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Reimagined Trees in Richard Wilbur's “She” and Sylvia Plath's “Virgin in A

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Reimagined Trees in Richard Wilbur's “She” and Sylvia Plath's “Virgin in A Ac­ta humanitaric­a universitatis Saulensis. T. 13 (2011). 350–363. ISSN 1822-7309 re­imagined 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 )1. 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 1 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 re­imagined 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).2 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 poets3 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- 2 See also Betty Friedan (1963). 3 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,”4 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.5 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 4 For the discussion of Sylvia Plath’s relationship to confessional poetry, see Robyn Mar- sack (M a r s a c k 1992, 8). 5 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 re­imagined 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).
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