Ac­ta humanitari­ca universitatis Saulensis. T. 13 (2011). 350–363. ISSN 1822-7309

Re-Imagined Trees in Richard Wilbur’s “She” and Sylvia Plath’s “Virgin in a Tree”

I r e n a RAGAIŠIEN Ė Vytautas Magnus University

Keywords: mythology, postwar Americ­an poetry, c­onformism, mythopoeia, revisionist mythmaking.

Richard Wilbur (b. 1921) and Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) belong to the postwar generation of poets whose works are characterized by “the direction in which American poetry was to go within ten years after the end of the war: towards mythology, the use of dream and archetype,” to quote Richard Gray (G r a y 1990, 220). The social and political context of the 1950’s is crucial to any understanding of the abundant use of mythological imagery in the works by Richard Wilbur and Sylvia Plath. According to Juliana Stevenson:

The end of World War II and the beginning of the 1950s saw a time of prosperity and success in mainstream America. Less than a decade after the United States allied with Great Britain and the Soviet Union, forming one of the most powerful forces in history to defeat the axis powers in the war, the U.S. was deeply entrenched in a nuclear arms race and ‘Cold War’ with the Soviet Union. As a result, the country put on a collective facade of stability and strength to cover up many injustices that were taking place during the time. Americans, equipped for the fi­rst time in a long while with a good amount of money, flooded to the suburbs and replaced any sorrows they might have had with material products and consumerism - creating an America of conformity and extravagance (S t e v e n s o n ).

The politics of conformism was intertwined with intolerance for other minded people. There was much emphasis on the fear of Communism which was envisioned as a threat. The threat was related to the fear of destabilization of the thriving economy of the midcentury America. This, it was claimed, would deprive Americans of their prosperity. As stated by Richard Gray, “this was the period of so-called ‘value-free’ sociology; much of the liberal intelligentsia acted on the  See also Linda Wagner Martin (W a g n e r M a r t i n 1992, 3–10); Pat Macpherson (M a c p h e r s o n 1991, 1–41); Douglas T Miller, Marion Nowak (1977); Stephanie Co- ontz (1992). 350 Re-Imagined Trees in Richard Wilbur’s “She” and Sylvia Plath’s “Virgin in a Tree” assumption that it was possible to exercise the critical function untouched by social or political problems; and many poets <...> withdrew from active involvement in issues of public concern or ideology into formalism, abstraction, or mythmaking” (G r a y 1990, 215). Gray also notes that conformity for many Americans meant repression of their anxieties related to the growing hostility between the United States and the former Soviet Union as well as the fear of the nuclear war which gained its impetus primarily as “fear of the potential nuclear capability of the enemy.” This also meant that the fear of the enemy from the outside increased the fear of “enemy within.” In everyday life, this fear manifested itself as restriction of personal freedom, both in the public and private spheres, which on the federal level was justifi­ed as a policy aimed at stopping the spread of Communism (Ibid., 217). Roberto Naranjo holds:

Firm anti-communist demeanor was expected from everyone, particularly those in government. <…> In such a fervent era of anti-communism, the junior senator for Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, employed this hysteria to prosecute countless government offi­cials. To promote liberal ideas, civil rights advancements or possible cooperation with communist states was enough to mark a person for persecution. Changes in the ‘conformity’ of America however, did not occur until the end of the 1950’s, coming slowly at fi­rst (N a r a n j o).

The Cold War context and its rhetoric also affected defi­nitions of gender roles and family life. As argued by Pat Macpherson, a model of the nuclear family was created; the individuality of whose members was defi­ned “by means of sex roles” (M a c p h e r s o n 1991, 3). Beth Bailey explains that “men and women usually took distinct and different roles, with male breadwinners and female homemakers.” She points out that “contemporary commentators insisted” that such gender differentiation as regards public and private spheres “was based on the timeless and essential differences between the sexes.” Such an essentialist approach to the division of labour is conditioned by “the economic and social structure and the cultural values of the postwar American society.” In turn, it “largely determined what choices were available to American men and women” (B a i l e y 2008, 845). Many studies highlight that women felt discriminated by having to limit their choices to the role of a “homemaker” in “the sexually charged, child-centered family,” as Stephanie Coontz has it (C o o n t z 1992, 28). In the post war American poetry, according to Richard Gray, the above described tensions and anxieties “issued in a preoccupation with evil, the possible eruption of weariness, guilt, and remorse, into the rhythms of routine experience.” Many poets wrote in the tradition of formalism seeking to dress the socially and not infrequently politically rebellious subject matter of their poetry in “socially established and accepted structures” (G r a y 1990, 216). By the late Fifties, non-

