Representations of Space in the Poetry of Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Sexton

View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Loughborough University Institutional Repository ‘My landscape is a hand with no lines’: Representations of Space in the Poetry of Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Sexton A Doctoral Thesis by Mohammed Fattah Rashid Al-Obaidi Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy of Loughborough University Supervised by Dr. Brian Jarvis Dr. Deirdre O’Byrne September 2017 © Mohammed Al-Obaidi Abstract This thesis is the first study using contemporary spatial theory, including cultural geography and its precursors, to examine and compare representations of space in the poetry of three mid- twentieth–century American poets: Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Sexton. Because of the autobiographical content often foregrounded in their work, these poets have been labelled ‘Confessional.’ Previous criticism has focused primarily on the ways in which they narrate (or draw on) their personal lives, treating accompanying descriptions of their surroundings primarily as backdrops. However, these poets frequently manifest their affective states by using the pathetic fallacy within structures of metaphor that form a textual ‘mapping’ of the physical space they describe. This mapping can be temporal as well as spatial; the specific spaces ‘mapped’ in the poem’s present are often linked to memories of earlier life or family. These spaces include psychiatric, general, and penal institutions, parks and gardens, nature (especially coastal settings), and the home (almost always a place of tension or conflict). Each poet addresses these broad types of space differently according to their evolving subjective relationship to them. These relationships are in turn strongly influenced by their social class and gender: for the two women, their experience of their own bodies as prescribed space, in relation to the restrictive and objectifying female role that was imposed on them, is critical. Also, critical in shaping the poets’ experience of space are post-World-War II socio-cultural and demographic changes in the United States, notably suburbanisation, consumerisation and the consolidation of a ‘therapeutic culture’. Interwoven with these influences are major political concerns of the period such as the Cold War with its accompanying surveillance and conformism and the threat of nuclear annihilation. In the work of all three poets, awareness of these modern fears fused with traditional Gothic motifs to permeate their descriptions of spaces with anxiety, bitterness, and even dread in a rejection of the synthetic optimism of the ‘American Century’ and commercial culture. Other criticism has touched on many of these themes in relation to one or another of the poets, but this study, by way of the theme of space, offers comparison and synthesis that aims to shed new light on their work and its relation to the period during which they wrote. Acknowledgments I am very grateful and thankful to God the Almighty for His help and endless support in enlightening the path of knowledge for me all the way from my childhood to the end of my life. First and foremost, I owe the highest acknowledgement to my supervisors Dr. Brian Jarvis and Dr. Deirdre O’Byrne who have offered inspiration, made timely suggestions, and put at my disposal their valuable experience and wisdom, so as greatly to enrich my thesis. Words cannot express how appreciative I am to Mohammed Hazazi and Ahmed Al-Shuraimi, my colleagues, for encouraging me throughout this experience, and to my family friends Nofal Al-Khabaz, Athraa Majeed, Ali Al-Khabaz and Hasan Al-Khabaz who supported me at times of need and led me through all the difficulties. I wish to give my special gratitude forever to my great wife, Marwah, and my lovely children, Omar, Mustafa and Adam. They are a blessing to me. The completion of this thesis would not have been possible without their presence, love and support. I would also like to express my deep gratitude and respect to the following people who generously responded to my questions about the subjects of this study and my requests for opinion and advice: Prof. Margaret Freeman, Prof. Louise Westling, Prof. Dawn Skorczewski, Prof. David Gewanter, Prof. Emeritus Diana Hume George, Prof. Alicia Ostriker, Prof. Fred Botting, Linda Gray Sexton, Frieda Hughes, Prof. Emeritus Adam Cornford, and Prof. Emerita Marjorie Perloff. I would also like to thank my parents and the other members of my family, who have supported me with patient love and care throughout my doctoral studies. Last but not least, I am enormously grateful to my sponsor – the Higher Committee for Education Development in Iraq (HCED) for their advice and financial support throughout the years of my journey. This dissertation was fully funded by the HCED. Table of Contents List of Figures……………………………………………..