This research paper is about Sylvia Plath and her writings. The early writings show the process of Plath’s coming into a period in which her initial idealism faded as she began to identify with the role of a creator, the writer, and especially, the aesthete. Although she was still a student at that stage, her construction of identity became more complicated and complex due to the nurturing questions of gender and sexuality.
It is also worth including, with regards to the aspect of feminism, some references from Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, who questions so-called repressive hypothesis. The problem of gender roles is also extensively discussed in another bibliographical position written by Adrienne Rich and titled Compulsory heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence. Here the author presents how the society actually pursue a threatening politics.
Yet, Elaine Tyler May and Deborah Nelson reveal that the culture of the fifties displayed contradictory views on certain issues concerning ideas about "citizen and state, self and society", which led to the politics of containment (further elucidated in Chapter One). Nelson discusses in Pursuing Privacy in Cold War America in which ways privacy trapped woman in particular. While the term privacy presumably indicated self-sufficiency, it came to symbolize "isolation, loneliness, domination and routine" for many confessional writers, linking Sylvia Plath as a confessional writer to the Foucauldian hypothesis, and arguing that confession does not lead to freedom, as the private is already penetrated by power.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter One: Baby-boomers of 1950s – Gender Roles in Clash of both Post-Victorian and Post-War Society
Chapter Two: Sylvia Plath – the Portrait of Life under a Cracking Jar
Chapter Three: The Two Bell Jars – The interwoven stories of Plath and Esther in the Cold War reality
Discussion
Conclusion
References
Introduction
The fact is that the inspiration drawn from any autobiography as a category of study is that it connects together many different disciplines, such as literature, history, sociology, and obviously – cultural studies. In addition, feminism offers a distinctive spin from which one can view some concerns, connected with the described facts, highlighting the gendered constructions of the ‘self’ they typically assume. And also there are the ethical or even political consequences of such assumptions. The women – authors and the women – characters of the autobiographies or quasi-autobiographical novels are even more difficult to frame into a singular area of discussion.
Therefore, when choosing The Bell Jar.y Sylvia Plath, I was well aware of the numerous assumptions already made and widely discussed by various critics and the notable authors. Accordingly, the immediate requirement was to be able to sieve through the available criticism and offer something worthy delving deeper, which was not to this date sufficiently analyzed.
The Bell Jar.s the first and only novel written by Sylvia Plath, and was published under the fictional name Victoria Lucas not a long time before she committed suicide in 1963. The book is always viewed as being heavily semi-biographical and gives the reader actually an insight into the author’s own life as she fought with her own clinical depression. What is more, the biographical descriptions of Plath’s life, give an uncanny feeling that whatever thought and feeling Plath speaks through Esther – the main protagonist of the novel, are actually her owns. That are the aspects which drew my attention – the mirrored lives of two women – the fictional one and the one who created her, gave her the life.
Diane S. Bonds provides a good opening to the thoughts that prevailed my concerns regarding an interesting and insightful assumption regarding this paper, stating that: “Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.ffers a brilliant evocation of the oppressive atmosphere of the 1950s and the soul-destroying effect this atmosphere could have on ambitious, high-minded young women like Plath” (Bonds, 1990, p. 49).
Accordingly, in the view of the above thoughts, this paper tries to show that as creative as she was, Plath struggled with her deepening clinical depression in the period of history when women were still reduced to the world of domesticity and that atmosphere, combined with her personal life were enough of the mixture to be fatal. I also claim that The Bell Jar.irrors Plath’s desire to be re-born afresh and to be able to rid herself of stifling etiquettes of the 1950’s and become individual who is able to become an autonomous entity.
The only presumption that comes to mind is that given that Plath was mentally stable, she would be capable of dealing with loss of the man she loved and would move on to creating further with more personal experience and possibly – the approach of a fully developed mature person.
The Bell Jar.as chosen as a primary source for the following dissertation, as it presents a unique period in American history with regards to female gender identity as well as consumer identity – both highly interwoven. Equally important is that the novel implies how the politics of containment during the Eisenhower years of power led to a an ideology of repression and in that way crashed the women’s spirits and to some extent their health, especially the mental one.
The methods or rather ways in which I plan on using in order to demonstrate the above claims, involve in-depth analysis of particular concepts. There are several key concepts that I intend to employ in this paper. These will be based on the theoretical works and biographical sources that were chosen as the secondary sources which help to shape the full picture of the problems to be discussed, and the questions which will be postulated.
There will also be involved the pursue within the inquiry in the context of feminist theories and criticisms. I will make use of this theory to examine how Esther Greenwood’s female identity and performances are restricted and shaped by the Cold War era, presented through McCarthyism and referred to by Esther in the novel’s introduction by the Rosenberg’s execution. In addition, the prominent feminist scholars such asTess Cosslett, Celia Lury et al.,as well as Mary Ann Doane will be quoted to bring the discussion of self-policing, amongst various other aspects, further, so that the paper will be also able to focus on the idea of so-called ‘the male gaze’. Although offering separate, and sometimes opposing arguments, both authors claim that the women and female characters throughout the literary history (and not only literary, but history in general) were perceived as an object, while the men, the ones who bore ‘the look’, were always considered to hold the position of the subject.
Therefore, the following postulated question at that point are:
“How and if does Esther oppose this statement?”
“How does Esther Greenwood reconciles the fifties roles of gender with regards to her own contradictions on the subject of sexuality and gender roles?”
Accordingly, the next question I will try to find answer to is “What were the factors in Plath’s life, that combined with the fifties denigrated role of female gender led to suicide?”
In order not only to answer these questions but also to clash them with the feminist point of view and repressed sexuality, so vital in The Bell Jar. with Plath herself, I chose to support these views by work of another scholar – Robin Peel, whose Writing Back: Sylvia Plath and Cold War Politics.deally refers to the shaping of Plath’s ideas and its influence on her literary output.
The early writings show the process of Plath’s coming into a period in which her initial idealism faded as she began to identify with the role of an creator, the writer, and especially, the aesthete. Although she was still a student at that stage, her construction of identity became more complicated and complex due to the nurturing questions of gender and sexuality. Peel claims that “she passes through periods when she accuses herself of penis envy and of having an inferiority complex. All of this points to the influence of her reading on her behavior and writing, not just for the ideas and theories that the reading supplies (Freud being an obvious influence in 1953), but for explanations and models which are variously encouraging and depressing.” (Peel, 2002, p. 102). That ‘penis envy’ so strongly suggests influence of the era in which she came to be born and raised – her world was still the one of men and it belonged to them, as well as freedom of sexuality.
It is also worth including, with regards to the aspect of feminism, some references from Foucault’s The History of Sexuality. who questions so-called ‘repressive hypothesis’. The author bitterly opens his book by stating that: “For a long time, the story goes, we supported a Victorian regime, and we continue to be dominated by it even today. Thus the image of the imperial prude is emblazoned on our restrained, mute, and hypocritical sexuality” (Foucault, 1978, p. 3).
The problem of gender roles is also extensively discussed in another bibliographical position written by Adrienne Rich and titled Compulsory heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence..ere the author presents how the society actually pursue a threatening politics by the simple “male right of physical, economical, and emotional access” (Rich, 2003, p. 26).
Numerous previous scholars have exhaustively studied The Bell Jar.ot only from feministic but also psychological point of view, providing valuable insights into such aspects as: feminism of Esther or mental illness, of both the character and the author of the novel.
All of them will be used in my paper and to discuss the aforementioned themes. Nevertheless, hardly any of the scholarly articles and books I have located on The Bell Jar.ave touched upon the relationship between Esther’s diminished health and freedom of behavior, which I argue in my paper is caused by the domestic values of the fifties, fear of Communism and “the enemy within” in connection with Foucault’s theory on the Panopticon and the self-policing society.