 See also Betty Friedan (1963).  Gray mentioned the early Robert Lowell and John Berryman as representatives of this trend (G r a y 1990, 216). 351 Irena Ragaišienė

conformist attitude would be manifested in more overt ways such as “a gradual slipping away from the formalism and abstraction – and, to some extent, the conformism – of the postwar years and towards renewed feelings of freedom, individualism and commitment” (Ibid., 218). Gray contends that “no cultural development is seamless.” He also states that “re-inventing the old American allegiance to the rebellious self, the weaving together personal and historical traumas” combined into the expression of a standpoint toward “abundance and anxiety.” These thematic spans constituted the main developments in American poetry of the late 1950s (Ibid., 220). Richard Wilbur is among the poets who remained attracted to the tradition of formalism and mythopoeia even when others started to look for alternative ways to express “discordancy of modern life” (Ibid., 221–223). The allegiance to form and interest in perennial subjects encoded in archetypal and mythological motifs can be explained by the great respect that poets of his generation had for the English Metaphysical poets and by his own interest in releasing new meanings from the description of everyday objects (Ibid., 221–223). Kathryn VanSpanckeren argues that “many poets, including Brooks, Adrienne Rich, Richard Wilbur, Robert Lowell, and Robert Penn Warren began writing traditionally, using rhyme and meters, but abandoned these in the 1960s under the pressure of public events and a gradual trend toward open forms” (V a n S p a n c k e r e n ). Sylvia Plath represents the trend in the postwar American poetry that, according to Richard Gray, showed “movement towards autobiography” wherein “poetry became once again not a flight from personality but a dramatization, a reinvention of the personal” (G r a y 1990, 223). Many critics regard Sylvia Plath’s poetry as confessional, that is centred on the exploration and the representation of a diverse, even the most intimate or painful personal experience, through the fi­rst- person speaker. Unlike Robert Lowell, the originator of the confessional mode of writing in American poetry, whose poetry is considered to be the “series of personal confi­dences,” Sylvia Plath fi­ctionalizes and mythologizes her biography attempting, as it were, to explore her life within the framework of universal experience delineated in biblical and mythological patterns. Plath’s treatment of universal and cultural mythology is often read as revisionist mythmaking in terms defi­ned by Rachel DuPlessis (1990, 1985) Alicia Ostriker (1987), and Liz Yorke (1991), to mention but a few. These critics suggest that when women turn to male- devised cultural and archetypal myths and literature, they fi­nd that their history is distorted. When searching in the past, a woman poet often feels alienated from the past and herself. Nevertheless, a return to myth from a new point of view allows a

 For the discussion of Sylvia Plath’s relationship to confessional poetry, see Robyn Mar- sack (M a r s a c k 1992, 8).  Plath’s revisionist treatment of religious and mythological imagery is discussed by a number of critics, e.g. Alicia Ostriker (O s t r i k e r 1987) and Jennifer Soutter (S o u t - t e r 1990). For the presentation of Sylvia Plath’s biographical information see, e.g. Jac- queline Rose (R o s e 1991) and Anne Stevenson (S t e v e n s o n 1989). 352 Re-Imagined Trees in Richard Wilbur’s “She” and Sylvia Plath’s “Virgin in a Tree” woman artist to become visible by affi­rming her subjectivity and constructing her identity as a woman “usually by the simple device of making Other into Subject,” to quote Alicia Ostriker (O s t r i k e r 1987, 216). It is specifi­cally the delving into myth as a heuristic device that unite Richard Wilbur’s poem “She” (1958) and Sylvia Plath’s poem “Virgin in a Tree” (1958). Both poems draw on the symbolism of the Tree of Life in the way they reflect on the representation of woman in cultural and universal mythology. As a reminder, Mircea Eliade writes that the “tree as symbol of life” evokes associations with “inexhaustible fertility,” “absolute reality,” “the Great Goddess or the symbolism of water” (E l i a d e 1958/1993, 221). The intension of the present paper is to discuss poetic signifi­cations and ideological underpinnings encoded in the re-visioning of this mythological and archetypal symbol in Richard Wilbur’s poem “She” and Sylvia Plath’s “Virgin in a Tree.” My contention is that Wilbur’s engagement with myth and archetype is more impersonal and focused on probing into the origins of being. Plath’s poem, on the other hand, seems to illustrate to perfection the goals of the revisionist mode of poetry as explicated by Alicia Ostriker: “Since the core of revisionist mythmaking for women poets lies in the challenge to and correction of gender stereotypes embodied in myth, revisionism in its most obvious form consists of hit-and-run attacks on familiar images and the social and literary conventions supporting them” (O s t r i k e r 1987, 216). The use of mythological images and social codes in Richard Wilbur’s poem “She” may serve as an illustration of the inevitability of such “sexual battle.” Wilbur’s poem written the same year as that of Plath’s creates a sweeping picture of woman as a mysterious presence, inspiring a desire to name her:

What was her beauty in our fi­rst estate When Adam’s will was whole, and the least thing Appeared the gift and creature of his king, How should we guess? Resemblance had to wait

For separation, and in such a place She so partook of water, light, and trees As not to look any one of these. He woke and gazed into her naked face. (W i l b u r 1963, 19)

The opening word of the question “what” and the spatial arrangement of the pronouns create an enigmatic impression. The extensive use of pronouns “he,” “we,” and “she” speak of a concealed relationship. Woman’s otherness may be read through the opposition of “she” to “he” identifi­ed with the collective “we” in “our estate.” The poem starts with an allusion to Genesis and the origin of the world

353 Irena Ragaišienė

in which “she” personifi­es the union of a primordial pair − “water” and “light” − which gave birth to the world/nature − “trees.” The narrative of creation expressed in natural symbolism is interwoven with Christian symbolism and a mythological allusion to the Goddess suggested by the reference to the feminine as “A shape of plenty with a mob of grain,” controlling the concentricity of life cycles, despite the male desire to dominate woman: But then she changed, and coming down amid The flocks of Abel and the fi­elds of Cain, Clothed in their wish, her Eden graces hid, A shape of plenty with a mob of grain,

She broke upon the world, in time took on The look of every labor and its fruits. Columnar in a robe of pleated lawn, She cupped her patient hand for attributes,

Was radiant captive of the farthest tower And shed her honor on the fi­elds of war, Walked in her garden at the evening hour, Her shadow like a dark ogival door,

Breasted the seas for all the westward ships And, come to virgin country, changed again − A moonlike being truest in eclipse, And subject goddess of the dreams of men. (W i l b u r 1963, 19–20)

Although woman is endowed with generative power and is envisioned as the Tree of Life, her reality is perceived as created by a male/law – she is a “creature of his king.” Her mysteriousness and the secret powers of the female body provoke man’s fear; thus, he suppresses her agency under “Adam’s will” and subverts her subjectivity into a passive reflection, a mirror of man’s creativity and his imagination.  She is “Clothed in their wish,” and her body (“her Eden graces”) are hidden. In the following lines, the poem rather freely links a number of enigmatic references to convey the development of the psychological and social reality of the perception of woman, various roles that she was made to play, and the functions she exercised for men. The poem emphasizes the perception of woman, not as a conscious being, but as a passive object (goddess of dreams, fi­gurine on ships, prisoner to be protected in towers, woman as the cause of wars, or a captive of

 Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar have pointed out that the dominant literary images of women are distortions of the notion of womanhood; they are but projections of male ima- gination (G i l b e r t, G u b a r 1979, 49). 354 Re-Imagined Trees in Richard Wilbur’s “She” and Sylvia Plath’s “Virgin in a Tree” male desire). The “she” of the poem is linked to the sphere of darkness, and her shadow is compared to “a dark, ogival door,” which is an allusion to feminine bodily contours. The corporal implications are reinforced by the image of the door, which may be read as a translation of woman’s birth-giving organs into an elevated euphemism. The comparison of woman to the door also suggests that, through a communion with woman, man can enter transcendental dimensions and regain his lost wholeness. Simultaneously, these metaphors, which create the male-made image of woman as symbol or myth, are contrasted with man’s fear and anxiety “to fi­nd you as you are”:

Tree, temple, valley, prow, gazelle, machine, More named and nameless than the morning star, Lovely in every shape, in all unseen, We dare not wish to fi­nd you as you are,

Whose apparition, bidding time until Desire decay and bring the latter age, Shall flourish in the ruins of our will And deck the broken stones like saxifrage. (W i l b u r 1963, 19–20) The enigmatic and diverse nature of the feminine expressed in images of different registers − the mythological (Biblical?) “tree,” “temple-machine,” “prow- gazelle” − reveals man’s desire to explore, control, and master the feminine. Richard Wilbur’s description of woman may be read through the lenses of Frieda Fordham’s discussion of the Jungian vision of the archetypal anima:

In different eras the image may be slightly changed or modifi­ed, but some characteristics seem to remain almost constant; the anima has a timeless quality − she often looks young, though there is always the suggestion of years of experience behind her. She is wise, but not formidably so; it is rather that ‘something strangely meaningful clings to her, a secret knowledge or hidden wisdom.’ She is often connected with the earth, or with water, and she may be endowed with great power. She is also two-sided or has two aspects, a light and a dark, corresponding to the different qualities and types of women; on the one hand, the pure, the good, the noble goddess-like fi­gure, on the other the prostitute, the seductress, or the witch. (F o r d h a m 1966, 53–54)

Although Wilbur attempts to penetrate into the enigma of the archetypal feminine, the last stanza holds out the possibility of “our will” being broken to mythologize and to transform woman into symbolic representation; it will be “in the ruins” of men’s will. Then, in these “ruins,” she will flourish into the real plant – breaking through the old, oppressive images. Woman will then be closer to what she really is, rather than the man-made representations and interpretations. The inability to solve the riddle of femininity may be related to the fear of exhausting the images

355 Irena Ragaišienė

that constitute the feminine as a perennial enigma, which has always been a potential source of imagination and creativity. As regards woman’s creativity, it seems to be limited to the generativity encoded in mythology of the Tree of Life, which is biological rather than creative fertility. As to the dissemination of the tree metaphor in Plath’s oeuvre, it may be pertinent to refer to Constance Scheerer, who provides a profound discussion of the metaphoric signifi­cance of, what Ted Hughes has called Plath’s “deathly paradise”. The critic points out that she has found many poetic visions of trees in Plath’s early poems which prefi­gure “twenty-eight or thirty ‘garden’ poems in The Colossus” (S c h e e r e r 1977, 168). Following Scheerer, it may be stated that in the poems built on the tree and, by implication root metaphor; for example,” On the Plethora of Dryads” (P l a t h 1980, 67–68), “The Manor Garden” (Ibid., 125), and “Elm” (Ibid., 192), the presence of trees − conventionally symbolic of development, protection, the life force, and creativity − and root − an incarnation of regeneration in the iconography related to the Tree of Life − suggest a relation to the world through biological and cultural ancestors − family trees, literary predecessors, and religion. The metaphoric confi­gurations of these poems reinforce psycho- mythological signifi­cations of this image, described in analytical psychology as a symbol of a state of rootedness in the self. The tree and the root are among the most important symbols associated not only with psychological evolution but also with artistic creation. Within this analogy Plath bridges aspects of the tree symbolism as self-evolution with its meaning used by the Romantics as the tree of

 The reflections of the impact of the father’s death on the development of Plath’s perso- nality and her creative career have been discussed by a number of critics, e.g., Liz Yorke (1991), Jacqueline Rose (1992), Steven Axelrod (1990), Janice Markey (1993), and Robyn Marsack (1992).  In the study on “The Philosophical Tree” Jung describes the symbol of the tree in terms of psychological development and views the tree within the context of mythological and alchemical parallels. The description of the psychological processes include the union of opposites through the integration of the unconscious often symbolized by roots (CW 13, Jung 272–273).  Gaston Bachelard emphasizes that the root is a multi-referential “dynamic­ image,” which represents a convergence of oppositional meanings conditioned by their location at the intersection of the two worlds − the chthonic and the celestial. Both these complexes of meaning emphasize the integrative quality of the tree and its ability to merge dialectical opposites. This, in turn, gives birth to a proliferation of images, activates the imagination, and inspires a production of new ideas, condensing the aerial and the earthy qualities in complex metaphors because the root as a “strange opaque mirror” “doubles every aerial reality with a subterranean image.” In emphasizing the vertical or transcendent nature of the creative process, Bachelard also points out that “the root is animated paradoxically in two directions, depending on whether we dream of a root bearing to heaven the juices of the earth, or of the root going to work among the dead, for the dead ...” Bachelard holds that “The old root − in the imagination there are no young roots − will produce a new flower. The imagination is a tree. It has the integrative virtues of a tree” (B a c h e l a r d 1987, 84–85). 356 Re-Imagined Trees in Richard Wilbur’s “She” and Sylvia Plath’s “Virgin in a Tree” poetry. In some poems, the conceptual aspects related to the tree as a source of the self are evoked through alternative metaphorical fi­gurations.10 Sylvia Plath’s poem “Virgin in a Tree” (P l a t h 1980, 81) is based on the picture of Paul Klee, according to Paul Alexander (A l e x a n d e r 1991, 215). As stated by Marcel Franciscono, Paul Klee’s etching Virgin in the Tree (1903) belongs to a group of works that were inspired by the “familiar store of late nineteenth century imagery on the nature of woman and her place in society which he had used for his earlier projects” (F r a n c i s c o n o 1991, 48). Carola Giedion- Welcker quotes Paul Klee to explain the origins and the meaning of the picture: “Technically this [picture] represents a step forward because of the use of lines of various weights … <…> The young lady, as behooves a virgin, is waiting for a suitor acceptable to a society of burghers. She grows older but not prettier” (K l e e qtd. in G i e d i o n-W e i c k e r 1952, 13). Giedion-Welcker further states that the picture can be regarded as an “allegorical grotesque. But the subject matter was as acute a concern as form. In The Virgin in the Tree the contents is an ironical protest against the moral sterility of the bourgeois society in which the artist lives. As in all the other drawings of this phase, there appears in his treatment here a pronounced element of burlesque” (Ibid., 13–14). Paul Alexander holds that the works of Paul Klee, Henri Rousseau and Giorgio De Chirico helped Plath overcome a protracted “writer’s block”: “she had written eight poems, all of which came to her so effortlessly she seemed to be transcribing – not writing – them” (A l e x a n d e r 1991, 215). The poem “Virgin in a Tree” was the fi­rst in this series. Like Paul Klee, Plath questions or rather ironizes social norms and rules that govern woman’s behaviour and sexuality, in particular. In “Virgin in a Tree,” the signifi­cations embedded in the meaning of the tree intertwine with those in Polly’s Tree (P l a t h 1980, 128–29) or “On the Diffi­culty of Conjuring Up a Dryad” (Ibid., 65–66) and “On the Plethora of Dryads” (Ibid., 67–68) where the tree stands for both a desire to create and the poet’s not infrequently failing struggle to bring forth literary foliage or to nurse the roots of the self. In these poems, the relationship to the self is seen as a consequence of the problematic relation to the world conditioned by Plath’s personal traumas and her ambivalence regarding gender roles imposed on women by her society. Rewriting the iconography of the tree, then, for Plath, may be treated as involving a shattering of patriarchal myths that defi­ne the roots of femininity, which in “Virgin in a Tree” (Ibid., 81), Plath ironically categorizes as – a “tart fable” that “instructs / And mocks!” The fable that the poem attempts to re-vision is that of Daphne and Apollo:

Here’s the parody of that moral mousetrap Set in the proverbs stitched on samplers Approving chased girls who get them to a tree And put on bark’s nun-black

10 See also Irena Ragaišienė (2004, 2009). 357 Irena Ragaišienė

Habit which deflects All amorous arrows. For to sheathe the virgin shape In a scabbard of wood baffles pursuers, Whether goat-thighed or god-haloed. Ever since that fi­rst Daphne Switched her incomparable back

For a bay-tree hide, respect’s Twined to her hard limbs like ivy: the puritan lip Cries: ‘Celebrate Syrinx whose demurs Won her the frog-colored skin, pale pith and watery Bed of a reed. Look:

Pine-needle armor protects Pitys from Pan’s assault! (P l a t h 1980, 81)

The myth of Daphne and Apollo describes a nymph’s choice to become a tree rather than become a possession of the god Apollo. This way she escapes what appears to be an inevitable rape.11 Meredith Powers states that the myth of Daphne and Apollo, like the absolute majority of patriarchal myths, presents the male god as heroic while

[w]omen are functionaries, backdrops in a mythology which insisted, sometimes with notable aggression, on the metaphoric centrality of the hero. Explication has perpetuated the bias. Daphne did not cleverly escape a villain, she “refused the call.” Yet what of Daphne’s view of the experience? What she resists is the questionable privilege of being raped by the god. The rewards inherent in such a violent rite understandably escape the girl. In modern times rape is recognized as an act of violence, of demeaning violation; the raped person is a victim, yet in myth it is accepted as a conduit to divinity or a variation on the marriage ceremony. But the women of myth do resist. Is that not archetypal behavior? Daphne fled, as did Arethusa and Britomartis; each clearly preferred metamorphosis and each was assisted in her escape by a shadowy goddess. But Daphne’s version of the event is not told (P o w e r s 1991, 4).

