Plath & Hughes Mod A Essay PDF

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Full mark essay for Rank 11 Selective High School...

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A comparative study of the poetry of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes illuminates both the connection between the poets and their dissonant perspectives. A comparative study based on conversations between texts illuminates both the connections between them and dissonances in perspectives. The links between the poetry of Sylvia Plath' and Ted Hughes are clearly evident in their references to particular elements of their relationship and their personal lives. These are conflated to validate their dissonant perspectives on individuals struggling to gain personal agency and power. In her confessional poems, Lady Lazarus and Arrival of the Bee-Box, Plath grounds her search for self-actualisation on her painful struggle to free herself from the oppressive constraints imposed upon her by her relationship with her father and Hughes. Hughes' deliberate poetic reconstruction of her poetry through, The Shot and The Bee God, a conversation which appropriates elements of this relationship to present a personal narrative, overturns Plath's perspective to suggest that her idolisation of a dead father rendered her incapable of gaining the agency she desired. Thus, the comparative study of their poetry highlights their connections and their dissonances. Comparisons between Plath and Hughes' poetry suggest that they are deliberately constructed texts which embody their desire to privilege their personal perspectives. In Lady Lazarus, Plath by presenting a confronting personal perspective accentuates her determination to validate her portrayal of herself as a woman who is burdened by the unrelenting oppression of men and can only find catharsis by painfully reinventing herself. Living in a world of uncertainty during the Cold War, Plath's relationship with the dominant males in her life, influenced her perspective that their patriarchal power constrained her ability to gain self actualisation as a woman. Hence, the biblical allusion within the title "Lady Lazarus" refers to her attempt to throw off the pain of victimisation and emerge triumphant like a self-resurrecting female Lazarus. Similarly, the allusion to her personal history in the opening line, "I have done it again", references her previous attempt at suicide and enables her to construct a narrative of her ability to metaphorically return from the death of disempowerment. She accentuates her struggle to free herself from the shackles of victimhood in the Nazi imagery of “ So, so, Herr Doktor … I am your valuable / The pure gold baby", which embodies her indictment of men who have reduced her to a possession in order to ensure their personal agendas. However, this theatricalisation of her pain is counterbalanced by the mythical allusion to the Phoenix ,"I rise with my red hair, I eat men like air", an affirmation of Plath's view that she had to reinvent herself in order to attain control of her life. Through his conversational links to Plath’s poetry, Hughes in The Shot, dismantles Plath's perspective of herself as a disempowered victim of male oppression by shifting audience’s perspectives to her psychological inability to liberate herself from the trauma of her father’s death. Written retrospectively in response to both Plath's and society's narrative of an abuser whose infidelity led to Plath's death, he uses the conceit of "a high velocity bullet" and the personification "his death touched the trigger" to suggest that Plath's self-destructive trajectory was unleashed by Otto's death. He deliberately reiterates Plath's poetical representation of her death-wish, which in Lady Lazarus is expressed as “I meant to last it out and not come back at all”, by presenting the inevitability of Plath's suicide in the metaphor "you were undeflected… Trajectory perfect". The symbolic connotation of “undeflected” and “Trajectory perfect” accentuates his view that Plath’s suicide was the product of her entrapment in the past. Hughes by reframing Plath's perspective of her entrapment by men with power to her idolisation of Otto, uses his reiteration of Plath’s personal history to privilege his own dissonant view that he was powerless. He extends this by employing the antithesis between "too mortal to take it" and "the right witchdoctor / Might have caught you" to suggest that unable to

access magical powers, he was humanly incapable of altering her self-destructive path. Thus, a comparative study of the poets’ work affirms that their dissonant perspectives are a construction of personal agendas. This understanding of personal perspectives as an act of construction is further established by an exploration of The Arrival of the Bee Box, Plath examines the possibility of attaining an autonomous female identity when patriarchally determined gender roles sought to keep women subservient. Written in 1962 after the break-up of her marriage to Hughes, she conflates her own feelings of entrapment by maternal responsibilities with her perspective of women as victims of patriarchal definitions of gender roles, who can only empower themselves by assuming control of their lives. The opening line counterpoints the idea of personal agency through the simple diction of "I ordered", with the symbolic connotations of entrapment "this box", to convey the dichotomy between autonomous acts and the societal demands which restrict women with their gender parameters. In addition, the use of images of disempowerment, "too heavy to lift … There is only a little grid, no exit" and the rhetorical question, "how can I let them out?" convey Plath's own anxieties that trapped in domestic duties, her poetic self would be lost. Thus the auditory imagery, "the noise that appals me most of all, / The unintelligible syllables" represents her indictment of the silencing of the female voice by the men's control of gender discourse. However, in a defiant act of regaining possession of her own destiny, the metaphor " The box is only temporary", reaffirms her view that women will ultimately release themselves from the confinement imposed upon them. While Plath’s perspective conflates her personal suffering to embody the patriarchal entrapment of the women of her zeitgeist, Hughes' poem, The Bee God illuminates his personal, dissonant perspective of her psychological inability to liberate herself from her subjugation to her father. As a response to accusations of misogyny which overshadowed him following Plath's death, Hughes inverts the binary oppositions between "the abused" and "the abuser" which informs Plath's view that in The Arrival of the Bee Box, patriarchy is general and Hughes in particular denied her personal agency. Hughes reframes this perspective through his poetic representation of Plath's destructive idolisation of her father. The allegorical religious allusion to "the Abbess / In the nunnery of bees" accentuates Hughes' view that Plath had futilely dedicated her life to a dead father, her voluntary incarceration deviating from Plath's personal assertion that "The box is locked, it is dangerous" acting as a metaphorical explication of her helplessness. Hughes undercuts this idea of helplessness, replacing it through his use of the anaphora "you bowed over your bees / As you bowed over your Daddy" to suggest that this obeisant act of reverence was reflective of her obsession with her dead father. Thus, while Plath's poem suggests that she will eventually find her freedom outside the confines of her domestic role, Hughes redefines this representation to a dissonant perspective of Plath's inability to release herself from her obsession with her father. Therefore, through the comparative study of poetry, Hughes reframes Plath’s incessant desire for self actualisation to portray a tormented individual with no personal ability to control her life. Whilst Plath presents the oppressive nature of male figures, Hughes provides a dissonant perspective where her fanatical desire for liberation from a psychological entrapment by a past that she dealt with by idolising her dead father, resulted in suicide....