54

CHAPTER-II

THE EXISTENTIAL COUNTERS:

PLATH'S POETRY AND HER LIFE.

55

The element of existence seems to be a profound theme in the works

of Robert T. Lowell, Theodore Rathke and Sylvia Plath. When it comes to

Sylvia Plath this element of existence threatens her being in the world. She

becomes an existential rebel. Sylvia Plath suffered from existential insecu­

rity all her life is evident from her angst filled poetry. In the previous

chapter, it was observed how she was torn apart in her dilemmas and

predicaments. The most significant aspect was her feeling that she might

lose her sense of meaning in life. To cover this, she used her imagination

over the world-the capacity to perceive in an intentional way.

She felt often that the ground under her feet was slipping by and she

had to hold living on to something. She became fearful but death was

longed for with an utter confusion of rebirth or an escape into a world of

imagination. It givt;s us the impression that Plath deliberately cultivates ' . .

her wo.~ld of psych9sis as if it is her poetic manner of existential protest • J .' ·~!-•, ._ ' ag;aifl:$5 a world which has no conceivable meaning or assurance.

LONGING FOR DEATH- REBIRTH

· Plath's endeavours had been largely to speed up her own distasteful

~.#Clf~inio a land of her fulfilments i.e. her artistic cultivated psychotic po-'" ,etic peripheries of imagination. She lived in the utter conviction that she

was trapped by the Society or by the self and she needed escape. In these

hectic efforts of escape, Plath goes through moments of anxiety and to her

rescue comes her poetry through which she finds satisfaction in attaining

her goals i.e. escape into ·a world' seemingly 'more full and clear'. The·

irony is that she is consciously aware of the seeming nature of her imaginery

confections. And that brin:;s in the Cllntcxt of dramatic pathos in her poetic

moments. Beyond these so:lf deluding poetic moments life is all ghastiliness.

56

of reality, struggling between Libido (birth instinct) and Mortie (the death

instinct)- a romantic impassional escape into the 'cloud-cuckoo' l~nd of

his comfortable imagination. But Plath is a stark realist. She is well aware

of the dubious nature of poetic escape mechanics. Even then she is under

a gross personal compulsion to lavishly indulge in open tantrums in order

to stand back from the psychotic anxieties making fitful inwards into her

self to her utmost discomfiture. This poetic escape is a delusion. There­

fore, she constantly nurtures a self which prompts her to take refuge in self

denial through self slaughter. The decision making at this pitch of emo­

tional constraint is always ridden with that Hamilton 'neither/nor' delimma.

So real and accurate are her existential predilictions .

. . . . Sing

)f a world more full and clear

fhat can be

(The Colossus p.l4)

Thus, she glorifies death, rebirth in verses of pure artistic delight.

:Jnce, her being-in-the world is looked down upon and she looks above -Ai): ~ith irrational expectation to a world 'more ritual and magical methods in

forder to free itself'.1

This kind of 'use' of 'ritual and magical' is only a

conscious poetic formula technique, which comes to nothing in facing the

reality of life. Her over exubercnt expressions of self-supposed convictions

of rebirth an: only a poetic ploy to substantiate the ideas that her growing

inward determinations. of self denial through self slaughter is a reality of

h~:r inklt an:xi<:ty ridden authenticity. Ilcr authentic self-manner is a con·

fused child like confront,ltion "ith the world. The reality is that her own

life is an insuiT.:r;lhlc blend nf dj,c,lnlant factors. It is here that her cxis-

57

tential learnings become explicit.

With her concentration on rebirth she slipped into death and this

going back, led her way to the tomb. "To find meaning in life she had to 7

die,".- says Rosenblatt.

On close observation of her poem "Lorelei" (Colossus) we gather

that she expresses her close kinship with the river goddess in her use of

'Sisters' She considers that she is receiving a personal message from a

world that is enchanting and full of bliss. The song itself is very rich in

imagination and powerful for the human ear-

Hence, in a well steered country

Under a balanced ruler

Deranging by harmony

Beyond the mundane order

Your voice lay siege

(Colossus, p.l4)

. ·'¥ · A balanced ruler/ Deranging by harmony' is at once a daring poetic ·F :~se of antithesis and a sentiment of metaphysical protest. This sense of

"' . ' .~:protest is in 'your voice lay seige'. One recognizes the wish of the poet for

a different world where there is harmony, balance in government that goes

beyo:1d the present experience of the world. The poet longs to join 'the

great goddess or peace' that is, to die by drowning. The final line of the

poem clarifies this death 11ish of the poet. It is not arrangement by har­

monY hut 'derangement'. and his 1·oice is not a captivating sonorosity. It

is just a ·siq;c'. The christian formula of loving God turns out to be an

autocratic e'\ploiting of (iodhead. for he cares not for the free will of man.

58

Stone, stone, ferry me down there.

(The Colossus, p.14)

The seductive song of the river goddesses may thus be understood as

an aspired promise of peace and harmony that man might presumably gain

after death. At the same time Plath's scepticism is too vibrant in the use

of vocabulary. It is customary to invoke 'rock' as a solid faith in christian

traditions. Instead she uses ·stone'. Her self-confounded timorous ambiva­

lence and look rather than confirmed faith, is suggested. The expression

·ferry m~: down there' further confirms her stand. Usually transcendence

into the above is custori1ary. Being ferried 'down' is reminiscent of Greek

hill Hades .where t~e souls reach the other side after crossing the river

Styx. The 'down' turned gesture well records her doubts rather than hope

of salvation. But her desire for salvation as a strong mystical passion is ' 'f•':;:,· -

·· evidept.'But the passions as desires are airy nothings. However, these airy '..- ~: ', .

i ;·i)cpt~.~-s as strongly desired facts express the nature of the compulsions "-·~~-' .. ~----:'~ .

;>·Jttn out of doubt rather than of faith. In all probability she is a suffering

:t~·elf in agony. This .is also the refuge of the Christian faith that every ·:.: ,,

. -·individual, after his death would be rewarded by being a:Jiotted a place in .,, ., i: paradise where there would be peace, love and harmony. Thus the Chris-

tian looks upon death as a way, a beginning of everlasting, happy life. The

present life on earth is considered to be temporary and unheavenly. The

Christians offer the following prayer on the occasion of the death of their

relatives/ friends-

In llim who rose from the dead

Our hope of resurrection dawned

59

The sadness of death gives way

to the bright promise of immortality.

Lord, for your faithful people life is changed

when the body of our earthly dwelling lies in death

We gain an everlasting place in heaven .. 3

While this may be an act of faith for a Christian to have love for

'everlasting life' through acts of faith and charity, for Sylvia Plath this is

the only way out of insecurity and suffering.

A similar view is put forth with regard to the crabs in 'Mussel Hunter

at Rock llarbour' where, in the final stanza, the dead crabs give them­

selv..:s up.··

Bellies pallid and upturned,

Perform their shambling Waltzes

On the Waves' dissolving turn

And return, losing themselves

Bit by bit to their friendly

Element - this relic saved

Face, to face the bald- faced sun-

(Colossus, p.62)

She gives here the feel of pain involved in the extremities of el­

emental hazards, which cvcry living being is required to encounter. For

christ ian traditions. 'the body of our earthly dwelling lies in the earth'. But

for /omastrians it is krt to facc the bald faced snow. To a large extent

even in thc nature's "ilderness many creatures ('crabs' here) suffer a co­

lossal neglect and humiliation in the state of nature, as well as in the state·

60

of society. We arc in a world of clements, where there is no

programme for living beings. We just survive, we do not live,

confirme<J, . . . ~:~·.

wtth any

hope. We 'stick on to life as mere negligible creatures. We perform our

'shambling waltzes/ On the Waves .. ./ to their friendly Elements'. The ex­

pression 'Friendly Element' is again a dreaming stroke born of self con­

cern and self pity. Otherwise we are in a world of utter elemental furies

without a place for hope or dreams.

Here, we find an analogy drawn by Sylvia Plath between the life of

crabs and herself. Some sort of a ritual is described- a ritual through which

one ·loses oneself. The bitter agonies of pessimism and loss of hope and

faith are evident. Even then faith is passionately desired, just to show the

anxiety of the desiring self. Jean Paul Sartre relates the state of human

existence to that of a vegetable (cabbage). Plath speaks of dead crabs

floating in the sea of life. # • ',

I

.. ·' . would appear, then, that in "Lorelei" and "Mussel Hunter at Rock

water and death are looked upon as a means to peace and per­

salvation. This assumption seems to hold also for "The Burnt Out

'' which begins with an exhaustive thorough description of a place • ·• . flarked by decay. In sharp contrast to the messy background.

'

The small dell eats what ate it once

And yet the ichor of the spring

proceeds clear as it ever did

From the broken throat, the marshy lip

(Colossus, p.68)

The folio\\ ing stan;.a, of "'Thc Burnt out Spa" indicate that the poet

61

docs not bdong then: but is deeply interested as this world is inhabited by

'the permanent dwellers'.

