by Kevin Patrick Mahoney
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Plath has died. Plath has risen. Plath will come again.
It is difficult to see Sylvia Plath except as an icon. She has not
graduated yet into the Russian Orthodox Church's school of iconic
representation, but she has come close: note the distinct similarity between
the covers of the Stevenson and Wagner-Martin biographies. As Mary Eagleton
writes: "The problem for the woman writer lies not only in the production
of writing; an equally fraught area is its reception." Bassnett reports
that there are various myths about Plath, each of which has its adherents
searching for the `real' Sylvia Plath.
There is Plath the `Doomed Poet', who, like Bryon, destroyed herself
through the very genius of her creativity, something which rock stars seem to
do exceptionally well nowadays. Or Plath the solitary feminist voice, before a
vocabulary had been developed a decade later to describe what she, and the
women of her age went through. Then there is the myth of the `Unfulfilled
Woman', frustrated in love, life and career. Ted Hughes complained about this
mythmaking process, as in a recent edition of the TLS he wrote of his attempt
to get Professor Rose to remove a passage from her book: "This is a fair
example of how an `interpretation'.., becomes a `fact' that is now `accepted'
and even exploited.., by new biographers such as Paul Alexander...". His
principal objection was that the passage in question would offend Plath's
children. This is not a defence used by many critics concerning male writers'
families, for men are not linked with families the same way women are, as Margaret
Atwood notes in her essay. That is not to say that Hughes himself is guilty of
chauvinism; on the contrary, one of the reasons why Plath's work is so
2
controversial is because in some of her poems, she made
recognisable representations of her family.
It is hard not to think of Aurelia and Otto Plath as Medusa and Colossus,
and Hughes himself as a vampire, the villain who kept Plath's secrets to
himself. Some critics tend to forget that these are real people, and not just
abstractions. The only reason why Hughes did not release all the Plath material
is that there are many people still alive who could be very hurt by what she
wrote. He must have dreaded every anniversary of her death. Yet this is not to
attack the work of feminist critics, many of whom give a valuable insight into
what it was like in the `bad old days'.
Tillie Olsen wrote: "writing is no more than an attainment of a
dowry to be spent later according to the needs and circumstances within the
true vocation: husband and family." Until this century in England, woman
writers were constricted by this type of thinking. Many people did not regard
writing as a career for women. This was despite the fact that many women
wrote novels in the nineteenth century, but few were ever considered as art.
"The male quality is the creative gift," Gilbert and Gubar
report. These two feminist critics believed that there was a real effort by
the patriarchal society to stop women writing. Yet Toril Moi and others
observe that it was never a concerted plot by male publishers to silence
women's voices. Telling people what to think in such a way would be more
reminiscent of a Nazi plot.
Patriarchal `oppression' was carried out unconsciously, as it still is
today. Hence the response of a man deciding if Aerial should become an A-level
text: "Not the sort of lady one would want to have cook one's
breakfast," (The Use of English Aut.1987). Women writers would be
conscious of this as they sat in literature classes, reading all about
men's experience in the world. "I had been taught that poetry
3
should be `universal,' which meant, of course,
nonfemale," Adrienne Rich wrote. Despite a lack of female authors in the
predominately male literary canon, there were plenty of women characters. Woolf
noted that practically all male writers had made their contribution to the
image of women. Feminists have called this `Woman as sign' writing. There can
be no doubt that some of the strongest characters in fiction have been women,
such as The Wife of Bath, La Belle Dame and Lady Macbeth. Yet none of their
male authors can ever precisely convey what it is to be a woman. This is
important because it is a reflection of the powerlessness women had in the
past, for without literacy they could never be active politically; they were
just passive receivers of what men told them, and with little education they
could not disprove what men said.
Indeed, as Gilbert and Gubar pointed out, the very word `author' has
connotations of power and legitimacy. A female writer could very well feel that
she was trespassing on male territory. Sylvia Plath faced similar experiences
in her college career, and she herself recorded in her Journal, before she had
met Hughes, that "I envy the man his physical freedom to lead a double
life - his career, and his sexual and family life." She was able to
partially solve this problem by marrying a fellow writer. On the theme of the
gender ambiguity of literary production, Terry Lovell wrote: "Novel
writing is a form of domestic production. Here, home and workplace have never
been separated." Women and home still could not be divided.
