Sylvia Plath

By: Maddy Burrows, Blake Chernin,

and Richard Masiello

Background Information(Born 1932- Committed Suicide 1963)

• American Born • Exceled in school• Won a scholarship to Smith• Writing flourished while at Smith• First attempted • Educated at Cambridge University

Depression

• Horrible Father- Daughter relationship, her dad died when she was 9

• 1st Suicide attempt August 1953• Treated at Mclean’s Hospital 6 months• Marriage to Ted Hughes • Miscarriage• Financial troubles• Successfully committed suicide 1963

Style

• Visual imagery– “Cinderella” (“scarlet heels”, “lilac wall”)– “Edge” (“a white serpent”, “she has folded”)

• Allusions, – Usually to classical mythology, especially Greek and

Roman– “Aftermath” (“Mother Medea”)– “Lady Lazarus”

• Mainly narrative poems– “Daddy”

Style

• Very personal– One of the first to write “Confessional Poetry” – “Daddy”– “Lady Lazarus”

• Usually dark in mood– Influenced by her life– “Daddy”

Style

• Poems often had twist endings or endings that otherwise had a different tone from the rest of the poem– “Balloons– “Kindness”

• Inconsistent rhyme– Established a strange, otherworldly rhythm– “Ariel”– “Aftermath”

“Edge”The woman is perfectedHer dead

Body wears the smile of accomplishment,The illusion of a Greek necessity

Flows in the scrolls of her toga,Her bare

Feet seem to be saying:We have come so far, it is over.

Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,One at each little

Pitcher of milk, now emptyShe has folded

Them back into her body as petalsOf a rose close when the garden

Stiffens and odors bleedFrom the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.

The moon has nothing to be sad about,Staring from her hood of bone.

She is used to this sort of thing.Her blacks crackle and drag.

Criticism

• “More akin to magic and murder”• “Feminist”• “Symbolic Annihilation”• “Theatrical”• “a lyricist, capable of great verbal beauty”• “she simply exposed her feelings in open,

exposed, even raw ways”

Criticism

• “intended to evoke a specific emotional response.”

• “Plath’s greatest talent lay in her ability to transform everyday experiences”

• “not able to project her personae a great distance from herself.”

CinderellaThe prince leans to the girl in scarlet heels, Her green eyes slant, hair flaring in a fan Of silver as the rondo slows; now reels Begin on tilted violins to span

The whole revolving tall glass palace hall Where guests slide gliding into light like wine; Rose candles flicker on the lilac wall Reflecting in a million flagons' shine,

And glided couples all in whirling trance Follow holiday revel begun long since, Until near twelve the strange girl all at once Guilt-stricken halts, pales, clings to the prince

As amid the hectic music and cocktail talk She hears the caustic ticking of the clock.

Agree/Disagree

• Disagree– “Plath’s greatest talent lay in her ability to

transform everyday experiences”– “Symbolic Annihilation”

• Agree– “intended to evoke a specific emotional

response.”– “she simply exposed her feelings in open,

exposed, even raw ways”

• Feminism• Ted Hughes• Personal experiences • Her depression• Started with an interest in nursery

rhymes• History

Influences

From The City Your poems are like a dark city centre.

Your novel, your stories, your journals, your letters, are suburbsOf this big city.

The hotels are lit like office blocks all nightWith scholars, priests, pilgrims. It's at night

Sometimes I drive through. I just findMyself driving through, going slow, simplyRoaming in my own darkness, pondering

What you did. Nearly alwaysI glimpse you - at some crossing,

Staring upwards, lost, sixty year old.

Conclusion• Poetry influenced greatly by her

life and depression• Dark and gloomy• “Death must be so beautiful. To lie

in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.” (Plath)