The stream that hustles us

Neither nourishes nor heals

(The Colossus p.69)

Thus water is presumed to posses healing and even purifying quali­

ties that we are not allowed to enjoy in life. The same notion seems im­

plicit in "Suicide off Egg rock", which opens with the picture of a man

leaving behind him a beach where-

... the hot dogs split and drizzled

on the public grills, and the ochre's salt

flats,

gas tanks, factory stacks - that landscape

of imperfections his bowels were part of­

Rippled and pulsed in the glass updraught.

(The Colossus p.25)

These lines give us the indication that the man is intimately tied to

the environment. The fact that it is squatted and 'imperfect' provides a

strong determination for the impending suicide. The fatal impact of the

blazing 'un further sanctions man·s determination to depart from life. The

intokrabk heat of the sun pen adcs the poem like a kind of secondary

theme-

Sun struck the water like a damnation

(Colossus p.25)

62

The 'Sun' striking water has a veiled suggestion that the highe,#·

unsympathising Corccs of nature, as well as super nature harshly and mer­

cilessly d~stroy even the spiritual intcntionalities and hopes on earth, sug­

gestively represented by 'water'. The 'seven' (fire) striking the 'water' is

like a damnation. More than anything else the intense heat of the sun

contributes to one's impression that the burden of life has become past

endurance to this man; yet, there is still the instinctive physical resistance

to overcome; his blood is

... beating the old tattoo

I am, I am, I am.

(Colossus p.25)

Unlike the 'water' (spiritual context) which silently bears the on­

slaughts of the merciless process above, the blood (human sense of being)

rebelliously makes desperate assertion 'I am, I am, I am'. According to her

it ·is an 'old tattoo'. Tattoo is a mere verbal inscription, whose validity is

just language born, has no real place of honour or dignity in this discarded -~-,",.,.

.. }.vorld of furious elemental interactions and turmoils. Anything human, '~ " . ,;

·including spiritual prerogatives, has no place. Hence, the world is hatcworthy ~

:"and renouncable, even if it comes to self slaughter.

In the poems "Man in Black" we recognize her deep relationship

with death- gives us an impression that she feels at home with death as a

sal\·ation from the tragedies of life. Thus suicide is resorted to against a

grey sea. headland and cliffs in shades of grey; man suddenly becomes

visihk in hi, dead 'Blad, c·oat. bLtd. ,!Jocs and black hair walking with

long step> tn\\ ards the: end of land There he stands, the very centre of the

elc:mcnh. dra\' 1ng "cr; thing I<'\\ .mb him·

Stones, strode out in your dead

Black coat, black shoes, your

Black hair till there you stood

Fixed vortex on the far

Tip, riveting stones, air,

All of it, together.

(The Colossus p.46)

63

Whoever this strange, suggestive figure-may be an individual, hu­

man being, a personification of death, or a combination of both- one thing

seems fairly clear: ''Man is black" is based on the assumption that there

exists a subtle relationship between death and the sea (or water in general),

similar in kind to the main theme of the poems .

. 'It is important to note that the poems dealing with death by water

almost exclusively belong to the ''Colossus" indeed, Edward Lucie Smith

~ightly argues that it would not "be going too far to say that the sea, and ~ '~ore specially the idea of death by water is the central image of the whole ."< . ~ 4 ~f the first collection."

The Bee-poems are another indication of her struggles of insecurity

111 this \\'orld. Fictional allusions are made to the queen Bee, her dead

father. In the poems. "Lament" and "All the Dead Dears" the references to

bees 111a11Jl~ serve as a kind of sign posts to identify the dead father, who

is explicit!: associated'' ith these in,ccts. a step towards metaphor instead

of mcrcl: pl~1in. fadual rercren~.: \\hich appears in the first stanza of

"Elc(tra on :\/cia Path"." her..: the 11<'11\ln of the lightlcss hybcrnaculum of

64

the b.:.:s IHHJ!d s.:em to symbolize the state of mental sting and shock into

which Electra, the speaker of the poem, was thrown on the occasion of her

father's death. The hibernation of bees is used to indicate some kind of

spiritual death or even death itself. This function has been even more fully

developed in the Beekeepers's daughter, where the daughter's queenship­

the expression very likely suggests her father fixation - is recognized as a

fruit ·that's death to taste': 'dark flesh, dark pairings'. Here the word 'dark

flesh' connotes sacred desires of instinct. The exprssion 'dark pairings'

stated for inner instinctive sublimations cherished through artistic imagi­

nation and dialectic thinking usual in adolescent children and neurotics.

The word bridegroom used later as a form of address to the dead father

further emphasizes the forbidden nature of the father- daughter in felt amoral

relationship, and this is to be confirmed finally in the following line -

"the queen bee marries the winter of your year."

(Colossus p.66)

'Winter' stands for the lost season in the cycle of seasons, thus

;!_randing for old age thus impeding death. It is a naturalilstic fact that the

::.ree has to die as and when it mates the queen bee. Thus the 'winter of your

_fyear' symbolically suggests the old age and death. So, in the world of bees

whenel'(~r the bee meets the queen bee it is old age of ('winter of your

year'), invariably ready for death. There is also a veiled suggestion here

about thi! patricid.: complex which Plath suffered more prominently than

matricide complex. It is a sort of loYc-hate tangle with her father. It is

important to note that Plath ·s fath~r di~d just \\hen she was on the thresh-

old of entering into I\ oman hood. 1\ hen 11 oman starts feeling the pricks of

Electra '''mplo .. Heins .1 fnrhiddcn relationship it becomes a haunting •

65

instinctive: passion.

The above outline of the probable evolution of the bee imagery will '

show that in the poems mentioned, Sylvia Plath above all endeavours to

clarify the complex relationship between the persona and the dead father.

It is noteworthy that the connection between bees and death remains in the

Bee poems. Realistic details referring to the melieu and to bee-keeping arc

thus interwoven with ''the person's seemingly unreasonable fear of death

expressed in a language filled with death symbols,"5

to speak in the words

of Meleander.

Most incidents can, in some way or other, be related to the craft of

bee keeping and thus belong to reality. One is gradually made aware of the

fear of the familiar world.

A presentiment of impending danger is keenly felt from the very

beginning of the sequence. In the first two stanzas of 'Bee Meeting' the .;,_.

po~fseems possessed by a combined feeling of separateness and fear, be-,,.-..

C'Ru;e she does not recognize the villagers, who are 'ali gloved and cov-·" . -

~re.d' and because she feels unprotected: 'I am nude as a chicken neck'.

:ffhe villagers furnish her with the items necessary for the occasion, and she r 'hopes that her protective disguise will help to hide not only her body but

her fear as well:

I am nude as a chicken neck, does nobody love me?

Now I am milbned silk, the bees will not notice

Thev will nnt smell 111\' fear, my fear, my fear.

(!\riel p.60)

lh:r fen in the thrice rcpcatnl ·my fear' suggests the intensity of her

66

fear concerning the impending death of the bee after it meets the queen

bee. It also suggests the strongly infelt passion for her own death in ex­

pressing her keenly infelt desire for death, which goes unnoticed by the

bee. 'My fear' therefore, is death itself as a surely destined eventuality. It

is not the natural death that she intends here. She means her strong death

wish and its possible realization of the death of the self through the death

of the other. There in lies the hint that the bee should 'smell my fear', that

is, her instinctive desire for death. There is a sense of despondency that the

bee would not do it. Symbolically she incarnates herself as death itself.

This is a king of seeking revenge on one's own passion by inflicting ut­

most injury, that is death wish.

This seemingly unreasonable fear refuses to let go its grip on her

and is felt to be steadily increasing throughout the poem. The final set of

questions imply that the root cause of her fear is death. desired and de­

'tcstcd ~imultaneously.

Whose is that long white box in the grove ,

What have they

accomplished, why am I cold

(Ariel p. 62)

In "the Arrival of the Bee Box". the poet's latent fear IS fully re­

vealed:

llow can I kt them out''

It is the noise that appah me most of :1ll

The unintclli:o:ihk "lhhlc-,.

67

Small, taken one by one, but my god, together!

(!\riel p.64)

Allusion to 'Roman mob' evocatively refers to the Roman Judges

and soldiers crucifying Jesus. The closed appended 'Small' indicates the

negligible heroes of Roman mob. It is quite startling that such negligible

creatures crucifying such a divine agent 'my god'. Her hatred of unthink­

ing mob is obvious. She cannot 'let them out'. But like Jesus again, she

cannot counteract or come to conflict with them. The only course left is to

succumb to death like unresisting Jesus. Hints of glorifying death are too

obvious here.

