Sylvia Plath compare to Esther
Sylvia Plath compare to EstherSylvia Plath was born to middle class parents in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts; she published her first poem when she was eight. Her father was a professor of entomology, when he past away he left psychological scars on Sylvia when she was eight. Her mother worked teaching in a medical/secretarial program at Boston University. By the time she entered Smith College on a scholarship in 1950 she already had an impressive list of publications. During the summer following her junior year at Smith, she returned from a stay in New York City where she had been a student ``guest editor'' at Mademoiselle Magazine, Sylvia nearly succeeded in killing herself by swallowing sleeping pills (LW, pg36). After a period of recovery involving electroshock and psychotherapy she was left in the �real word�(GR, pg23). She later described this experience in the novel, The Bell Jar. On February 11, 1963, Sylvia Plath killed herself with cooking gas at the age of 30.
Esther Greenwood attended College on a scholarship, earned top grades and majored in English just like Sylvia. Her life at the beginning seemed to be full of potential and goals, but as her thoughts and emotions are reveal to us; it becomes clear to us that despite all her achievement, Esther�s true state of mind is not in the right place. As the story goes on she has to make a decision, like Sylvia, whether she wants a career or a family (LW, pg. 38). �Esther sees herself as something else than primarily a housewife, and she uses much of her energy to try to avoid marrying the one she is expected- Buddy Willard�(SP, pg3). Like Sylvia, she did a summer internship in New York City, and suffered a mental collapse, and was institutionalized. While
Esther�s future in the novel�s conclusion is still unknown. You can see Esther�s confusion; frustration, paranoia and fear are coming from Sylvia�s life.
Sylvia Plath�s poem, �Mirror�, shows much of how she views her life. Plath discusses the duality of the mirror and difficulty of seeing deeper into one's self in her poem. The speaker is the mirror, which describes itself in human ways throughout the poem (DM, pg. 24). "I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions."(1). The mirror is pure in its reflection of the woman, "Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike I am not cruel, only truthful-" (3-4). Love or dislike cannot change the reflection the mirror and the truth as it is reflected back to the viewer can often be cruel or harsh but it is only truthful. Almost as to say it�s not the mirror's fault but more a job. As the author speaks of the mirror as "The eye of a little god" (5), the power of the mirror is expressed just as it conveys the mirrors omniscient ability to reflect the whole truth of the woman. The loneliness of the mirror is shown, "Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall. It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long, I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers, Faces and darkness separate us over and over"(6-9).
The image of the wall creates a feeling of boredom and sadness as the darkness separates the mirror from its constant vision, which has become part of its "heart" (DM, pg. 37). The darkness could be within the mirror or even the author herself. The space in between the two 9-lined stanzas is similar to the space between the poem's mirror and the wall. The transformation of the mirror into the lake is a repetition of the lakes former life showing the poems mirrored circularity. In the lines, "Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me. Searching my reaches for what she really is" (10-11), the underlying theme of the whole poem can be seen. The transformation presents the woman looking for her true identity inside her reflection. Almost as though the woman does not like what she sees "she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon" (12), hoping for a better truth. The unfolding of this self and search for truth is constant in this poem. The ending is important to show the process of life and the reflection of aging physically or mentally. "In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish" (17-18). These lines are talking about the terrible fish as seen through the eyes of the mirror and makes a negative statement about aging as all things in nature must on their search for their true selves.
Sylvia Plath's poem, "Daddy," expresses her love-hate relationship with her father, and how it has affected her life Sylvia's father Otto Plath died when she was nine and this poem puts her conflicting emotions into words. �The poem is obviously written with childish undertones� (DM). Plath repeats the "ooh" sound throughout the poem, which forces the reader to recall nursery rhymes. At the very beginning of the poem when Plath states: �You do not do, you do not do, Anymore, black shoe, In which I have lived like a foot�(M, 1-2). Plath incorporates these childish things for a variety of reasons. Her father died when she was too young to understand that he did not "leave her"(DM, pg. 56). She instead felt betrayed and angry that he would do such a thing. This poem helps the reader to understand the child's point of view. She also wants the reader to understand why she saw her father as God-like, as she states in the second stanza: �Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe, Big as a Frisco seal�(M, 8-10).
As a child she could not see him as anything but a statuesque figure. She was young and could not understand her father's faults. Readers can easily see foreshadowing of the hard times to come in this stanza as well. Instead of describing the statue as a brilliant, everlasting figure, she describes it as "ghastly"(M, 9). The remainder of the poem provides the final reason for the childish undertones. Plath, overcome with sadness about her father leaving her, develops an intense hatred for him. She demonstrates her hatred by transforming his image into a Nazi and the devil. As Diane Middlebrrok explains, Plath's poems about her father "show that the attitude toward him evolves from nostalgic mournfulness, regret, and guilt, to resentment and a bitter resolve to break his hold on her" (DM, pg. 58). Plath becomes determined to convince the reader that her father had been a horrible person, a Nazi, to justify her feelings toward him. Even the descriptions of her father resemble both Hitler and his army: �And your neat moustache,
And your Aryan eye, bright blue�(M, 43-44). This relationship climaxes in the eleventh stanza, when Plath for the first time feels the need to justify her words to the reader.
