Sylvia Plath
The “father figure” in Sylvia Plath’s poetry
“Daddy”
This brings out a strong obsession of a daughter towards her father, with a deep-rooted sexual instinct as an undercurrent. It is not easy to overlook this aspect of Sylvia Plath's poetry, though many critics have blown this out of proportion. Pomes like 'Daddy', 'Cut' and 'Fever' can be analyzed from the sensitive angle of 'love-hate' relationship from a sensitive feminine poet. But when it comes to reading of 'The Colossus', 'Lady Lazarus' and the series of bee poems, the confessional streak becomes brighter which emphasize the relationship of the poet with her father, without any overtones.
The poem 'Daddy' is an important one. John Rosenblatt thinks: “by no means it is her best poem.”42 The poem has Sylvia Plath's most extended treatment of the father symbol. The rapid, often wild succession of elements relating to the father is not entirely integrated into the poem. It opens with a reference to father's black shoe, in which the daughter 'lived like a foot', suggesting her submissiveness and entrapment the poem then moves on to an idealized image of the father.
Plath herself describes said: “The poem is spoken by a girl with an Electra Complex. Her father died when she thought he was God. Her case is complicated by the fact that her father was also a Nazi and her mother very possibly part Jewish. In the daughter, the two strains marry and paralyze each other. She has to act out the awful little allegory once before she is free of it.”
The poem starts on the note of a nursery rhyme, recalling the tale of the old lady in the shoe. On a deeper level, she talks about the political implications. Sylvia Plath wants to justify her love towards, her father who was a 'brute' and universalizes feminine psychology when she confesses:
At twenty, I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.
But suddenly the killer instinct comes up, while she expresses in the beginning
“Daddy”
This brings out a strong obsession of a daughter towards her father, with a deep-rooted sexual instinct as an undercurrent. It is not easy to overlook this aspect of Sylvia Plath's poetry, though many critics have blown this out of proportion. Pomes like 'Daddy', 'Cut' and 'Fever' can be analyzed from the sensitive angle of 'love-hate' relationship from a sensitive feminine poet. But when it comes to reading of 'The Colossus', 'Lady Lazarus' and the series of bee poems, the confessional streak becomes brighter which emphasize the relationship of the poet with her father, without any overtones.
The poem 'Daddy' is an important one. John Rosenblatt thinks: “by no means it is her best poem.”42 The poem has Sylvia Plath's most extended treatment of the father symbol. The rapid, often wild succession of elements relating to the father is not entirely integrated into the poem. It opens with a reference to father's black shoe, in which the daughter 'lived like a foot', suggesting her submissiveness and entrapment the poem then moves on to an idealized image of the father.
Plath herself describes said: “The poem is spoken by a girl with an Electra Complex. Her father died when she thought he was God. Her case is complicated by the fact that her father was also a Nazi and her mother very possibly part Jewish. In the daughter, the two strains marry and paralyze each other. She has to act out the awful little allegory once before she is free of it.”
The poem starts on the note of a nursery rhyme, recalling the tale of the old lady in the shoe. On a deeper level, she talks about the political implications. Sylvia Plath wants to justify her love towards, her father who was a 'brute' and universalizes feminine psychology when she confesses:
At twenty, I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.
But suddenly the killer instinct comes up, while she expresses in the beginning