…...……………………………………….i Introduction:……………………………………………..………….………………………………….1 Space, Place, and Text……………………………………………………………………….4 Common Places, Shared Times, Divergent Histories……………………….……………….5 Research Questions…………………………………………………….………………...…11 Methodology………………………………………………………………………………..12 Chapter One: ‘The Aquarium is Gone’: Robert Lowell in Space Introduction . …………………………………………………………………………………...16 Lowell in Public Space: Circles within Circles .. ………………………………………………19 Lowell Confined: Madness and Choice . ………………………………………………………44 Lowell and Domesticity: Away at Home .. …………………………………………………….63 Near The Ocean: Lowell on the Shore .. ……………………………………………………….72 Conclusion: ‘Nowhere was Anywhere’ .. ………………………………………………………84 Chapter Two: ‘A Living Doll, Everywhere You Look’: Space in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath Introduction . ……………………………………………………………………………………87 Walls, Mirrors, and Dolls: Escaping into the Domestic Zone . …………………………………91 ‘This is the city of spare parts’: The Body in Hospital Space…………………..……….……..113 ‘The Far Fields Melt My Heart’: Plath in Nature………………………………..……….…….136 Conclusion: Where There Was to Get to………………………………………………..……..154 Chapter Three: ‘The Country of Comfort, Spanked into the Oxygens of Death’: A Grand Tour of Space in Anne Sexton’s Poetry Introduction ..... …………………………………………………………………………………157 Haunted by Houses: Home, Disillusion, and the Wifely Body . ……………………………...160 The Ambivalent Space of the Hospital and the Reversible Panoptical Machine……….….181 Into the Open and Half Way Back: Sexton in the Outside World…………………….……207 Conclusion: White Space, Black Figure……………………………………………………222 Conclusion: ‘A Whole History Remains to be Written of Spaces’ Space, Text, and Subjectivity ............................................................................................. .226 Politics Out of Doors ………………………………………………….. ........................... .227 Advertising and Body Politics ............................................................................................. 229 Domesticity and the Theatre of Self .................................................................................... 230 No Hiding Place: Being Seen .............................................................................................. 233 The Asylum as Panopticon and Zoo .................................................................................... 234 The Shore: Space Between Past and Present ....................................................................... 236 Animated Spaces: Pathetic Fallacy and Confessional Gothic ............................................. 237 Inverting the Panopticon: Confessional Poetry and its Politics of Space ............................ 239 Found in Space: Contributions of This Study...................................................................... 242 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………….……251 List of Figures Figure 1: The Ether Monument in the Boston Public Garden……….…….22 Figure 2: The Shaw Monument, Boston…………………………………...29 Figure 3: House as a Model Organism……………………………………174 i Introduction The confession as a genre or cluster of genres has a long history, from the Confessions of Augustine of Hippo by way of Rousseau’s Confessions and De Quincy’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater, to popular mid-twentieth-century pulp magazines like True Confessions. 1 The term ‘Confessional’ was first applied to the American poet Robert Lowell’s seminal Life Studies in a 1959 review by M.L. Rosenthal, in which he described the work as going ‘beyond customary bounds of reticence or personal embarrassment […] Lowell removes the mask. His speaker is unequivocally himself, and it is hard not to think of Life Studies as a series of personal confidences, rather shameful, that one is honour-bound not to reveal.’ 2 Three claims Rosenthal makes here are central to the meaning of the term ‘Confessional’: that the poem’s speaker is ‘unequivocally himself’, that the poems go beyond ‘customary bounds… of personal embarrassment’, and that these ‘personal confidences’ are in some sense shameful. Shame, however, is precisely defined by ‘customary bounds’ of morality or propriety: shame is individually felt but socially imposed. In the Abrahamic tradition, the first instance of shame is of course that of Adam and Eve in the Garden after they have eaten the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and realise that they are naked which causes them to cover themselves. This self-covering, paradoxically, is an instant indicator of their guilt to God when He comes to visit them that evening. Hence, while nakedness is innocent — where innocence means the lack

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