The bee box is a coffin. -She describes her fear by hinting at the fact

that the box contains a swarm of vital elements which could be very dan­

gerous 'I wonder how hungry they are?' (Ariel, p.63). At the same time she

is fascil}ated by the desire to be invaded by them 'I can't keep away from . --· ,.,

it' (J\fld p.64 ). The fear of dying is visible in the infantile unconscious ... ;;.

wd~ ego. There is an anxiety permanently present in such an individual

who realizes his inability to cope under such circumstances- to put up a

struggle to master an internal breakdown threat. This, evidently leads one

~~a death wish. Her own potential internal break down draws her to thi> - ,"\

box of menace. Could this be her regressed libidinal ego? It is certainly

horrible to imagine a dead image of a self made regressed ego. In "Stings"

we can analyse her mental attitude towards what she calls the worker bees

as "unmiraculous women .. (Ariel. p.65).

I am no drudge

And dried pLtto 11 ith 1111· dense hair

68

Plath abhors the cheerful, mechanical life of the worker bees. she

cannot accept this kind of mechanical existence. She affirms strongly that

she does not belong to this kind.

This declaration might be taken as a protest against the woman's

traditional committment to mere domestic duties and simultaneously, as an

implicit plea for her right to maintain her strangeness, that is her anxiety

filled individuality.

The refusal to be a 6

'drudge' evidently involves the risk of not

being accepted by these women who only scurry, but the right to be true

to herself is nevertheless asserted:

... but I

Have a self to recover, a queen

(Ariel p.65)

·, ~r,,

<:c?·Jt is worth noting m this context that as early as 1956 (after her

m.;ii~iage) Sylvia Plath was aware of the dilemma of modern women. Ac--~,~. '

·curding to Ames " .... she had decided 'that I want to keep on being a

· t~iple-threat woman: wife, writer and teacher (to be swaped later for moth­

Jhood; I hope) I can't be a drudge. the way housewives are forced to he 7

·here (in England)"

The final image of the resurrected queen is central to the bee se-

qucncc. A final triumph over contradictions seems to surface- evidently

this can take place only in death. \\'ill she rccoYcr her unique self'? But, it

is not death wherefrom she can rccO\·cr her true sci f- it is from the ritual

of death- rebirth. Such kind of C<'IltrJdictinns ha\·c hccn ohscn cd through­

out her lifc-dcJth Jmagcr; \\hich culmJJLll<:' Jnto an insnhahlc dilemma

69

born of her angst. It is worth the re!lection to deduce whether her attempts

have been from death to rebirth or extrication from her husband, mother,

father or domesticity, society or a victory over the male doing to which her

false self has been servile.

In this seesaw mental struggle, Plath went through a severe conflict

and bouts of anxiety. Anxiety attacks her on a deeper level. Anxiety must

be in the core of the personality. The self-esteem, ·my experience of my­

self as a person', 'my feeling of being worth', all of these are Imperfect

descriptions of what is threatened. "Anxiety is the apprehension cued off

by a threat to some vaiue that the individual holds essential to his exist­

ence as a personality"8

, says Rollo May. The threat may be to physical life;

death to psychological existence; Joss of freedom and meaninglessness.

In Anxiety the security pattern is threatened, Freud and Sullivan describe

it as a "c.osmic" experience. It is cosmic in the sense that it invades us

totally, pii~etrating our whole subjective universe. There is no way of nature ·~.,.,

from.;i(th~ rationalist cause and effect theory of universe. There is some ·*~~-:::' ~.

mi.s.\ing link in the universe which characterizes our inner personality and _, ..

i~if mechanism. Hence, it is cosmic. . ·'

··,

The liberation and ultimate fulfillment of her uniqueness is symbolised

by the upflight of the queen bee:

Now she is flying

More terrible than she ever was, red

Scar in the sky. red comet

Over the engine that killed her-

The mausoleum. the wax house

(:\rei! p.67\

/U

It is evidently only in death, if ever that the queen/the persona will

'recover' her unique self. Life itself is thus sacrificed for the sake of self

realization-not even the mysterious third person who may be Christ,

escapes death:

The bees found him out,

Molding on to his lips like bees

Complicating his features.

(Ariel p.67)

The third person is suggested as Christ is likely due to the expres­

sions used. The third person is called 'a great scape goat the square of

white linen /He wore. instead of a hat'. is probably a reference to the

napkin which had been laid over christ's head when he was buried.( cf. St.

John 20]). "The sweat of his efforts a rain/ Tugging the world to fruit"

""" (Ariel~,,'p:67).may allude to Jesus in Gethsamane (cf.St.Luke, 22:44). ~-·'J~- ' ., )-

.-:-l.' ~

';:· The uniting factor of the several different aspects that make up the -.: -~\- ',

c.6J'flplex thematic pattern of the Bee poems is death and the persona's

.:a:~ivalent response to death. It is true that fear of death is predominant

through out the cycle, but since the recovery of the persona's self seems

incompatible with life (or the drudgery of life), death may be assumed to

be longed for as being the liberator of her unique personality.

The poem "Death & Co ... seems to be an important clue to an under­

standing of ambivalence towards death. because in this poem the two seem­

ingly contradictory strains- !'car ut' death and fascination '' ith it- merge

in the pcrccrtinn of the douhk nature pf lkath:

71

Two, ofcourse there are two

It seems perfectly natural now-

The one who never looks up, whose eyes are lidded

And balled like Blake's

who exhibits

He does not smile or smoke

The other does that,

The two faces speak of the condor and an irresistible lover. The

faces are seen in relation to a projection of herself as dead. The scene

moves from a disgusted imagery of death of the predator, beauty of the

dea!;l bab}es in the hospital to an equally disgusting scene of a selfish lover -':"··

and ~~~ly a vision of her own death.

,-/~~~:(· '

:~'· .. An elucidation of symbolic implication of death figures was made by _,.

