Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath

  • Submitted By: ton0881
  • Date Submitted: 03/24/2015 8:34 PM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 977
  • Page: 4

Sylvia Plath was born in Boston, Massachusetts on October 27 1932 she endured a depressing childhood. Plath was a gifted poet, but inside she was miserable. Sylvia Plath's emotional life, and her difficult time with her father's death, her separation from Ted Hughes, and bipolar disorder played an important part in her career as a poet by inspiring her to create her dark masterpieces. Despite all her troubles, Sylvia Plath was an outstanding student at Smith College, won prizes, and awards for her writing, and she earned straight A’s. Then she met and married Ted Hughes, which she had two children with. Sylvia Plath, was an extremely great poet, at the age of eight she published her first poem Circus In Three Rings. Plath wrote numerous poems and one novel, the Bell Jar, based on her life and deals with one young woman’s mental breakdown under the name Victoria Lucas.

Sylvia Plath’s poems are mainly about 20th century feminism and women’s injustices. The poem Daddy she creates a symbolic image of her father, using different ways to describe her relationship with him. In Daddy, she compares him to a Nazi and herself to a Jew “I may be a bit of a Jew. I have always been scared of you” (Plath, "Daddy"). In the poem Purdah I believe it is about female oppression from society, especially male oppression. I feel that she is tired of this and wants someone to listen. In Purdah, what Plath conveys is that women always hide in the shadows of their husbands, reflecting their shadows thus acting like a mirror, which is like Purdah or a screen. In Jailer, I feel that Plath is talking about how much she is suffering in her marriage with, Ted Hughs. She feels as if she is imprisoned, and being tortured making herself as the victim. She writes “He his been burning me with cigarettes, Pretending I am a negress with pink paws” (Plath, Jailer). She feels as if her identity doesn’t suit her. I feel as if feminism played an important role in Plath’s poetry, her life...

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