Plath’s poem may be read as deferral of this privileged point of view. The poem also suggests an intertextual dialogue, in Julia Kristeva’s sense with culturally dominant discourses that identify women’s natural roles exclusively within the range of symbolism pertaining to the Tree of Life. Pat Macpherson writes that women of Plath’s generation were expected to accept their society’s defi­nitions of ‘naturalness,’ which implied compulsory motherhood, domesticity, and supporting

11 For a more detailed description of the myth, see Pierre Grimal (G r i m a l 1951/1990, 119-120). 358 Re-Imagined Trees in Richard Wilbur’s “She” and Sylvia Plath’s “Virgin in a Tree” the husband’s career.12 What is more, young women were encouraged to be attractive; thus to be active consumers of products produced by the beauty industry. On the other hand, there was much emphasis on virginity; premarital sex was considered sinful: “‘purity’ [is] the wife’s coin that buys her husband’s ‘respect’” (M a c p h e r s o n 1991, 8–16). The standards regarding purity and chastity, however, did not relate to men. Sylvia Plath tackles the question of the double standard in her semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar. Casey Montgomery writes:

In Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, there are feminist undertones throughout. While the book itself was published in 1963, at the beginning stages of the feminist movement, it is set in 1953. The novel deals with many topics that are still of interest today. The double standard between premarital sex for men and women is one such issue. Esther, a character based on Plath herself, found that her boyfriend had slept with a waitress during the summer. This event ultimately makes her question the contrasting principles on the view of sex for an unwed woman versus that of an unwed man. She sees this idea as hypocritical and faulty. In an attempt to equalize herself and protest this crucial double standard she set out to lose her virginity. Near the end of the book she does so to a Professor at Harvard University during one of her stays at the hospital. The idea that she refused to bow to this double standard and actively set out to undermine it was a widespread reaction to many things during the initial feminist movement in the 1960s (M o n t g o m e r y ).

In “Virgin in a Tree” the irony invested in the description of the virgin’s body and the perception of her life as wasted (“dour-faced, her fi­ngers / Stiff as twigs, her body woodenly // Askew”) invokes intertextual links with Plath’s poems “Two Sisters of Persephone” (P l a t h 1980, 31) and “Spinster” (Ibid., 49) which may be read as a parody of those dogmas, which claim that it is devotion to a man (and to the body) that leads to eternal bliss (or birth of children). Alternately, it is the denial of the body that leads to the “graveward,” that is, to the world of shades, Hades, where the “wry virgin to the least” becomes a victim of worms that invade her body and cause its decomposition. 13 In this article, the treatment of the tree in the mythopoeia of two midcentury American poets has been examined, and the socio-historical specifi­city of the period as well as the major developments of American poetry after 1945 has been presented. The analysis highlights traces of negotiation with conventional meanings of the tree inherited from culture and mythology. It is argued that Richard Wilbur’s “She” tends to resort to the traditional association between woman and the Tree of

12 See also Stephanie Coontz (C o o n t z 1992, 31–32). 13 To Janice Markey, the opposition developed in the poem “Two Sisters of Persephone” “appears very much to be a Lawrentian/Woolfi­an dichotomy. The reference to Persephone further opens up the poem − the writer is equated with the Persephone banished to the un- derworld for the winter months, while the ‘natural’ woman is the Persephone whose return to earth reinstates the earth’s fertility” (M a r k e y 1993, 139). 359 Irena Ragaišienė

Life. On the other hand, Wilbur lets his object speak and release new meanings.14 Plath both displaces the traditional connotations of the tree with reference to her gender experience and attempts to re-imagine their original signifi­cations largely within the framework of the Daphne myth which she re-visions through the lens of cultural mythology and gender roles prevalent in the midcentury America.

References A l e x a n d e r 1991 – Paul Alexander, Rough Magic­: Sylvia Plath, New York: Viking Penguin. A x e l r o d 1990 – Steven Gould Axelrod, Sylvia Plath: The Wound and the Cure of Words, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. B a c h e l a r d 1987 – Gaston Bachelard, On Poetic­ Imagination and Reverie. Trans. Colette Gaudin. Dallas: Spring Publications. B a i l e y 2008 – Beth Bailey, “America at Midcentury 1945–1960,” A People and A Nation– A History of the United States, Sinc­e 1865, vol. II, eds. Mary Beth Norton, Carol Sheriff, David M. Katzman, David W. Blight, Howard P. Chudacoff, Boston, MA.: Houghton Miffi­n. C o o n t z 1992 – Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: Americ­an Families and the Nostalgia Trap, New York: Basic. D u P l e s s i s 1985. Writing Beyond the Ending: Narrative Strategies of Twentieth- Century Women Writers, Bloomington: Indiana UP. D u P l e s s i s 1990 – Rachel Blau DuPlessis, The Pink Guitar: Writing as Feminist Prac­tic­e, New York: Routledge. E l i a d e 1958/1993 – Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, trans. Rosemary Sheed, London: Sheed and Ward. F o r d h a m 1966 – Frieda Fordham, An Introduc­tion to Jung’s Psyc­hology, London: Penguin. Franciscono 1991 – Marcel Franciscono, Paul Klee: His Work and Thought, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. G i e d i o n-W e l c k e r 1952 – Carola Giedion-Welcker, Paul Klee, trans. Alexander Gode, New York: The Viking Press. G i l b e r t, G u b a r 1979 – Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic­: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, New Haven: Yale UP. G r a y 1990 – Richard Gray, Americ­an Poetry of the Twentieth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge UP. G r i m a l 1951/1990 – Pierre Grimal, The Penguin Dic­tionary of Classic­al Mythology, edited by Stephen Kershaw from the translation by A.R. Maxwell-Hyslop, London: Penguin Books. F r i e d a n 1963 – Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, New York: Norton. J u n g 1953–1978 – C.G. Jung The Collec­ted Works of C.G. Jung. 20 vols. Eds. Sir Herbert Read, Jung, Carl Michael Fordham, Gerhard Adler. Trans. R. F. C. Hull, London: Routledge Kegan Paul. 14 I am referring here to Richard Gray’s discussion of Wilbur’s poem “Objects” and his sta- tement that “by cherishing things [Wilbur] releases them to new meaning” (G r a y 1990, 222). 360 Re-Imagined Trees in Richard Wilbur’s “She” and Sylvia Plath’s “Virgin in a Tree”