~:Vi.a Plath herself in an introductory note written for the B.B .C. program.

~~~ii quoted by Rosenthal and nuns: ._ ... ·',

This poem [ Death & Co.,] is about the double or schizophrenic

nature of death-the marmoreal coldness of Blake's death mask. say, hand

in glove with the fearful softness of worms, water and the other katabolists.

I imagine these

who have come

two aspects 9

to call.

of death as t\\'O men, two business friends,

Confronting with death. 1\hichn·cr di\guisc it chooses. will be fatal,

Inn the rccognitir>n nf death·, dual it;· it, fundamental f<:arfulncss and its

scn\ual attraction- appMcntl~ cnlh in~~ rce('neiliation of these opposing

72

forces, which, I believe, will account for the atmosphere stanza of the

poem, wherein a series of striking metaphors the poet imagines herself in

the repose of death:

I do not stir

The frost makes a flower

The dew makes a star,

The dead bell

The dead bell.

Somebody's done for.

(Ariel p.39)

The counteracting reactions to death are aspects of the same ritual

that express her anxiety and descent into darkness. In some poems like

"Lady Lpiarus" and "Fever l 030" Plath describes the complete destruction

of b9,~:ind personality in a contradictory expression of attitudes. Thus she ,.;?~7-

bdjigs:death and birth into the closest proximity so much so in any reader,

"~dtound contradictory feelings are released towards existence,'"1 0

to quote YJ.•

· ~leander. All this drama, the undulating seemingly close affinity to death ."';~

. ·i~·only a concealed, renewed desire to live. She is torn apart in these .< ' -.;

txistential counters of death and life arousing in her turbulant waves of

anxiety. And yet, one can notice in her poetry an admirable consistency

leading one to artistic, imaginary poetic sublimity.

If one ha:; to observe any of her late poems. about life and death. one

wouldn't escape the terror of the existential realities. One such instance

where life and death arc so closcl: related as not to be distinguishable is

"A IliqJlda\ j'rc;~c!1t"·. One gets to sec ho'' Plath merges

the two unagc' of ·cutting· :Jnd "birth'.

"And the knife not carve but enter

Pure and clean as the cry of a baby"

(Ariel, p.48)

73

The irony behind these lines is that only death could satisfy the poet

as her birthday present. But, then, the final image gives another dimension

to the death wish: Plath wants to go back to the purity, innocence of her

infancy as an alternative to the unwithstandable present.

A word used by the poet in "Years" and "Ariel" to denote equal

balance among opposing tendencies is 'stasi:f. In these two poems a form

of existence .is revealed that is even more desirable than static equilibrium:

0 God, ..

Stars stuck all over, bright, stupid confetti

Eternity bores me,

what I love is

The piston in motion­

my soul dies before it.

And the hooves of the horses,

Their merciless churn.

And you, great stasis-

what is so great in that'

(:\rkl p.73)

Stasis i'. it arrears. not r,, he cqu.dlcd to eternll~ 111 its sense of

74

everlasting bliss in the future life - such a state of mere stillness is

recognized as boredom. what is wanted is 'the piston in motion', an ex­

pression which probably stands for an ideal form of life that is superior to

most others because of its pulsating rhythmic motion contntstatic balance,

are juxtaposed, and no attempt at reconciliation is made, as the concluding

lines clearly show:

The blood berries are themselves, they are very still.

The hooves will not have it,

In blue distance the pistons hiss.

(Ariel p. 73)

Esther Greenwood's one moment of unqualified happiness occurs

when on 'skis she doesn't know how to use schusses down a slope. She

describeS: one such event in the Bell Jar. t·

I felt my lungs inflate with the inrush

of scenery-air, mountains, trees, people.

I thought, this is what it is to be happy.

I plummeted down past the zigzaggers,

the students, the experts, and smiles and

compron11se, into my own past.

(p.72)

In the narration of Plath one can observe a moment of jov and ex-. . -

citcmcnt. It is ncar patching up of a sore past as she absorbed the smiles

of the experts and the cheers of the students. She cunnccts this incident

with her unfulfilled past.

75

But in other poems, 'the crumbling of the public persona and the

'solicitations' of the inner world' (The Bell Jar, p.72) are expected not

with exhilaration, as a soaring release after long confinement but, in the

words of Steiner "with anxiety and dread a sense of being in the grip of

an implacable force riding her irresistibly to no good end:"11

.... the wind

Pours by like destiny, bending

everything in one direction

(Collected poems, p.248)

Then the I?istons shriek and the hoofbeats appal:-

The train is dragging itself, it is screaming­

An animal

Instance for the destination,

The blood spot

The face at the end of the flare.

(Collected poems, p.249)

In the above line, she confirms her fears about getting caught in the

dreadful anxiety and she finds no escape. Her helplessness is expressed,

when she says 'bending everything in one direction'. She contemplates

also on the 'dragging·. "train· that seems to have one destination and the

poet is left with no alternatives - she is just dragged to OJle awful end.

The ego is reduced to numb hclp!c,sm:ss by the solicitations of the ghosts

it called up hut cannot control· ··Riddkd \\ ith ghosts. to lie Deadlocked

with them" (The Colossus. p.20i. It 'tands helpless hcfnrc its own disso-

lution:

See, the darkness is leaking from the cracks.

I cannot contain it. I cannot contain my life.

(Collected poems, p.249)

76

The poem is leading one to an abysmal pit of hopelessness and utter

despondency. There seems no way out but to end in death. Various images

are brought into the poem to show the helplessness and the utter impossi­

bility of living-and living can be only in death.

The concepts are changing in a quick kalidoscopic succession: hope

and joy in life, despondency and death and now the final image of her

existential counter arrives at rebirth.

~r/er the experience of deep despair, Plath seems to assert with ·~·l, .

. . rene':"~ vigour and an energetically creative spirit that she would rise . . ' (:,}:-"'·· fr~·death with a message of liberation .

. ;; ·-

An idea of life after death is implied m "Lady Lazarus:"

Out of the ash

I rise with my red hair

And 1 eat men like air

(Aril p.I6)

To judge from the metaphorical correspondence of th.c last stanza o t'

"Lady Lazarus·· to the final stanzas of ":\riel" and "Stings·· quoted above,

one can cornfortahly assure the prospect of rebirth. But then this rebirth

wish is onl: a dcsir..: .. 1 '' j,!J ruJ filmcnt t>n 111sincti\'c cherishing just to

77

suggest the arduous and painful nature of life in contrast to what might

happen in the after life. A better state of existence in the after life she

suggests is a poetic contrast, and as such merits as pathetic fallacy. "Pa­

thetic fallacy" is a phrase invented by John Ruskin (Modern Painters, Vol

Ill pl.IV). According to him a writer was pathetically fallacious; he as­

cribed human feelings to the inancinate. For Ruskin himself it was a de­

rogatory term because it applied, so he said, "not to the true appearances

of things to us, but to the extraordinary or false appearances, where we are

under the influence of emotion or contemplative fancy,"12

Almost all the

confessional poets luxuriate in pathelic fallacy and Sylvia Plath outdid

them all.

In "Ariel", however, this aspect is more vaguely felt than in "stings··,

but on the other hand these two poems have a similar final emphasis on

triumph in death which seems close to the idea of rebirth as expressed in ,._, ..

"LadyFarus". Besides, in varying degrees and by means of different sets

of i!li~ges in other respects "Ariel", "Stings", and "Lady Lazarus" also

s~~m. to involve the idea of liberation and perfection in death . . ~ t ..

• <~ "Lady Lazarus" brings to mind the Biblical account of Lazarus threat­~ ~f.'-~· e~ to rise 'Out of the ash'. The concept of dying and being reborn, which ~J.

"fs such an important thematic aspect of the poem, is thus moulded in a

form made up by familiar elements. Sylvia Plath's own comment clarifies

our understanding:

She wrote the following note on '"Lady Lazarus" for the B.B.C.:

The speaker is a 1\'0!11~11 11ho lws the great and terrible gift of being

reborn. The only trouble is. she ha~ tn die first. She is the phoenix, the

libertarian spirit. what 10u \\ill She i' also ,iust a gnod. plain. \'cry re­I.'

sourceful woman.

78

In several poems the idea of d<:ath 's purifying function is introduced

as a complement to. the concepts of rebirth and perfection. Occasional!y

too, a longing for purity and/or perfection is sensed in Plath's early poetry

as well.

In "Medallion", we witness the two strains of purity and perfection

come together where we notice the description of a dead snake:

Knife like, he was chaste enough

Pure death 's metal. The yardman's

Flung brick perfected his laugh

(Colossus p.53)

As has been discussed earlier the idea of perfection in death is fused

into the ,tpematic patterns of "Stings" and "Ariel." "Lady Lazarus" con­-·::!

. tains tq;!;:_following declaration in which an unusual, even perverted form q-J~.. .

,- ~:~.

ofay~6mplishment is asserted:

Dying

Is an art, like everything else.

I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.

I do it so it feels real.

I guess you could sav I've a call.

(Ariel p.l7)

Long ago. Thomas De Quincy the author of "Confessions of an Opium

Eater'". \HOle :~n en\ iabk per,<>nal c'sa\ on '"thunder as Fine Art"'. Plath

79

fine art. In fact she is not in love with suicide; she is ardently in love with

committing suicide. All the co11 fcssionals have a unique weakness of de­

claring at the pitch of their poetic voice as to what all that happens in their

personal experiences with the intention of sympathetic nod of confirmation