Yet, Elaine Tyler May and Deborah Nelson reveal that the culture of the fifties displayed contradictory views on certain issues concerning ideas about “citizen and state, self and society”, which led to the politics of containment (further elucidated in Chapter One). Nelson discusses in Pursuing Privacy in Cold War America.n which ways privacy trapped woman in particular. While the term privacy presumably indicated self-sufficiency, it came to symbolize “isolation, loneliness, domination and routine” for many confessional writers, linking Sylvia Plath as a confessional writer to the Foucauldian hypothesis, and arguing that confession does not lead to freedom, as the private is already penetrated by power (Nelson, 2002, p. xiii).
That isolation and actual loneliness of numerous women often led to suicides. In that matter, the paper will provide quotation and estimates fromRonald W. Maris; Alan L. Berman’s book titled Comprehensive Textbook of Suicidology. in which authors strongly suggest that “Suicides do not usually happen out of the blue, solely as the product of intolerable acute stressors. Almost all suicides have relevant bio psychosocial life histories that make them variously vulnerable to or protected from suicidal crises.” (Maris, Berman and Silverman, 2000, p. 38).
Another point, which needs to be briefly mentioned as an introductory note, is that the paper will focus also on form of narration within The Bell Jar. as it is one of the main aspects that throughout the years after the novel’s publishing made it so close to the reader’s heart. It is often repeated that The Bell Jar.eads like a message from ones closest friend – it is witty but never pretentious, often funny without trying too hard and finally sarcastic but not mean.
That is why it worth taking a closer look at the way the style is formulated, because the novel does such a splendid job taking the reader straight into Esther’s bothered mind that the effect seems natural. As it will be discussed in broader terms in the final Chapter, here is only the glimpse and a note – there is nothing more natural about any novel like having a first-person narrator. That technique is used in The Bell Jar.ith a great success. There are obviously the limitation of such form of narration, to mention but one – the subjective point of view of not only the character of Esther but also the other characters and situations.
Regarding the narrating techniques John Mullan simply states that “One basic distinction is between first-person narration and third-person narration. Novelists are themselves often conscious of this as a choice to be made when they sit down to a new work.” (Mullan, 2006, p. 40). That holds the truth, while Plath on purpose chose first-person form, however, Susan Snaider Lanser has characterized the voices of female narrators as ‘a site of crisis, contradiction, or challenge’ (Wexman, 2001). And here, one can also observe the accordance with the quoted author – Plath’s only novel does challenge the perception of women in 1950’s because at the same time it presents the crisis in one person’s life and it also delves deep into numerous contradictions in Esther’s life which lead to her mental breakdown.
The final introductory reference that I would like to make refers to the genre characteristics. The most literary critics assume that because of the similarities which can be traced between Esther and Plath this novel is nothing more but autobiographical fiction. Nevertheless, the autobiographical elements can be further defined, due to the fact that like many post-modern writers, Plath was best known for her confessional writing (Phillips, 1973, p. 28). The fact is, that scholars who have studied and analyzed her output often focused on the ‘self’ and her use of it in her consecutive writing. Throughout the years of her writing career she was known to write to express the situations and feelings she experienced, or to rid herself of negative feelings following some traumatizing events. Even her own mother, mentioned that Plath believed in power of self-healing through written words (Kottler, 2006, p. 24).
In her only novel The Bell Jar. Plath depicted Esther Greenwood and her life-defining summer, which in fact, is the portrait of herself and her personal breakdown during the summer of 1953. However, her inward writing is different from the other confessional writings due to the fact that here she employed another – more witty style and tone in comparison with what Plath used to write in. Not only by that, but also through the fact that she decided to pen the novel under the pseudonym. In addition, Plath did not make herself the central character of the novel, while her confessional-styled peers made it the point of creating such literary form of fiction, which would could be best described as resembling a diary or a personal journal (Reyna, 2012, p. 8).
Another label, pinned to The Bell Jar.s that of being the bildungsroman – the novel about the moral and psychological growth of the main character. Accordingly, if it one decides to interpret it as a bildungsroman, one must narrow down the scope of the story to these fact which focus on telling the story of “Esther’s experiences of fifties America and her development and construction of sexual and social identity” (Bærevar, 2007, p. 60). As such, that would slightly defect from the complexity of the story, due to the fact that in some part, the novel is being narrated from the adult Esther’s point of view. But still, an acknowledge Plath scholar, Linda Wagner-Martin, says that the book is “in structure and intent a highly traditional bildungsroman” and then continues explaining that “ The Bell Jar.s a Female Bildungsroman, […] characteristic of bildungsromane. the story centers around Esther Greenwood’s maturation, with each character and scene added solely to contribute to Esther’s development. Moreover, the book discusses themes like identity and sexuality, which are prevalent in the bildungsroman genre“ (Wagner-Martin, 1986, p. 55).
That could be all true, if not one aspect – in a traditional bildungsroman, the main protagonist evolves, develops from something like an ugly duckling into a mature, self-aware character. The Bell Jar.as a dual form, with prevailing one which suggest the exact opposite – someone beautiful, aware of values and having some point of view degrades, falls virtually apart. Therefore, more appropriate notion would be that of Janet McCann says that “the book is really an ‘ unbildungsroman’. tracing Esther’s change from apparent knowledge and self-confidence to ignorance and uncertainty as the apparently open horizon shrinks to a point” (McCann, 2012, p. 9).
This paper asserts that Esther Greenwood’s female identity parallels with the cultural context of 1950’s and as such it is under a constant influence of male oppression and a general social context in which she lives – that those factors not only define her but also fatally wound her psyche. Having said that, my aim is to present the clear parallels between the fictional broken woman – Esther and the one who created her – Plath in the mirror of the world that is their point in time.
In order to achieve the assumed aim, the following paper is organized into three chapters. The first chapter is a specific theoretical chapter, having in its scope the theory behind not only The Bell Jar.ith its protagonist – Esther, but mainly the author of the novel – Sylvia Plath. That is why, it presents the historical background to the era of The Bell Jar. as well as formative years of its author – Sylvia Plath – the 1950’s. Accordingly, it discusses the relationship between women and the impact this period had on their lives. It emphasizes that the Cold War’s rhetoric and America’s quest for national security created a kind of fear that also affected and formed the female identity in the fifties, resulting in their isolation, loneliness and suicidal risk. The chapter’s subsections try to outline some other vital subjects, such as analyzing key works which bear typical sense of feminism from the 1950’s, and also the genre which can be defined as the one typical for Plath’s literary output. The chapter also seeks to depict the early writings of the author and pin-point those of the aspects which may prove that her writing reflects the political situation and its influence on feminist perspective. Here, there are also included the psychological questions and reflections, regarding the typical treatment of schizophrenic patients in 1950’s. Through that, I will attempt at explain that with appropriate psychiatric medical help, which that period had lacked, most of the suicide victims amongst women of 1950’s could have been prevented. To achieve that goal, I will frequently refer to the Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. That biographical position is the very one, where the reader can have an actual – real-life glimpse into Plath’s mind regarding her and the women’s in general position in so-called patriarchal, male dominated society.
The second chapter discusses the relationship between Plath’s personal experiences and the resulting writings. It tries to present the power of emotion and feelings which throughout the poet’s productive years consumed her to the point where she did in fact experience a creative outburst and reached the levels of mastery, but at the same time that it burnt her to the ash – mentally and eventually led her to death. As such, the chapter aims to show that in case of Plath, her marital problems – being mistreated by her husband, cheated and finally abandoned, did have an extremely devastating effect. Although Plath was adult she was not mature – that is the leading thought of this chapter and as such it will be presenting various bibliographical proofs.
The final chapter is fully devoted to finding the answers to the postulated above questions. Therefore, as such, it analysis Esther’s feminine as well as sexual fulfillments in The Bell Jar. The chapter in particular raises questions concerning Esther’s ability to adapt to 1950’s customs of femininity. Through its three subsections I address the following questions: “How and if does Esther oppose this statement?” Secondly, “How does Esther Greenwood reconciles the fifties roles of gender with regards to her own contradictions on the subject of sexuality and gender roles?” And eventually, “What were the factors in Plath’s life, that combined with the fifties denigrated role of female gender led to suicide?” As such, this sub-part ultimately seeks to answer the question whether The Bell Jar.an be perceived as quasi-autobiographical and bildungsroman.
