Sylvia Plath and the Problem That Has No Name
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City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Student Theses Baruch College Spring 5-18-2018 To Be Everything: Sylvia Plath and the Problem That Has No Name Alanna P. McAuliffe CUNY Bernard M Baruch College How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/bb_etds/85 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] McAuliffe 2 Table of Contents Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... 3 Plath in Context: Postwar America ........................................................................................ 5 The Role of Women in Midcentury America ................................................................... 5 The Shortcomings of Postwar Women’s Movements .................................................. 10 The Poetics of the Problem that Has No Name ........................................................... 15 The Poetry of Sylvia Plath ..................................................................................................... 18 “Spinster” ............................................................................................................................. 20 “Two Sisters of Persephone” ............................................................................................ 25 “Elm” .................................................................................................................................... 30 “Ariel” ................................................................................................................................... 36 “Daddy” ................................................................................................................................ 41 “The Applicant” .................................................................................................................. 50 Revolution as Salvation .......................................................................................................... 55 Works Cited ............................................................................................................................. 58 McAuliffe 3 Abstract This thesis will explore, in depth, how the poetry of Sylvia Plath operates as an expression of female discontent in the decade directly preceding the sexual revolution. This analysis will incorporate both sociohistorical context and theory introduced in Betty Friedan’s 1963 work The Feminine Mystique. In particular, Plath’s work will be put into conversation with Friedan’s notion of the “problem that has no name,” an all-consuming sense of malaise and dissatisfaction that plagued American women in the postwar era. This notion will be furthered by close-readings of poems throughout various stages of Plath’s career, namely “Spinster,” “Two Sisters of Persephone,” “Elm,” “Ariel,” “Daddy,” and “The Applicant,” works which speak to binaries enforced by cultural convention, the dangers of the domestic model, and the inescapability of mid-century femininity. In advancing this argument, biographical readings of Plath’s work will be rejected, bolstering the notion that her work stands alone as cultural criticism. Operating in an age of restriction and repression, Plath’s work speaks to both female identity and subordinating norms of domesticity. Though this thesis will certainly incorporate contemporary and modern cultural criticism as well as historical context for the concept of feminine containment and restriction, it will be most focused on analyzing Plath’s work as a poet, including assessing her praxis, aesthetic, and narrative choices. Finally, this argument will conclude by establishing how the six poems considered, as well as the rest of Plath’s oeuvre, directly anticipate second-wave feminism and the women’s rights movements of the sixties. McAuliffe 4 “WOMEN HAVE LUST TOO. WHY SHOULD THEY BE RELEGATED TO THE POSITION OF CUSTODIAN OF EMOTIONS, WATCHER OF INFANTS, FEEDER OF SOUL, BODY AND PRIDE OF MAN? BEING BORN A WOMAN IS AN AWFUL TRAGEDY.” SYLVIA PLATH McAuliffe 5 Plath in Context: Postwar America Writers are largely a byproduct of the era that they inhabit. Even if it is entirely unintentional, sociohistorical commentary inevitably diffuses into their work. For an author like Sylvia Plath, however, reaching womanhood in mid-century America did not merely inflect her work: it inspired it. Life for American women in the middle of the twentieth century (particularly middle class white women) was largely centered around the domestic sphere. A symbol of hope, prosperity, and most significantly, stability, the home served as a model of successful democracy following a time of turmoil and conflict. Entering her adulthood in 1950, Plath was maturing in an era where the housebound role of women was an immovable status quo. Sylvia Plath’s poetry is a direct result of a sparring with these rigidities, a desire for the comfort of gender normativity at odds with a desire for alternatives. Thusly, in order to understand the content and craft of her oeuvre, it is first necessary to review the historical context in which she was living and writing, roughly 1952 to 1963. The Role of Women in Midcentury America Following the conclusion of the second World War in 1945, the United States became an icon of economic and political strength. While other global powers suffered immense losses of life and damage to infrastructure, American causalities were comparatively far less debilitating (Dunar 3). In the wake of violence and victory, American families felt optimistic about the future. When soldiers returned home to a triumphant welcome, peace felt permanent and the general perception was that life in America was unshakably stable. As a result, women were urged to have children, to raise them in an era of prosperity. In what is colloquially known as the “Baby Boom,” more than seventy-six million children were born between the years of 1946 and 1964 (Dunar 174). With expanding families came the need for expanded houses, in neighborhoods built specifically for the McAuliffe 6 growing family. Subsequently, Americans began to move to the suburbs in droves, with low-cost mortgages giving former soldiers and their families an additional incentive to head for small communities on the outskirts of larger cities (Dunar 177). The transition into a suburb-centric culture did little to benefit women. From the thirties into the forties, the number of women in the workforce grew exponentially in response to the economic pressures of the Great Depression (“Working Women in the 1930s”). When America entered World War II in 1941, men left jobs behind to go abroad and fight. Consequently, women filled positions formerly held by men out of necessity. The settling down into suburban life made many of these former freedoms inaccessible to women. Instead, young women were being encouraged to stay home, to keep house and to watch children while their husbands served as breadwinners of their family unit. By the end of the fifties, the average age at which women were married was roughly twenty years old (U.S. Bureau of the Census). A growing number of teenagers were foregoing higher education to marry, while thirty-seven percent had dropped out before graduation, mostly for marriage and a life of domesticity (“Women’s Roles in the 1950s”). Even if women did pursue higher education, they were often encouraged to take classes on home economics and interior design, their career choices often limited to clerical or service industry roles. Of the forty percent of adult women who did work outside of the home, only twelve percent practiced a profession (Zelomek). These women, often receiving their educations at women’s colleges throughout the United States, went on to pursue academic and white-collar positions but found that their ability and experience was overlooked due to their gender. Frustrated with the lack of career mobility, well-educated women sought solace in the home, hoping that it would “become not a place of drudgery but a liberating arena of fulfillment through professional homemaking, meaningful child rearing, and satisfying sexuality” (May 25). McAuliffe 7 Over time, however, it became evident that the decision to embrace domesticity was far from a choice; it was a reality steeped in normative cultural expectations. Though the second World War had reached its conclusion, the United States’ deployment of the hydrogen bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ushered the world into a new state of alert. Though Americans attempted to cling to the myth of unshakable peace and prosperity, the atomic era was marked by anxiety and unease. In the wake of the introduction of nuclear weaponry, uncertainty and mistrust of communist-aligned nations and individuals grew. For example, when the Soviet Union gained confirmed nuclear capability in 1949, fifty-three percent of Americans polled stated that there was good chance of their community being bombed in a future skirmish (May 25). The angst surrounding a perceived but unknowable threat was soothed by the promise of containment. The first Cold War tactic of the United States, containment aimed to quell the spreading of communism and quash the advancement of the enemy. This policy was furthermore mirrored at home. The domestic sphere became a “psychological fortress” for Americans,