotarpio sociokultūrinis kontekstas,
pabrėžiama, kad šeštojo dešimtmečio Amerikos politika, nulemta šaltojo karo grėsmės,
skatino konformizmą, slopino kritinės minties sklaidą. Šios tendencijos turėjo įtakos ir
poezijos raidai. Wilburas priskiriamas poetams, kurie net maištingą poezijos turinį bandė
įsprausti į tradicinę eilėraščio formą ir taip sudaryti konformistinės poezijos įspūdį. Silvijos
Plath, Wilburo kartos atstovės, poezijoje ryškus autobiografinis elementas, susipinantis su
visuomenėje dominuojančių diskursų kritika. Straipsnyje teigiama, kad Plath kritinis požiū­
ris į šiuose diskursuose išreiškiamą lyčių politiką lemia medžio kaip mitologinio ir kultūri­
nio simbolio reikšmes. Medžio signifikacijos analizė tiriama remiantis anglosaksiškos
feminizmo kritikos pateikiamu revizionizmo (revisionism) aspektu bei Richardo Gray’aus
pateikiama pokario (1945–1960) amerikiečių poezijos raidos analize. Pasirinktų Wilburo ir
Plath eilėraščių analizė siejama ir su psichoanalitinėmis, mitologinėmis, kultūrologinėmis
įžvalgomis. Tai padeda atskleisti intertekstinius ryšius tarp minimų autorių poezijos ir
išryškinti šių autorių skirtingą požiūrį į tradicines medžio reikšmes. Išvadose teigiama, kad
tiek Wilburo, tiek Plath pasirinktuose eilėraščiuose dominuoja Gyvybės medžio semantika,
kuri Plath eilėraštyje panaudojama visuomenėje dominuojančių diskursų kritikai, Wilburo
eilėraštyje išryškinama mito, kaip ideologiją formuojančio naratyvo, reikšmė. Kita vertus,
įpindamas medžio semantiką į mįslės forma konstruojamą eilėraštį, Wilburas, būdamas
formalistas, traktuoja eilėraštį kaip objektą, sukuriantį savitą reikšmių spektrą. 362
Re-Imagined Trees in Richard Wilbur’s “She” and Sylvia Plath’s “Virgin in a Tree”
Irena Ragaišienė
Re-Imagined Trees in Richard Wilbur’s “She” and Sylvia Plath’s “Virgin
in a Tree”
Summary
Keywords: mythology, postwar American poetry, conformism, mythopoeia, revisionist
mythmaking.
In this article, the treatment of the tree in the mythopoeia of two mid-century American
poets, Richard Wilbur (b. 1921) and Sylvia Plath (1932–1963), has been examined, and the
socio-historical specificity of the period as well as the major developments of American
poetry after 1945 has been presented. The analysis highlights traces of negotiation with
conventional meanings of the tree inherited from culture and mythology. It is argued that
Richard Wilbur’s “She” tends to resort to the traditional association between the woman
and the Tree of Life. On the other hand, following Richard Gray’s discussion of the role of
formalism in Wilbur’s poetry, it is argued that Wilbur’s poem exists as an object that releases
new meanings. The discussion highlights that Sylvia Plath both displaces the traditional
connotations of the tree with reference to her gender experience and attempts to re-imagine
their original significations largely within the framework of the Daphne myth which she
re-visions through the lens of the cultural mythology of the mid-century America.
Irena RAGAIŠIENĖ
Department of English Philology
Vytautas Magnus University
58 Donelaičio St.
LT-44248 Kaunas
Lithuania
[[email protected]]
363