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Yoshita Srivastava

Prof. Nidhi Kalra

Autobiographies

15th October 2018

Finding the Confessional Form in Sylvia Plath’s Selected Poems

About Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath was a twentieth century American poet, dramatist and novelist. She had a

troubled life and even though she committed suicide at the age of thirty, she managed to create

an incomparable following in the literary community. Joyce Carol Oates described Plath in the

New York Times Book Review as “one of the most celebrated and controversial of postwar

poets writing in English.” Plath’s work has been speculated to be intensely autobiographical.

Most of her poems borrow from her own experiences of mental illness, conflict with her parents

and her husband and her battle against suicidal tendencies (“Sylvia Plath”, para 4).

Born in 1932 in Boston, Plath was the daughter of a German immigrant college professor,

Otto Plath, and one of his students, Aurelia Schober. The poet’s early years were spent near the

seashore, but her life changed abruptly when her father died in 1940. Financial circumstances

forced the Plath family to move to Wellesley, Massachusetts, where Aurelia Plath taught

advanced secretarial studies at Boston University. In her teens, Sylvia Plath started winning

several writing awards and scholarships ("Sylvia Plath | Biography, Poems, Books, & Facts",

para 2)
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She started facing symptoms of severe depression in her Undergraduate years and even

attempted to commit suicide at the age of nineteen. Her novel, Bell Jar is believed to be inspired

by her own struggle and recovery. After recovering and completing her graduation, she received

the Fulbright grant to study at Cambridge University and here she met her future husband, the

prolific writer Ted Hughes. They got married in 1956 and separated in 1962, after having two

children. Plath’s three major works were The Bell Jar and her poetry collections Colossus and

Ariel ("Sylvia Plath | Biography, Poems, Books, & Facts", para 5).

For the purpose of this paper, we will look at Plath’s poems, “Daddy”, “Lady Lazarus”

and “Tulips”.

Confessional Poetry

Confessional poetry emerged in late 1950s-60s and is associated with the works of a

specific group of writers. The term “confessional poetry” was coined by Critic M. L Rosenthal

while reviewing Robert Lowell’s book of poems and prose Life Studies. Life studies is divided

into four sections, including a prose autobiographical sketch of Lowell’s youth and poems

revealing the poet’s intimate views of his youth, marriage, imprisonment, and his stay at a mental

health hospital. Life Studies kick started the movement of confessional poetry among modernist

writers. Since then, several poets have been associated with this form, namely, Anne Sexton,

Sylvia Plath and W. D. Snodgrass. However, there has been constant contestation in academia

over prescribing the label of ‘confessional poetry’ over the works of these writers

(“Confessional”, para 1)

Confessional poetry focused on a subject matter that had not been a penchant of

American poetry earlier. Instead of focusing on external factors of universal emotions,

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confessional poetry portrays the poetic self as the poems deal with issues such as death, trauma,

depression and mental illness (Molesworth, 10).

The Confessional Form of Autobiography

According to Stephen Spender, in a confessional autobiography, the writer aims to tell

the truth about the person he knows most intimately about, which is the author himself. The

writer’s only criterion is then telling the ultimate truth, however, there is no verification that the

truth revealed is the only version of truth. The truth revealed then fits perfectly with the author’s

image of the self. Also, the confessional form demands that the confession be made to a

confessor (Spender, 121).

In Plath’s work, she channels her autobiographical details to form commentary of various

issues, which are both personal and at the same time, a concern of the broader context. The

confessor receiving her confession is the reader, who judges Plath’s proclamation with his/her

own contextual moral yardstick.

“Daddy”

Autobiographical text has a strong ‘I’ presence to lend authority to the version of truth

explored. In this poem, Plath has constructed the structure in such a way that the poem seems

like a conversation with her deceased father. In the second stanza, she reveals to the reader

“Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time.” The is sentence is structured as a

direct confession, and can be interpreted as Plath finally letting go of her father’s memory after

so many years of living the aftermath of his death. In the middle of the poem, she shifts the

blame from herself to her external circumstances, connecting her suicidal tendencies at the age of

twenty with the childhood tragedy of losing a parent.

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“ At twenty I tried to die

And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.”

She goes on to proclaim that she has found herself a partner like her father. However,

soon she confesses that she has killed him too. Comparing the figure of her father to a Nazi

tyrant and herself to a Jew, Plath attempts to justify that by ridding herself of her father’s

memory; she can turn into an independent self. The war between the Nazi and the Jew is

symbolic of her inner war where her father’s death as well as her past plays a significant and

negative role on her present state. In the last stanza, she ultimately shifts all the blame of the

misdirection of her life to her past tragedies.

