The child in the poetry of Sylvia Plath

Date

1974

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Abstract

In Sylvia Plath's four bocks of poetry, The Colossus, Ariel, Crossing the Water, Winter Trees, and in her poetic drama Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices, the child personifies three distinct themes. The child is 1) the entrapment of the mother. 2) the inheritor of the mother's psychological darkness, and 3) the redemption of the mother from that darkness. All three of these roles are only possible because the child is an extension of the mother's self. Often the child's role is a combination of two or all three of these roles. Critics tend to emphasize that the child symbolizes life and hope. The child, however, also symbolizes entrapment and darkness for the mother figure. Thus, it is necessary in looking at the role of the child in Plath's poetry to view closely the psyches of her mother figures. Tension between mother and child may arise because the mother is unable to achieve freedom of self. This tension supports feelings of guilt and despair which reinforce the mother's sense of psychological darkness. In order to escape that, darkness, the mother seeks a source of light which she often thinks she sees in the child. The child then becomes hope and salvation from her darkness. Thus, the child in Plath's poetry has three distinct, yet overlapping roles. The child entreps the Father, inherits her darkness, and redeems her from her own dark vision of the world.

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Keywords

Children in literature., Plath, Sylvia--Criticism and interpretation.

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