Confessuicidal
poets? What a gloomy title that I chose! But yes, in my opinion, these two
poets really trapped my attention with their popularity as confessional poets
yet decided to end their precious life by committing suicide. Considering in
detail and subjecting to an analysis in the poetry entitled “Housewife” and
“Daddy”, I would like to discover the essential features or meaning on their peculiar
works in relation with their life story.
Anne
Sexton and Sylvia Plath are very famous and regarded with great favor,
approval, or affection especially by the general public for their controversial
poetical life and poems. Both of them suffered the same condition of despair
and mental breakdowns that somehow became their aspiration in writing their
pieces. Most of their poems recounted their life experience, their personal
life, their family life, their fight against depressive disorder, and their
foremost notorious theme: death and inclination of committing suicide.
In
my opinion, these two poets had [almost] the same family background that eventually
formed them and instilled them with such kind of trauma that later on would affect
their way of thinking and cause terrible mental breakdown in the rest of their
life.
Living
in a dysfunctional family, Sexton and Plath ended up with awful memories of
their family. Sexton was abandoned by her parents and Plath was being raised by
an authoritarian father who died when she was eight years old. Thus, I could
conclude why they’re so drown into such kind of bitterness they underwent at
their young age. Along these lines, they appeared to endeavor an attempt to
survive from their depression. As a result, themes on suicidal attempts, depression,
death, family life, and desperation are considered as their object of escapism.
The
two poets were also best known for their death controversy. They said to have
several suicide attempt that later on ended up with the same scheme of death in
the depths of despair. Sylvia Plath died at age 30 on February 1963 by carbon
monoxide poisoning in the kitchen, with her head in the oven, while Anne Sexton
died at the age 45 on October 1974 also by carbon monoxide poisoning in the
garage. She might have inspired by her fellow student in Robert Lowell’s
writing seminar at Boston University; Sylvia
Plath. This was a surprising and lamenting fact that the poets revealed.
The
poems “Housewife” by Sexton and “Daddy” by Plath talked much about their
family lives; their relationship with their family members. In Housewife, Sexton merely narrated about
her self reflection episodes through a simple and concise poem. As it is said
in her biographical information, Sexton’s poems articulate some of the deepest
dilemmas of her contemporaries about her most fundamental hopes and fears. She
might have depicted her life’s experience as a mother and a housewife in this
poem.
Sexton
gave rise to a desire by being attractive in her opening lines. As she stated,
“Some women marry houses.” For me, it’s kind of true, since most women, when
they become a housewife, they will have a 24/7 affiliation with the ‘house
hold’ things. It’s not surprising that after a woman got married, she seems to
marry the house not the husband. It is shown by the line, “It’s another kind of
skin; it has a heart, a mouth, a liver, and bowel movements.” This line
represents how women deal with the life after marriage. The house is portrayed
to be the other kind of skin and having some human’s body parts such as heart,
mouth, and liver. It shows me that the ‘house’ revealed to be a real living
thing, a real companion in struggling through the life after marriage.
Then,
I could draw conclusion for the reason why Sexton wrote this line. As I got
some information from her biography, it was due to the leaving of her husband. Her
husband joined the marine and was sent to Korea. During the absence of her
husband, she entered therapy. She appeared to be a single mother raising her
child alone while her husband was away. This might caused a disturbance in her
life, that a family should consist of a husband and wife that should share job
in enduring their marriage. Or, according to my own interpretation, Sexton and her
husband have a certain outward aspect that somehow they could not communicate
and work together as a husband and wife.
When
I came to the line where Sexton said, “The walls are permanent and pink,” it
appeared in my mind that every married woman in the world really want to have a
permanent marriage, none of them, including me--later, wanting to have a
difficult marriage that ends up with divorcement. It did happen to Sexton, a
year before she killed herself; she split up with her husband. Then, as we all
know, pink color symbolizes love, romance, and excitement. Sexton used the pink
color to symbolize the celebration of love, the romantic life, and the
excitement in the marriage itself. Yet, it looks as if it is the outer skin of
the marriage, in fact, as it is said in the fifth line, “See how she sits on
her knees all day,” wives contribute their whole life to serve the husband, and
if they have children, they are the one who completely deprive their selves
into their children’s development. The line “Men enter by force,” shows me that
men just engage with the forcing of their demands. Here, particularly, men
always associated with the sexual abuse or domestic violence in a family. “See
how she sits on her knees all day” also shows me the domestic violence part. It
reveals how a woman forced to do the household things up till “faithfully
washing herself down”.
Just
exactly like what I have in Indonesian culture, where most of the society
acknowledges the concept of patriarch family. Women, or wives, should obey
their husbands’ demands. They are not allowed to complain and criticize the
husbands’ decision. Javanese culture particularly, holds high the position of
husband in a family. Yet women are more inferior to men. They always put aside.
They have to choose; to be married or continue their career while receive
mockery from other people.
Responding
to this tradition, no, it’s not a tradition actually. It’s a mindset. It’s a
stereotype infused by the other people. Not to give a bad valuation to my own
culture, it’s just my fidgetiness towards this old-fashioned mindset. Javanese
people tend to have a hand in other people’s business even though they still
have their own problems waiting to be solved. If I have to choose, I will
choose to pursue my cherished desire, my strong drive for success. Then, after
that, I will be married, have children, and continue what I will have achieved.