of the public. They do it by way of piling up erratic and startling images

on images. They know the secret that constant and repeated verbalisation

of anything through the confidential confessional techniques of expression

renders the thing said into a truthful proposition. Hence, Plath constantly

speaks of her passionately intended desire for committing suicide.

She is quite successful in her poetic mission of glorifying suicide as

against the pains of life. She poetically exploits the widest spread frustra­

tions and maribound thoughts of people in general and confections her

poetic artifacts in such a profound manner that they receive for themselves

a mome~~ary assenting nod in their passionate poetic moments of enjoying

what ~~· says. The readers are her confidential clerks. They sympatheti­

caliy•~are with what all she says even when it is about her need to commit J , : r· ,· .•

~iicfge. For a moment they too fall in love with the idea of committing ~ ... . .

·. sJ(hide. Thus the intended poetic transmission is complete and successful. . J'-.'~{

':~t the reading public have their own pursuits to fall after such a capsuled ~:-

r!J'oments of erratic thoughts and feelings.

These lines in "Ladv Lazarus" emphasize the skill that is needed for

a successful suicide and should be <;een in relation to those stanzas of the

poem which display the document of exhibitionism that probably belongs

to certain form' of suicidal urge. \\'hat is remarkable about-the poem is the

objectivity with which she handles such personal material. Talking about

one's death. analysing one's suicide m~thods can only he an outcome of

one's inner turhulcnce. That thl' f<'Pt of her suffering was the death of her

80

father whom she loved, who abandoned her and who dragged her after him

into death comes to ·Surface. Plath defies this act of dying as a "call' and

in it she finds rebirth with a message of liberation. Hence, death becomes

an act of purification.

"Birthday Present" ends with the following urgent appeal for the

present to be given her which contains even larger variety of subtle con­

notations:

There would be a nobility then, there would be a birthday

(Ariel p.SO)

The ambiguity of the expression 'there would be a birthday' in the

penultimate stanza is striking and proves yet another variation on the re­

birth motif . . ,~, ~ .. . ~::r

th'e poet's increasingly sublimated feeling of being purged of pain ~f:~.--'

and:~i'n before rising to paradise is seen in "Fever 1030". This poem is \<)~;·

a,i!l\iu't acute illness for the person's feverish fantasies. - ' ~· ~- .

Here purification in death is, as it were, taken a step further towards

~in even more lucid revelation of purity than noted before. The fact that the '!-:

.poet chooses a state of hallucinatory fever as an excuse for dealing with

purification in its rather narrow religious sense may be interpreted as a

sign of her scepticism of Christian dogma.

It ts worth noting Sylvia Plath's opinion about religion

and cold ;111d i,!f'llll 1<' me :\II the a\\ ful emphasis

to donothing but through Christ. But I do

want Frieda (her daughter) to have the

experience of. Sunday SchooL so I may keep

up the unsatisfactory practice of going

to church, although I disagree with almost

everything." (pp.l?0-171)14

81

Esther's father, like Sylvia Plath's is in his grave, and she has not

been happy since the age of nine, when he died. Daddy is in the world of

death- and the suicide has just gone there. Since the mother has shown

no understanding in her face, and 'Doctor Gordon 15

does not understand

the message of the hand writing perhaps the answer is there, in George

Plucci's "look as He faced death?" perhaps the answer to the problem of

existence lies through that face, in the death world. . "'

Jl: ' ,1if: I\lf''The Bell Jar" there are many indications that Esther's problem ""•" . . ·::~·~:-

is an.Jftsubstantial identity, which is craving to become substantial enough ' :~i.

t9Jive: "I felt myself melting into the shadows like negative of the person

{~·~never seen before in my life (p.l 0). On pp. 21-2 she takes a hot bath ·;~~~' '

"'Y;i)ich is described as if it were a rebirth, and hears voices whispering two ·.Jr

:different names at the door, 'as if I had a split personality'. Another

:tharacter is described as starting at her reflection in the glossed shop .

windows as if to make sure, moment by moment, that she continued to

exist. These are recurrent themes in Sylvia Plath's work.

Reading the novel. we arc continually aware. th~t Sylvia Plath's

world was full of possibility of non-existence. But this is also associated .

• in the future. just as death-in rebirth is resorted to from fear of a loss of

intentional \·ision. The figs on her imaginary tree of fulfillment turn black

82

and drop; and like the protagonist of the poem "The Disquieting Muses",

Esther tries to become a woman but cannot. Increasingly there is a loss of

the capacity for creative becoming, in future. Trying in her insomniac fan­

tasies, to imagine a future stretching away like telegraph poles, Esther says

in "The Bell Jar"

I saw the years of my life spaces along a road in the

form of telegraph poles, threaded together by wires. l

counted one ... two ... three ... nineteen telegraph poles,

and then the wires dangled into space, and try as I would,

I couldn't see a single pole beyond the nineteenth.

( p. 76)

David Holbrook says, "She had in her private phenomenology, a

fatally false sequence in her logic: she believed that death could be path­

way to 'f~birth, so that her suicide was a schizoid suicide. Again, this ,, ~·

< ,:':· •

cannot:'tie discussed without reference to the atmosphere of the contempo-·7{;:;.

rary. irts which displays at this moment a dangerous rejection of life, moving . ,. '-'' 16 t~0-w"ards Nihilism an abandonment to hate."

.· ··-~· ..

. . . Ted Hughes, the former divorced husband of Sylvia gives his analy-... •!!. ...... ~ -

~'t· of the existential counters of Sylvia- what he calls as ritual scenario

<for the heroine's symbolic death and rebirth. The mythic scheme of violent

. initiation, in which the old self dies and the true is born, or the child dies

and the adult is born, or the base animal dies and the spiritual self is born,

which is fundamental to the major works of Lawrence and Dostoyevski, as

well as to Christianity. can be said to have preoccupied her. As far as she

was concerned. her escape from her past and her conquest (\f the future. 0r

in more immediate. real terms her \\ell hein~ fn•m d:~~ '" da~ and even her

83

pose this re-interpretation on her own history, within her own mind, and

how potently her home made version of the rite could give sustaining

shape and positive direction to her psychological life. "Her novel had to

work," says, Ted Hughes, "as both the ranking of the mythic event and

the liturgy, so to speak, of her own salvation." 17

All human beings go through the experience of suffering and death

to various degrees depending upon their sentient natures. Every encounter

between living beings and nature can be a confrontation with death or with

the richness of life that is experienced at all levels of existence and in all

activities. But, for Plath, death seems to have occupied all the objects and

forms of the world ever since she lost her father. Father loss is a haunting

trauma all through her life. In poetry it becomes a motivating factor, a

momentum maker. For her, at every turn, death seems to reduce all living

beings. Ai> a result, Plath made hectic efforts to transcend these psychic • -':,t

implicat'fbns through her poetry. Thus in "Fever 1 030" the speaker be-,'"'"-

com~t~the virgin, ascending to heaven in "Lady Lazarus", she is red haired .. ,

deri;6n resurrecting from the ashes, in "Ariel", she is an arrow shot to the ·. l

~tfrt; in "Purdah" a fierce lioness. The world is full of alternating and

;~htradictory forces of persecution and inertness. In such a world Plath ~ ::.,

Jakes recourse to the forces of death in a realm of darkness. Stuck with this

,Phenomenon, says Meleander, "her poetry mirrored the passivity of non

being."18

In poems like "Ariel.; and ''Winter Trees", Plath longs to be

reborn through sun, sky and water.

What Sylvia Plath repeatedly tried to achieve through. her poetry was

a control over her psyche which cost her a life long struggk. In her poetry

which was. to a large extent. consistent. Plath tried to portray "a momen­lq

tary ordering of the s:mho]<; of life and d.:ath" t,, •1lh'tl' \lckarH!cr again

84

MANIPULATION OF FALSE SELVES

Syl~ia Plath is constantly prickled by the feeling of emptiness within ·

her leading her into moments of insecurity. Mixed up with the impulse to

be reflected was a tendency to make false selves, out of fragments, scraps

and shadows .

. . . . they stuck me together with glue

(Daddy, Ariel, p.54)

I see myself as a shadow, neither man nor woman

(Three women, The Collected Poems, p. 157)

The poem "Daddy" is about her despondency, desparation of having

lost someone whom she thought was a god. She made several attempts to

commit suicide and when she failed in the first attempt at the age of

twenty~¥' she says, 'they stuck me together with glue'. She failed in the ';!~

atte~~t of suicide, she thought a new life started, a new self has emerged . . ~;~~~. -

.· TJfe whole poem is like 'a runaway train barrelling through one psychic ... :~·~ '

!;·::nightmare after another' and when it comes to a standstill the last line ~ ~·

::·~ads, "Daddy, Daddy, you bastard, I'm through" as if relieving Plath from • .• l"C•.

~ .. ~-.: "her tormentor- a new life to live.

In ··Three Women" (Collected Poems, p.l76) she becomes a shadow,

not a living person. The intensity of the imagery is matched with the viv­

idness of "Colos:;ul'_". Her emotional experience takes various shapes of

her self as often as her psychological mood changes.

··/\rid .. is a poem of the ·identity' casting itself into innumerable

struggks.

