The Creative Potential of Sylvia Plath - Essay Example

Dying as the best performance of art: reflections on Sylvia Plath’s works Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I've a call. Sylvia Plath Introduction Female destiny is full of challenges and complexities. The destiny of every poet is very often interesting and tragic. A creative potential of Sylvia Plath was often determined by a weak-willed nature of a woman, a creature, which needs protection and understanding. The most logical and positive outcome of negative experiences and wonderings is death. The theme of dying was prosecuting the writer, till it was the central theme, which made her famous after her death. Death is the main topic of many writers and poets but tragic themes of Sylvia Plath are really significant and worth-studying. Maybe, she needed some help and support and then her fame would not be so tragic? She lived in the world where everything connected with women’s fate seemed tragic to her. On the other hand, would her fame be so bitter-sweet in case she was not focused on the theme of death? Actually, no one knows the answer to these questions. “Poetry, I feel, is a tyrannical discipline, you've got to go so far, so fast, in such a small space that you've just got to turn away all the peripherals. And I miss them! I'm a woman, I like my little Lares and Penates, I like trivia, and I find that in a novel I can get more of life, perhaps not such intense life, but certainly more of life, and so I've become very interested in novel writing as a result” (Sylvia Plath.). All we have is her creative heritage, which makes us feel like she felt and make us courageous while approaching an eternal theme of death. This theme is not scaring, it is positioned as a kind of art by Sylvia Plath. Creative thinking about death by Plath Her two central works “The Bell Jar” and “Ariel” are considered further on in the paper with regards to the theme of death. The first her novel “The Bell Jar” is often referred to as a fictional autobiography of the writer. Death as the central theme should be promoted and supported, because death was a critical point of the writer’s concern and the Centrum, around which all other events occurred. Death was a binding thread for Sylvia Plath. It was a kind of freedom and liberation from the daily routine, hardships, negative emotions and depression: “Death must be so beautiful... To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.”1 In such a way, Oscar Wilde reflected his ideas about death and we can clearly see that these two great writers had a lot in common in their reflections about the eternal themes. Both of them wanted to find peace in the Nature and they wanted to be closer to it. Therefore, the positioning of death as a kind of liberation is very interesting with regards to the experience and biography of Sylvia Plath. She was a devoted mother of two children and a wife of Tom Hughes. Her husband gave her up, she felt depressed and she did not have much power to live. She relied only on herself. She felt depressed and she relied only on her. There is no doubt that Sylvia Plath expected nothing from anybody and she thought that there is no way that one is never disappointed in case he/she relies on no one except him/herself. This novel is devoted to the destiny of a woman in America in 50s. There were a lot of challenges in the family and social life of people. Esther Greenwood as the central character of the novel was a talented and experienced woman. Women at that time sacrificed their hopes and aspirations in the name of her husbands and children. The Bell Jar describes unequal relations between men and women. The former had a chance to have early sexual relations beyond their marriage and women were supposedly innocent until their marriage. Sexuality in 50s in the American society was not positioned as a separate spiritual entity or a way to pleasure or satisfaction. It was a cage for women and very often they wanted to escape from it. For women, sexuality is separated from any expression of love. Women are usually taught that sex and love are very different things and then it is difficult for many of them to build healthy and happy relations. This is like a puzzle that has no solution. While it's considered natural for men to have sexual experience with the majority of women, women did not have a chance to reveal their sexual potential. The sex is often positioned as the darkest side of a human nature. The sexual rape and violence are to phenomena going hand in hand. There is an option for women to experience heterosexual relations. In the process of her challenging life, this woman goes insane. It is rather hard for her to sacrifice her wishes, desires and aspirations and remain an indifferent person. There is a great despair of this woman and she feels depressed and really hard. Every moment and every day Esther was approaching to her despair and confusion. Esther Greenwood is not going insane to the fullest extent, when she made an attempt to get drowned. She needs help very much and she knows that when she kills herself, she will feel much easier. Death for her is a possible approach to nature. The novel describes chronicles of her life. The bell jar is a metaphorical name of the novel and it describes mental conditions of an individual, who is trying to escape from her madness. The novel is focused on Esther’s going mad. Esther feels closed from the external world. There is no way or option to feel released from tight bounds of the society. Esther is closed from life and love. A woman experienced hardships, she could not show her female nature, and she was too complex and too reserved2. Her first sexual experience was too frightening and of course, it is more natural of her to communicate with women than with men. She does not know what normal sexual relations are and what they look like. Esther was greatly scared off by mental procedures: shock therapy and lobotomies. In the end of these mental