Woman-Centric Themes in the Poetry of Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich - Research Paper Example

of Woman-centric Themes in the Poetry of Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich The lives of poets have always been under scrutiny. Their lives have in most cases, influenced the kind of poetry they have written, both as far as form and content are concerned. The kinds of themes that have been taken up by women poets have in many cases, reflected the concerns of women in a largely patriarchal society. The cases of Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich are no different. This paper shall seek to analyze the poetry of these three poets, looking at the thematic and formal convergences in their poetry. The woman-centric themes of the poems shall be dealt with in this paper. The formal innovations that these poets have made in their poetry shall also be an important part of this paper. This paper shall also look at the divergences within their poetry. Obviously, even though women share many of their concerns, to say that their concerns are identical would be to reduce the complexity and depth of the issue at hand. This paper shall argue that the feminist content of these poems needs to be looked at in terms of the need for solidarity amongst women of all ideological orientations, arising out of their experiences as women in a patriarchal society (Hoffman 48). Anne Sexton’s poem “Cinderella” speaks of the problems inherent within fairy tales. It speaks of the harmful stereotypes that are perpetuated within and through such stories. The stereotype of the wicked stepmother is one such stereotype. The importance of Sexton’s poem lies in its ability to subtly pint at such stereotypes and laugh at them while at the same time rebuking society for believing in them. When she says, That's the way with stepmothers. (373), she intends the reader to detect the sarcasm within the lines. This is intended to reveal the extent to which women in such stories are victimized and portrayed as villains. The reference to the ball as a “marriage market” (373) is another instance when events that are considered important in popular imagination are deconstructed and viewed as events with social and economic significances. Sexton continues with themes of relevance to women in “Her Kind” where she expresses solidarity with women of another era. She refers to witch-hunts that have taken place in history, arguing that ‘witches’ were just women who were different from what a patriarchal society wanted them to be. Sexton herself was considered to be a woman different from conventional models of femininity. This may have led her to express her solidarity with other marginalized groups of women from history. Greg Johnson concurs with this view in his review of Diane Wood Middlebrook’s biography of Anne Sexton (408). Sexton repeatedly uses the line “I have been her kind” (405) in order to emphasize the importance of such solidarity. Her life is important here also because it reveals how difficult it is for women, even famous poets, to lead their lives in a patriarchal society. The self-positioning of female subjectivity in Sylvia Plath’s poetry spans across the subjects of sexuality, history, kinship and heavily politicised and gendered notion of rationality. The focus of the essay shall be on “Daddy,” “Lady Lazarus,” and “Metaphors.” In “Daddy” one finds the coalescing of the identities of her father and a tyrannical political leader. Owing to the immediate historical backdrop of the poem, the Second World War, one may well speculate that the reference here is to the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler. The analogy between her father and Hitler points to the collusion between patriarchy and dictatorships. It is against the Nazi ideal of racial purity that the speaker establishes her own identity as proudly hybrid when she says “With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck/And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack/I may be a bit of a Jew.” (631) This repudiation of purity enables her to construct her identity outside the rigidly deterministic prisms of gender, racial and ethnic belonging. The references to the concentration camps of Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen is significant for it enables the narrator’s feminist politics to envisage the idea of shared marginality whereby she proclaims herself “a Jew.” (631) This thus creates a broader understanding of and between different historically marginalized social groups. This is enhanced by the lines where expresses her willingness to die, in Lady Lazarus, Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. (569) As Pamela Smith argues, one can even detect a strain of boastfulness in these lines that reveal the wish for solidarity between marginalized groups of the society that Plath expresses (324). In “Metaphors” one finds the notion of a cloying excess which runs through the poem. While on the one hand the images of ripe fruit (“A melon strolling on two tendrils”) or rising yeast might refer to the state of pregnancy, the images of plenitude here are arguably not positive ones (n.p.). They conjure instead the sentiments of closure, stagnation and even rot rather than that of fecundity. This then may be read as repudiation of the patriarchal idea of the nurturing, feminine earth-mother where a woman’s identity is shaped through reductive utilitarian demands of childbearing. The last line “Boarded the train there's no getting off” (n.p.) is perhaps a critique of orthodox societies where a woman dis not granted the civil right over her own body and is thereby denied the right to abort an unwanted foetus. The concluding line is thus puts forth the political message of both women’s right over their sexuality and the rejection of social mores which validate a woman’s existence vis-a-vis her ability to bear children. Adrienne Rich’s poetry speaks of the need for women to aggressively break out of patriarchal moulds. While speaking of embroidered figures made by the narrator’s aunt in “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers”, she invokes the hidden resistance that women of earlier generations may have displayed (382-383). Such acts of resistance may have gone unnoticed on the face of it, but they survive and can be found by one who would care to do so. Great premium is placed on the ability of the artist to record resistance as the embroidered tigers are ultimately, works of art. Art can be used in order to underscore the unconscious feelings of resistance in a person’s mind and these rebellious thought can be the beginning of the end of patriarchy, as far as Rich is concerned. The fact that this rebellion is traced to a family member from a previous generation serves the purpose of giving the narrator a precedent or a foremother in her own resistance to patriarchy. The poems that have been discussed in this paper reveal a desire to resist patriarchy and one of the foremost weapons that they refer to in this regard is solidarity amongst women. The poems also talk of the need to create a history of women’s resistance that would help in providing models of attack for the following generations. The poetry here arises out of the society that it is a part of. The trials and tribulations that are faced by women on an everyday basis are the ones that are spoken of in the poems that have been discussed in this paper. The narrators of these poems seek to place women in one place, looking at patriarchy as the enemy. Solidarity is seen as the answer to many of the problems that are faced by women. This theme runs through all the poems that have been analyzed in this paper . Works Cited Hoffman, Nany Jo. “Reading Women's Poetry: The Meaning and Our Lives”. College English 34 (1): 1972, 48-62. Web. 25 Nov. 2013. Johnson, Greg. Review of Anne Sexton: A Biography by Diane Wood Middlebrook. American Literature 64 (2): 1992, 408-409. Web. 24 Nov. 2013. Plath, Sylvia. “Daddy”. Name of Book. Place of Publication: Publisher, Year of Publication, Print. ---. “Lady Lazarus”. Name of Book. Place of Publication: Publisher, Year of Publication, Print. ---. “Metaphors”. Name of Book. Place of Publication: Publisher, Year of Publication, Print. Rich, Adrienne. “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers”. Name of Book. Place of Publication: Publisher, Year of Publication, Print. Sexton, Anne. “Cinderella”. Name of Book. Place of Publication: Publisher, Year of Publication, Print. ---. “Her Kind”. Name of Book. Place of Publication: Publisher, Year of Publication, Print. Smith, Pamela A. “The Unitive Urge in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath”. The New England Quarterly 45(3): 1972, 323-339. Web. 24 Nov. 2013 Read More