85

The poem is about riding her favourite horse. Alvarez points out that

you can hardly find the horse. She becomes one with the horse-

Hauls me through the air-

Thighs, hair,

Flacks from my heels

(Ariel p.36)

All the attention of the poem is on her inner joy at losing herself in

the excitement of a morning ride. Yet this assertion of vitality, character­

istically, is expressed in terms of a movement towards a transformation­

death.

Am the arrow

The dew that flies

Suicidal, at one with the drive

Into the red

Eye, the cauldron of morning.

(Ariel pp.36-37)

Existentialists propagate the idea that one is a 'person'; and such

)nC has the freedom and choice to live his own life as one likes. By

person' they mean to imply that one's personality is always unique. It is

1ot like manY. On the other hand it is aJ\,·ays none like anv. . - .

She becomes the de'' and the den is inYol\·cd 111 a drive into this

·cauldron· It 'llic~ ~uiciclal'- a stratH!C \\3\ of regarding the normal ex-. ~ - ~ -

86

Is symbolic of new life- rebirth and beginning.

There are recurrent images in Sylvia Plath of a swarm or pack, with

related images of eating and stinging: identities are exposed or disguised

by gloves or veils; there are recurrent images of losing the contents of

one's inside, or having harm thrust into one, against which implosion some

protection needs to be worn.

There are also images of vulnerability, and images of covering within

which there is nothing, or masks which disguise. Often she exploits the

problem of not being able to piece the self together, in relation to the

problem of not being able to put the object together and this leads to a

complex problem which seems to become acute over her images of the

male object. He is 'Napoleon', 'the bees', 'Daddy', ·the man with asbesto,

gloves', 'the concentration camp doctor'; she is a 'grain of rice' or 'a

pebble', 'a bundle of violent clubs', confused with her manipulated self.

-~ . ,We can sum up all these images by using the word 'Depersonaliza-·" -·~ l

. tion\ Laing ( 1960) uses this term about his patients and his words could

~~·applied to Sylvia Plath's use of many of her figures: . '.:•

The people in focus here tend to feel themselves as more or less

ilepersonalized and tend to depersonalize others; they are constantly afraid

of being depersonalized by others. The act of turning him into a thing is

for "him'" actually petrifying. ln the act of being treated as an "it" his own

subjectivity drains away from him like blood from the face. Basically he •

rcqutrcs constant confirmation from others of his own existence as a per-20

son.

This kind nf requiring "cpmtant confirmation· from (1\hcrs in order

87

nature. In an introvert there is always that tendency of ravmg for the

acceptance of his dcfl)rmcd world view to be acknowledged by others.

!'lath is always conscious of the !'act that her ·own existence as a person'

not as one among many speaks for her craving for altogether new and

controversial images and metaphors. She gloats and prides on standing on

controversial and questionable grounds even when it amounts to brooding

on crime as a first payable act.

Laing then gives an account of how a girl dreams of turning into

stone in order to avoid being turned into stone by someone else. "lt seems

to be a general law that at some point those very dangers most dreaded can

themselves be encompassed to forestall their actual occurrence; to con­

sume oneself by one's own love prevents the possibility of being consumed 21

by another" . This illuminates both Sylvia Plath's impulse to suicide and

her searcl,1 for purity, as though rirc is a failure to sustain a sense of one's

own being without the presence of other people. It is a failure to be

oneself, a failure to exist alone. An individual who depends so desperately

upon identification is lost, and this explains how deprivation can be fol­

lowed by desperate acts as in "A Birthday Present":

There would be nobility then, there would be a birthday.

And the knife not carve, but enter

Pure and clean as the cry of a baby,

And the universe slide from my side.

(Ariel p.SO)

'I he dnpcrate ;1rl hnc '' ,c·Ir .Jilllihilation under the· prct..::-.;t of a

rebirth. Thcreh: she \\;Jnl> I<' '11)-')-'L''I th.11 'he would not g.i,·c the pri,·ilegc

88

Mortio (the death instinct). Therein lies her subjective sense of achieve­

ment and victory.

22 The contempt she shows for "appearance" is taken to show her

strength. But this assumes too easily that she could judge these from her

own secure self. Her contempt for conventional gestures, traditional cus­

toms is a contempt for the false self in herself for the mechanical modes,

inauthentic responses, which are attempts to establish a self in the world.

A good deal of her scratching irony is directed at the conformity of the

false self which is being-for-other. It is this false self we see pieced

together at the end of the "Poem for a Birthday" (as given above). In

"Crossing the Water", she writes,

It is Monday in her mind; morals

Launder and present themselves.

(Crossing the Water p.23)

#« ~Monday as the first day of the week, is the day for the domestic

· <,itttre's of women. Plath criticizes the mechanical role of a woman in the '1'• •• or

s'ocicty. Her only wori-; is to be busy with the household chores. This is a '! '

scathing verbal attack on the customs of the day which again, is a reflec­

.. tion of her false self.

In ·'Totem" she speaks about the routine work of people. It is some-

thing like a journey without an cml.

There is no tnminus. on[\ suitcases

Out of which the sam.: sclf unfolds like a suit

Bald and shin:. "ith pod~ch of wishes.

89

I am mad, calls the spider, waving its many arms.

(Ariel p. 77)

The 'wishes, notion ar.d tickets' however, are not the common delu­

sions and aspirations of the society treated with open satire. They are the

pathetic scraps and oddments by which the schizoid individual tries to

assemble some kind of self, submerged into the mechanical duties of living

in Our times. Two hands are not enough; therefore 'calls the spider, wa1-

ing its many arms.'

Sylvia Plath is 3peaking with vehemence her distaste towards the

role of woman in the society. The role of a wife, mother and the limitations

of a woman are looked down by her. She feels that the woman is trapped

in a fixed tole thrust upon her by the society. She hates the experience of

coercion.;by the society to play the role thrust upon her as woman. ·'1 -

!,he problem is discussed in the ''Three women". A false identity '•, '

seen¥ '·to have been thrust upon one protagonist almost by a Leda-like ':-"

irtoh!station through deception. Along with the mechanical domestic chores :. "..:: -·· slfe ·also hates the forced procreational role thrust on women . •..

Stars and showers of gold ... conceptions, conception

And the great swan ...

..... his eye had a black mcanlllg

I saw the world in it - small. mean and black.

Every little 11 ord hooked to c1·cry little word.' and act to act.

(\\'inter I rces. Collected Poems p. 176)

The ·n]ack mcan1n,c rcfn, to the h1ddcn carnal intcnti<>:ls of men.

90

They arc 'small, mean and black.' They are highly detestable for women.

"Black Rook in Rainy Weather" reveals that Sylvia uses childish

magic to resolve her lil'c's problems through incantations and rituals. Such

a resort to magic out of feeling of deficiency in one's sense of identity

arises out of lack of confidence in !he present and the future. David

Holbrook says, " . .,from moment to moment Sylvia Plath's protagonists

cannot deal from a secure self, with a world: sometimes the world seems

to contain terrible, impressible ghosts, which she cannot allay or assuage."23

Psychoanalytical theory asserts that the capacity to see the world in

a meaningful way is linked with the capacity to love and the experience of

being loved. Without this kind of rich security of love experience, the

capacity for meaningful seeing cannot follow. Her poetry represents an

immense;attempt to overcome what she calls neutrality and to exert ere-'

ative i~ffntionality in perception. She does not want to be deceived by the

tell -tale fairy tale fabric of happiness in the world. She only knows the -. 'rook' that orders 'its black feathers' disturbed by the flight. Flight of the

:rook implies its sublime engagement with life. It is that felt sublimities of

the rook that momentarily detract her attentions from 'fear of total neutral­

}ty.' This 'fear of total neutrality' implies the unassured nature of life

constantly and continually threatened by the forces of annihilation and

negation. Mortio (death instinct) is the greatest annihilator of ali.

Of whate\·cr angel may choose to flare

Suddenly at my elbow. l only kno~v that a rook

Ordcrint! ih black feathers can so shine

My eyelids up, and grant

A brief respite from fear

of total neutrality.

(The Colossus, p.35)

91

She dreads the loss of meaning. Her problem becomes one which has

been expressed by many poets. In a story by Walter De La Mare a character

says, "I have come to the end of things. For me the spirit, the meaning,

whatever you like to call it-has vanished, gone clean out of the world, out

. 1' 24 I ot what we call rea 1ty." This is the central prob em for the modern

artist, when a confidence in love fails. There can also be a loss of confi-

dence in a benign universe, and so meaning seems to dissolve. while the

held on reality breaks down, and hope dissolves into futility.

According to some critics there is a kind of "Symbolic Ossification''

going oh throughout "Ariel" and "Colossus" poellls that reduces the indi­

vidl.lal to a thing. This is a process where the feelings are deadened, the

·aesthetic sense has come to its end, the sensitivity is hardened and there

is. loss of ability to feel tenderness and love. Thus speaking of the huge

s·tatue, the poet labourer finds it hard to reconstruct and feels hopeless, . '

