Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath from a Kristevan Perspective
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by OpenGrey Repository Transforming the Law of One: Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath from a Kristevan Perspective A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Areen Ghazi Khalifeh School of Arts, Brunel University November 2010 ii Abstract A recent trend in the study of Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath often dissociates Confessional poetry from the subject of the writer and her biography, claiming that the artist is in full control of her work and that her art does not have naïve mimetic qualities. However, this study proposes that subjective attributes, namely negativity and abjection, enable a powerful transformative dialectic. Specifically, it demonstrates that an emphasis on the subjective can help manifest the process of transgressing the law of One. The law of One asserts a patriarchal, monotheistic law as a social closed system and can be opposed to the bodily drives and its open dynamism. This project asserts that unique, creative voices are derived from that which is individual and personal and thus, readings of Confessional poetry are in fact best served by acknowledgment of the subjective. In order to stress the subject of the artist in Confessionalism, this study employed a psychoanalytical Kristevan approach. This enables consideration of the subject not only in terms of the straightforward narration of her life, but also in relation to her poetic language and the process of creativity where instinctual drives are at work. This study further applies a feminist reading to the subject‘s poetic language and its ability to transgress the law, not necessarily in the political, macrocosmic sense of the word, but rather on the microcosmic, subjective level. Although Sexton and Plath possess similar biographies, their work does not have the same artistic value in terms of transformative capabilities. Transformation here signifies transgressing of the unity of the subject and of the authoritative father, the other within, who has prohibitive social and linguistic powers. Plath, Kristeva‘s the ―deadmost,‖ successfully confronts the unity of the law, releasing the death drive through anger. Moreover, Plath‘s psychic borders are more fluid because of her ability to identify with the iii pre-Oedipal mother. This unsettling subject is identified by shifts in texts marked by renewal, transgression, and jouissance. Unlike Sexton, Plath is able to achieve transformation as she oscillates masochistically between the ―inside‖ and the ―outside‖ of her psychic borders, and between the symbolic and the semiotic. Furthermore, this enables Plath to develop the unique ―Siren Voice of the Other.‖ In comparison, Sexton, the ―dead/less,‖ evades any confrontation with the maternal and the performance of death in her poetry. Her case is further complicated by the discovery of a second mother. As a result, passivity becomes a main characteristic of her work. This passivity remains until the maternal abject bursts in her text and she reacts to this by performing cleansing rituals, and gravitating toward a symbolic father. Without the dynamism of transgression, Sexton‘s work is heterogeneous but does not achieve ultimate transformation and jouissance. Confessional poetry, in this sense, takes on a new dimension. The life stories of the poets become important not for their pejorative, pathological aspects that focus on narrative mimesis, but rather for their manifestation as an aesthetic process. The subject of the writer becomes important as an aesthetic identity in the poems, which are rooted in real life. The main concern then becomes the aesthetic transformative dialectic between the semiotic and the symbolic in her work of art. iv Contents Abbreviations……………………………………………………………..………….....vi Introduction…………………………………………………………………..………….1 I. Overview………………………………………………………………………………………………………..………………..1 II. Theoretical Background……………………………………………………………11 A. Kristeva: General Perspective………………………………………………….11 B. Criticism of Kristeva‘s ―Feminist‖ Theory………………………………….....15 C. Kristeva and the Socio-biographical…………………………………………...19 D. Different Speaking Subjects...............................................................................22 III. Kristeva, Sexton, and Plath……………………………………………………….28 IV. Method and Outline……………………………………………………………….37 Chapter 1: Sexton, the Ouroboros ……………………………………………...….....40 1.1 Law of One: Starting with the Father……………………………………………..40 1.2 The Mother In Between…………………………………………….……………..49 Chapter 2: “Geometry and Abjection”………………………………….