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Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath. The Bell Jar (1962). Previously…. Benjamin Franklin Frederick Douglass Harriet Wilson P. T. Barnum Ernest Hemingway. Sylvia Plath. Born 1932 in Mass. Parents German/ Austr . Father dies 1940 1950 – attends Smith College 1953 – guest editor @ Mademoiselle

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Sylvia Plath

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  1. Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar (1962)

  2. Previously… • Benjamin Franklin • Frederick Douglass • Harriet Wilson • P. T. Barnum • Ernest Hemingway

  3. Sylvia Plath • Born 1932 in Mass. • Parents German/Austr. • Father dies 1940 • 1950 – attends Smith College • 1953 – guest editor @ Mademoiselle • Nervous breakdown, institutionalized

  4. Sylvia Plath • 1955 – graduates, gets scholarship to Cambridge • 1956 - meets/marries Ted Hughes • 1957 – teaches in US • 1959 – back to Britain • 1960 – birth of 1st child

  5. Sylvia Plath • 1962 - Hughes leaves her • Jan. 1963 – The Bell Jar published • Feb. 1963 – commits suicide • Ariel published posthumously

  6. Plath’s legacy • Confessional poet • Victim of psychiatry? • Feminist martyr? • Hughes attacked 1960s • Hughes edits journals • Hughes claims Plath Fantasia

  7. Hughes on Plath’s Legacy "In the years soon after [her] death, when scholars approached me, I tried to take their apparently serious concern for the truth about Sylvia Plath seriously. But I learned my lesson early. [...] If I tried too hard to tell them exactly how something happened, in the hope of correcting some fantasy, I was quite likely to be accused of trying to suppress Free Speech. In general, my refusal to have anything to do with the Plath Fantasia has been regarded as an attempt to suppress Free Speech [...] The Fantasia about Sylvia Plath is more needed than the facts. Where that leaves respect for the truth of her life (and of mine), or for her memory, or for the literary tradition, I do not know."

  8. Confessional Poetry • Movement in the 1950s (continues more or less) • Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton • Autobiographic poetry • Revelations of personal life • Depression • Sexual problems • "Poetry led me by the hand out of madness"

  9. Confessional Poetry • Literary autobiography (roman a clef) • Covers up/disguises/invents alternate histories • Harriet Wilson, Ernest Hemingway • Confessional poetry • Removes mask hiding the self

  10. “Daddy” You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time– Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal

  11. I have always been scared of you, With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. And your neat mustache And your Aryan eye, bright blue. Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You– Not God but a swastika So black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you.

  12. You stand at the blackboard, daddy, In the picture I have of you, A cleft in your chin instead of your foot But no less a devil for that, no not Any less the black man who Bit my pretty red heart in two. I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do.

  13. But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue. And then I knew what to do. I made a model of you, A man in black with a Meinkampf look And a love of the rack and the screw. And I said I do, I do. So daddy, I'm finally through. The black telephone's off at the root, The voices just can't worm through.

  14. If I've killed one man, I've killed two– The vampire who said he was you And drank my blood for a year, Seven years, if you want to know. Daddy, you can lie back now. There's a stake in your fat black heart And the villagers never liked you. They are dancing and stamping on you. They always knew it was you. Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

  15. Daddy • Strictly autobiographical? • Electra complex? • Working out relationship to father • Portrayal of self as Jew?

  16. The Bell Jar • Tells story of Mademoiselle experience • Return home • Electroshock therapy • Recovery • Bell Jar as symbol of depression

  17. The Bell Jar • Defining the self • Against social expectations • Against beliefs in how women should be

  18. The Bell Jar • Relationships with men • Rosenbergs • Source of mental illness? • Self moving not outward • Inconclusive end • "an autobiographical apprentice work which I had to write in order to free myself from the past".

  19. Film versions • The Bell Jar (1979) • Sylvia (2003)

  20. Confessional poetry • Stylization of self? (real or not) • Therapy? • Sentimental self-pity? • Compare poetry – prose - journals

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