·unproductive leading to a realization that the original ideal vision is get-

· ling lost.

.... ! encounter one

.... improbabk person

Framed in a basket of cattails.

0 she is gracious and austere.

seated beneath the toneless water'

It j, nnt I. it j, not I

92

Her poems arc full of confessional allusions to her frigidity and

incapacity to share joy in the intimate interpersonal moments. Because of

this reason she becomes voilent and raving on encountering maL

conc.upiscent gestures. The 'improbable person framed in a basket of cat­

tails' is one such abhorant image, 'cattails' connoting at the wild manners

the-cats exhibit through their tails by way of inviting the partner for a love

act. Cats 'love affairs' (mating) are always associated with sky rending

howl and cries probably suggesting at the physically painful nature of cats'

love acts. But then the female counterpart is 'gracious and austere' sug-

gesting that the she-cat is mute and submissive to the he-cat. The use of

'austere' is very significant. It means the she-cat remains pure in this

forced love act upon her, as absolutely nothing happens to her in the sense

of sharing pleasure, remains unvoilatcd of her modesty and virginity. 'Seated

beneath the toneless water' is vibrant enough in suggesting as to how cold

she remain in love. The 'toneless(ness)' of the (cold) water implies the

impo~bility of expressing that state of conditibn l.h Janguage. Such is the J~ ~

un~~kable nature of personal experience, whether it is painful or joyful.

It always puts a person in existential crisis and the thinking self falls into

an 'either'!' or' delimma. The self doubt is clear in twice repeated 'It is not

I'. The tonal vibration suggests 'it is she'.

In a world where there is no hope, no real voice in the midst of 25

"imaginative dross and dysfunction'' , to borrow the expression of Mary

Lynn Bore. the poet realizes her own failures in "'The Colossus"' poems. In

th<.: lines above the poet sees her Ol\'11 image fixed and static. lifeless and

mute but aesthetically fixed ('a basket of cattails'). The poet expresses the

horror of identification 11ith the lifeless statue ('it is not !") and under-

stands the full meaning of her hclplc,;snc-;s and dcspondc'nc~ as being-in-

93

Plath is able to see directly a void, a nothingness when she finds

herself voiceless, passive, meaningless and uncontributory. The sense of

the self-in-the-world falls apart when the experience of reality begins to

elude comprehension and concreteness.

For a minute sky pours into the hole like plasma

There is no hope, it is given up.

(Berck-Plagc, Ariel p.30)

In a paper on "Alice and the red king, A Psychoanalytical view of

Existence"26

an American psychoanalytic discusses the kind of need in

human beings expressed in the text "Thou God seest me". Dr. Solomon

quotes a patient's dream: "There is a giant lying on the grass. There is a '

big cirde above him indicating that he is dreaming (like in the comic .27

strips).':

.. ,#h" in the dream just doing ordinary things. "I" get the idea that ''!"

exl.~t only in his dream. It is important for him to stay asleep. because if 28

he wakes up, "I" will disappear. This is a tremendous fear.

Sylvia Plath, is continually seeking to be seen in this way: m mlr-

.. rors, in water, in eyes, she seeks for some rc!lcction. Often, however. she

finds nothing but a stony gaze. The most substantial clement in her my­

thology is the cracked Colossus who sees nothing with eyes in which she

is buried:

The hald. 11 hitc tumuli of your eyes.

(The Coi(1SSllS. p.l2)

94

A similar image is described by Solomon as the predicament of his

patient who existed only in the mind of her Colossus. David Holbrook

describes how Plath attempts to develop her own temporary ego and exist­

ence through the hatred towards her father and mother. She projected a

good image of herself into the mind of the father, as demonstrated by her

dream. It also became evident that she reintroduced the male image of her

father into herself. This led to her father into herself. This led to her

acquiring his masculinity as a spurious identity. She also displaced and

projected her hostility to her mother on to her father. fortifying her O\\ n

fears of his actual power over her. Defensively, her helplessness was also

projected outwardly, allowing her to feel powerful and bony over the a'­

sumed helplessness of others, which gave her a reason for her existence 29

and created a form of temporary ego mystery".

~he development of the infant's perception of the 'not me' is bound <· ' up wi,th a sense of meaning of the seen world. The mother has to allow

~"':· ;$

hi1~:,at first, to believe that he is creating his w0rld, and gradually as he .:~'",

cr~ates it he finds it and he perceives it as meaningful. This is her way of

being for him, allowing him to make use of her. This is the analysis of i 30

Winnie ott's.

In the light of Winnicott's analysis, to see a meaningful world is to

sec it with all one's being: this is apperception. What keats called ''a

greeting of the spirit" in our capacity to perceive the world in a meaningful

way. depends therefore. upon the degree to which the mother, by respond­

ing to us in her face, makes us feel real and ali\'C. and.ahlc to get back

from the world what \\C gin~ t)f our,ch cs. by confirming us, and bringing

out in us the capacity for "crcatiH ltl<'king". To Sy!Yia Plath it seems that

if the mother's face can he nwllillcd. all ''ill he \\ell. llut this nonreflection

can bring m the words of D.W.Winnicott agam:

.... a threat of chaos, and the baby will organize withdrawal,

or will not look except to perceive, as a defense. A baby so

treated will grow up puzzled so about mirrors and what the

mirror has to offer. If the mother's face is unresponsive,

then the mirror is a thing to be looked at but not looked into 31

Sylvia Plath wrote:

Mirrors can kill and talk; they are terrible rooms

In which a torture goes on one can only watch

.95

The face that lived in this mirror is the face of a dead man

Do not worry about the eyes

(The Courage of Shutting up, Winter Trees p.20)

Ralph Slatter and Harold Kelmon explain Horney's view in order to

describe the mental state of a person who is caught up in an existential

dilemma:

"The tyranny of the Should" ( ) forces the person to mould himself 32

into his "idealized image''. He is driven to be perfect: he commands

himself to think, feel and do what he should. However. no matter how hard

and long he struggles. the person cannot attain the sought after perfection.

partly because he dcm<l11ds C\\lllradictor: thmgs of himself and proba\··,.

because p.:rkction is unatt;llnahlc. I he inc\·itablc outcome is a chronic

scn'c of strain <tnd c~hau,li<'JI \ 'ltJJtLJIL'k the p.:rsnn lllay dc.:,elnp feelings

of guilt. f:tilurc. dcfc;tt. di,;p;tir. h<'J'Cicssncss. helplessness. and dcpr..:,­

'1<'11. All lhL·<;e ;trc I ill' kit '' J1l!'l••llts ,,f r<'Pted anxict\· and 1ndicate the

96

existential cnsrs.

According to the psychoanalysts, in one's interpersonal relationships,

the neurotic person constantly makes irrational demands for approval, sym­

pathy, admiration, respect, obedience, freedom and the like. Again and

again these claims are frustrated, and, as it seems to him, unfairly so the

outcome is a mounting sense of being cheated and he experiences anger

and ultimately, despair.

The manic phase is a flight from self hate and the resultant suffering

and feelings of irredeemable worthlessness to an irrational conviction of

being one's proud self with limitless energy and power. This braving, being

a false self invoked mask, is highly dangerous and detrimental. It is in

such moments of unfounded bravery and heroism that one resorts to nega­

tive ac~ons. Such negative action could well be committing suicide or

intlictiiig torture and murder on others. This is the manner of a psycho-~-:t

pathAl'95uicidal attempts may occur when the person moves up from the /:Pit!

..... ·.-;_,:.;;

d~Jts of depression; they may also occur; he starts to move down into

depression and into the prospect before him. Suicide is the prospect before

him. Suicide is the person's way of giving up the struggle and ending his

·suffering by sinking permanently into oblivion. It is also a way to punish

one's torturers who are the people onto whom self-torturing forces have

been externalized. In agitated depression there is a large component of

anxiety. which is the person's response to his violent self-hate and disrup­

tive conllicts. In the so called smiling depressions self-hate becomes so

intense that it acts as a narcotic. deadening the painful suffering.

The indi\ idua\ cxpnience' ,,·If-hate· in all forms or being directed at

him by other:-. The h"'tdit: CP!lln <>llt tnchrc:ctl: as C<>ntinuing complaints.

97

despair is the person's awareness that he cannot live spontaneously and

authentically, without strain, inner division and anxiety. He becomes help­

less because he cannot be his real self.

SEARCH FOR/ IDENTITY

After the birth of her daughter, Frieda, the real poems began in

1960. It is as though the child were a proof of her identity, as though ll

liberated her into her real self. I think this guess is borne by the fact that

her most creative period followed the birth of her son, two years later. This

triggered off an extraordinary outburst: for two or three months, right up

to her death, she was writing one, or two, sometimes three poems a day,

seven days a week, she said in a note written for B .B.C. :

These new poems of mine have one thing in common they '~

:Were all written at about four in the morning-that still blue. ~ .. -'almost eternal hour before the baby's cry, before the glassy

music of the milkman, setting his bottles.33

That sea imagery and an enveloping blackness accompany her re­

turn to her element ID what we might expect. Sylvia Plath herself under-,

stood the suicide attempt as an effort to rejoin her father, to appear before