Chapter One: Baby-boomers of 1950s – Gender Roles in Clash of both Post-Victorian and Post-War Society
If you were a woman reading this magazine 40 years ago, the odds were good that your husband provided the money to buy it. That you voted the same way he did. That if you got breast cancer, he might be asked to sign the form authorizing a mastectomy. That your son was heading to college but not your daughter. That your boss, if you had a job, could explain that he was paying you less because, after all, you were probably working just for pocket money (Gibbs, 2009 online)..
Susan Levine, in her book Degrees of Equality: The American Association of University Women and the Challenge of Twentieth-Century Feminism.laims that “by most accounts, the women’s movement died during the 1950s. Described by some as ‘the doldrums’ and by others as an era in which the search for security after two decades of depression and war led American women to focus on family life to the exclusion of public concerns, the 1950s appears to be a decade of passivity and domesticity” (Levine, 1995 p. 67).
That can be true, purely from the organizational point of view. However, there is the weighing political force which actually caused such situation and it would be short-sighting to say that the women were actually the ones that shaped the world around them to become safely stuck in suburban houses domestic divas of 1950s. In reality American social culture at the time was entirely based on the family. In that respect, the social organization relied on the traditional notions of the male and female role in the family: it was a model of community based on stereotypes.
In this chapter I intend to present the American society in the 1950s, with special focus on the women’s situation in that era. In order to achieve this, I will at first discuss how the development of the contemporaries’ dream – living in suburbia, led to the phenomenon of the domestic containment. Next, I will focus on the social obsession with purity, which was dictated by the political situation of this period. With that, I would like to stress how loneliness in suburbia, combined with politically warped morality influenced the psyche of the American women. I will explain the issue of the ‘repressive hypothesis’, as well as the problem of Valium-like substances abuse by the housewives. The final aspect which I will deal with is the 1950s’ attitude towards mental breakdowns and illnesses, which, due to previously mentioned issues, were common among the American women.
1.1. Suburbia’s Domestic Divas of 1950s and the Politics of Domestic Containment
Marriage in that period became an unbelievable powerful institution; young people were not concerned if.hey were going to get married, but when.nd with whom. Young women were not supposed to doubt whether having babies is fine with them, but only how many.abies they were going to have. According to Harvey, the Americans were getting married earlier than ever and “the median marriage age dropped from 24.3 to 22.6 for men and from 21.5 to 20.4 for women” (Harvey, 2002 p. 69).
Most young couples had children as soon as they got married and Lambs states that women had “an average of 3.2 children before their late twenties” (Lambs, 2011, p. 9). The author of The 1950’s and 1960’s and the American Woman: the transition from the “housewife” to the feminist.akes it clear that in contrast to common beliefs, large percentage of the housewives were actually highly educated women, nevertheless the widespread social perception that “family and books don’t mix” was still extremely rooted in people (Lambs, 2011 p. 10). One can ask, what were the factors that were behind this frenzy rush into domesticity? It seems important to realize that after the war, which was the time of difficulties and deprivation, young people simply were attempting to rebuild a normalcy, have lives immersed in the new post-war prosperity. However, there was more than that which was in fact making the Americans early couples with bunch of children; “it was a general attempt to elevate family and domesticity into a national obsession, as Lambs claims” (2011 p. 10).
There is also the reasonable question ‘Why did the young Americans agreed to those marriages and parenthood with such enthusiasm and dedication?’ The fact is that scholars and observers of the postwar era often point out to the connections between the cold war politics, suburban development, race relations, and the domestic ideal. Accordingly, the context of the cold war refers to earlier unnoticed link between political and familial values. According to Elaine T. May “Political opportunists like Senator Joseph McCarthy preyed upon these anticommunist sentiments. McCarthyism targeted perceived internal dangers, not external threats. […] Anticommunist crusaders called on Americans to strengthen their moral fiber in order to preserve their freedom and their security. A society weakened by luxury and decadence would be vulnerable to subversion from within” (May, 2008 p. 12-13).
From that, there were only minute steps towards re-shaping the political containment into domestic containment in which there was only one type of ‘casualty’ – women, locked out in the new surrounding of comfortable suburbs.
Jane De Hart has explored the theme of domestic containment more fully in several essays that explore gender relations and national identity during the Cold War. She also is certain that in times of national crisis “formative configurations of gender, sexuality and nationhood” are “often reasserted, sometimes coercively, in constructions of national identity” (De Hart, 2001 p. 143). Domestic containment operated in the 1950s at a time when “fear of communism permeated American life” and policymakers believed that “stable family life [was] necessary for personal and national security as well as supremacy over the Soviet Union” (125).
Referring to 1950’s “dream come true”, which was by all standards living in the suburbs, G. Matthews says that: “Critics of suburbanization point to a number of problems they believe it created. For a housewife in the1950s, a suburb was frequently lonely and isolating in those years before women went out to work in large numbers” (2000, p. 304).
On the other hand, during her research for actual references regarding the lifestyle and feminine feelings in the 1950’s, B. Harvey describes some women’s reflections on finally getting a house for their families: “The house was surrounded by a lake of mud. But I was thrilled – it was a very exciting thing to have a house of your own. And everything you dreamed about was there, everything was working, brand-new, no cockroaches. You got a beautiful stainless steel sink with two drains, cabinets, drawers, a three-burner General Electric stove with oven, a Bendix washing machine. The only thing I had to buy for the house when we moved in was a fluorescent tube over the kitchen sink- the fixture was even there!” (Harvey, 2002 p. 113)
With that picture in mind – new house, new appliances, everything ‘cookie-cutter’ pretty, the life in the suburbs looked encouraging, if not tempting. It is obvious that people were relatively further from the city centers but all job opportunities were still available, families lived in comfortable houses, had nice, big gardens and the social life was blooming between all of those who moved there. As Lambs presents it: “Barbecues, associations, cocktail parties and different types of popular activities were a part of everyday life for these families” (Lambs, 2011 p. 5).
Furthermore, many people believed that their children would receive a better education in suburban schools (Matthews, 2000 p. 305).
In this society driven by the need to reproduce as much as one could – just to fight back the Communists, children were the obvious center of the suburban life, as well as the reason why so many families decided to leave big cities and transfer to these areas where the feeling of safety and community were dominant. Lambs quotes Carol Freeman’s recollection of suburban life in 1950s: “It was a warm, boring, completely child-centered little culture. We sat around in each other’s kitchens and backyards and drank a lot of coffee and smoked a million cigarettes and talked about our children” (Lambs, 2011, p. 6). In the early years, the suburbs were not connected with the cities by means of public transportation and still not many people owned cars. That actually made neighbors even closer, when they helped each other and shared cars to transport their children. Accordingly, women were forming tight groups which mutually helped and supported each other.
But isolation was there, ever-slightly looming, creeping to all those women left for hours in the suburbs, with their brand new TV sets booming scary information regarding the potential communistic threat. And, to add to this isolation, there was another aspect which bound the women of 1950s to become nearly schizophrenic – they were supposed to remain pure morally, stick to submissive role of wives eagerly awaiting their husbands arrival from work.
It is the fact that, the role of the women in the 1950 – a unique template of perfectness was created for the purpose of all society that all women had to identify with. Women needed to be ideal mothers, caring wives and smart homemakers. However, this perfection was deeply connected with social standards, due to the fact that raising of the new generation was extremely important at this time, therefore the women worked diligently to make it happen and to make it successfully.
