Plath's Writing example essay topic

The Many Views of Sylvia Plath Pulitzer Prize winner, Sylvia Plath began her misunderstood life on October 27, 1932, in JamaciaPlains Massachusetts. She was born to Otto and Aurelia Plath, who were both teachers (Sylvia Plath). Her father was a professor at Boston University. He studied bees. (Personal Influences) Plath has been seen in a variety of ways; as a tragic poet, the all-American, girl next-door, but, most of all, a heroine of the feminist movement.

Plath's life was haunted by visions of her past. Her father died when she was eight from neglected diabetes, after the amputation of a toe, and eventually and entire leg (Personal Influences). "Otto Plath was diabetic, yet chose to ignore doctor's warnings about certain prohibited foods. He projected an arrogant self-confidence as if nothing could defeat him. It was this same arrogance that caused his death".

(PersonalInfluences). Plath never fully recovered from her father's untimely passing (Personal Influences). Shefelt betrayed, and was consumed by her own guilt. Shefelt that if he loved her more, he would have taken better care of himself. Otto Plath is a recurring theme in her works. Her poem, Daddy, expresses her resentment and bitterness toward being deserted by him (Personal Influences).

After receiving straight A's throughout high school, Plath attended Smith University. In the summer of 1953, she received the opportunity to go to New York and intern with Mademoiselle. While in New York, Plath suffered an emotional breakdown. She plunged into a deep depression (Sylvia Plath). When she returned home to Boston, where she was living with her mother (whom she hated), she took a handful of sleeping pills, and attempted to end her life (Sylvia Plath). After this, she was sent to McLean Hospital, to be treated for mental illness (Sylvia Plath).

Upon her release from the hospital, she returned to Smith, and then to Cambridge, England to study at Newnham College. (Sylvia Plath) Here she met, fell in love with, and, after four months, married the future Poet Laureate of England, Ted Hughes (Gray). The two were together for six years, and produced two children together, Frieda in 1960 and Nicholas in 1962, (Sylvia Plath). However, Hughes left Plath for Assi a We vil in the winter of 1962 (Sylvia Plath). Desperate and alone, Plath sealed off the doors to her children's rooms on February 11, 1963, placed her head in a gas oven, and died (Sylvia Plath). Ironically, AssiaWelvill eventually killed herself in the same exact way as Plath (Kirjasto).

Hughes felt that he was powerless to help Plath. He believed that she was destined to kill herself because of her fixation with her father (Gray). "What happens in the heart simply happens", Hughes said (Gray). Plath is not only seen as tragic, but also as literature's "Golden Girl" (Personal Influences). Shew as brilliant and talented. "An acclaimed poet and novelist.

She is the golden girl who had everything -- beauty and brains; a great and recognized talent; a family that included a daughter and son. Yet on a third attempt, she commit suicide in 1963 at age 31", (Personal Influences). Hughes recalls their first meeting in his poem, "American legs / simply went on up / that flaring hand / Those long, balletic, monkey-elegant fingers / and the face / a tight ball of joy", (Gray). This few of Plath as a celebrated and loved poet, contrast sharply with views of her as a deranged and tragic poet. Even she found great confidence in herself at times.

"Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well", (Women). Is it possible that this seemingly self-destructive girl is also this woman who exudes such confidence and radiance? She says, "It is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative -- whichever is running at the moment dominates my life, floods it. Iam now flooded with despair, almost hysteria", (Women). It has been theorized that Plath suffered from Bipolar disorder.

A disease producing these extreme emotions, which she describes here, (Women). Perhaps the most popular view of Plath is that of the feminist heroine and martyr. "The nascent feminist movement in the 60's enlisted her as a martyr and vilified Hughes as her oppressor, and, intentionally or not, her murderer", (Gray). Indeed, much of Plath's writing examines the woman's plight. She writes", every woman adores a fascist / The boot in the face / the brute / Brute heart of a brute like you", (PersonalInfluences). Her poetry drips with cynicism and resentment.

She writes, "Out of the ash / I rise with my red hair / and I eat men like air", (Kirjasto). Here she places herself in the aggressor position. She puts herself in charge and in power above the man. She also writes, "O Sister, Mother, Wife / Sweet Lethe is my life / I am never, never, never coming home!" (Cooper).

