Sylvia Plath

Joel Marin

Prompt 3

Colin Pope

Sexuality Through the words of Sylvia Plath

Anthony Giddens argues that sexuality is the major “malleable feature of the self,” “a prime connecting point between body, self-identity and social norms.” Therefore social relations cannot avoid the sexual aspects that are at work in constructing people’s identities. In Plath’s poems sexuality appears as a cruel expression of social needs, and the continuance of male ideology is related to the way cruel ideas of sexuality are enforced. Opposing to the idea that sexual restrictions leads toward individual freedom, Plath’s poems give a negative view on the meaning sexuality has attained in the twentieth-century’s culture. Rather than a way to express one’s self, sexuality is seen as constraining and changing people relations. Thus, this paper presents a reading on the way Sylvia Plath portrays sexuality in a gender inequality world.

In Plath’s poetry sexuality appears as a way people try to express themselves but they fail to do so. Even though sexuality is thought of as private and subjective, Angela Carter argues that sexual intercourse is understood as an intimate act and a way for people to reveal “themselves” to one another, it is in fact personal interactions that best reflect social norms. For example, “in society men are considered superior to women and are prone to be active in opposition to women’s submission, that will be reflected in people’s sexuality, and thus, in their relationships with each other.” (Angela Carter)

The idea of sexuality as a construction and not as an expression of individuality is shown in the poems through a frequent use of irony. In “Lesbos” men and women try to copy sexual behaviors they saw in movies, the recreation of sexual stereotypes become an important tool for analyzing the ways in sexuality is defined. Even though the poems show the speakers’ attempt to escape such definition, they frequently present a sense of entrapment, as if despite...