Such model of the society, stemming from the striking division between the masculine and feminine roles was, as it was explained above, created by the government but it was cleverly propagated by the means of communication such as TV, magazines or radio programs. The verbalism of this model, nicknamed by B. Friedan as “feminine mystique”, was one of the main missions as far as the women’s magazines of the 1950’s are concerned. In her renowned work, B. Friedan writes:
The image of woman that emerges from this big, pretty magazine is young and frivolous, almost childlike; fluffy and female; passive; gaily content in a world of bedroom and kitchen, sex, babies and home. The magazine surely does not leave out sex; the only passion, the only pursuit, the only goal has woman is permitted is the pursuit of a man. It is crammed full of food, clothing, cosmetics, furniture, and the physical bodies of young women, but where is the world of thought and ideas, the life of the mind and spirit? In the magazine image, women do no work except housework and work to keep their bodies beautiful and to get and keep a man (Friedan, 1997 p. 82).
In order to support the opinion, that media had its huge role in solidifying the image of ‘domestic diva’, N. Walker explains the importance of feminine magazines in the construction of a national definition on women’s role in society and the standards of middle-class: “A survey of the magazines’ contents from 1940 until the late 1950’s shows both an expanding definition of the domestic – to include national holydays and psychological adjustment- and an increased emphasis on the possibility of improvement in all areas of life” (Walker, 2000 p. 31).
In 1950’s Home Economics.extbook intended for the high school girls, taught how to prepare for married life. In accordance with it, women had the sole purpose of creating the heavenly port for their husbands, where everything was working perfectly and was centered around breadwinner – husband.
And so – although contained in their suburban realms and living both the dream life of wife in modern house and a scared woman in the nuclear threat era, 1950’s housewives had another aspect to be aware of – the moral standards they had to keep up.
1.2. Repressive Hypothesis – Social Obsession with Purity vs. Echoes of Roaring Twenties Female Freedom
In The Bell Jar,.hose echoes of social trend and need for purity is well presented in Buddy's fall from grace which comes after his confession that he had slept with another woman. Realizing that he was not pure in reality, devastates her. Later in the novel, the probable cause of her obsession is hinted at: “All I’d heard about, really, was how fine and clean Buddy was and how he was the kind of person a girl should stay fine and clean for” (Plath, p.68). Here we can understand, that what caused her desire for her own purity, which seemed as almost obsession was not a religious standard, or not even the crashing influence of an authoritarian father or moral mother, but it was the general social ethos of 1950’s America.
As it was already widely discussed above, it was the social desire to form the unified front of purity, moral values and the image of family which would be strong enough to overpower lurking threat of Communism. However, the shape it took, the determination of those involved in the whole process, cannot solely be ascribed to fascist-like approach of Joseph McCarthy to sexuality and purity in general.
As this chapter’s main title suggest, not only the situation of women came to limbo because of the return of GI after the World War II. It was also shifted of its path by the reverse changes after the freedom experienced in numerous areas, which women had during the Roaring Twenties. That Victorian society in 1920’s was something that differed drastically from the situation in 1950’s. As Freedman explains: “By the 1920s, the Victorian ideal of innate female purity had disintegrated. Stimulated by Freudian ideas, a critique of “civilized morality” infiltrated American culture. Meanwhile, working-class youths, blacks, immigrants, and white bohemians had created visible urban alternatives to the old sexual order. They engaged in a sexually explicit nightlife, used birth control, and accepted sexuality outside marriage. Even for the middle classes, a recognition of female sexual desire and the legitimacy of its satisfaction – preferably in marriage but not necessarily for procreation – came to dominate sexual advice literature by the 1920s. As birth control, companionate marriage, and female sexual desire became more acceptable, female purity lost its symbolic power to regulate sexual behavior” (Freedman, 2006, p. 123).
I am pretty certain that those children, those women raised by the generation of parents shaped by the Roaring Twenties were involuntarily taught that women do have right to be rid of male dominance and decide about herself, at least to some extent. And with the Russian threat, connected with the shift in the perception of morality, that knowledge was distorted. On one hand there were freedoms offered by the achievements from 1920’s and on the other there were blaring TVs dictating to become modest, family-oriented female citizen in the fight against Communistic threat.
What is also interesting, that paradise of the dreams come true – the life in the suburbs was not for everyone. G. Matthews remarks that “Federal Housing Authority policies discriminated against single women and people of color as homeowners” (Matthews, 2000, p. 304).
That attitude was probably strongly based on the actual political situation, which dictated that Deviations from the norms of appropriate sexual and familial behavior might lead to social disorder and national vulnerability” (May, 2008 p. 13).
That is why, first of all, this challenge prompted Americans to create a family-centered culture that was more than the internal reverberation of foreign policy (28). Secondly, May points out to the fact that such pure and moral society needed to condemn any forms of improper, not only politically but also sexually tendencies. That is why: “the most severe censure was reserved not only for those suspected of ties to the Communist Party, but also for gay men and lesbians, who faced harsh repression and official homophobia. As anticommunist crusaders launched investigations to root out “perverts” in the government, homosexuality itself became a mark of potential subversive activity, grounds for dismissal from jobs, and justification for persecution” (May, 2008 p. 27-28). In fact, what came to be known as the ‘lavender scare’ – homophobic reaction, actually bigger number of people lost their jobs than those who were fired due to being suspected as communist sympathizers.
Accordingly, with the onset of frantic red and lavender scare, the family became the center of all of the unease, and conveniently, domestic ideology that was just being shaped provided an ideal response to that. In May’s words: “The legendary white middle-class family of the 1950s, located in the suburbs, complete with appliances, station wagons, backyard barbecues, and tricycles scattered on the sidewalks, represented something new” (2008 p. 13).
Sandra Lee Bartky provides an interesting perception of Foucault’s view on so-called ‘docile bodies’ (Foucault, 1979: 138), according to which people of their own free will commit the act of self-policing in order to obey the rules and sustain the required cultural norms and standards. She showed how women control their bodies and discipline themselves to match up to the “men’s ideas of correct female appearance” (Bartky, 2003 p. 36). The aspect of ‘self-policing’ will be further discussed in the following chapter, however, it was necessary to point out that in the 1950s women felt obliged not only to play the role of the perfect wife, mother, citizen, but it seems that they also forced themselves to ‘think no evil’ and remained pure both in deeds and in words. It can well be ascribed to so-called ‘repressive hypothesis’.
1.2.1. The Repressive Hypothesis or “Don’t talk about sex”
In reference to the repressive hypothesis power was used to ban discussion of sex and with that, the discourse on sexuality. Foucaults claims that: “Through the political economy of population there was formed a whole grid of observations regarding sex. There emerged the analysis of the modes of sexual conduct, their determinations and their effects, at the boundary line of the biological and the economic domains. There also appeared those systematic campaigns which, going beyond the traditional means-moral and religious exhortations, fiscal measures-tried to transform the sexual conduct of couples into a concerted economic and political behavior” (Foucaults, 1978 p. 27).
The institution of marriage become the only one with the complete power of what is and is not said about sexuality, that is why anything outside the confines of marriage was not supposed to be discussed. Foucault easily explained why repressive marriage could possess the sole rights to discuss the sexuality. The repressive hypothesis connects sexual repression with the emergence of the bourgeoisie. Opposite to the aristocracy which came before it, the bourgeoisie gained richness through their own hard work. And as such, this class would value ethic, and would not involve itself in anything that could be described as ‘frivolous pursuits’. This was the taboo that constituted the difference, or at least the manner in which the taboo was applied and the rigor with which it was imposed. It was here that the theory of repression – which was gradually expanded to cover the entire deployment of sexuality, so that the latter came to be explained in terms of a generalized taboo” (Foucaults, 1978 p. 128). Therefore, sex for mere pleasure became disapproved as an unproductive waste of energy (114).
Freedom of speech is one of the core aspect associated with America, that is why it comes as shocking that there was – not so long ago – the period when some discourses were frowned upon or even banned by those yielding the power. In Foucault’s opinion, knowledge and power to cut people from it are interlinked. With blooming red and lavender scare it seems that those in power felt obliged to control what and how would be available to be told about sex. And, as it was mentioned above – purity was highly important in the society of 1950s, there was no place for facetiousness and there was no point in laxing the morals through improper literature.