M a c p h e r s o n 1991 – Pat Macpherson, Reflec­ting on the Bell Jar, London: Rout­ ledge. M a r k e y 1993 – Janice Markey, A Journey into the Red Eye: The Poetry of Sylvia Plath - A Critique, London: Women’s Press. M a r s a c k 1992 – Robyn Marsack, Sylvia Plath, Buckingham: Open UP. M i l l e r, N o w a k 1977 – Douglas T Miller and Marion Nowak, The Fifties: The Way We Really Were, Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday. M o n t g o m e r y 2007 – Casey Montgomery, “Feminism in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, www.helium.c­om [on line at: http://www.helium.com/items/708800-feminism-in- sylvia-plaths-the-bell-jar, accessed March 12, 2011]. N a r a n j o 2003 – Roberto Naranjo, “Historical Analysis of the Cold War”, www. ehistory.com, [online at: http://ehistory.osu.edu/world/articles/articleview.cfm?aid=66, accessed September 4, 2011]. O s t r i k e r 1987 – Alicia Suskin Ostriker, Stealing the Language: The Emergenc­e of Women’s Poetry in Americ­a, London: Women’s Press. P l a t h 1963 – Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, London: Faber and Faber. P l a t h 1980. Collec­ted Poems, edited with an introduction by Ted Hughes, London: Faber and Faber. P o w e r s 1991 – Meredith A. Powers, The Heroine in Western Literature: The Arc­hetype and Her Emergenc­e in Modern Prose, Jefferson, N. C.: McFarland. R a g a i š i e n ė 2004 – Irena Ragaišienė, “Reaching out for the Forbidden Fruit: Religious Signifi­cations of the Tree Metaphor in Sylvia Plath’s Poetry,” Tiltai. Priedas: Mokslo darbai, Klaipėda: Klaipėdos universitetas, 25, 333–355. R a g a i š i e n ė 2009 – “I am not a Tree with My Root in the Soil: Ecofeminist Revisions of Tree Symbolism in Sylvia Plath’s Poetry,” Journal of Ec­oc­ritic­ism, Vancouver: University of British Columbia, Poetic­ Ec­ologies, 1 (2), 31–41. S c h e e r e r 1977 – Constance Scheerer, “The Deathly Paradise of Sylvia Plath”, Sylvia Plath: The Woman and the Work, Ed. Edward Butscher, New York: Dodd. R o s e 1991 – Jacqueline Rose, The Haunting of Sylvia Plath, London: Virago. S o u t t e r 1990 – Jennifer Soutter, Arc­hetypal Elements in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath, Boston Spa: The British Library, (Ph.D. thesis – University of Durham, 1989). S t e v e n s o n 1989 – Anne Stevenson, Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath, London: Penguin. S t e v e n s o n 2004 – Juliana Stevenson, “The Influence of an Author and his writings on 1950s America” [on line at: http://universityhonors.umd.edu/HONR269J/projects/ stevenson.html, accessed May 4, 2011]. V a n Spanckerennd – Kathryn VanSpanckeren Outline of Americ­an Literature, www.usinfo.org [on line at: http://usinfo.org/oal/, accessed April 20, 2011]. W a g n e r-M a r t i n 1992 – Linda Wagner-Martin, The Bell Jar: A Novel of the Fifties, New York: Twayne Publishers. W i l b u r 1963 – Richard Wilbur, The Poems of Ric­hard Wilbur, New York: A Harvest Book. Y o r k e 1991 – Liz Yorke, Impertinent Voic­es: Subversive Strategies in Contemporary Women’s Poetry, London: Routledge.