“There’s a stake in your fat black heart

And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.”

By driving a stake through her father’s heart and proclaiming that she’s through, Plath

claims that she is moving on from her past tragedies and forming her independent self; cutting

ties with both the haunting memory of her father and her vampire like partner. Like Rousseau

and Augustine’s confessions, Sylvia Plath follows a similar pattern. Though hidden behind the

fiction narrator, she first confesses and then justifies her actions by pointing out external

circumstances hoping to get redemption as well as sympathy from her confessor, the reader.

“Lady Lazarus”

Lazarus is a biblical figure who Jesus raises from the dead. Plath utilizes this biblical

reference to illustrate her three attempts at committing suicide. Similar to ‘Daddy’, the poem is

written in first person. Utilizing an ironic and mocking tone, the poem leaves a chilling effect as
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an extremely personal and serious experience is described in such a light form. . “Daddy” was

clearly a comment on her own individual experience On the other hand; the self in Lady Lazyrus

can resonate with those battling mental health issues.

“The peanut-crunching crowd

Shoves in to see
Them unwrap me hand and foot—
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies
These are my hands
My knees.”

Though, there is a comment on the treatment of mental health patients as spectacles in the

above stanza, she is still basing this comment on her own experience. As Spender specifies, the

author of a confession aims to tell the truth about himself. Here, Plath is doing just that, she

doesn’t claim to represent experiences of all patients contemplating suicide. Instead, there is a

constant possession of the narrative as she repeatedly uses first person pronouns, “A sort of

walking miracle, my skin”, “And I a smiling woman.”, “I am only thirty” or “I may be skin and

bone.” Then, it is clear she wants to assert the fact that this is her personal experience. Another

interesting confessional form of autobiography trait that she uses is the attempt to present a

timeline of the events in her life. Going back from her latest attempt at the age of thirty, she

describes and enlists the two previous attempts. Hence, though the experience described here

may have universal representation, it is derived from a recounting of personal experience and an

attempt to describe the truth about her.

“Tulips”

In this poem, Plath writes about a bunch of flowers that she received while she was

recovering from appendectomy. The structure of “Tulips” is different from the earlier ones. Here,
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she gives a detailed description of what is happening around her. “Tulips” leaves no question in

the mind of the reader that it is a personal experience of the writer being described here. With the

background of her battle with depression and suicidal, there is a clear overtone of her inner

mental battle in the poem. In the beginning, Plath confesses that giving up her possessions and

letting go of all that defines her brings sense peacefulness over her.

“I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.

I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses
And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons.”

At one point in the poem, Plath even compares this form of peacefulness to that

experienced by those who are dead. This poem was published posthumously in the collection of

her poems Ariel. Thus, it is not difficult to imagine that her contemplation on turning into a

nobody and letting go of all material possessions as well as familial ties is a major theme of the

poem. “Tulips” then is a poem that signifies the revelations and truths the poet was questioning

about her own reality at the time.

Conclusion

Some critics have argued that the confessional poet tag doesn’t sit well with Plath’s

works. Plath’s husband Ted Hughes pointed out that the autobiographical details in Plath’s

poems are more emblematic than Lowell’s poetry. Another critic claims that the realistic details

of Lowell’s poetry are missing from Plath’s ( Uroff, 104)

Though, labeling Plath’s poetry can be a difficult task, after looking at the three poems,

one can spot similarities between Plath’s poetry and the confessional form of autobiography.

Plath reveals to her confessor a version of truth about herself which according to Spender’s

theory matches the confessional form. Plath’s three poems reveal a truth about her that remains
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a part of her image even now. Her personal struggles remain as much a part of her memory in the

public sphere as her celebrated works.

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Works Cited

"Confessional | Modern American Poetry". Modernamericanpoetry.Org, 2013,

http://www.modernamericanpoetry.org/school-poetry/confessional. Accessed 14 Oct 2018.

Molesworth, Charles. "" With Your Own Face On": The Origins and Consequences of

Confessional Poetry." Twentieth Century Literature 22.2 (1976): 163-178.

Spender, Stephen. "Confessions and autobiography." Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and

Critical (1980): 115-22.

“Sylvia Plath.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/sylvia-

plath.

"Sylvia Plath | Biography, Poems, Books, & Facts". Encyclopedia Britannica, 2018,

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sylvia-Plath. Accessed 14 Oct 2018.

Uroff, Margaret Dickie. "Sylvia Plath and Confessional Poetry: A Reconsideration." The Iowa

Review (1977): 104-115.

Plath, Sylvia. Collected poems. Faber & Faber, 2015.