Plath Flashcards
Uroff in self
Self in Plath’s poems = weak and submissive attempts to separate herself from inner feelings
Hughes= represents a witness to elemental power in control
Arid
She presents the dangers of a man made world
Bleake
Plath’s long lines are often sculpted by the movement of breath
Lindberg
Landscapes serve as mirrors for herself. She never seems to be quite at home
Tulips - Margaret Dickie
The manipulative mind must control its most terrifying experience
Barbara Hardy (tulips)
Hateful emblems of cruel spring and presents from the healthy world that wants her back
Tulips- Jeannine Dobbs
Plath wants to reject the tulips as she wants to reject the trappings of her family and relationship
Richard Grey - Tulips
Hidden rich melody
Daddy - Robert Philips
She dramatises the war in her soul
Jon Rosenblatt - Daddy
The historical references allow her to dramatise her rebellion against the oppressive father
Eileen M.Arid - daddy
Spoken by a girl with an Electra complex
The two strains (part Jewish mother and German father) marry and paralyse each other
Robert Philips - tulips
The most nakedly confessional poem ever written
Wuthering heights
Brita Lindbergseyersted
Images of the landscape are consistently turned into metaphors for the human feeling of being insignificant and exposed
Wuthering heights
Janice Markey
Uniformly bleak and negative
Night shift
Janice Markey
Technology serves as a buffer between us and nature a block between us and the deeper dimensions of our own experience
Feeling that community has been deeply eroded by consumption.
The stones
Janice markey
Toying with the idea of rejecting the world
The stones
Alvarez
Passive tone. She appears to be gambling with life and holds little concern for winning or losing
Wuthering heights can be seen as….. what does this link to for Hughes
Journey of realisation after feeling like she belongs to a different currency realises still shares common ground with humanity (realisation of importance and value of family)
Link to Hughes discovery of inner self.
Both realise self = unique and that should be cherished not disconnected
Bell jar
I feel like a race horse in a world without tracks
Betty Friedan
Return to the Victorian conceptualisation of women as innocent creatures made for reproduction and submission after WW2 influenced the presumption it was a female’s biological destiny to be a mother.
Plath aged 20 (morning song link)
Graduate school and travel abroad are not going to be stymied by any squealing, breastfed brats.
Janice markey
There are no ready made connections
Elizabeth Hardwick
Her work is brutal like a smash of a fist and sometimes it is also mean in it’s feeling
Elizabeth Hardwick
There is a particular remoteness about Plath
Uroff
Her poems show “the mind confronting its own suffering trying to control that by which it feels controlled”
Alvarez
If the poems are despairing vengeful and destructive they are at the same time tender and usually clever
Margaret Rees
She strips away he polite veneer letting her writing express elemental forces and primeval fears
She hinted st the tensions hovering just beneath the surface of the America way of life post war period
Janice markey
Plath regarded death as a means for rebirth and purification