It seems that Plath was fed up with the typical female responsibilities. Why was Plath so fixated with the role of women is society? "She made her first suicide attempt at the age of twenty because the pressures put on her to conform to the role of a woman, in particular, a middle-class upwardly-mobile educated woman, by society, had become too much for her. She lacked either the strength or the courage to continue to fight against the ideals which were being continually foisted upon her", (Cooper).

Perhaps Plath felt a lack of control over her own fate, as did Her heroine, Esther Greenwood, in the Bell Jar, Plath's semi-autobiographical novel (Cooper). "Esther wishes to discover herself, discover what she really wants to do rather than just accepting as her desires and ambitions those which society has set out for her", (Cooper). Plath was proud of her work as a supporter of women everywhere. She writes in Letters Home, "Ishall be one of the few women poets in the world who isa fully rejoicing woman, not a bitter or frustrated or warped man-imitator, which ruins most of them in the end. I am a woman and glad of it, and my songs will be of fertility and the earth", (Cooper). This feeling of entrapment, which led Plath to such deep despair in 1953, also leads many other women into a similar situation.

Plath wanted to rise up, and take a stand for those oppressed women (Cooper). In Plath's poem, Two Campers in Cloud Country, she states", I lean to you, numb as a fossil. Tell me I'm here", (Cooper). Again, her resentment for her father, and for all male authority in general, is exposed in her famous poem, Daddy.

Plath compares her father to a Nazi, and herself to a Jew. (Cooper). Perhaps her father was the spawn of this deep rooted animosity toward men. Or perhaps, and more likely, her separation from Hughes led to her bitter, biting cynicism. In her poem I am Vertical, she suggest that a woman reaches perfection through death. She states", The woman is perfected / Her dead / Body wears the smile of accomplishment", (Cooper).

"She feels that her role as a woman is inflicted on her by society in general, she does indeed seem to see it as a conspiracy, and the only way to escape from it as oblivion or death", (Cooper). In the Bell Jar, Plath describes her heroine, Esther Greenwood, sitting in the crook of a tree. S heis surrounded by ripe, beautiful fruit, of which she can only choose one. One fruit represents marriage, a happy home, security. Another adventure, independence. Each a different profession, each a different path.

The longer she sits, debating with herself, she begins to see some of the fruit wither and drop from the tree. Her choices become slimmer and slimmer until she becomes hysterical and can hardly breathe. Another excerpt from the Bell Jar shows her indecisiveness when making life long decisions. "When they [the photographers] asked me what I wanted to be Said I didn't know. 'Oh sure you know,' the photographer said. 'She wants,' said Jay Cee wittily,' to be everything.

' " (Lucy). Perhaps it was thoughts such as this that led to her eventual suicide. Plath made it evident through her writing that she had no interest in being a common house wife. Her poem Lesbos examines the bleakness of the life of a house wife. The poem has a feeling of " claustrophobia" brought on by images of a windowless kitchen.

This implies that the dirty kitchen is the " beginning and end" of this woman's world, (Cooper). Was this sad image the way Plath saw her life on February 11, 1963? She was living alone, raising two children. The three of them lived in a London flat with no heat (Personal Influences). Perhaps she saw herself as the sad woman described in Lesbos.

"And Ishall be useful when I lie down finally: /Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time forme", Plath writes in I am Vertical (Cooper). Perhaps her biggest fear had been realized. In her mind, she was nothing more than a simple housewife of no real value (Personal Influences). Many different portraits of Sylvia Plath have been painted over the years. Some see her as a sad, misunderstood poet. Some see her as America's golden girl.

And still others hold a vision of her as a martyr for the cause of equality, and the avenger of women everywhere. Throughout all the debate, one thing holds true; Plath led a mysterious life, a life we will never fully grasp. However her work serves as to her life. Her passion and genius are inspiring and have been remembered long after her untimely death".

Sylvia Plath had the ability to transform any emotion or event into the most beautiful of verse. However, the weight of her actual life was to much for her to handle, and so as so many other geniuses have done, she left the world much too early", (Sylvia Plath).

Bibliography

Kirjasto. web "Lucy's Sylvia Plath Page" web l"Poet's License: British Laureate Ted Hughes". Gray, Paul. Time. com. February 16, 1998. Val 115. No. 6"Sylvia Plath: Personal Influences on Plath's Writing" web "Sylvia Plath: The life and Death of Sylvia Plath" web pg w. htm "Two women writers challenge society's conspiracy against women" Cooper, Catherine. web walker. html Women. web.