Confessional Mode of Feminist Poetics: Sylvia Plath on Love, Life and Death

Abstract

The purpose of the present paper is to focus on voices of feminism in the poetry of Sylvia Plath, credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry. The main aim of this paper is an introduction and analysis of Sylvia Plath's early poems so as to highlight her major themes and concerns. It incorporates a brief survey of origin and emergence of feminist writers of the twentieth century. This paper is based on Thematic, Interpretative, Exploratory and Critical analysis. The paper critically analyzes and examines the female literary tradition to find out how women writers of their time have perceived themselves and imagined reality particularly through the poems of Plath. The paper through close textual reading explores and exposes the patriarchy through a delicate balance of radical and social feminism. The paper concluded that Sylvia Plath and her contemporaries believed in broadly feminist ideals. Sylvia Plath through her poems was giving a closure for the treatment she received from the male domination. It reinforces the fact that much ground still needs to be traversed towards achieving gender equality in the new millennium.