Abstract
Lacan’s phallogocentric structure of language challenges the function of language as a neutral mirror of objective reality and rather refers to the privileging of masculine in construction of meaning throughout the patriarchal history which allowed no place for feminine writing. Thus, opposing phallogocentric discourse, poststructuralist feminists exhort to what Cixous terms as “ecriture feminine” as the inscription of female body and female difference in language and text. Accordingly, viewing women’s sexual difference as a source rather than a point of inferiority to men, Sylvia Plath rediscovers female experiences in her poems through using “ecriture feminine” and thus exhibits the productivity of women’s language. Hence, looking from the perspective of Cixous’s “ecriture feminine,” the current study aims at analyzing the female modes of writing in Plath’s poems. The main finding of the research is that, through using genuine female forms of expression, Plath brings into being the symbolic weight of female consciousness, illustrating the oppressive forces that obstruct female expression.
Keywords: Sylvia Plath, Helene Cixous, ecriture feminine, phallogocentrism
Phallogocentrism and Feminine Writing
Due to the control of men over their territory, women have been confined to live in a narrow room where they have undergone an unconscious brainwash throughout the whole history. As Cixous (1975) points out, there have been few writings by women that could be inscribed with “femininity.” The phallocentric society has made women the “repressed of culture” (p. 349).
As a confessional poet, many of Sylvia Plath’s poems were written under the influence of her real life experiences. Her poetry expresses her sense of victimhood in a patriarchal society where even the literary circles are controlled by male powers. Plath uses what Cixous (1975) calls as “l’ecriture feminine” or the “white ink” as an antithesis to masculine modes of writing fashioned merely for male purposes.
Lady Lazarus and the Subversive Feminine Text
Plath’s text in “Lady Lazarus” is subversive in the phallogocentric literary environment of the time. As Strangeways (1996) asserts, Plath’s text is subversive in the sense that she reverses the gaze of male readers so that they become “overlooked in the act of overlooking.” Plath subverts the traditional masculine text into a feminine text with persistent blunt female body images, overpowering the female and giving her a sense of developing self.
Motherhood and Female Experience
Even her family-oriented poems provide such female imagery and female experiences including the experience of motherhood. In “Morning Song,” Plath gives account of the experience of the poet-persona as a woman experiencing motherhood. In “Three Women,” Plath portrays the experience of childbirth as an “exclusively female rite of passage.” In “Metaphors,” Plath again portrays the experience of pregnancy and motherhood from the point of view of a pregnant woman.
Conclusion
Through using genuine female forms of expression, Plath brings into being the symbolic weight of female consciousness, illustrating the oppressive forces that obstruct female expression. Plath’s literary repossession of her body through a self-conscious process constitutes what Cixous (1975) calls “the starting point for her imaginative autonomy” as a female artist going back to her native strength as a woman in a masculine literary environment.
Works Cited
- Bassnett, S. (2007). Poetry and Survival. In Harold Bloom (Ed.), Sylvia Plath (pp. 207-227). New York: Infobase Publishing.
- Britzolakis, C. (2007). Conversation amongst the Ruins. In Kathleen Conners and Sally Bayley (Eds.), Eye Rhymes: Sylvia Plath’s Art of the Visual (pp. 167-82). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Britzolakis, C. (2006). Ariel and other poems. In Jo Gill. (Ed.), Cambridge Companion to Sylvia Plath (pp. 110-120). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Cixous, H. (1975). The Laugh of the Medusa. Chicago Journals, 1, 347-362.
- Keefe, J. (2007). The Pregnant Riddle: An Explication of ‘Metaphors’ by Sylvia Plath. ESSAI, 5, 87-90.
- Kendal, T. (2007). From the Bottom of the Pool: Sylvia Plath’s Last Poems. In Harold Bloom (Ed.), Sylvia Plath (pp. 147-164). New York: Infobase Publishing.
- Oberg, A. (1978). Sylvia Plath: ‘Love, Love, My Season.’ In Arthur Oberg (Ed.), Modern American Lyric: Lowell, Berryman, Creeley, and Plath (pp. 127-73). Rutgers: Rutgers University Press.
- Ostriker, A. (1986). Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Women’s Poetry in America. Boston: Beacon.
- Plath, S. (2003). Ariel. Germany: Faber.
- Plath, S. (1981). Collected Poems. London: Faber and Faber.
- Showalter, E. (1981). Feminist Criticism in Wilderness. Critical Inquiry, 8, 179-205.
- Stowers, C. (1997). Sylvia Plath’s Revolutionary Wieldings of the Female Body. In Vicki Bertram (Ed.), Kicking Daffodils: Twentieth Century Women Poets (pp. 153-188). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
- Strangeways, A. (1996). ‘The Boot in the Face’: The problem of the Holocaust in the poetry of Sylvia Plath. Contemporary Literature, 37, 370-391.
- Wisker, G. (2004). Viciousness in the Kitchen: Sylvia Plath’s Gothic. Gothic Studies, 6, 103-11.