Images of Self: A Study of Feminine and Feminist Subjectivity in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Margaret Atwood and Adrienne Rich, 1950-1980 Little, Philippa Susan The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author For additional information about this publication click this link. http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/jspui/handle/123456789/1501 Information about this research object was correct at the time of download; we occasionally make corrections to records, please therefore check the published record when citing. For more information contact [email protected] Images of Self: A Study of Feminine and Feminist Subjectivity in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Margaret Atwood and Adrienne Rich, 1950-1980. A thesis supervised by Dr. Isobel Grundy and submitted at Queen Mary and Westfield College, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Ph. D. by Philippa Susan Little June 1990. The thesis explores the poetry (and some prose) of Plath, Sexton, Atwood and Rich in terms of the changing constructions of self-image predicated upon the female role between approx. 1950-1980.1 am particularly concerned with the question of how the discourses of femininity and feminism contribute to the scope of the images of the self which are presented. The period was chosen because it involved significant upheaval and change in terms of women's role and gender identity. The four poets' work spans this period of change and appears to some extent generally characteristic of its social, political and cultural contexts in America, Britain and Canada. (Other poets' work, for example Rukeyser, Lorde, Levertov, is included too. ) The poets were not chosen to illustrate a pre-feminist vs. feminist opposition since a major concern is to explore what I see to be the symbiotic relation between femininity and feminism (as also between orthodoxy and heresy). However the thesis is organised chronologically because periodisation is important for a consideration of the poetry's social setting. In wanting to connect the poetry with cultural and political circumstances as much as possible I have taken Edward Said's assertion of a text's position of 'being in the world', its potential as a cultural product to help reshape reality, and its value as a 'powerful weapon of both materialism and consciousness'. This is the starting point for the study which is circular and cumulative in shape, fundamentally thematic, though each chapter is a chronological exploration of the work of one specific poet, beginning with Plath and completing with Rich. A conclusion attempts to pull the strands of each together and consider the implications raised. The thesis has four general concerns which run through its particular focus on each poet. The first involves the relations between cultural practice and ideology; the second involves the ideology of gender (through exploration of femininity and feminism); the third involves authorial ideology (through the construction of self-image in relation to femininity and feminism) while the fourth involves these concerns in terms of the overall arena of women's struggle for meaning and self- determination in cultural practice. More specific elements of the study include collating and comparing self-images and attempting to make connections or chart changes where images such as witch, queen, handmaid, shamaness, goddess, earth mother, whore, madwoman, etc., re-occur. Usage of myth (particularly Persephone). the Gothic, 'and articulation of lesbian desire are also explored. The emergence of a female 'hero' self-image, in opposition to 'victim', seems to be a corollary of the impact of feminism in Rich's poetry , particularly, but this tendency can be traced back through Plath. I explore the celebration of nature and the power of essentialism in the construction of heroic female images, particularly in the figure of the mother flowing with milk at the centre of 'ecriture feminine'. The concluding chapter suggests that femininity did not constitute such a repressive constraint on self-image and writing practice for women as perhaps might be supposed; and that feminism, while opening up many empowering changes for women, has raised further disturbing and unresolved questions about identity, and even helped, in some of its aspects, to create a new 'orthodoxy' in which various aspects of experience cannot easily be articulated. My example is Rich's later work where it seems to admit itself limited by its own initially liberating strategies and looks further on towards new 'heresies'. INTRODUCTIM; page CHAPTER 1: Svlvia Plath page 30 CHAPTER 2: Anne Sexton page 118 UAPTER 3: Margaret Atwood page 199 CHAPTER 4: Adrienne Rich page 266 "CN'ILTJS ION 327 I page SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY page 344 Grateful thanks to Bob Little for all his Dractical. intellectual and gaberhauer emotional support. Thanks also to Marion for typing, and to Rob Ryder, S, Beeby. late Martha Lang for their -,e Dan Weinbren and the interest and encouragement. Anv errors are my own, (Erratum : There is no page number 43. ) INTRODUCTION- Voman-as-sign- Making sense of the self This is a study of four women poets whose work and life experiences span the early 1950s to the early 1980s. The study focuses upon their constructions of the female self-image within social, political, historical and literary contexts. I am particularly interested in how the discourses of femininity and feminism contribute to the scope of these images af the self. Very broadly, I began seeing the poetry of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton in the fifties and early sixties produced as a result of trying to create subversive self-images within a conservative, pre-feminist discourse. The ensuing alienation and frustrations, perceived as 'madness', I imagined as emerging from such an unsympathetic context. The images of the self which Margaret Atwood and Adrienne Rich create, in contrast, seemed supported by the feminist discourses of the seventies, and were consequently far less judgemental of the 'subversive' female self. Not mad or bad women, they emerged eventually as self- styled female heroes, voices calling for individual transformations and collective change. This will sound familiar, since it has become a 'post-feminist' cliche. I am aware now that much of this scenario is myth, created as much by the needs of eighties feminist researchers to divide the past from the present and future. So although I have organised the study chronologically, I am no longer sure that the progress I originally had in mind - the reactionary 1950s leading on to the liberation of the sixties and seventies - can ever be so simplified. I work chronologically because I feel periodisation Is important. For all the gains feminism achieved and continues to achieve, feminist discourse has raised pressing and unresolvable questions for -1- women poets of this decade. It is fair to say, too, that feminism has raised new constraints upon what can and cannot be said, even as it has helped to do away with older silences and inhibitions. Exploring these questions forms a substantial part of this study. k central contention here is that femininity (whose characteristic decade is the 1950s) and feminism (whose most influential decade is the 1970s) have a symbiotic relationship. It is one reminiscent of that between heresy and orthodoxy: A heretic is he [sic] ... not an atheist; rather maintains a prc! ound and often fruitful link with the orthodoxy that defines his terns. (1) Therefore I attempt to draw out the threads of 'feminism', in its period - specific differences, from the fifties and before, while exploring what I see to be elements of classic 'femininity' in the feminist work of Atwood and Rich. Having said this I want to describe something of the shape of this study. In wanting to connect the poetry with cultural and political circumstances as much as possible, I have taken Edward Said's assertion of a text's position of 'being in the world', its potential as a cultural product to reshape reality, and its value as a 'powerful weapon of both materialism and consciousriessl. (2) Yet the Ifictiveness' of language cannot be over- emphasised, particularly when examining imaginative writing such as poetry -I hope this contradiction will prove a fruitful starting-point for the study which is circular and cumulative in shape, fundamentally thematic, though each chapter is an exploration of the work of one particular poet, beginning with Plath and completing with Rich. (I have also looked at a variety of other poets' work, both male and f emale. ) The study has four major concerns. The first involves the relations between cultural practice and ideology; the second involves the ideology of gender (through exploration of femininity and feminism); the third - involves authorial ideology (the construction of self-image in relation to femininity and feminism); while the fourth involves these concerns in studying the whole arena of women's struggle for meaning and self- determination in cultural practice. In the two sections which follow, I first set out the theoretical frameworks I have used and secondly block in the social and literary background to the period, including a review of the main themes I shall concentrate upon in examining the poetry. The period 1950-1980 has been one of significant upheaval in social and cultural attitudes. In poetry, also, there has been a move away from the traditional and the formal to freer forms more concerned with social and psychological subjects. In this study I am most concerned with change in the textual ways women perceive themselves and are perceived, and the relationships between these perceptions. Poetry has been one medium for the articulation and exploration of such change: this has become evident in the previous decade's publishing boom which has pushed 'women's writing' into the literary mainstream.