Major Themes in Sylvia Plath's Poetry | Eureka Study Aids

Major Themes in Sylvia Plath's Poetry

Introduction

     Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work that may be stated directly or indirectly. Themes are truths that exhibit universality and stand true for people of all cultures. Through themes, a writer tries to give his readers an insight into how the world works or how he or she views human life. Usually the theme of a work of literature can be stated in one word, such as "love" or "solitude". 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: death, victimization, patriarchy, nature, the self, the body, motherhood, sexuality and love. 

1. Death

     Death is an ever-present reality in Plath's poetry, and manifests in several ways. One common theme is the void left by her father's death. In "Full Fathom Five", she speaks of his death and burial, mourning that she is forever exiled. In "The Colossus", she tries in vain to put him back together again and make him speak. In "Daddy", she goes further in claiming that she wants to kill him herself, finally exorcising his vicious hold over her mind and work. Death is also dealt with in terms of suicide, which eerily corresponds to her own suicide attempts and eventual death by suicide. In "Lady Lazarus", she claims that she has mastered the art of dying after trying to kill herself multiple times. In short, Death is an immensely vivid aspect of Plath's work, both in metaphorical and literal representations.

2. Victimization

   Plath felt like a victim to the men in her life, including her father, her husband, and the great male-dominated literary world. Her poetry can often be understood as response to these feelings of victimization, and many of the poems with a male figure can be interpreted as referring to any or all of these male forces in her life.In regards to her father, she realized she could never escape his terrible hold over her; she expressed her sense of victim-hood in "The Colossus" and "Daddy". Her husband also victimized her through the power he exerted as a man, both by assuming he should have the literary career and through his infidelity. However, in her later poems, she seems finally able to transcend her status as victim by fully embracing her creative gifts (Ariel), metaphorically killing her father (Daddy), and committing suicide (Lady Lazarus, Edge).
3. Patriarchy
     Plath lived and worked in 1950/1960s England and America, societies characterized by very strict gender norms. Women were expected to remain safely in the house, with motherhood as their ultimate joy and goal.Women who ventured into the arts found it difficult to attain much attention for their work, and were often subject to marginalization and disdain. Plath explored and challenged this reductionist tendency through her work, offering poems of intense vitality and stunning language. She depicted the bleakness of the domestic scene, the disappointment of pregnancy, the despair over her husband's infidelity, her tortured relationship with her father, and her attempts to find her own creative voice amidst the crushing weight of patriarchy.
4. Nature
    Images and allusions to nature permeate Plath's poetry. She often evokes the sea and the fields to great effect. The sea is usually associated with her father; it is powerful, unpredictable, mesmerizing, and dangerous. In "Full Fathom Five", her father is depicted as a sea god. She also pulled from her personal life, writing of horse-riding on the English fields, in "Sheep in Fog" and "Ariel". Nature is also manifested in the bright red tulips which jolt the listless Plath from her post-operation stupor, insisting that she return to the world of the living. Here, nature is a provoker, an instigator - it does not want her to give up Nature is a ubiquitous theme in Plath's work; it is a potent force that is sometimes unpredictable, but usually works to encourage her creative output.

5. The Self
     Plath has often been grouped into the confessional movement of poetry. One of the reason for this classification is that she wrote extensively of her own life, her own thoughts, her own worries. Any great artist both creates his or her art and is created by it, and Plath was always endeavoring to know herself better through her writing. She tried to come to terms with her personal demons, and tried to work through her problematic relationships. For instance, she tried to understand her ambivalence about motherhood, and tried to vent her rage at her failed marriage. However, her exploration of herself can also be understood as an exploration of the idea of the self, as it stands opposed to society as a whole and to other people, whom she did not particularly like. This conflict - between the self and the world outside - can be used to understand almost all of Plath's poems.

6. The Body
     Many of Plath's poems deal with the body, in terms of motherhood, wounds, operations, and death. In "Metaphors", she describes how her body does not feel like it is her own; she is simply a "means" towards delivering a child. In "Tulips" and "A Life", the body has undergone an operation. With the surgery comes an excising of emotion, attachment, connection, and responsibility. "Cut" depicts the thrill Plath feels on almost cutting her own thumb off. "Contusion" takes things further - she has received a bruise for some reason, but unlike in "Cut", where she eventually seems to grow uneasy with the wound, she seems to welcome the physical pain, since the bruise suggests an imminent end of her suffering. Suicide, the most profound and dramatic thing one can do to one's own body, is also central to many of her poems.
7. Motherhood
     Motherhood is a major theme in Plath's work. She was profoundly ambivalent about this prescribed role of women, writing in "Metaphors" about how she felt insignificant as a pregnant woman, a mere "means" to an end. She lamented how grotesque she looked, and expressed her resignation over a perceived lack of options. However, in "Child", she delights in her child's perception of and engagement with the world. Of course, "Child" ends with the suggestions that she knows her child will someday see the harsh reality of life. Plath did not want her children to be contaminated by her own despair. This fear may also have manifested itself in her last poem, "Edge". Overall, Plath loved her children, but was not completely content in either pregnancy or motherhood.
8. Sexuality
     The whole concept of sex to Plath appears to be very disturbed and resentful one. This is conveyed strongly through the poem "Maudlin" in which Plath evokes her bitterness towards masculinity with the aid of two characters, the Virgin and Jack. Another poem which is strongly sexually oriented, but in a more mechanical and lustful sense, is "Night Shift". The brute physicality conveyed through onomatopoeia in the poem impregnated the feeling of primeval sexuality in which violence is interlaced. In short, Plath's poetry depicts sexuality as a central tool in the perpetuation of male dominance and female submission, a fact that makes the relations between man and women even more difficult.
9. Love
    Love has been a major theme in poetry for generation together and a woman plays a major role in the game of love. All the poems written by Sylvia Plath, including the posthumous collection, "Ariel" can be grouped under love poems. She is in love with nature, in love with sea, in love with her dead-father or in love with death itself. The normal erotic love, which she ought to have experienced as a young girl does not make an impression on her as poetic themes. She was utterly disillusioned with the concept and as a result love in the normal sense of the term is conspicuously absent in her poetry.

Love is a shadow,

How you lie and cry after it

Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.(Elm)

Notes Prepared By: Prof. Shahbaz Asghar