Whereas
Sexton narrated her life as a woman and a housewife, Plath described her father
and child relationship in her poem Daddy.
Still in the theme of confession, this poem clearly reveals her anger, her
hatred, and her vengeance towards her father. Known as an authoritarian and
dictator in the family, Plath expressed her rage for her father died when she
was only eight years old.
Most
Plath poems are lengthy and use so much imagery. In the first stanza of Daddy, she depersonified her self as a
foot and her father as black shoes. She used the shoe figure as we know that
shoes are worn to protect the foot from stepping something. It illustrates that
her father was her protector but he was died and letting her lived under
poverty and sufferings. Yet, this shoe imagery could also be something
‘ladylike’ (as you suggest). It somehow represents the uncomfortableness, the
state of being tense and feeling pain when wearing a pair of shoes. I could
imagine my self wearing stilettos and what a hurtful sensation that I felt on
my toes, ankles, and heels. Using this stilettos analogy, I would like to determine
following investigation about the usage of the shoe imagery in Plath’s poem, Daddy. As we all know, stilettos is a
kind of woman shoes with a very high narrow heel on the shoes. It appears to be
perfect and elegant shoes. Graceful and classy. Yet, to wear this kind of shoe,
needs a sacrifice to endure such hurt feeling, be uncomfortable or in pain.
This is kind of shoe that Plath tried
to portray her father, to give a mental representation of her father.
The
second stanza, where she wrote, “Daddy, I have had to kill you, You died before
I had time----“ gave me the idea about the time she couldn’t spend with her
father. She seemed to blame her father for leaving her without giving any
affection from a father to his daughter. She was lacking of warm compassionate
feelings during her childhood.
In
the 27th line, the German words, “Ich, ich, ich, ich” instead of
revealing an inclination of her existence (Ich means I in English), somehow it
gives me the impression of hurt feeling, as I tried to pronounce it, the words
sounded almost like “itch, itch, itch”. It’s like a contagious skin infection
caused by the itch bug and causing skin irritation. In my opinion, this was
another imagery used by Plath to divulge the figure of her father as the one
who cause what I called as her “mind infection” and “heart irritation”.
Plath
exploited so many harsh words and cruel imagery as I discovered in the seventh
stanza, the 31st line and so on, where she positioned herself as a
Jew in the Nazi concentration camps of Holocaust. She even wrote that her
father was like an engine that chuffing her off like a Jew. It might be her
father as a German descendant that caused her used German’s imagery as she told
that “I thought every German was you”. At this point, I would like to ask,
whether or not she conceive her father and Nazi leader, Hitler, having the same
personality? Or it’s kind of tribute to the brute treatment that she received
from her father so she used such Nazi imagery?
Lines
by lines she consistently scorned and expressed her hatred towards father in
words. From “I have always been scared of you”, “Brute heart of a
brute like you”, “A cleft in your chin instead of your foot, But no
less a devil for that…”, “There’s a stake in your fat black heart, And
the villagers never liked you”, until “Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through”.
Furthermore,
Plath also described her father as God
and Devil. Two completely inverse
things. Plath, who’s been left by father since she was eight years old,
considered her father as someone who has a God-like dignitary. A father to a
child will be a guiding star, someone who will always be there to accompany and
to guide his child. However, Plath felt the other way around. She might think
that she did not have a good memory with her father, so she juxtaposed the Godlike with the Devil-like character. It
is clearly seen that Plath’s words and imagery are all of the tokens of the
same symbol: bitterness, satirical
mimicry and hatred towards her father.
As
I came to the end of the poem, I found out that she used the word black so many times. The first one is in the
second line, the black shoe, then in the 55th line, A man in black with a Meinkampf, in the 69th line, the black
telephone, and in the 76th line, your fat black heart. As
we all already know, black represents dark power,
sexuality, sophistication, formality, mystery, fear, evil, unhappiness, depth,
sadness, remorse, anger, anonymity, underground, mourning, and death. Specifically,
this poem emphasized the black color as a color that symbolizes dark power,
fear, evil, unhappiness, sadness, remorse, anger, mourning, and death. By using
this metaphor, Plath again and again tried to convey all her feelings and
poured it all into this poem.
As
the end result of an analysis process of the family backgrounds of Anne Sexton
and Sylvia Plath, I could reach a conclusion that their splendid writings are
overshadowed and overwhelmed by things they experienced throughout their lives.
The core link between these literary works is the poets’ experiences that they
apprehended as an accumulation of psychological result of perception and
learning and reasoning that residues from direct engagement commencing the time
they were raised by their parents and family.
In
addition, I also found out that these two poets; Sexton and Plath had come to
believe on the basis of emotion, intuition, or indefinite grounds that poetry with
confessional themes are their way to relief such burden in their life. They
used poetry to remove oneself from a familiar environment, usually for pleasure
or diversion. To come upon after searching; find the enjoyment, find the joyous
revenge of something or someone that was missed or lost. In this specific
theme, Sexton tried to discover what’s been missing from her as a housewife,
what she experienced and lived through her firsthand knowledge of states,
situations, emotions, or sensations of being a housewife, while Plath tried to perceive
her loosing of her father by paying lack of respect accompanied by a feeling of
intense dislike.
