Lesbos Flashcards
Lesbos
- vitriolic tone
- deeply ironic title as heterosexual couple is conforming to societal expectations
- greek island - Sappho lived in Lesbos
Sappho - greek poet, figure for erotic female love
Viciousness in the kitchen!
- sibilance- hissing sound
- rejection of myth in 1950s genteel femininity; the domestic space instead become claustrophobic and hellish
the potatoes hiss
context: In her first “independent act” since Hughes left her, Plath packed her two children, a sack of potatoes from her garden and her two cats into the car and drove from North Tawton, Deven, to St Ives, Cornwall, to visit friends, Marvin and Kathy Kane, on 13-14 October 1962.
“Hollywood”, “Stage curtains”
Acting lexis throughout
fluorescent light wincing on and off like a terrible migraine
- Plath experience serious migraines - by this point she was addicted to sleeping pills
- fluorescent lighting could reference performance and theatricality
look at her
sense of detachment
You who have blown your tubes like a bad radio
- adresses Kathy
- can’t conceive
You say I should drown my girl.
She’ll cut her throat at ten if she’s mad at two.
- a ‘creative account’ - Gail Crowther
- being deliberately provocative
- projection of Plath’s own psychological illness
- Plath went missing for several days and her brother found her having had too many sleeping pills - plath tried to kill herself many times
You have one baby, I have two.
- all interactions seem to be expressed through motherhood/marriage
- comparison
I should sit on a rock off Cornwall and comb my hair.
I should wear tiger pants, I should have an affair.
anaphora shows pressure from societal expectations
I’m doped and thick from my last sleeping pill
highlights confessional nature of poem
The sparks are blue.
- effects of sleeping pills/ migraines
- blue sparks are reminiscent of the Bell Jar overdose scene
hate/Up to my neck,
Thick, thick.
Drowning in hate
doggy husband
- pet - as if Kathy Kane is trying to control, domesticate her husband
- link to lovepet
Close on you like the fist of a baby
claustrophobia of dometic space
suggesting the claustrophobia/burden of children
bell jar - baby as a trap
Even in your Zen heaven we shan’t meet.
- Kathy Kane believed in Zen Buddhism and Plath makes fun of her
- final and categorical rejection of any affinity or sorority with Kathy Kane - irony of the title
- rejection of attempt to be sisterly
It is love you are full of. You know who you hate.
He is hugging his ball and chain down by the gate
- she insinuates that she is a lesbian as Kathy’s attentions are overbearing
- idiom - ‘the ball and chain’
- oppressive nature of marriage
- link back to ‘doggy husband’ - as pet => ‘the lovepet’ - love is something we try and tame, control = result is destructive
Heather Clark quote about ‘Lesbos’
Lesbos, like Cut, is a “fantasy of release from oppressive feminine roles quietly enforced by other women” (Clark, her biographer)
Gail Crowther quote about “Lesbos”
Gail Crowther - poem is a “creative account” of her visit to these friends
What did Plath call Kathy in her letters
‘manic’