tortures, she feels desperate. Therefore, the performance of death in this novel is really positioned as a separate entity of liberation. In the volume of poems "Ariel" the concept of death is positioned as the highest art of performance. Plath also reflected her biographical facts in this volume of poems. She had a horse named Ariel and when riding by this horse it was a kind of liberation for the writer. The wind was blowing and her mind become freer. “Ariel” is often positioned as a poem of Sylvia Plath’s confessions. The writer reflects her psychological problems and wants to show the biographical developments of Sylvia Plath. The imagistic issues and reflections used by the author penetrate throughout the poem. Plath discusses different transfers from image to image. The modern American poetry is more advanced thanks to the developments by Sylvia Plath. For example, such images as the “black sweet blood mouthfuls”, which she assigns to berries; the "glitter of seas", are those concepts, which are unusual for the American poetry. The author wants to show to her readers a process of transformations and the process of disintegration; we see the image of the horse early in the morning and the Ariel is able to rush across the countryside, and the rider is able to collect berries across the countryside. In accordance with Rosenthal: “In a single leap of feeling, it identifies sexual elation (in the full sense of the richest kind of encompassment of life) with its opposite, death's nothingness”3. Actually, Plath discusses possible ways of a human being. On the one hand, it is evident that our life is passing between stillness and ignorance. Scaring shadows preventing a human being from a proper functioning and performance of death is a possible way to substitute usual life by possible strategies of liberating performance. The dew that flies  Suicidal, at one with the drive  Into the red Eye, the cauldron of morning. We can see that Death is positioned as glittering phenomenon of liberation, it is an apocalypse of revelation and it is "Stasis in darkness". There is a way forward a way out of this routine and challenging life. To perform death as an act of revelation is upheld by the main character of the poem. Death is a final stage of our lives. There is a sexual background of relations between a female rider and a male horse. A woman wants to be uplifted and wants to turn into a female lioness. A new female identity of a woman appears: “I unpeel--/ Dead hands, dead stringencies” that these motifs prevailed over her. She wants to be converted into foam. At this point we can draw parallels between a real mermaid Ariel and the main character of the poem. Moreover, the image of foam brings us closer to considerations about the goddess Venus coming from the sea foam. Foam is positioned as a metaphor of life and death, because Venus comes from the foam and Ariel turns into foam, when she jumps into the ocean. In accordance with the lines of the poem: “The child's cry/ melts in the wall”. There is a need for a woman to be liberated from her mothering routine. A woman turns into an arrow and in a metaphorical way she is renamed: "The dew that flies/ Suicidal."4 Death is a direct way for rebirth. There is a witnessing ritual death of a woman. A spirit of Goddess is everywhere. The options of death are open for the main character of the poem. There is a fusion of life and death; there is a way out for negative feelings and emotions in case a body manages to turn into foam. There is a creation of a spiritual dimension and Plath moves and projects her poetic vision on death performance. She was gradually moving from her daily routine to a perfect liberation and performance of death. We can also see the enchanting lines of Sylvia Plath's poem “Words”: Years later I Encounter them on the road-- Words dry and rider less, The indefatigable hoof-taps. While5 From the bottom of the pool, fixed stars govern a life. Therefore, we can see that our lives are captured between the sky and the earth and it is very hard to choose the best option for future life or for life in the Heaven. Conclusion As far as we can see, Sylvia Plath is an incredible woman, who was confused to the greatest extent by her too challenging life and did not see any other option of release except death only. Death was positioned by her as the only one possible solution to show to the world her dignity, her self-performance and a strong-willed character. Obviously, it seemed to the writer that a woman does not have any other way to do that in this world, which is created specially for men and women are just guests without rights, opportunities and positive expirience. Sylvia Plath committed a suicide when she put her head into the oven and her children were in the next room. Therefore, it is evident that this woman carried a too hard burden, which she simply could not manage. It was a pain that she could not bear. She wanted only to die, to leave this world because she could not see any other way out. It is really hard to position her main characters the same way she positions herself, but in such a way the writer manages to show death as a possible masterful performance and not as an act of a scared woman. It is a spirit of a woman, who could not be pacified on the Earth, but had a hope to find peace and rest in the Heaven. Works cited On “Ariel”. Available from: http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/plath/ariel.htm Sylvia Plath. Forum. Available from: http://www.sylviaplathforum.com/ariel.html Sylvia Plath. (2012). Words. Available from: http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/sylviaplath/1462 Word Analysis. Available from: The Official Website of Sylvia Plath. Available from: http://www.sylviaplath.de/ Wagner-Martin, Linda. Sylvia Plath: A Literary Life. Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Wilde, Oscar. On Death. Available from: http://thinkexist.com/quotation/death_must_be_so_beautiful-to_lie_in_the_soft/343317.html Read More