Adrienne Rich in her essay “Compulsory Heterosexuality”.oints out that “male empowerment in heterosexual relationships throughout social institutions has been violating women’s psychic and physical confines on the grounds of male needs, male fantasies about women, and male interests in controlling women- particularly in the realms of sexuality and motherhood- fused with the requirement of industrial capitalism” (Rich, 2003: 14).
On the other hand, it cannot be omitted that in 1948 and 1953, the United States was shocked to its very core by the publication of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male.nd Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. commonly known as the Kinsey Reports. Those two extensive sex surveys, researched by zoologist Alfred Kinsey and his team of researchers, visually presented the results of conducted interviews amongst American men and women. The provided information included for example, the age of first sexual intercourse, number of partners, occurrence of premarital or extramarital sex, possible homosexual and lesbian affairs plus numerous other sexual statistics. Kinsey Reports’ findings were shocking not only for experts but mostly, to the general public. As Reumann stresses: “Kinsey demonstrated that much of Americans’ sexual activity took place outside of marriage, and that the majority of the nation’s citizens had violated accepted moral standards as well as state and federal laws in their pursuit of sexual pleasure” (Reumann, 2005 p. 1).
What is more, W. Breines states that girls growing up in the 1950’s were the part of a immensely contradictory culture: “They balanced precariously on the edge between two cultures… this generation was inverting an emergent culture, one in which new meanings and values, new practices, new relationships and kinds of relationships were continually being created in contrast to a residual culture effectively formed in the past, but still active in the cultural process” (Breines, 1992 p. 88).
That is why, it is not difficult to understand that modern suburban home with all its amenities was not, in fact, enough to fulfill most women of this generation. Beneath the illusion of happiness, women wanted more – more power, more control over their lives and above everything – more autonomy. But it was all forbidden and what is even worse – it was stuffed between the warped morality of 1950s and social standard empowered by the government, where male dominance resurfaced as if it were reborn in the pure form of Victorian society. It inevitably caused the collateral damage – some women, similar to Esther from The Bell Jar.ere not able to follow the social trend and found themselves entrapped in their psyche.
1.3. Drastic Results of Household Containment and Repressive Hypothesis – Mental Illnesses and Suicidology of 1950s Housewives
The dissatisfaction that women started to feel at the end of the 1950’s became a national issue, summarized in the catch phrase “There is something missing”, deeply felt by a great many women. According to Lamb “Most certainly women were put under an immense pressure to return to their traditional role as mothers and housewives, completely dedicated to their children and dependent on their husbands. Some women felt the government was going too far when it started to promote the idea that women should be happy washing dishes, preparing meals, cleaning the house and be the “ideal” woman” (Lamb, 2011 p. 1).
In fact, the relationship of women, sexuality, and nationalism, postwar ideologies of American womanhood were far more complex than a focus solely on purity would suggest and as such had drastically deeper results on the feminine psyche. 1950s with its Cold War, propaganda of building fallout shelters in the backyards, constant ‘red’ threat and strained moral standards found its way under the mental surface of the Americans’ subconscious, where it remained as a chronic anxiety – especially, in women’s minds.
Maris and Berman, the co-authors of Comprehensive Textbook of Suicidology.rovide data which suggest that generally, “women are diagnosed with mental disorders more frequently than men are. Some significant gender differences in specific disorders are also evident. Depressive illness (actually several distinct disorders), the disorder most often associated with suicidality, is more common among adult women than among men […], presents twice as frequently with a secondary anxiety disorder among women […], and is three times as frequent in chemically dependent female adolescents (Maris, Berman, & Silverman, 2000, p. 155). These are data which were easily applicable to the American 1950s due to the fact that the authors enumerate depression and anxiety as most common reasons for suicides. They also stress that “female completed suicide rates peak in midlife (in the United States), particularly in the menopausal years. Whether this observation may be explained by the biological changes inherent in menopause, by life experience losses incurred during these years (e.g., the ‘empty nest’), or by (more likely) combinations of these or yet other factors cannot be said, as this phenomenon has received no serious research attention” (Maris, Berman, & Silverman, 2000, p. 156).
Ida Kodrlová remarks one very important factor, regarding the risk of suicide, which smoothly covers with the realm of suburban women in 1950s – “Stigma associated with help-seeking behavior; Barriers to accessing health care, especially mental health and substance abuse treatment” (Kodrlová, 2006 p. 5-6). It can be easily imagined, that the women destined to live in that era were not supposed to show any signs of weakness due to the super-imposed necessity to be strong and perfect in a society in constant threat of being potentially attacked by the Russians. Based on my previous findings, I would even venture the statement that if.nd when.ome woman would admit to feeling anxiety or over-bearing stress, she would be simply institutionalized, due to being socially unadapt and as such – too ‘soft’ to protect the image of America.
That is why the influential feminist writers of the time openly criticized the institution of psychiatry and they argued that it was one of the main ways in which society tried to repress and control women. Such attitude was caused by the fact that women who did not behave ‘properly’ risked being closed in the psychiatric care. Accordingly, feminist writers opposed the practice of psychoanalysis, the ever-present in 1950s approach in psychiatry. Another psychiatric therapy that drew feminist attention was the class of drugs called ‘minor tranquilizers’ (Tomes, 1994, pp. 348-349).
Guise-Richardson, the author of an extensive paper Protecting mental health in the Age of Anxiety: The context of Valium’s development, synthesis, and discovery in the United States, to 1963.ssumes that the widespread Valium use was a product of its time. The ways of understanding mental health, medicine, and the interaction of body and mind, all play into justifying widespread use of minor tranquilizers, such as Valium (Guise-Richardson, 2009 p. 213). The author also draws a tricky comparison between June Cleaver – mother from the popular 1950s and 1960s television show ‘Leave it to Beaver’. stuck forever in a perfect home, raising a perfect family, always perfectly calm with the abuse of Valium and its consequent ill-fame based not only on clinical trials but also infamous song by Rolling Stones ‘Mother’s Little Helper’ (Guise-Richardson, 2009 p. 2). Although the song appeared as late as 1966, it has a strong reference to the sense of feminism in 1950s.:
“Kids are different today,
I hear every mother say.
Mother needs something to calm her down,
and though she’s not really ill, there’s a little yellow pill.
She goes running for the shelter of a mother’s little helper,
and gets helps her on her way, gets her through her busy day” (Guise-Richardson, 2009 p. 2).
The identity crisis of the “housewife” in the late 1950’s is the best described by B. Friedan who bitterly confesses:
I’ve tried everything women are supposed to do – hobbies, gardening, pickling, canning, being very social with my neighbors, joining committees, running PTA teas. I can do it all, and I like it, but it doesn’t leave you anything to think about- any feeling of who you are. I never had any career ambitions. All I wanted was to get married and have four children. I love the kids and Bob and my house. There’s no problem you can even put a name to. But I’m desperate. I begin to feel I have no personality. I’m a server of food and a putter-on of pants and a bed maker, somebody who can be called on when you want something. But who am I? […]I seem to sleep so much. I don’t know why I should be so tired. This house isn’t nearly so hard to clean as the cold-water flat we had when I was working. The children are at school all day. It’s not the work. I just don’t feel alive (Friedan, 1997 pp. 64-65).
The symptoms described by the renowned author and feminist are typical of clinical depression. Such symptoms were probably prevalent in the lives of the suburban women in the 1950s when isolation and constant anxieties – not only regarding the political situation, but also those centered on sustaining the perfect standards of housewife, were at hand day by day in an unchanging scenery.
The consequences of this American dream “golden cage” were felt all over the country. An increasing number of frustrated and overpowered women were a threat to the image of perfection that this social ideology wanted to impose. Lamb explains that “The distinction between the image promoted by the time’s ideology and the feminine reality of the 1950’s was so sharp that women started to think that they themselves were the problem, that they were trapped into something that they couldn’t identify” (Lamb, 2011 p. 31). The author also points out that “On the growing number of women that were getting regular psychiatric help, the married ones were reported unhappy and unsatisfied, the unmarried ones were suffering from anxiety and depression. Strangely, a number of psychiatrists admitted that unmarried women were happier then married ones” (32).
