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Feminism In Sylvia Plath's Poetry

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Sylvia Plath is considered to be one of the most significant female poets known not only to Americans but also to the whole world. Her death in 1963, followed by an unfortunate and short life did not end her input and influence inliterature, she became an icon to the female literary society. Sylvia's outstanding style of writing and themes which she portrayed in her works such as death, seeking for an identity or oppression on women in a patriarchal society began the feminist movementin America and changed the role of women. This topic is of a great importance because they way that Sylvia Plath was expressing her feelings and showing her negative view on a patriarchal society and oppression on women was a giant leap in the world of a women's liberation movement. …show more content…

Sylvia's Plath poem ‘Mushrooms' (1962) is an extended metaphor for an oppressed population –women. She describes the mushrooms as they grow ‘discreetly' and ‘very quickly' which means that the women gather steam and they cannot be stopped. In this work, Plathgives some clues that the …show more content…

The way that Sylvia Plath presented the image of women in her poems drawattention of many to the problem of patriarchy and overshadowing the importance of the female role in the society. She was a great poetess and a literary revolutionist in a female world. By combining irony, extendedmetaphors and a great use of language she was able to show the inequality and the dominance of man over woman in the society. She showed that even as, according to the society,a comparatively weak personcould fight for the right cause with her firmest weapon,her extraordinary style of writing. She revolutionised the world of poetry and presented women as a very strong part of the society capable of accomplishinggreat things.Words:

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Despite the successful career, Plath’s personal life was not as positive. She married a poet Ted Hughes in 1956 whom she had two children with, but their relationship was not ideal and worsened with time. In 1962, Hughes left his wife for his mistress and this caused Sylvia Plath to fall into a severe depression (“Sylvia Plath Biography”). It is during this time

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This becomes evident in a lack of information about the type of society, and the reader therefore lacks a complete understanding of how the women are oppressed. As a whole, this poem sets forth the idea that female gender is fluid, and asks its readers to questions what it means to be a woman in a male dominant

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How does Plath's assumed Jewish identity in her Ariel poems compare with the actual cultural experiences expressed in the poems of Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks? Sylvia Plath’s collections of poems in her final book Ariel invokes strong images of what she was going through in the last months of her life. Nothing is stronger than the images referenced in the poem Daddy of what the Jewish people went through in the concentration camps during World War II. Using strong words such as: An engine, an engine Chuffing me off like a Jew.

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Sylvia Plath was a troubled poet that extended to idea of reality to the general public; in her poem “Daddy,” Plath confronts the relationship of a young woman and her father in a resentful and distressing way that compels the spectators to regard the grudge that she feels for her deceased father. Sylvia Plath demonstrates in her poem, “Daddy,” the underlining of a young girls mind in such a way that she confesses to murders that only existed in the protagonists brain, and defines what hatred of a so-called loved one can do to the ideas and emotions of a child growing into a young woman. The spectators of “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath examine her poem to find the protagonist discovers enough courage to prevail over her late father’s influences in her

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1185 Words | 5 Pages

”(Hughes, “On Sylvia Plath”) her poetry “grew out of terrible and shattering and inally unbearable expierences”(Souces 4) Hughes attributes Plath’s depression to her childhood relationships, specifically the death of her father. Her father appears as a theme throughout her works because this event deeply impacted Plath’s life. Plath references her father in her works outright and also in her references to bees. Plath, also herself denotes the relationship between her father and her suicide in the poem “Daddy” saying “I was ten when they buried you.

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Have you ever hated someone and feel that if you have the opportunity you could kill him/her? Did you ever fell that if he/she dies you will be happy or get redemption? Well our author “Sylvia Plath” feels that way in her poem Daddy, when she was trying to kill her father that she was see him as an evil monster, and tried to show us her life that she pictured it like hell, even when she lived with her husband that she was seeing him as an evil monster, so she wrote this poem and expressed her desire for death, which is the main theme in the poem, by using various types of literary devices like: repetition, allusion and hyperbole….. Plath uses the repetition device to develop and emphasize the theme of “death”, when she tries to kill her father

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“Poetry Is Not a Luxury” (1982) intertwines feminism and poetry together. Author Audre Lorde says that for women, “poetry is not a luxury, but a necessity of our existence” (Lorde, 1982, pg. 281). In today’s society, women’s opinions aren’t really expressed, because it’s not widely accepted in this man-built world. Lorde’s quote “poetry is not a luxury, but a necessity of our existence” means that women should use their voices and channel their energy into poetry. Since poetry is accepted, women aren’t being deviant.

