Plath Sylvia

A detailed Summary of Plath Sylvia

Even in her earlier poems, Sylvia Plath displays an unhealthy preoccupation with sex, madness, morbidity and obscurity.

There seem to be a number of common themes running through all of Plath's poems, which encapsulate her personal attitudes and feelings of life at the time she wrote them. Of these themes, the most prevalent are: sex, madness, morbidity and obscurity.

The whole concept of sex to Plath appears to be a very disturbed and resentful one. This is conveyed strongly through the poem Maudlin (a poem about self-pity) in which Plath evokes her bitterness toward masculinity with the aid of the two characters, the Virgin and Jack. Jack is described as having a "crackless egg" and being "navel-knit" (ie: cold hearted and impregnable). He is given an arrogant, macho image too: "With a claret hogshead to swig, he kings it". Plath's sourness becomes apparent when Jack's lifestyle of luxury is compared to the repressed and disturbed life of suffering which the "sleep-talking virgin" leads. The idea of sleep-talking evokes her pain and suffering, leaking from her subconscious. Her torment does not end on the inside however, according to Plath who describes further physical and mental torture endured by women wh

Plath's second obsession is with madness. The clearest example of this is found in Miss Drake Proceeds to Supper. The paranoia, constant delusions and obscure perceptions described in the poem convey a deranged fear, which has arisen as a result of her insanity. The tortuous and enigmatic adjectives used to describe furniture ("knotted table and crooked chair") illustrates the obscurely twisted perception of Miss Drake as she clumsily "lifts one webbed foot after the other", pretending she is a duck, "her bird-quick eye cocked askew". The paranoia conveyed as "she edges with wary edge" through the "perilous needles" which "grain the floorboards and outwit their brambled plan", clearly shows her fear which is exacerbated from the impression given that she is small and vulnerable, "footing sallow as a mouse". This and her detailed observation of the "furred petals" almost incites sympathy for her as this mad woman is "ambushed" and panic stricken by the "bright shards of broken glass".

o painfully beautify themselves for the pleasure of men like Jack: "at the price of a pin-stitched skin fish-tailed girls purchase each white leg". Furthermore, Plath justifies the virgin's choice to endure the pain: "The sign of the hag" (the virgins fear of aging).

All of Plath's poems contain some kind of obscurity but Resolve is the most interesting as it centres around making common images appear obscure. When "two water drops poise on the arched green stem of my neighbor's rose bush"

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1000
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English