At Seventeen By Sylvia Plath Essay

There once was a little girl, she had long hair and big eyes; and she loved to play outside in the dirt. At the age of six her mother told her to go inside and play with the dolls, that she would get hurt playing outside. Society taught her that a woman’s job was to take care of a family and raise children of her own one day; she was taught the world was not a place for her. Despite the instilling of this message in many girls, few managed to speak out against it; one of these few was Sylvia Plath. In Sylvia Plath’s work, her deeply rooted emotions and resistance to authority often led people to perceive her as pompous. Perhaps being born a woman—whose stack of duties was laid over the ground of ambition—led to the exceptional rasp of her nature. In Plath’s piece “At Seventeen” she uses diction and stylistic devices to convey that in order to achieve to achieve happiness, young

Plath lived in a society where women cooked, cleaned, and cared for unruly children—also referred to as hell. Plath makes it evident that she does not want to “[cook] three meals a day”; instead Plath wants “to be free--free to know people and their backgrounds” (Plath 5). Plath’s use of dashes in her journal indicates a break in thought--a break in thought that exposes Plath’s unruly side. Plath’s desire for freedom was a form of defiance in and of itself. Women were expected to stay locked up at home waiting for their “loving” husband to return, so by turning against these ideals Plath rebells against the system. Plath confesses in her journal about how “[she cried] out against” the limitations placed on her happiness declaring “I am I--I am powerful” (Plath 5). Plath’s use of repetition and dashes in this quote exemplifies her insurgent nature. Plath states that “I am I” and then goes on to call herself “powerful”; by saying this Plath rebels against traditional gender roles of her time, and therefore achieves