¶ … 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 Art," the critic George Steiner titles of his essay on Plath, referring not only to a line from her poem "Lady Lazarus" but the critical elision of the poet's personal suicidal depression with the source of her confessional poetic gift. For instance, Plath's masterpiece, "Daddy," is a dramatic monologue in the voice of a German woman whose father was a Nazi. Yet despite the 'assumed' nature of "Daddy's" voice and the apparent divergence of poet from the speaker, the poem is still often interpreted as a poem in a lyric, confessional voice.
There is some justice to this approach. Plath's own German heritage and her difficult relationship with her own father, who died at an early age, makes the highly personal interpretation of this poem often given by critics seem more justified. The poem is more complex than a pure confessional, however. "Daddy" does attempt to create an analogy between the personal depression and despair of the poet that has caused her to embark upon unfulfilling and controlling relationships with men and a larger historical injustice of violence inflicted upon oppressed people and women. Ultimately, however, the end of the poem locates the work in the individual speaker's unique personal despair and inner, rather than outer political conflicts.
Every woman loves a fascist," writes the speaker of "Daddy." (Line 48) The poet chronicles the physical details she remembers of her father, the boots, the uniform, and speaks of herself as a disappointment to him. She states that she must be a "bit of a Jew," both allying herself with the individuals whom her father...
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