She spoke of 'having a go' at suicide, like someone 'has a go' at tournament tennis" ("Sylvia Plath"). Additionally, one of Sylvia Plath's better-known poems, Lady Lazarus, from her posthumously-published Ariel collection (1965) describes a female speaker defiantly rising, like Lazarus, from each of several suicide attempts: 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'd say I have a call [HIDDEN] Another well-known Sylvia Plath poem, Daddy, also from Plath's 1965 Ariel collection, alludes to the suicide attempt of the speaker, at age 20 (Plath's own age when she had her first nervous breakdown and subsequently made her first documented suicide attempt ), based on a wish to join her deceased father in death: I was ten when they buried you At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you
She understands there is a double standard between men and women, but does not know what to do to create a better, more fulfilling life for herself, both sexually and mentally. At one point, she says, "ever since I'd learned about the corruption of Buddy Willard, my virginity weighed like a millstone around my neck" (Plath 180)
Thus, she frequently associates imagery pertaining to water with herchildhood and the presence, and then the dearth of presence, of her father. It was only after her father died that the author and her immediate family, "moved from their house near the ocean, which Plath missed deeply, to Wellesley, Massachussettes, 1942" (Materer 3)
The subsequent quotation shows that, …the bottom line is that Hughes was the husband who left her for another woman, who left her in the depths of the coldest winter for years, in a cold bare flat -- a million moon miles from the quaint, stylish, hominy-grit-cosy Boston suburb of Wellesley, Mass. -- in impersonal, indifferent London, with two small children and no sure way to make a decent living (Whittington-Egan 4)
In "Daddy" she attempts to connect the intensely personal suffering of a woman (Plath) who never recovered from the death of her father to a more universal suffering, whether it's between father and daughter, husband and wife or tyrant and captive. The poem opens with the narrator addressing her father: You do not do, you do not do Anymore black shoe, In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white Barely daring to breathe or Achoo (Muller 320)
In fact, Ariel,1 the collection that includes "Daddy," is an autobiographical collection of poetry that describes Plath's life leading up to her suicide. In "Daddy" she attempts to connect the intensely personal suffering of a woman (Plath) who never recovered from the death of her father to a more universal suffering, whether it's between father and daughter, husband and wife or tyrant and captive
In fact, Ariel,1 the collection that includes "Daddy," is an autobiographical collection of poetry that describes Plath's life leading up to her suicide. In "Daddy" she attempts to connect the intensely personal suffering of a woman (Plath) who never recovered from the death of her father to a more universal suffering, whether it's between father and daughter, husband and wife or tyrant and captive
"In this poem a disturbing tension is established between the seriousness of the experience described and the misleadingly light form of the poem. The vocabulary and rhythms which approximate to the colloquial simplicity of conversational speech, the frequently end-stopped lines, the repetitions which have the effect of mockingly counteracting the violence of the meaning, all establish the deliberately flippant note which this poem strives to achieve" (Aird 1973)
But despite this sense of sorrow, the tone of the poem is playful, even mundane, deflating both the Biblical resonance of the title as well as the seriousness of the act. Critics of the poem, even literary scholars, often note that Plath's supposed nine lives eventually ran out, and "she died by her own hand, gassing herself in a London apartment in 1963 in the grips of a bitter depression" (Beam 2003)
The line that suicide feels like 'hell,' is deflated with her mocking assertion that killing herself and coming back is her 'calling' in life, proving the doctors' apparent success. "Plath's late poems are full of speakers whose rigid identities and violent methods not only parody their torment but also permit them to control it… She is above all a performer, chiefly remarkable for her manipulation of herself as well as of the effects she wishes to have on those who surround her" (Dickie 1975)
However, according to the speaker of the poem, who has also "done it again./One year in every ten/I manage it --, " her resurrection is a medical triumph, not a religious one even though onlookers regard her as a kind of traveling religious sideshow (Plath 1-3)
Plath can thus include among Lady Lazarus's characteristics the greatest contemporary examples of brutality and persecution: the sadistic medical experiments on the Jew's by Nazi doctors and the Nazis' use of their victims' bodies in the production of lampshades and other objects. These allusions, however, are no more meant to establish a realistic historic norm in the poem than the allusions to the striptease are intended to establish a realistic social context" (Rosenblatt 1977)
Sylvia Plath (/ p l æ ? /; October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. Born in Boston, she studied at ...
Sylvia Plath - Poet - The author of several collections of poetry and the novel The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath is often singled out for the intense coupling of violent or ...
For more on the life and tragic death of Sylvia Plath, author of many influential poems and the novel The Bell Jar, visit Biography.com.
Sylvia Plath was one of the most dynamic and admired poets of the 20th century. By the time she took her life at the age of 30, Plath already had a following in the ...
Browse through Sylvia Plath's poems and quotes. 250 poems of Sylvia Plath. Phenomenal Woman, Still I Rise, The Road Not Taken, If You Forget Me, Dreams. Born in 1932 ...
This Sylvia Plath site contains a lot of bibliographical information, useful resources, links to essays, articles and poems, and a short biography of Sylvia Plath.
News about Sylvia Plath. Commentary and archival information about Sylvia Plath from The New York Times.
Sylvia Plath was born in 1932 in Massachusetts. Her books include the poetry collections The Colossus, Crossing the Water, Winter Trees, Ariel, and The Collected ...