361 Irena Ragaišienė

Irena Ragaišienė

Poetinės medžio reikšmės transformacijos Richardo Wilburo eilėraštyje „Ji“ ir Silvijos Plath eilėraštyje „Skaistuolė medyje“

S a n t r a u k a

Pagrindinės są­vokos: mitologija, š­eš­tojo deš­imtmečio amerikiečių poezija, konfor­ mizmas, mitologija pagrįsta poezija, revizionizmas poezijoje.

Straipsnyje nagrinėjamos medžiams suteikiamos reikšmės pokario laikotarpio ameri­ kiečių autorių Richardo Wilburo (1921) eilėraštyje „Ji“ ir Silvijos Plath (1932–1963) eilėraštyje „Skaistuolė medyje“. Pateikiamas šio laikotarpio sociokultūrinis kontekstas, pabrėžiama, kad šeštojo dešimtmečio Amerikos politika, nulemta šaltojo karo grėsmės, skatino konformizmą, slopino kritinės minties sklaidą. Šios tendencijos turėjo įtakos ir poezijos raidai. Wilburas priskiriamas poetams, kurie net maištingą poezijos turinį bandė įsprausti į tradicinę eilėraščio formą ir taip sudaryti konformistinės poezijos įspūdį. Silvijos Plath, Wilburo kartos atstovės, poezijoje ryškus autobiografi­nis elementas, susipinantis su visuomenėje dominuojančių diskursų kritika. Straipsnyje teigiama, kad Plath kritinis požiū­ ris į šiuose diskursuose išreiškiamą lyčių politiką lemia medžio kaip mitologinio ir kultūri­ nio simbolio reikšmes. Medžio signifi­kacijos analizė tiriama remiantis anglosaksiškos feminizmo kritikos pateikiamu revizionizmo (revisionism) aspektu bei Richardo Gray’aus pateikiama pokario (1945–1960) amerikiečių poezijos raidos analize. Pasirinktų Wilburo ir Plath eilėraščių analizė siejama ir su psichoanalitinėmis, mitologinėmis, kultūrologinėmis įžvalgomis. Tai padeda atskleisti intertekstinius ryšius tarp minimų autorių poezijos ir išryškinti šių autorių skirtingą požiūrį į tradicines medžio reikšmes. Išvadose teigiama, kad tiek Wilburo, tiek Plath pasirinktuose eilėraščiuose dominuoja Gyvybės medžio semantika, kuri Plath eilėraštyje panaudojama visuomenėje dominuojančių diskursų kritikai, Wilburo eilėraštyje išryškinama mito, kaip ideologiją formuojančio naratyvo, reikšmė. Kita vertus, įpindamas medžio semantiką į mįslės forma konstruojamą eilėraštį, Wilburas, būdamas formalistas, traktuoja eilėraštį kaip objektą, sukuriantį savitą reikšmių spektrą.

362 Re-Imagined Trees in Richard Wilbur’s “She” and Sylvia Plath’s “Virgin in a Tree”

Irena Ragaišienė

Re-Imagined Trees in Richard Wilbur’s “She” and Sylvia Plath’s “Virgin in a Tree”

S u m m a r y

Keywords: mythology, postwar Americ­an poetry, c­onformism, mythopoeia, revisionist mythmaking.

In this article, the treatment of the tree in the mythopoeia of two mid-century American poets, Richard Wilbur (b. 1921) and Sylvia Plath (1932–1963), has been examined, and the socio-historical specifi­city of the period as well as the major developments of American poetry after 1945 has been presented. The analysis highlights traces of negotiation with conventional meanings of the tree inherited from culture and mythology. It is argued that Richard Wilbur’s “She” tends to resort to the traditional association between the woman and the Tree of Life. On the other hand, following Richard Gray’s discussion of the role of formalism in Wilbur’s poetry, it is argued that Wilbur’s poem exists as an object that releases new meanings. The discussion highlights that Sylvia Plath both displaces the traditional connotations of the tree with reference to her gender experience and attempts to re-imagine their original signifi­cations largely within the framework of the Daphne myth which she re-visions through the lens of the cultural mythology of the mid-century America.

I r e n a RAGAIŠIEN Ė Department of English Philology Vytautas Magnus University 58 Donelaičio St. LT-44248 Kaunas Lithuania [[email protected]]

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