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"Daddy": Sylvia Plath's Debt to Anne Sexton Author(S): Heather Cam Source: American Literature, Vol

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"Daddy": Sylvia Plath's Debt to Anne Sexton Author(s): Heather Cam Source: American Literature, Vol. 59, No. 3 (Oct., 1987), pp. 429-432 Published by: Duke University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2927127 Accessed: 10-07-2015 14:26 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Duke University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Literature. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.135.12.127 on Fri, 10 Jul 2015 14:26:35 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions NOTES "Daddy":Sylvia Plath's Debt to Anne Sexton HEATHER CAM MacquarieUniversity D66PADDY" is one of Sylvia Plath's most anthologised poems, LI and, some might say, one of her most quintessential; yet this seemingly original and idiosyncraticwork is deeply indebted to an early, virtually unknown, confessional poem by Anne Sex- ton: "My Friend, My Friend" For M. W. K. who hesitateseach timeshe sees a younggirl wearingThe Cross. Who will forgiveme forthe thingsI do? With no special legend or God to referto, With my calm white pedigree,my yankee kin, I thinkit would be betterto be a Jew. I forgiveyou forwhat you did not do, I am impossiblyguilty. Unlike you, My friend,I can not blame my origin With no special legend or God to referto. They wear The Crucifixas theyare meant to do. Why do theirlittle crosses trouble you? The effigiesthat I have made are genuine, (I thinkit would be betterto be a Jew). Watchingmy motherslowly die I knew My firstrelease. I wish some ancientbugaboo Followed me. But my sin is always my sin. With no special legend or God to referto. Who will forgiveme forthe thingsI do? To have your reasonablehurt to belong to AmericanLiterature, Volume 59, Number 3, October I987. CopyrightC I987 by the Duke UniversityPress. CCC 0002-983I/87/$I.50. This content downloaded from 128.135.12.127 on Fri, 10 Jul 2015 14:26:35 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 430 AmericanLiterature Might ease my troublelike liquor or aspirin. I thinkit would be betterto be a Jew. And if I lie, I lie because I love you, Because I am botheredby the thingsI do, Becauseyour hurt invades my calm whiteskin: Withno speciallegend or God to referto, I thinkit would be betterto be a Jew.1 "My Friend, My Friend," appeared in the Antioch Review during the summerof I959. However Plath may have seen the poem some monthsearlier, late in I958 or earlyin I959, during one of RobertLowell's workshopsat Boston University,or after one of his classes when Plath, Sexton, and George Starbuck customarilyretired to the Ritz Bar to continuetheir discussion of poetryinformally over martinis.2 During this time Sexton was assembling her first book of poems, To Bedlam and Part Way Back (I960). She set Plath an example by tackling private and deeply personal material in an outspoken and colloquial fashion in the firstperson. Plath later acknowledged the liberating influence that Sexton and Lowell had on her poetic development: I've been very excited by what I feel is the new breakthroughthat came with,say, Robert Lowell's Life Studies[I959], this intensebreak- throughinto veryserious, very personal, emotional experience which I feel has been partlytaboo.... I thinkparticularly ... Ann Saxton [sic] . is an extremelyemotional and feelingyoung woman and her poems are wonderfullycraftsman-like poems and yet theyhave a kind of emotionaland psychologicaldepth which I thinkis something perhaps quite new, quite exciting.3 Both this statement, made in the course of a BBC interview on 30 October I962, and "Daddy," writtenon the twelfthof that month, date from the most intensely creative period of Plath's brief life. During October and November I962 she wrote over 1 Anne Sexton, "My Friend, My Friend," AntiochReview, I9 (959), I50. Copy- right ?) I959 by Anne Sexton. Reprintedby permissionof the SterlingLord Agency, Inc. 2 See Anne Sexton,"The BarflyOught to Sing,"The Artof Sylvia Plath: A Symposium, ed. Charles Newman (London: Faber & Faber, I970), pp. I74-8I. 3 Sylvia Plath, The Poet Speaks,ed. Peter Orr (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, I966), pp. I67-68. This content downloaded from 128.135.12.127 on Fri, 10 Jul 2015 14:26:35 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Notes 431 halfof WinterTrees (I97i) andAriel (I965). It is forthe poems of thisperiod thatshe is best remembered,and perhapsfor none betterthan "Daddy," the work that draws so extensivelyupon "My Friend, My Friend." Sexton's poem is dedicated to M. W. K., making it plausible to say that it is addressed to Sexton's friend,Maxine Winokur Kumin. This is reinforcedby the factthat, similar to Kumin, the friendin the poem is Jewish.The speakerclaims to be without religion,"With no special legend or God to referto," yet she is burdened by her sense of guilt. It pervades her life,coming to its fullestexpression in her account of her mother'sdeath, and cruciallyin the speaker'sattendant feelings of liberationand "release." It is the awarenessof her inescapableguilt thatcreates the poem's focus and accounts for the speaker's deep need to forgiveand in turnto be forgiven. "Daddy" is also addressedin the firstperson to someone close to the speaker. UndoubtedlyOtto Plath and Ted Hughes in- spired "Daddy," but theyare no morea Nazi Daddy nor "a man in black with a Meinkampflook" than Plath is a gipsy Tarot mistresswho feelsherself to be Jewish.Plath used and distorted autobiographicalfacts to portraya sado-masochisticand, ulti- mately,mutually destructive relationship. In so doing, she found Sexton's model useful. For its own purposes "Daddy" borrows and slightlyalters rhythms,rhymes, words, and lines from the early Sexton poem. "My Friend, My Friend" has an AABA rhyme-scheme throughoutits six stanzas,with the exceptionof the last stanza which adds a line with an A-rhymeto the basic quatrain.These A-rhymesrepeat and echo in "Daddy." Plath borrowsSexton's "do," "you," and "Jew,"adding ingeniousvariants of her own: "shoe," "Achoo, "blue, "du, true, through,""who, and "glue." Of particularnote is Plath's "gobbledygoo"to Sexton's "bugaboo." Sexton's quatrains end in alternaterefrains, the second and fourthlines of the opening stanza: "With no special legend or God to referto" and "I thinkit would be betterto be a Jew."The second of these refrainsis twice reworkedby Plath,becoming in "Daddy": "I thinkI may well be a Jew"and "I may be a bit of a Jew."Furthermore, "With my calm white pedigree,my yankee This content downloaded from 128.135.12.127 on Fri, 10 Jul 2015 14:26:35 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 432 AmericanLiterature kin,/ I thinkit would be betterto be a Jew,"from the first quatrainof "My Friend,My Friend,"clearly serves as themodel forthe lines leading into Plath's second variation on the"Jewish" refrain: Withmy gipsy ancestress and myweird luck And myTaroc pack and myTaroc pack I maybe a bitof a Jew. Here Plath's alterationsare exotic and expansive,allowing the speaker to chant about her dark arts. Anothersimilarity is the concernwith the death of, and sub- sequent release from,a parent. In "Daddy" however it takes twentyyears of suffocatingsuffering and finallyan exorcism and an elaborate ritual-the stake in the heart of vampire- like Daddy-to make him lie still enough, the persona hopes, to allow her to get "through" to personal freedom. Daddy's death is far more drawn out, dramatic,tortuous, and sinister than that of the mother in Sexton's poem. The death brings Plath's poem to its close, as the persona gasps her valediction, "Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through,"and collapses, ex- hausted by her efforts,into a world without Daddy. On this disturbingthreshold the poem ends, leaving the reader teeter- ing and searching for a foothold on the final and troubling word "through."In contrast,Sexton's poem turns back on it- self, taking the reader back throughthe poem's closed circuit of guilt. This process is nicelycaptured in the closing couplet, which bringstogether the poem's alternatingrefrains. It is in such differencesin treatmentthat Plath reveals her true artistry.Clearly she drew upon her formerclassmate's poem as she wrote "Daddy," and her debt to Sexton is considerable. Acknowledgingthe debt, however,is not to detractfrom Plath's achievement.Whereas "My Friend, My Friend" is an unexcep- tional, early example of Sexton's confessionalpoetry, "Daddy" is a brilliantact of exorcismfrom Plath's glitteringlate period. Despite Plath's use of a source in the compositionof "Daddy," the poem remainsdistinctly and uniquelyhers. This content downloaded from 128.135.12.127 on Fri, 10 Jul 2015 14:26:35 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions.
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