The impact of the suburban isolation on women’s lives was broadly analyzed and described by the feminist researchers and their findings were unanimous – all those ostensibly perfect and happy housewives were trying to find the outlet for their growing frustrations. Some of them were able to fulfill themselves in creative hobbies but the remaining group was comprised of the women who simply found the escape route in increasing abuse of tranquilizers, such as Dexedrine, and later Dexamil (Harvey, 2002 p. 125).
That is why, in the late 1950’s, psychiatrists and analysts described so-called ‘housewife’s syndrome’ which had serious pathological syndromes such as: “fatigue, nervousness, sleeping troubles, heart attacks, suicides, bleeding ulcers, hypertension and other serious diseases” (Lamb, 2011 p. 44). Friedan simply states that at one point “women have outgrown the housewife role, they couldn’t go back into their limited and isolated world” (Friedan, 1997 p. 425).
1.3.1. Treatment or Torment – American Attitude towards Depression and Mental Illness in 1950s
From the perspective of our time, the clinical care provided to women in 1950s would most probably be considered as highly inefficient, but from the perspective of the first half of the last century and the 1950s, it might have been perceived as perfectly appropriate (Kodrlová, 2006 pp. 1-2). Although modern psychopharmacology was not highly-developed and therefore the drugs to dampen the depression were not sophisticated enough but the new methods in psychotherapy were being developed. Therefore, when we look at The Journals. we can see that Plath had relatively good access to psychotherapy. After her first suicide attempt in 1953 she met her therapist Dr. Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse Beuscher, with whom, as Paul Alexander wrote, she stayed in seemingly constant contact from September 1953 until February 1963 either by mail or by telephone (Alexander, 1999 p. 100).
Hirshbein presents rather striking image in her article titled Science, Gender, and the Emergence of Depression in American Psychiatry, 1952–1980.hen she states that “in the early 1950s in the United States and in Europe, physicians began to work in collaboration with pharmaceutical companies to test a wide range of medications on a variety of patients. […] pharmaceutical companies also worked with physicians who were employed in mental hospitals to test their products there. […] the hospital environment for psychiatric patients at mid-century could be chaotic, with disordered persons and overcrowded conditions. In this setting, psychiatrists who used the new medications measured success by whether the patients appeared to be improved, particularly in measures such as the lessened need for ECT or whether the patients could be advanced toward discharge” (Hirshbein, 2006 p. 194). What is more, “by the 1950s and 1960s the hospital population had shifted toward younger, more neurotic women” (196).
As it was mentioned, the psychiatry was slowly developing into its appropriate form at the time so sadly, social science researchers began leaning towards the idea that there might be something connected with women’s social environments that would explain their obviously higher tendency to become depressed only by the end of 1960s (Gove, 1972 p. 38). Although there were still psychiatric researchers focusing on former assumptions regarding the women’s role and their nature in society when they described women’s depression, luckily, there were from time to time those, who were far more compassionate towards women and recognized the importance of treating women for depression (Abernethy, 1976 p. 657).
In the early 1950s, psychiatrists tended merely to diagnose or rather describe the depression which women experienced as ‘endogenous’ – depression type that seemed to come out of nowhere, and ‘exogenous’ or ‘reactive’ which could have been developed due to a life stress (Hirshbein, 2006 p. 204).
What is even worse, in the first half of the twentieth century there were only two possibilities for patients fighting with mental illness – the asylum or psychoanalysis. In 1955 the future of psychiatric treatment drastically changed when scientists discovered that psychiatric drugs could change brain chemistry. The revolution in treatment that this discovery and the development of drugs and other advancements such as electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) sparked was only an emerging discourse in the late fifties
Interestingly, in reference to the above mentioned aspect of abuse of tranquilizers, A. Tone, the author of The age of anxiety: a history of America’s turbulent affair with tranquilizers.2009) stresses that:
In 1950s American culture, anxiety was viewed less as a serious psychiatric disorder than as a badge of achievement: an emblem of struggle, but also of success. […]This can-do mentality also underlay the belief that Americans not only could accomplish anything but were entitled to do so with minimum discomfort and inconvenience. In this cultural tableau, tranquilizers were welcomed as a means of personal fulfillment with the same fervor as credit cards, electric refrigerators, television dinners, and cosmetics (xvi-xvii).
It becomes obvious, that in such world suburban housewife addicted to prescription tranquilizers was nothing serious and as such was not supposed to obtain clinical help. There was nothing wrong with mothers reaching out to family doctors for such medicines. What comes as maybe not a shock, but rather curious astonishment is that the American society went so far in their blindness to reality, that in 1956, Tiffany jewelers reported amazing increase in sale of “ruby and diamond-studded pill coffers for those who wished to glorify their new-found happiness” (59).
When eventually, anxiety became recognized as a legitimate mental illness, tranquilizers finally stopped being treated as the harmless ‘peace pills’ (xix).
At the time when Plath struggled with her depression, on the verge of writing The Bell Jar.he dominant psychiatric perception of the depressed was that “they were crazy, so thoroughly one with their disease that they were doomed to spend their lives in asylums” (Shorter, 1997 p. 238).
In 1950’s psychoanalysis was understood as “a therapy suitable for the needs of wealthy people desiring self-insight, but not for really psychiatric illnesses” (190). With the rather high cost of psychoanalysis and the general understanding that those suffering from any firm of mental illness were harmful to society, the only available and physical treatment was institutionalized care. That is why, so many women from former suburban paradises, especially those of lower economic standing, ended up in the state asylums. With such attitude and asylums slowly, but inevitably overcrowding, the doctors stopped focusing on treatment and concentrated on institutionalization.
To fully understand the Americans attitude towards those who could not find their place mentally in their lives, for example the Los Angeles Times.n 1953 published an article titled “Don’t Let Mental Illness Scare You”. inclining that Americans were afraid of ‘the insane’ – and the insane being individuals who “lost their sanity and ability to think and act rationally, and therefore has lost precisely those faculties that defined him or her as human” (Selwyn, 1953 p. 17).
The taint that was caused by the mental illness was so great that it could destroy the entire image of given family, so accordingly, the need to keep up appearances and making the disease seem like an invention of the ill member were common. Also the attitude that the depressed wife or mother could actually (or rather should) ‘snap out of it’ or ‘toughen up’ (Warner 2009, p. 23).
With such social attitude and so restricted medical help, the women of 1950’s were doomed to loneliness and overwhelming sense of even-deeper isolation and alienation. Luckily, with the female social unhappiness and the desire to become more active in the deciding sphere of their lives, the feminist movement began strengthening and with that the researches and discourses devoted to feminine needs.
In such period – of both the political and household containment, threat and anxiety for not only the ‘Reds’ but also the immoral ‘lavenders’ and in a constant battle for her own identity was raised and shaped culturally Sylvia Plath. For her, the world surrounding her was merely the everyday reality, however, from my point of view, all of those factors supposedly influenced her and her writing which I aim to prove in the following chapter.
Chapter Two: Sylvia Plath – the Portrait of Life under a Cracking Jar
Although Sylvia Plath lived a very short life, leaving her most forceful impressions for posthumous interpretation, she nevertheless became an icon for the representation of female selfhood in poetry. Her work was barely available in print at the time of her suicide, with only one collection, The Colossus and Other Poems.1960) published. Her great prose work, the novel The Bell Jar.1963) was published under a pseudonym, but its readership increased when it was republished posthumously (Shuman, 2002, p. 1213)
The aim of this paper is to focus on Plath as an author and voice behind the bitter-sweet tone of The Bell Jar. For that reason, the structure of this second chapter requires to recall and empower those facts which were introduced in Chapter One – those referring to the overwhelming state of the society’s collective mind in 1950s. As such, the chapter will not revel in the novel The Bell Jar.s of yet, leaving it for Chapter Three.