As Diana Middlebrook observes, "As she culls up her own picture of him as a devil, he refuses to adopt this stereotype�. Instead he jumbles his trademark": �A cleft in your chin instead of your foot, But no less a devil for that, no not, Any less the black man, who, Bit my pretty heart in two�(M, 53-56). She realizes that she has become hysterical, and the words seem to simply rant and rave about hatred. The reader becomes less convinced that he had been a ruthless beast because nothing is heard besides her anger. Plath states that, although it may be hard to see the resemblance between her father and the devil, he will never be a better person because of it (DM, pg. 60). Toward the end of the poem the reader finds that the hatred geared toward her father is also aimed toward the man who is her father's archetype. She becomes angry with her husband for being a man who closely resembles her father, deceiving and controlling. She states:
�I made a model of you, A man in black with a Meinkampf look, And a love of the rack and the screw, and I said I do, I do�(SP, 22). She hates her father for influencing her to choose a man similar in nature to her father. He has done so by not being there to give her a better image of what a good husband is.
Similar to Steven Gould Axelrod, one could argue that "Daddy" is a work of fiction. He states that "Plath herself introduced it on the BBC as the opposite of confession, as a constructed fiction� since its details depart freely from the facts of her biography"(DM, pg. 63). While the fact that the poem does not follow her biography remains a valid point, it is easy to see otherwise. Plath could not deal with her anger over her father's death in the poem. The reader easily finds the poem to be an expression of her inability to come to terms with her father's death. The only fiction in the poem is that her father was a Nazi. Plath remembers him as having similar characteristics, but he was not involved in the war. Consequently, the reader must conclude that, "Daddy is a love poem," it is just the opposite(DM, pg. 63). While Sylvia Plath loved her father while he was alive, she no longer has any love for him. She has become consumed by hatred. She hates him for leaving her in the first place and because she ended up with a husband who modeled him. She also hates him because she was unable to join him. Although she attempted suicide, she failed: �At twenty I tried to die, and get back, back to you� (WM, pg. 43). She blames her father for leaving her to go to a place that she could not reach. The poem concludes with "Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through" (M, 80). While this signifies the end of the poem, it also brings closure to her feelings about her father. She has "killed" him by having her imaginary villagers stamping on him (DM, pg.65). She has dealt with her hatred toward him and needs to move on. Possibly, Plath was hinting that she was simply finished with being hurt and was literally "through." Plath committed suicide before the poem was published.
People who attempt suicide do so to block the tremendous pain that is caused by a variety of problems (kJ, pg5). There could be changes in relationships, problems related to jobs, problems in school, loss of loved one (like Sylvia�s loss of her father), their financial situation being bad, body image, or various abuses like physical, mental, emotional or sexual. Depression and stress are considered as the major factors in suicide. Different people deal with stress in different ways. It also depends on what kind of society and atmosphere you live in. Not everyone attempts suicide when faced with unbearable situations(kJ, pg.6). Some people cannot cope with it as others can and they feel suicide is an easy way out. It is a known fact that in today�s fast moving world there is too much of competition everywhere in every field(kJ, pg7). Every day we hear cases of adults, teenagers, and even children being pushed around to their best. It brings out the best in some people, but not everyone. Those who are pushed to their limits and cannot cope with it feel let down by themselves. They fee as if they are not wanted anymore by the society. This creates a low self-esteem.
Sylvia Plath expresses her painful life through the character Esther in the novel The Bell Jar and through her poetry. Sylvia�s life has been surrounded by death, seeing all of this made her want to end her life. Sylvia wrote the Bell Jar as her good bye to the world before she committed suicide. Sylvia has lived a less than perfect life with more downs than ups. As we read her poems we see that she has lead a painful life with full of Sadness and Darkness. We see her relationship with her father and how she views the life that was given to her. Less than one month before Sylvia committed suicide by asphyxiation, her book was published (GR, pg23). It�s very intriguing to see all the things she had to go through and how she hides behind someone or something to show us who she really is. Sylvia Plath was really a very smart person with a lot of talents, but her life experience led her to her downfall. Sylvia Plath has had a life which was full of changes, but it was interesting to see how she express her self; she either wrote poetry or book, which talk about her life. Plath�s never reveals to the reader that it�s her life she�s writing about, but we know it is by her biography.