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Born on October 27 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts, Sylvia Plath was the daughter of Aurelia Schober, a Boston University graduate, and Otto Plath, a professor of German and biology. At a young age, her family fell on hard times as Plath’s father suffered from an embolism, caused by undiagnosed diabetes, which ultimately led to his death in 1940. Losing her father haunted Sylvia, who at the impressionable age of eight watched as someone she loved died after a long, painful illness. This traumatic experience would serve as inspiration for her poignant poem Daddy. Two years later, Aurelia moved with her children and her parents to Wellesley, Massachusetts, to teach medical secretarial courses and took on the burden of running the family on her own.

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Opening Sentences… Widely considered her most celebrated book of poems, the posthumous Ariel exposes Plath’s twisted physiological torment. Perhaps its most well known work, “Lady Lazarus” unambiguously examines suicide and death. It cloaks its reader in the solitude that weighs so heavily on its author. In this poem, Plath alludes to Lazarus, a man who Jesus resurrects from the dead.

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910 Words | 4 Pages

Her startling poems focus on reflection and often have a depressing tone. [In conclusion,] Sylvia´s poetry was excellent, creative, and dark, influenced by her past. Plath was born on October 27, 1932 in Boston, MA. Her mother, Aurelia Schober, was studying at Boston University. Otto Plath, her father, was the professeur.

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1222 Words | 5 Pages

Sylvia Plath uses the words “Christ” and “Plato” in the seventh and eighth paragraphs. These are prominent historical figures and by mentioning them she could possibly be suggesting the idea of male dominance throughout history. It could also mean that the persona in the poem feels like she is being entrapped and victimised by males in our society. In the second paragraph, the theme of entrapment is obvious when Plath mentions “its running is useless”. This acts as a form of irony because running is usually perceived as an act committed to gain freedom.

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715 Words | 3 Pages

The poem that was decided for this week’s assignment was Sylvia Plath’s Ariel. At first, the meaning of this poem was eluding; try as one might, the meaning behind the lines were slippery and managed to evade capture. As it is with much poetry, it took a great amount of research into Plath’s life to understand the meaning behind her words. Once when Plath and Ariel was researched in more detail, it was discovered that this poem was based off of a thrilling experience that the speaker had endured. This was a story about Plath’s horse (Davis, para. 1), Ariel, and how Ariel managed to help Plath relinquish control of her life.

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1207 Words | 5 Pages

My poem challenges the role of a woman. My poem discusses the roles women play in society. It states the struggle women face with their gender. It questions the duties women are pressured to play the typical housewife. My poem also mentions the hunger women crave for equal pay.

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The collective body of Sylvia Plath 's poetry demonstrates definitively her mastery of her craft. Plath has been criticized for her overtly autobiographical work and her suicidal pessimism, however, close study reveals that her poetry transcends categorization and has a voice uniquely her own. As Katha Pollit concluded in a 1982 Nation review, "by the time she came to write her last seventy or eighty poems, there was no other voice like hers on earth" (Wagner 1). In works such as "Lady Lazarus," "Daddy," and "Morning Song," Plath relates her own painfully experiences in the form of dramatic monologues using a persona who eventually triumphs over adversity by regaining the self that had been lost before the struggle of the poem. According to Plath, the narrator of "Lady Lazarus" has "the great and terrible gift of being reborn . . .

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885 Words | 4 Pages

Sylvia was born in a time where women were limited on the things they could do in their lifetime. Using her own experiences with mental breakdowns and attempted suicide, Sylvia Plath portrayed her struggles in her semi autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, which was criticized for its graphic and depressing nature yet helped helped others with similar struggles. Sylvia had a hard life with suffering depression with not many happy events in her life. Sylvia Plath parents were Otto

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