Sylvia Plath: The Use of Dramatic Monologue as Confessional Poetry
Sylvia Plath presents an unusual paradox as a writer. On one hand, she is lauded by literary critics, particularly feminist critics, for her use of confessional poetry. Specifically, in poems such as "Daddy" and "Lady Lazarus" Plath is assumed to be 'confessing' certain aspects of her personal life. Like the speaker of "Daddy," she was the daughter of a German father; like the subject of "Lady Lazarus" she attempted suicide several times. On the other hand, both of these poems are still written in the genre of the dramatic monologue, in which a speaker articulates an idea through the assumed persona of another person obviously different from the poet.
In "Daddy," perhaps Plath's most famous poem, the speaker is the child of a former Nazi officer who is desperately trying to exorcise the ghost of her father.
An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.
The speaker of the poem "Daddy" identifies not with her father, but with her father's murdered victims, suggesting that the oppression she felt at his hands as a young girl mirrors that of the oppression he wielded against the Jews of Europe. The political oppression of the German man parallels his oppression within the home of his family. "Rather than an elegy or an angry conversation of a girl with her deceased father, 'Daddy' can be seen as a manifestation of the different aspects of a woman's oppression by patriarchy" (Hassanpour & Hashim 123). In other words, this gives the poem an explicitly political dimension that it would lack if simply read as an expression of Plath's feelings about her own father who was of German extraction but not a Nazi. Plath explicitly invokes the Holocaust in every line, effectively ratcheting upon the intensity of the poem and making its subject matter larger than that of a familial relationship.
Plath almost playfully creates connections with her poetry and her own life, even while using a dramatic monologue to hold the speaker at a distance. "Dramatic monologue in poetry, also known as a persona poem, shares many characteristics with a theatrical...
Ultimately, Lady Lazarus uses her status as a failed suicide as a source of power, not disempowerment. The haunting words of the end of the tale that she is a woman who eats men like air are meant to underline the fact that despite the fact that the doctors feel that they are the source of her coming to life again and again, there is a strength of spirit within
Sylvia Plath: A Brilliant but Tortured 20th Century American Poet One of America's best known twentieth century poets, Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) lived an artistically productive but tragic life, and committed suicide in 1963 while separated from her husband, the British poet Ted Hughes. Before her death at age 30, Sylvia Plath had suffered a bout of severe depression for several months, the likely result of her separation from Ted Hughes and
At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones will do. (51-60) These lines allow us to see the poet dealing with her anger and the final thought is equally powerful when the poet tells her father, " Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through" (110). The anger, unlike her father, lives and that might be the most agonizing aspect of the poem. There is
Woman Loves her Father, Every Woman Loves a Fascist: The Politics and Poetics of Despair in Plath's "Daddy" Sylvia Plath is one of the most famous poets to emerge in the late 20th century. Partially due to the success of her autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, which details her partial recovery from suicidal depression, Plath's poetry has been frequently analyzed through the lens of her clinical mental problems. "Dying is An
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