…………….55 2.1 Establishing Borders (Shields)…………………………………………………….55 2.2 Houses and Rooms………………………………………………………………...67 2.3 Proper Dolls and Holes…………………………………………………………….72 2.4 Windows and Other Barriers………………………………………………………78 2.5 Borders in Myth and Fairytale……………………………………………………..94 2.6 Outside Shields…………………………………………………………………….99 Chapter 3: The Secret Within…………………………………………………………103 3.1 A Second Mother…………………………………………………………………103 3.2 The Burst of the Abject…………………………………………………………..113 3.3 Purification Rituals………………………………………………………..……...130 Chapter 4: Hegira to the Name of the Father…………………………..……………140 4.1 Dying Whole…………………………………………………………………...…140 4.2 The ―Dead/less‖………………………………………………………………..….148 v Chapter 5: Plath the Pharmakos (Scapegoat)...............................................................159 5.1 Pharmakos to the Father………………………………………………………..…159 5.2 Pharmakos, Outside in Nature……………………………………………...……..169 5.3 The Appearance of a Face (an otherness)…………………………………………181 Chapter 6: Subversive Heterogeneity…………………………………………………192 6.1 ―Daddy,‖ the Nazi . Mummy, ―Medusa‖………………………………………192 6.2 The Siren Voice of the Other…………………………………………………..….205 6.3 Back Again From ―Medusa‖ to ―Daddy‖…………………………………………210 6.4 Fragmentation of Time…………………………………………………………….215 Chapter 7: The “Deadmost”…………………………………………………………...226 7.1 Burning……………………………………………………………………………229 7.2 Cannibalism……………………………………………………………………….234 7.3 Killing and Shedding Blood………………………………………………………244 7.4 Veils………………………………………………………………………………251 Chapter 8: Last Confrontation……………………………………………………......266 Chapter 9: Sexton and Plath…………………………………………………………..275 Conclusion: ……………………………..…………………………… ………………..284 Notes………………………………………………………………………………….…291 Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………….309 vi Abbreviations ASCP Anne Sexton: The Complete Poems. Boston: Houghton, 1981. CP Sylvia Plath, Collected Poems. Ed. Ted Hughes. London: Faber, 1981. The Journals The Journals of Sylvia Plath 1950-1962. Ed. Karen V. Kukil. London: Faber, 2000. Johnny Panic Sylvia Plath, Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams, and Other Prose Writings. 2nd ed. London: Faber, 1979. Letters Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters. Ed. Linda Gray Sexton and Lois Ames. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Letters Home Sylvia Plath, Letters Home: Correspondence, 1950-1963. Ed. Aurelia Schober Plath. 1st ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1975. vii Acknowledgment I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Sean Gaston, whose encouragement, guidance, wide knowledge and constructive criticism while I was writing this thesis enabled me to develop an understanding of the subject. I am also heartily thankful to my second supervisor, Mr. David Fulton, for his continuous support, cooperation, patience and sound advice. My deepest love and respect goes to my husband, Akram Mahmoud, who believed in me and cared for our four girls in addition to his demanding job while I was away from home for research. My love goes also to my daughters, Maya, Meera, Yara, and Tala who were patient when I was not there for them. Moreover, I would like to thank my parents, in-laws and all the other members of my family who supported me and helped take care of my children. I would also like o to thank Dr. Jessica Cox, Dr. Myrna Nadir, Emma Filtness, Alex Osmond and everyone who has helped with her or his insightful comments. Lastly, but most importantly, I am grateful to Philadelphia University in Jordan for sponsoring my project. 1 Introduction I. Overview An examination of Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath from a Kristevan perspective will help to establish their different psychological positions in life and in their poetry. According to Kristeva, the subjectivity of the poet in her work of art is not discarded. On the contrary, the instinctual drives released in the poet‘s psyche lead to poetic creation and transgression of the law of One,1 which is the patriarchal, monotheistic law as a social closed system. M.L. Rosenthal first coined the term ―Confessional poetry‖ in 1959. At that time, he used the term to describe a new poetry which, he believed, was therapeutic and autobiographical as it ―put the speaker himself at the centre of the poem in such a way as to make his psychological vulnerability and shame an embodiment of his civilization‖ (69). This definition was advocated by many critics. A. R. Jones, for example, described the ―voice‖ of Confessional poetry as the ―naked ego‖ (30). In this sense, such poetry constitutes a break from formalist, impersonal verse (Gill, Anne Sexton 10). Because of what Hoffman views as ―the limited‖ and ―pejorative‖ sense of the term (687), especially in the light of the high incidence of suicide among the Confessionalists, it has become common practice to avoid associating this poetry with the subject of the artist. Rather, they objectively studied the instability and the uncertainty of language, as well as the indeterminacy of subjectivity removed from