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The Poetry of Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop, and Sylvia Plath

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The Poetry of Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop, and Sylvia Plath Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 2001 Girls Who Would Be Gods: The oP etry of Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop, and Sylvia Plath. Anna Lynn Priddy Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Priddy, Anna Lynn, "Girls Who Would Be Gods: The oeP try of Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop, and Sylvia Plath." (2001). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 309. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/309 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6” x 9” black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. ProQuest Information and Learning 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 800-521-0600 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. GIRLS WHO WOULD BE GODS: THE POETRY OF EMILY DICKINSON. ELIZABETH BISHOP, AND SYLVIA PLATH A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by Anna Lynn Priddy B.A., Mount Holyoke College, 1991 M.F.A., Louisiana State University, 1996 May 2001 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number 3016572 UMI* UMI Microform 3016572 Copyright 2001 by Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Table of Contents Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iii Introduction..........................................................................................................................1 I. “It was given to me by the Gods / When I was a little girl” .........................................4 II. “I revere holy ones” .....................................................................................................45 III. “I cast off my identity / and make the fatal plunge” .................................................69 IV. ‘Two, of course there are two” .................................................................................97 V. “ The woman is perfected” ..................................................................................... 123 VI. “Now I resemble a sort of god” .............................................................................. 153 VII. “Excuse me for the voice, this moment immortal” ............................................. 169 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................185 V ita................................................................................................................................... 193 ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Abstract Girls Who Would Be Gods: The Poetry of Emilv Dickinson. Elizabeth Bishop, and Svlvia Plath charts the development of these three American poets, from concerns with ambition and competition that appear in their early poetry, letters and journals, to their later creation of myths surrounding themselves and the secondary worlds of their creation. With Plath’s explicit wish that she might be God, Bishop’s Crusoe-like exile that allows her to create imaginary realms and homes, and Dickinson’s not entirely tentative proposal that she might well be the Biblical Eve, these poets indulged in imaginative re-creations of their worlds and their selves. What emerges is a portrait of poets actively engaged in a usurpation of divine handiwork; knowingly trading mortal lives for the immortal iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Introduction “I took my Power in my Hand- / And went against the World” (Dickinson #540) This is a creation story. It is a story not unlike that of the mythical Pygmalion, whom came to love the woman he made with his own hands before any made by God or nature. Pygmalion appeals to Venus to grant Galatea life, for his statue inspired emotions in the artist that none in the natural world could. The goddess does as he requests, and the statue becomes a living, breathing woman, equally in love with her creator. There are three characters at work in this tale: the mortal artist, the— eventually—living creation, and the supernatural, immortal goddess that grants the art life. The three poets to be discussed here enact this myth individually. Alone, they play each role. Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop, and Sylvia Plath were writers of poetry, scribbling and laboring writers. And they are poets, forevermore represented as such by their verses, their names attached to the living work of their creation. They were each also that otherworldly creature that gave life to the work. At its inception this study sought to understand the trajectory of the woman poet’s career. It meant to answer questions about when and how one came to be a poet, what it might or might not mean if the poet’s gender was female, and to answer the critics who seemed to want gender to mean more than it might otherwise need to. Dickinson, Bishop, and Plath, among many talented women writers, were exemplary as writers and as literary figures for the general readership. Together, their careers span 1 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. nearly one hundred years of poetry by women in this country. Moreover, the stories of their lives have taken on mythological proportions. And these stories are significantly varied, representing three very different ways of being a poet. Secondary Worlds was the title Auden chose for his lectures inaugurating the T.S. Eliot Memorial series at the University of Kent in 1967. The term itself was borrowed from a J. R. R. Tolkien essay on fairy tales (41). Auden posited that the creation of these secondary worlds is the job of the poet or of the creative artist, whatever the medium. As he explains, it is love of the primary world that leads one to wish to create a secondary one: “Being a man, not God, a poet cannot create ex nihilo. If our desire to create secondary worlds arises at least in part from our dissatisfaction with the primary world, the latter [enchantment with the world] must first be there before we can be dissatisfied with it” (42). Auden lists five aspects of the primary world that may give rise to disenchantment and which can be abolished from a secondary world: death, limited freedom, lack of understanding, the profane, and the evil. For these poets, the desire to create alternative worlds arose from a desire to deny the reality of death, first encountered while they were quite young. Issues of limited freedom and a lack of understanding seem to arise for them, as they do for us all, and they refuse to accept this as well. They replace this with an uncanny belief in their own abilities, and a competitiveness that leads them eventually to feel themselves as supreme creator. But to accomplish this requires a denial o f the primary world that is not always simple or easy, and a denial of their primary selves as well. In order to create secondary worlds, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop, and Sylvia Plath have to 2 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. overcome their own circumstance and character. They replace this with a god-like self who, if the poems allow, will be an immortal
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