SYLVIA PLATH: Contexts and Criticism
Contexts
- Confessional poetry – made private suffering its subject, negotiating
the putatively taboo topics of mental illness, institutionalization,
domestic violence, sexuality, etc.
o Self-exposure and an illumination of the individual
o In contrast to T.S. Eliot’s principle of the impersonality of poetry
- Institutionalization
o Plath was herself institutionalized on many occasions on
account of her mental health – she was treated with
electroshock therapy, but this was administered improperly and
painfully
Uroff – ‘Plath makes the self centre of her poems’
Lindberg – ‘psychic landscapes’/’landscapes serve as mirrors for the self'
Britzolakis – Plath’s poems ‘yoke together historical and psychic events in
highly unstable metaphorical conjunctions’
Dickie – ‘Plath’s poems toy with their musical qualities’
Brain – Plath’s treatment of nature goes beyond mere Romantic adulation
to deal soberly with the vulnerability of the body’
Gashemi – ‘Plath’s use of reflective objects and images exhibits her
persona’s search for self-recognition’
J.C. Oates – Plath is a ‘passive witness to a turbulent natural world’
Bloom – ‘in her poetry, external settings are often internalized’
Deborah Nelson – Plath sees the domestic set as a scene of theatricality
Lowell – reading Plath’s late work is like ‘playing Russian roulette with six
cartridges in the cylinder’
The Stones
- Title
o Cold and insignificant although also unchanging and unwavering
o Totemically recognizable – universal, natural, historical material
o The basis of creation and part of a larger foundation
, o Commits a heaviness to the experience of institutionalization
o Associations with the graveyard, weighted memorializing of
death
- Overview
o The speaker’s tone is rigorously curt: there are barely any
complex clauses and sentences and instead we hear a tone of
strict observational precision rather than emotional extremity
o By employing the recurrent image of the city, the speaker
exposes the transactional care administered at the hospital as
well as the larger social treatment of individuals in distress
o The speaker’s sense of self is the sum of its part throughout the
poem – she exists as a shadowy half-presence and we see that
the ‘mendings’ that have been applied to her have not restored
the substantial sense of personal identity
o Use of half-rhyme in the poem (e.g. ‘others’, ‘nurse’, and ‘curse)
suggests an unfinished process, or lack of satisfaction lingering
at the possibility of connection with the wider world that is not
fully resolved
o Constriction of the poetic form and the regularity that the
speaker has to conform to – monotonous and impersonal
repetition
o There is an apathy or disingenuous quality to the healing that
the speaker has undergone – conformity and expectation, as
well as the cliché images of rebirth, rather than genuine
resolution
- Key images and language
o ‘this is the city where men are mended’
Large and impersonal setting
Indifferent and alienating environment for the speaker
A sense of misdirection and a riddling quality to the
‘city’
Complex metaphor arguably makes the powerlessness
of the speaker feel even more frustrated – the mind is
able to transform the inhospitable hospital setting yet
cannot escape
Commercial and transactional process of treatment
Purification and health corrupted by the disease and
grime associated with the city
‘men’ may alienate the female speaker
o ‘the stomach of indifference, the wordless cupboard’
a sense of being digested and objectification
contrasts with the personalised care expected of
hospitals
ideas of corrosion and being broken down
powerlessness and passivity of the speaker is
emphasized
Contexts
- Confessional poetry – made private suffering its subject, negotiating
the putatively taboo topics of mental illness, institutionalization,
domestic violence, sexuality, etc.
o Self-exposure and an illumination of the individual
o In contrast to T.S. Eliot’s principle of the impersonality of poetry
- Institutionalization
o Plath was herself institutionalized on many occasions on
account of her mental health – she was treated with
electroshock therapy, but this was administered improperly and
painfully
Uroff – ‘Plath makes the self centre of her poems’
Lindberg – ‘psychic landscapes’/’landscapes serve as mirrors for the self'
Britzolakis – Plath’s poems ‘yoke together historical and psychic events in
highly unstable metaphorical conjunctions’
Dickie – ‘Plath’s poems toy with their musical qualities’
Brain – Plath’s treatment of nature goes beyond mere Romantic adulation
to deal soberly with the vulnerability of the body’
Gashemi – ‘Plath’s use of reflective objects and images exhibits her
persona’s search for self-recognition’
J.C. Oates – Plath is a ‘passive witness to a turbulent natural world’
Bloom – ‘in her poetry, external settings are often internalized’
Deborah Nelson – Plath sees the domestic set as a scene of theatricality
Lowell – reading Plath’s late work is like ‘playing Russian roulette with six
cartridges in the cylinder’
The Stones
- Title
o Cold and insignificant although also unchanging and unwavering
o Totemically recognizable – universal, natural, historical material
o The basis of creation and part of a larger foundation
, o Commits a heaviness to the experience of institutionalization
o Associations with the graveyard, weighted memorializing of
death
- Overview
o The speaker’s tone is rigorously curt: there are barely any
complex clauses and sentences and instead we hear a tone of
strict observational precision rather than emotional extremity
o By employing the recurrent image of the city, the speaker
exposes the transactional care administered at the hospital as
well as the larger social treatment of individuals in distress
o The speaker’s sense of self is the sum of its part throughout the
poem – she exists as a shadowy half-presence and we see that
the ‘mendings’ that have been applied to her have not restored
the substantial sense of personal identity
o Use of half-rhyme in the poem (e.g. ‘others’, ‘nurse’, and ‘curse)
suggests an unfinished process, or lack of satisfaction lingering
at the possibility of connection with the wider world that is not
fully resolved
o Constriction of the poetic form and the regularity that the
speaker has to conform to – monotonous and impersonal
repetition
o There is an apathy or disingenuous quality to the healing that
the speaker has undergone – conformity and expectation, as
well as the cliché images of rebirth, rather than genuine
resolution
- Key images and language
o ‘this is the city where men are mended’
Large and impersonal setting
Indifferent and alienating environment for the speaker
A sense of misdirection and a riddling quality to the
‘city’
Complex metaphor arguably makes the powerlessness
of the speaker feel even more frustrated – the mind is
able to transform the inhospitable hospital setting yet
cannot escape
Commercial and transactional process of treatment
Purification and health corrupted by the disease and
grime associated with the city
‘men’ may alienate the female speaker
o ‘the stomach of indifference, the wordless cupboard’
a sense of being digested and objectification
contrasts with the personalised care expected of
hospitals
ideas of corrosion and being broken down
powerlessness and passivity of the speaker is
emphasized
