Woman Writing And Sylvia Plath's Poetry

The western literary criticism of the 20th century witnessed a flux of variousideas and theories. After the mid 50s, with the upsurge of post-modernism, feminismand feminist literary criticism—this new force suddenly rose, becoming a brand newcritic theory with great influence on broadening the literary circle. Women writers andcritics, such as Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, Kate Millett,Germaine Greer, Elaine Showalter, Sandra Gilbert, Susan Gubar, Helene Cixous, LucyIrigaray, Ellen Moers, Alice Walker and Toril Moi had been not only the main force offeminist literary criticism, but also been voicing their opinions in woman writing, whichin the American Poetry was corresponded with and put into practice by Sylvia Plath.After the Second World War, there were two obvious literary trends in theAmerican Poetry, one being towards simplicity, the other being interested inself-revelation. Especially among the post-modernist schools of poetry appearing in the50s and 60s, Confessional Poetry was the one that reflected this trend the most.Confessional Poetry was founded by Robert Lowell. However, it was Sylvia Plath whohelped it culminate. Her first book of poetry, The colossus published in 1960 did notarouse much attention among the readers and critics. It was Ariel (1965), which cameout three years after her suicide that earned her name, followed by the publication ofCrossing the Water (1971), Winter Trees (1972) with the help of Plath's husband, TedHughes. Those two subsequent publications lifted her reputation to a new high. Evenuntil now, Sylvia Plath and her poetry still enjoy quite a reputation. In 1998 particularly,Birthday Letters Ted Hughes published posthumously intrigued readers' yearning forPlath again. Both masses of readers and the press welcomed Birthday Letters with openarms. Sylvia Plath, with her poetry writing and her life tragedy gluing together, becamenot only one of the representatives of Confessional Poetry in post-modernism, but alsobecame the yardstick of feminist literature for her consistent endeavor to keep writing asa woman writer and rebellious spirits towards patriarchal society and prejudice.However, unfortunately, as Plath's suicide at the height of her powers and hermarriage tragedy with her husband Ted Hughes made quite a deal of writers and critics focus on her biography, her journals, and psychoanalysis of the reasons why shecommitted suicide, only a few critics and writers applied feminist approaches on Plathsystematically and as far as the author is concerned, seldom did they apply womanwriting theories in feminist literary criticism to the analysis of Sylvia Plath and herpoetry. So in this case, this paper will not only give a detailed and systematic study ofwoman writing theories, but also employ some of them to the analysis of Sylvia Plathand her poetry writing, resulting in the conclusion that Sylvia Plath, as well as otherfeminist precursors and theorists, has come to fully realize several necessities forwoman writing and broke all the barriers to woman writing the patriarchal societyimposed upon them and earnestly advocated and practiced woman writing theories.Sylvia Plath also helped to expand the traditional woman writing genres topoetry-writing and infused her poems with great historical and social significance, beinga great contribution to the history of woman writing. To be specific, six parts areincluded:The first chapter, with the sub-title "Her triumph—her poetry, not her death" notonly provides a brief introduction on Sylvia Plath and her writing career, but alsocomments on criticism of Plath from various perspectives and proposes a newperspective, i.e. from the perspective of woman writing. In addition, this chapter alsointroduces the outline of this paper.The second chapter offers the theoretical framework, providing the readers somebrief, introductions on feminism, modern feminist literary criticism as well as theorieson woman writing, among which detailed comments and comparisons aboutAnglo-American Theories on Woman Writing and French Theories on Woman Writingare included in particular.In the third chapter, the author spells out four kinds of barriers to woman writing:prejudices against woman writing in traditional literary history, lack of their (women's)own literary history, financial dependence and limited education funds and traditionalwomen's role in patriarchal society.Chapter Four follows and corresponds with the Chapter Three. Women writers andcritics are introduced, Sylvia Plath in particular. Confronting those barriers which havebeen discussed in Chapter Three, women writers and feminist precursors have keptendeavoring to voice their talents with pens, including fighting against patriarchalprejudices, searching for female literary history and their realization and fighting for financial independence and own space. What's more, the paper discusses the case ofSylvia Plath in particular from two perspectives—from her talent and perseverance inwriting and from the analysis of some of her poems which denounce the traditionalwomen images and are against domesticity with ambivalent attitudes.Then this paper comes to its fifth part to have a look at traditional genres forwoman writing and Plath's historical and social contexts. This chapter is mainlyconsisted of two parts: reasons behinds the traditional genres and Plath's struggleagainst traditional genres through analysis of the Holocaust poems and social contextsof Plath's poetry, which reveals that Sylvia Plath has done a great contribution to thedevelopment of the genre of woman writing into a brand new field.Finally the writer comes to the conclusion. The writer's argument is that womenwriters, particularly those feminist writers, bravely unveil those biases and prejudices intraditional literary criticism and fully come to realize those necessities of womanwriting. Sylvia Plath shares many ideas of feminists on woman writing and in order tocontinue her writing career, she kept fighting against all kinds of barriers for writingconditions under tough circumstances in the middle of last century. Her poetry, as wellas herself, has already been not only a literary symbol of the women's rights movementbut also a yardstick for the whole literary history.