The Visual Construction Of Subjectivity In Sylvia Plath’s Poetry

This thesis focuses on the visual construction of subjectivity in Sylvia Plath’s poetry.Plath often employs fragmented visual images to imitate a dissolved "self" under the gaze of others,but she also highlights the creative power of the self to deconstruct the visual through emotion and its cognates.Affects are the unconscious and empirical emotional surges;Plath emphatically incorporates them in her poems to foreground a subject’s difficulty in integrating and controlling its sense of self.In her last poems,the poet seems to deliberately separate herself from her affective experiences,turning to a more solitary and individualized "self."Plath’s engagement with visual arts in her literary productions has been more widely appreciated in recent years.This thesis engages with the discussion to reveal the relationship between Plath’s visuality and her ideas about subjectivity.It also brings in an affective dimension.Following Plath’s three periods of creative bursts,the three chapters examine respectively the early ekphrastic poems,Ariel poems,and the 1963 poems.Plath’s ekphrastic conditions her to articulate her affective moments beyond the representational capability of words.They also enable the poet to think more about the gaze.By Ariel,the kind of visuality alluding to specific paintings disappears,but the gaze remains.The omniscient gaze splinters the speakers’subjectivity,yet at the same time stimulates their affects to counteract the self-depleting look and reaffirm the presence of the self.In the hope of reconciling the opposing powers of "gazing" and "being gazed at," Plath’s speakers desire integration with their surroundings to reach an expanded,integrated,and even transcendental "self." However,in the last poems in 1963,Plath gave up such efforts She no longer indulges in momentary ecstasies,anger or frustrations,but soberly exerts self-reflections.Filling both positions of the gazer and the gazed,she has finally ceased to please.The central part of this thesis concentrates on a close reading of Plath’s poetry.The Lacanian term "gaze," as well as the notions borrowed from the affect theory and the picture theory,will be applied to clarify the claims.