him free from the tight, but life preserving. social self she had wrapped

herself in-

And l. stepping from this skin

of old bandages. boredoms. old faces

1 lh<.: Cnlk.:tcd l'oc1m. p. 221)

98

Poetic expression of strong vexations at the monotony of life is one

thing, suggesting at the oblique determination of suicide is another. 'This

skin/Of old bandages, boredoms, old faces' may appear to be a sort of

normal, poetical excitations and revolt at the monotony of life of practical

realities. But hidden behind it arc the ever forming wholes of determina­

tion to forge and shun life itself as the only way of gaining vicrry and

freedom. There is, an inherent bleak contradiction in the use of ·~Jack car

of Lethe' and 'Pure as a baby'. The memory of the 'blackness' of the car

that she travels on Lethe is the point and it speaks for the anxiety filled

ambivalence in her imagination. This also reveals that she has a morbid

attachment with life. But 'Pure as a baby is a coinage emerging out of

pathetic fallacy. As a poetic expression the whole passage is quite gripping

and movmg.

T~~. suicide attempt of 1953 did not succeed. She was found hospi­

talized{.and subjected to a course of therapy that included treatment of ~'! -

'-<~.

electrl'c shock. By midwinter she was back at Smith, and in the words ol

St~i~er, "Facing and constructing the old wrecked life- new and strong"34

Apd at the end of the term, the false, flat, bright, insistent voice of the go­

getter is back in the scrapbook to claim, continues Steiner quoting the

.~vords of Plath "exams and papers I hadn't lost either my repetitive or my

creative intellect as I had feared .... a semester of reconstruction ends with

an infinitely more solid if less llashingly spectacular flourish than last

vcar's"35

But Nancv lluntcr Steiner's "/\closer look at Ariel". the closest ' '

look at Sylvia Plath \\'C ha\ c. tells us that the reconstructed "typical Ameri­

can girl. the product of a hundred ) cars of middle class propriety was 36

suffering from something like <'lltP!ogical insccurit\.

99

existential counters of inherent rear and dread, to arrive at the conclusion

that she was reconstructed into a ·typical American girl etc. is not convinc­

ing.' The very 'reconstruction' is against her will and sanction. Her emo­

tional self - she takes all her practical and poetic decisions on an excited

emotional plane could not reconcile and readjust with the 'reconstruction'

itself. There is nothing particularly American about it. Her stricken human

self and ego is a universal factor. The 'patient' is 'reconstructed' alright.

But the needful 'agent' in her could not be cobbled perfectly. The possible

positive world view is already shattered, needing a total conversion - through

faith. But faith is one thing which always eluded all through her life, and

vampairish doubt took its place. For herself, she is not the doubter. she is

the doubted itself. The surreal manner of her existential doubt is beyond

recovery and reconstruction into a positive whole.

H~r children rounded her completeness. Ted Hughes described the

births ~f the two children as crucial stages in his wife's movement towards

sel f,-acceptance.

ln "Stings" we notice the quest for self, the pull of strange mner

<;ompulsions is less successfully countered:

.... I

I!avc a self to recover, a queen.

Is she dead. is she sleeping')

(Ariel p.65)

In this poem she is not threatened b) a box of \'ita! creatures. or a

swarm. hut she ts extracting the lwne: deposited during the time the bees

(sci f). She has painted the hive lovingly .

. . . the hive itself a tea cup

While with pink flowers on it,

with excessive love I enamelled it

Thinking Sweetness, Sweetness'.

(Ariel p.65)

100

The act of extraction 'to scour the creaming crests' is a sweet and

pure activ_ity. In her case it is a mere dream, a chimera. The 'hive' meta

phor morphising into 'a tea cup ... with pink flowers in it' suggests the

erratic nature of the imagery. She lives in the wonder land of /\lice.

Toward the end of her life, Plath's concern with identity became

defensively rebellious. In "Daddy", she ties tradition that so strangled her

earlier i,q, her life and in her poetry. She adopts sevl'rai methods to achieve

her en&f of freedom: name-calling, new identities, scorn, humiliation, and •' ,-

tran!.!_,et of aggression. Her freedom rings false, however the ties are still

there. 'Lady Lazarus' rc·vcals Plath's awareness of the lingering ties and as

David Holbrook says, "stands as an encapsulation of her whole life's quest

f~r identity ... "37

from passivity. to passive resistance, to active resistance,

and finally to the violently imagined destruction of those people who first

gave and then shattered her life: men. She saw herself as a product of male

society, molded by males to suit their particular whims or needs.

1\sh. ash-

You poke and stir.

Flesh. hone. there is nothing there-

101

I\ wedding ring

I\ gold filling

1-lcrr God, llcrr lucifer

Beware

Beware

(Ariel p.l8)

Sylvia Plath turns to the potential source of "being" 111 the poems

"who" ( Poem for a Birthday)

Mother, you are one mouth

I would be a tongue to,

Mother of otherness

Eat me ...

(The Colossus, p.72)

To understand these lines we have to enter into the very early feel-38

·: ings of a bodily king about being born. Fairbairn says, .. The child's ego

is a mouth-ego". In all of us there is a remnant of an unsatisfied infant

hunger and this 'unborn' 'dynamic in oneself' ('the regressed libidinal \()

.ego') feels like a hungry all devouring mouth. As Guntrip- ( 1966) notes.

··schizoid patients who are seriously unfulfilled and. so physically hungry.

may dream of this unborn self as a bah~. perhaps locked <may in a steel

is rccognit.:d. the patient ma~ !"1:.:1 lil--c on.: .. gr.:at nwuth:· \\anting to cat

102

exist, with its roots in primitive urges to suck, have intense feelings about

the gates of the body and 1\lso the hungry 'mouth ego' echoed everywhere

in their world. Since the schizoid individual feels such intense hunger

directed at his objects (Those he would relate to - the significant other and

the world- as- object), he comes to feel that the object (the other) must

have similar voracious feelings directed at him. Love seems a mutual eat­

ing-and so, terribly dangerous.

Thus, we notice in Plath, the way she swings on the scales of exis­

tential counters and eventually we see her going through an immense amount

of angst which we are going to study in depth in the following chapter.

103

NOTES

1. Jon Rosenblatt, Sylvia Plath : "The Drama of Initiation," in

Twentieth Century Literature (Copy right 1976, Hofstra University Press)

Vol. 25, No.I, Spring, 1979, p.21.

2. Ibid p.2l

3 . The Roman Missal, (Theological Publications in India, Banga-

lore, 1974 ). p.453

4. Edward Lucie-Smith, "A M~derous Art", Critical Quarterly 6

(1964) p.93

· 5: 'quoted by Ingrid Melander in The Poetry of Svlvia Plath, A

StudXc'Pf Themes, (Stockholm, Almsquish & Wiksell, 1972) p.91 '1~:-:. '

6. taken from the "bee poems" referred to the female bees or

worker bees.

7. as quoted by Ingrid Meladcr in The Poetrv of Sylvia Plath : .\

Study of Themes (Stockholm : Almsquist & Wiksell. 1972) p.93.

8. Rollo May, The Meaning of Anxictv (Revised Version). N~"

York: W.W. Norton and Comp<~ny. INC.) .. p.72.

9. ivl. L. Rosenthal. S\ h ia !'lath and Confcssionai·Poctrv The Art

of Svlvia PI:@ (cd) Ch:n\cs :\c\\111:-tn. (Bloomington: Indian:-~ l.'nivcr-

sit\ Press. 1970). p.70

104

10 . Ingrid Melander, The Poetry of Sylvia Plath (Stockholm :

Almsquist & Wiksell, 1972) p.99.

11 . Nancy Hunter Steiner, A Closer Look at Ariel, A Memory of

Sylvia Plath, (New York: Harper's Magazine Press, 1973), p.29.

12 . J.A.Cuddon, A Dictionary of Literary Terms , (London

Andre Dewtsch Limited, 1997) p.l27.

13 . Quoted by M.L. Rosenthal in "Sylvia Plath and Confessional

Poetry" The Art of Sylvia Plath P. 70

14 . Ames Quotes From A Letter Of Sylvia Plath in Letters Home.

p.25.

1•5 Dr. Gordon : A character in Sylvia Plath's 'The Bell Jar'

16 . David Holbrook, Sylvia Plath, Poetry And Existence, (Lon­

d~h·; The Athlone Press 1976), P. I

17 . Ted Hughes, "On Sylvia Plath", Raritan (A Quarterly Re-

' view) 1994, Vol 14, No2, P.4,5.

18 Ingrid Melander, The Poetrv Of Sylvia Plath, as in note no.

7 I'. I 03.

1 9 Ibid P.l 04.

20 R.D. Laing. L!hricatiol1_~lLFalsc Selves And Dadd,·. (New

York Penguin I 960\. 1'.4~

105

21 IbidP.54

Crossing The Water P.57

/' --' David Holbrook, Sylvia Plath, Poetry And Existence, (Lon-

don: Athlone Press 1976 ), P.\7

24 . As Quoted By David Holbrook In Sylvia Plath, Poetry And

Existence. (London : University of London/ Athlone Press, 1976) p.21.

75 - . Mary Lynn Broe, Protean Poetic, Poetry And Sylvia Plath

(Columbia : University of Missouri Press, 1980) p.72

26 . J.C. Solomon, Alice And The Red King: A Psychoanalytical

View Of Existence, International Journal of Pschoanalysis, 1963, Vol

44, p,63.

27 Ibid

28 . Ibid

29 . David Holbrook, Sylvia Plath, Poetry And Existence as m

· note no. 23. p.\40

30 D.W. Winnicott, The Child And The Family, (London:

Tavistock. 1957). p.ll2

3 l Ibid p.ll3

'')

·'-. Ralph Slatter. I Llrnld Kclnll1!1. On Depression Horney's Vic11,

106

sis And Neurology, Ed. Benjamin B. Coleman, Vol 4, p.54,55.

~~

.).) : Quoted By A. Alvarez, Sylvia Plath, in The Art Of Sylvia

Plath, (ed) Charles Newman, (Bloomington : Indian University Press,

1970; London :Faber and Faker, 1970) p.58.

34 . Nancy Hunter Steiner, A Closer Look At Ariel, A Memory

Of Sylvia Plath, (New York : Harper's Magazine Press, 1973) p.23

35 . Ibid, p.23

36 Ibid, p.23

37 David Holbrook, Sylvia Plath, Poetry And Existence as 111

note no.24 p.23

38 . W.R.D. Fairbairn, "On The Nature And Aims Of Psychoana-

lytkal Treatment," International Journal Of Psychoanalysis (London :

Tavistock, 1958) vol 29,5.

39 Harry Guntrip, Personality Structure and Human Interaction,

tLOndon : Hogarth Press, 1996) p.23.