MALE AUTHORITY AND FEMALE IDENTITY IN THE POETRY OF SYLVIA PLATH, ANNE SEXTON, AND ADRIENNE RICH

The relationship of male authority and female identity is the central theme in the poetry of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Adrienne Rich. Sylvia Plath treats the male-female relationship specifically as a father-daughter relationship. In her early poems, daughters wish to be engulfed by a godlike father. But in her late poetry, women become conscious of the oppressive implications of such a merger; as a result, they willfully combat their own tendency toward self-denial and violently struggle against the fathers and father surrogates, who threaten their right to independent selfhood. Unlike Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton does not develop a vision of an emerging female identity in her poetry. Instead, her protagonists fluctuate between submission and resistance to fathers and other men in positions of fatherlike authority. Even when they clearly recognize the devastating effects of male authority on female identity, Sexton's protagonists do not imagine themselves escaping domination. Of these three poets, only Adrienne Rich evolves a vision of a female identity that is not circumscribed by male authority. For Rich, the struggle for self-emergence is waged not so much with individual men but with the patriarchal attitudes of the existing culture. The chronological movement of her poetry reflects the total evolution of woman's ascending consciousness. Her protagonists eventually outgrow their acquiescence to male concepts of female identity, rejecting such externally imposed definitions. Finally, after unsuccessful efforts to reform patriarchal society itself, Rich's protagonists create their own definitions of female identity, definitions that find their validity and support in the long-suppressed but nonetheless vital tradition of matriarchal culture.