In this chapter I intend to show, how the everyday existence in the American 1950s might have an impact on Plath’s psyche, as well as her literary output. With the politics of containment, translated into domestic containment, mixed with the fats-paced style of life which was at one point thrown at Plath, it comes hardly as a surprise that the woman of her fragility remained sane and sound for such a long time. Her own Journals.eveal in very early years that she was feeling the nation-dictated loneliness and claustrophobia of her own thoughts: “Tonight, for a moment, all was at peace inside. I came out of the house – across the street a little before twelve, sick with unfulfilled longing, alone, self – reviling (Plath, Kukil 1999 p. 18).
To support my thesis, I researched Nelson, who outlines in Pursuing Privacy in Cold War American.hat were the ways of trapping women’s privacy in particular. The general understanding of the term ‘privacy’ indicates self-sufficiency, however, under the terror of Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare and the domestic values of the fifties, it started to actually symbolize ‘isolation, loneliness, domination and routine’. Accordingly, that was a leading theme for many confessional writers, linking Sylvia Plath as a confessional writer to the Foucauldian hypothesis, briefly mentioned in previous chapter, and claiming that “confession does not lead to freedom, as the private is already penetrated by power” (Nelson, 2002: xiii).
Kottler, who devoted his book Divine Madness – Ten Stories of Creative Struggle.o analysis of the phenomenon of the famous people suffering from various forms of mental illnesses, when describing Plath, states that she discovered relatively early in her life – during college years, that her own creative expression “helped her cope with depressions that were becoming both more frequent and more intense” (Kottler, 2006 p. 14). He also explains that it was her mentor and scholarship sponsor, Olive Higgins Prouty, who actually suggested that she should focus on writing about her own experiences as much as possible and as her literary output shows, “This became the signature theme of her writing career” (14).
In such form of expression, we can trace the above mentioned confessional writing. For Plath, it was freeing experience – to create, however, commonly “shame – in large part due to the religious origin of the form – has been a central aspect of the conventional confession”, as Cooke, the author of Confessional Politics: Women's Sexual Self- Representations in Life Writing and Popular Media.1999) estimates (67). Lerner goes even further when he argues that “Confession is something that causes shame. Real confession will cause shame because we have done wrong, confessional poetry deals with experience that is deeply painful to bring into public, not because it is disgusting, nor because it is sinful, but because it is intensively private” (Lerner, 1987 p. 64).
For Bawer, nevertheless, Plath’s writing had nothing to do with privacy and rather opposing – with the almost perverse need to expose herself. In his opinion, her writing became a way of asserting herself, or even getting upper hand over her deficient sense of identity (Bawer, 1991 p. 20). He quotes Stevenson, who notes: “Haunted by a fear of her own disintegration, Plath kept herself together by defining herself, writing constantly about herself, so that everyone could see her there, fighting and conquering an outside world that forever threatened her frail being” (1998 p. 23). Therefore it is not strange, that Edward Butscher observed in his biography Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness. “getting published was not merely important [for Sylvia], it was everything: for her, seeing one’s name in print was the ultimate proof not merely of acceptance but of existence” (2003 p. 91).
The following chapter will present Plath from various perspective – at first as the citizen of the America under the threat of the ‘Red Scare’, secondly, as a woman who was born and who grew up in 1950s just to be dropped psychologically into moral turmoil of the 1960s and finally – as the obsessively in-love woman who was scorned and abandoned by her husband. All those images, intend to pave the way for the comparative analysis of Plath’s life and her novel The Bell Jar in the next chapter..
2.1. Under the Atomic Dome – Plath’s writing in view of the 1950s politics
As an introduction to this chapter, it is worth recalling Evans, one of the co-authors of Feminism and Autobiography: Texts, Theories, Methods.ho argues that: “As is widely known, Sylvia Plath’s own history involved a complex rejection of the USA. She condemned the dirt and the decay of Great Britain in the 1950s and was appalled, as generations of visitors from the USA have been, by the absence of domestic comfort and ease. Plath’s flight from the USA (and her refusal at the end of her life to return there) was obviously related to […] explicit politics, but that flight – fuelled as it probably was by personal circumstance – was also articulated through a critique of the cultural and political values of the USA” (Evans, 2000, p. 77).
Luke Ferreter lies a solid background, regarding the available biographical sources, which already aimed at showing Plath’s works connection or complete lack of interest with the politics. He even states with some awe that “It is surprising for how long critics have been arguing, against a tendency to interpret Plath’s work in personal or psychological terms, that Plath was a politically engaged thinker and writer” (Ferretter, 2010 p. 90).
For example, Tracy Brain argued, that ‘the conventional personal readings to which [Plath’s writing] is customarily subjected’, is in fact completely wrong due to the fact that Plath’s work is “deeply, politically engaged with [the] world” (Brain, 2001 pp. 36-37).
Furthermore, an influential critic Sandra Gilbert claimed that Plath “did not have an explicitly political imagination” (Gilbert and Gubar, 1994 p. 297), but the more recent studies were successful in proving that Plath was constantly thinking and writing about the political discourses and events with which she was surrounded, from the time she went to Smith College to the end of her life (Ferretter, 2010 p. 90).
Al Strangeways, as one of the more balanced voices amongst the critics, has raised the opinion that “Plath’s work articulates a complex intellectual, emotional and aesthetic investment in contemporary history and politics” (Strangeways, 1998 pp. 77-131).
Finally, the author whose work greatly influenced my perception of Plath’s attitude towards surrounding her reality – Robin Peel has demonstrated how systematically Plath’s thoughts and works are soaked by the political aspects, from philosophy books and lectures to magazines and radio programs (Peel, 2002 p. 16).
It is not surprising, that the events which were playing out on the screens of television had also an impact on Plath. She was not immune to the political threats and for example, when studying at Smith College in Massachusetts,.n 1953, she wrote to her brother Warren that she just hoped, the world was not destroyed by war before both of them were able to enjoy the fruits of their labors (Wilson, 2013 p. 1)..
Furthermore, Ferretter argues that “Plath’s politics developed in a complex ideological world, in which militant anti – Communism was politically dominant, but in which many dissenting voices, although more faint than the clamour of this discourse, were also to be heard” (Ferretter, 2010, p. 91).
It is the biographical fact that Plath grew up with a very strong belief in both the rights and the responsibilities of the individual. Her father, for example, strongly believed in pacifism. Her mother broke with the Church when she was a college student because of its ‘repressive and controlling ideology’ and she brought up her children to believe, as she and her husband had done, in ‘directing one’s life toward an idealistic goal in order to build a strong inner life’. She also shared with them the pacifism in which she and her husband believed Wagner-Martin, (1987 p. 19).
Accordingly, living the life of contemporary American, at the age of only seventeen, Plath was able to capture with unique skill the sense of sinister shadow the lives of ordinary Americans felt, as the Korean War was about to begin. Plath’s letters with Chicago student Eddie Cohen are full of references to her constant state of fear concerning the war and the atomic bomb. She could never entirely suppress this fear in the superficial diversions of college life, she wrote, so deeply disturbed was she by the possibility of atomic war (Ferretter, 2010, p. 93).
The life of fear and experiencing the beauty of the surrounding world during August 1950 in complex emotionally literary outburst. ‘.itter Strawberries’, is a poem she originally wanted to title ‘.words into Plowshares’ where a ‘little girl with blond braids’ hearing the discussion of bombing the Russians into nothingness, pleads, ‘Don’t’, and her ‘blue eyes’ swim with ‘vague terror’ (Plath, 1981 pp. 299–300).
Much later poem, “The Arrival of the Bee Box”, raises the issue, which was discussed in the first chapter – that, of the power and control, so very much prevailing subject of everyday life in Cold War America. It can be analyzed, as it was many times – as the reference to Plath talks about death as not an end but as a chance to be reborn (Kamel in Bloom, 2001 p. 31).