Yet Sylvia did sometimes find it hard to maintain a balance between
family and writing. "Throughout the Hughes's eight months in Eltisley
Avenue she kept twenty or so manuscripts by each of them in circulation at a
time..." Stevenson records. Feminists looking for the `power behind the
throne' of a male writer, would find a lot of material in Plath's great efforts
to get her husband's work published. Both Virginia Woolf and Rich complained that
they felt restricted
4
in writing about their bodies. Plath used her bodily
functions as metaphors: "The blood flood is the flood of love," (The
Munich Mannequins). A menstrual flow is a signal of a failure to produce, lack
of fertility in producing poems. "These poems do not live: it's a sad
diagnosis." Stillborn). In this latter poem, poems are babies pickled in
glass jars. An horrific image, but one which she herself saw and used most
memorably in The Bell Jar.
She pleads her defence: "It wasn't for any lack of
mother-love." This was the era, after all, of John Bowlby and his
`Maternal Deprivation Hypothesis'. They must have been very lowly
creations,"not even fish". "Perfection is terrible, it cannot
have children." This all-surrounding vapour of icy blank whiteness
"tamps the womb". It plugs up the womb, enforcing sterility
(hopefully without the explosive charge that tamping usually involves). The
pickled babies do not speak of their mother, refusing to acknowledge her:
"They smile and smile and smile and smile at me." This is
involuntary, and not a comfort for "their mother near dead with
distraction,". Can there two better examples of Plath's literary
production difficulties?
Some critics believe that she was writing ahead of her time, paving the
way to popular feminism a decade later. In The Munich Mannequins Plath writes
resentfully of having to be the perfect woman, all in the image preferred by
men, mannequins -
Naked and bald in their furs,
Orange lollies on silver sticks,
Intolerable, without mind.
- forced to shave by men, but wearing furs, and delicious
objects to be licked by men. They do not last long, but once they are just a
silver stick, will men disregard their real value and get another lolly? All
this, whilst hydras are being killed by Hercules. However, only last Saturday
there
5
was a film on BBC1 about a dream woman who also happened
to be a window display dummy. The film was called Mannequin. The attitudes
which Plath was writing about are still with us. Here, she mocks the `woman as
sign' writing angrily, effectively showing it as the falsity that it is.
"But in twenty-five years she'll be silver/In fifty, gold," as
the super salesman in The Applicant says, as he sells a man with an empty head
a wife, the "it" of the poem. This continues well from The Munich
Mannequins, and is seen as one of Plath's most feminist poems. So why do I like
it? Why has it received the distinction of being recorded as a song by The Blue
Aeroplanes, an all-male band? I would venture to say that it is because it is
universal, despite being written by a woman (recalling Rich's comment). We all
have mothers at least, if not wives. Here, we can at last feel how they felt at
times, these anonymous, desexed women "To bring teacups and roll away headaches".
The Applicant does not need a glass eye, but something to fill his empty
hand. Marriage will be a perfectly fitting suit for a man: "It is
waterproof, shatterproof proof/Against fire and bombs through the roof."
The applicant may just as well regress to the womb, if all he wants from
marriage is protection. "It" will accommodate your every desire:
"You have an eye, it's an image." A pleasing thing to look at. My
boy,"It can sew, it can cook," and it has a free catalytic converter.
Both men secretly acknowledge their dependence.
I have linked the three poems I have examined for convenience's sake, as
all are good examples of feminism and the troubles women have in producing
literary texts. Yet Plath wrote on many more political issues; for instance,
she recorded in her Journal her fears for the future: "Already a certain
percentage of unborn children are doomed by fallout." A much wider
examination of her work needs to be carried out. It is neither constructive nor
desirable to attack the feminists, or to deny their necessity as a political
force. Contrary to what Plath wrote, I believe her poems to be alive and well.
There will always be people suffering in this world, regardless of their
gender, who will turn to her work. The feminists have not kidnapped them: read
and discover for yourselves the many Sylvia Plaths. For as a human being, we
must allow that she progressed and adapted all her life. It is pointless to
debate whether the `real' Plath worshipped her husband, or wished to put a stake
in his heart. As Mary Lynn Broe writes: "Plath's voice is powerful because
it succeeds in encompassing - not negating - vital contradictions."
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Sylvia Plath Collected Poems, edited by Ted Hughes.
Bitter Fame, A Life of Sylvia Plath by Anne Stevenson.
Sylvia Plath by Susan Bassnett.
Feminist Literary Theory by Mary Eagleton.
Times Literary Supplement 24th April 1992.
The Use of English Autumn 1987 Review Article: Feminist
criticism by Gillian Spraggs.
|
Visit
our Sylvia Plath
page for Sylvia Plath biography, Sylvia Plath bibliography, Sylvia Plath
interview, free Sylvia Plath essays and listings of other Sylvia Plath essays |
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