That control can be with ease translated into Plath’s feeling of entrapment – both mentally, but for the purpose of this chapter – more socially, as it had its place with the contemporary women. What adds to this Cold War’s period strength of voice, is the image of paper to describe the self of the poet which, as Annas claims “is used consistently in the post-Colossus poems” (Annas, 1988, p. 111). The author recalls for example poem Crossing the Water. in which “two black cut-paper people” seem to be less substantial and less real than the solidity and powerfulness of the nature surrounding them. She also mentions the play Three Women. where the Secretary says of the men in her office: “There was something about them like cardboard, and now I had caught it” (111). She sees her own infertility as directly related to her complicity in a bureaucratic, impersonal, patriarchal society. Annas states that “Paper is symbolic of the socioeconomic reality with its characteristic bureaucratic paper-shuffling labor. It stands for insubstantiality; the paper model of something is clearly less real than the thing itself, though in ‘developed’ economies it seems to be the office machines, and objects which have vitality, purpose, and emotion, while the people are literally colorless, objectified, and atrophied” (112).
2.2. The Soul’s Containment – Plath’s female perspective
Plath’s critics and biographers are unanimous in one thing, that there was no time in Plath’s life, from the time she was a teenager, during which she was not writing fiction. Therefore, it is only obvious to conclude, that such a learned, intelligent young woman, would not refer to the situation of her own gender in her literary output.
When looking from the female perspective, and in the context of the first chapter aspects, Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, as Evans points out.is such an important, indeed undervalued text, precisely because it is through this text that Sylvia Plath explores the limits of women's autonomy and the secure first-person singular” (Evans, 2000 p. 79) .
Indeed, Plath’s writing cannot be dissected and divided into separate, easily-recognizable parts, as it was suggested above. There is always an undertone of peculiar duality and therefore, when referring to that problem,Pamela J. Annas, the author of A Disturbance in Mirrors: The Poetry of Sylvia Plath.tresses that: “This dual consciousness of self, the perception of self as both subject and object, is characteristic of the literature of marginalized or oppressed classes” (Annas, 1988, p. 109). The author continues pointing out to the fact that “Sylvia Plath has this dialectical awareness of self as both subject and object in particular relation to the society in which she lived. The problem for her, and this is perhaps the problem of Cold War America, is in the second aspect of a dialectical consciousness: an awareness of oneself in significant relation to past and future” (109).
Such duality can be observed in numerous places throughout the Journal.here she either proclaims her awareness about the society’s carnal trifles, like for example, when she writes about a friend’s job: “[…] her job with John Crosby on the Herald Tribune sounds ‘thrilling’ and dangerous - I should think he’d want to have an affair with her, but except for idle curiosity to hear about how these queer people live - lesbians & homosexuals – I couldn’t care less” (Plath, Kukil 1999 p. 277).
What is more, Ferretter directs our attention on the fact that “the majority of Plath’s stories are based on experiences and events in her own life. Fiction is, for Plath, above all a medium in which women’s lives can be portrayed” (Ferretter 2010, p. 152).
It is fairly common to point more feminist tendencies in Plath’s writings, and Peel supports that opinion, stating that the authentic female voice takes shape of the layers and she sheds these layers “in her Ariel.eriod are the layers that have been imposed by the patriarchy” (Peel, 2002 p. 17).
The domesticity and having a family did not make Plath fulfilled, as it did not – just like I described in Chapter One, the other women in 1950. The feelings of being trapped or even imprisoned may not only be translated as referring to the house but, asSusan R. Van Dyne claims “in the female body, which is itself the maternal legacy. The problematics of femininity is thus reduced to the problematics of the female body” (Van Dyne, 1993 p. 81).
Plath’s being a mother combined with her own and international tension, were the possible forces behind re-evaluation of the importance of history, politics and institutions. Especially, the comments regarding the Cold War and nuclear warfare, which she read and heard, contributed, in Peels opinion “to the specific language of the Ariel.equence in ways about which we cannot be categorical, but which should be admitted” (Peel, 2002, p. 18). Based on her own accounts in the Journal. it is clear that Plath read widely and during her time in England the discourse of the Cold War pervaded serious journalism, television and radio, protest folk songs, and satire, so there is no possible way, that she would not contribute – as a woman – to the voices referring to female opinion on politics.
What is more, at the time a strong group of women, who were social and cultural critics was active during all the decade, to mention but one – Betty Friedan. The words they enclosed in the books they published were making Americans aware of the importance and admiration given to women in other societies (Lambs, 2011 p. 14). These women were successful in showing that, according to Kaledin, “an important value […] was their acceptance of femininity as a positive force in the world” (Kaledin 1984, p. 22) and that women’s role as mothers and housewives was not only negative and depressing. Shirley Jackson showed the hard reality of mothers but at the same time the marvels of motherhood and stressed that even Sylvia Plath left aside her bitter writing to talk about her love for her son Nick (Lamb, 2011 p. 14).
Her Journals.ive the testimony to this contained world of satisfying motherhood even better, where we can read “How odd, men don’t interest me at all now, only women and women talk. […] Must read some Sociology, Spock on babies. All questions answered” (Plath, Kukil 1999 p. 349).
Nevertheless, Ferretter is certain that: “Several of Plath’s women characters have a violent complex of suppressed emotions just beneath the surface of their outward femininity, which she portrays as a direct effect of their experiences in patriarchal society” (Ferretter, 2010, p. 169). That Plath struggled in her married life with the dominant husband and his oppressive personality is not a secret and therefore, it is not surprising that being the author who willingly wrote semi-biographical literature, her characters were portrayed as having such complex. It is even less surprising in light of Kottler’s opinion, that says: “Sylvia Plath was a complicated person, living during a transitional time for women. As much as she wanted a career, she also wanted to find love with the right man. She had been told all her life that it was OK to have poetry as a hobby, but her real purpose was to settle down, raise a family, and make a good home for her husband” (Kottler, 2006 p. 19).
It is at this point, necessary to see what were the aspects of Plath’s personal life that made her give up the life and abandon her small children, similarly to so many women in the American reality of 1950s and 1960s.
2.3. The year The Bell Jar. racked
Having analyzed the political factors behind Plath’s literary output, it is natural to shift towards matters closer to the author and her personal, domestic life, in order to see the cascade-like events that led to both – the writing of The Bell Jar.nd Plath’s tragic end. Curiously, Evans points out that “The instability of the self in the twentieth century is presented in The Bell Jar.s an inevitable.onsequence of the increasing choice of ‘person’ which is open to women in the latter part of the twentieth century” (Evans, 2000, p. 79).
As it was mentioned above, Plath always felt she had to get marry, and the only aspect she might dwell upon was to whom. Her biographers frequently recall the fact that her firs lover raped her – some seeing it as a defining moment which broke her mentally (Wilson, 2012 pp. 3-4) and some, such as Kottler, as predisposition towards ‘manly’ men, just like her husband. In Kottler’s opinion: “If her first lover raped and abused her, then perhaps it is not surprising that she picked a future husband who, although a brilliant poet on the verge of recognition, was also a noted philanderer. Hughes was tall, dark, handsome, and charismatic. He also seemed to exude a kind of dangerous violence and unpredictability that Plath found both alluring and a little frightening. It was an inauspicious start to their relationship that Hughes roughed up Plath during their first lovemaking leaving her bruised and battered as she later described in her journal” (Kottler, 2006 p. 19).
The Journals.ake it plain and obvious that Hughes was extremely important to her – not only as her dangerous lover, with whom she frequently had “Good love-making today, morning & afternoon, all hot and hard and lovely” (Plath, Kukil, 1999 p. 277), but also the critic of her writing: “I sometimes feel a paralysis come over me: his opinion is so important to me” (349).
[...]
- Quote paper
- Marta Zapała-Kraj (Author), 2021, Sylvia Plath. The Portrait of Life under a Cracking Bell Jar, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/1140363
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