Abstract
This article examines the significance and relevance of mirror imagery in Sylvia Plath’s poetry. For Plath, “the search in the mirror is ultimately a search for the self, often for the self as artist,” particularly the female artist who seeks autonomy beyond the masks of regressive femininity. The mirror — and its transformation into a lake — serves as the threshold between the conscious and unconscious, between the false, socially imposed self and the emerging, autonomous “terrible fish.” Through close readings of poems including “Mirror,” “Purdah,” “In Plaster,” “Face Lift,” “Morning Song,” “Ariel,” and “Daddy,” the article traces the recurrent motif of psychic death followed by spiritual rebirth that defines Plath’s poetic vision.
Keywords: Sylvia Plath, mirror imagery, female identity, stream of consciousness, feminist poetics, psychic rebirth, terrible fish, Ariel
Introduction
One mirrory eye — A facet of knowledge. (“Berck-Plage” 48–49)
William Freedman demonstrates in his article entitled “The Monster in Plath’s Mirror” that for Sylvia Plath, mirror holds great significance because “the search in the mirror is ultimately a search for the self, often for the self as artist,” especially the female artist who dissolves all self-linked taboos and given masks of regressive-cocoon shaped femininity in the cauldron of massive psychic energies emanating from her creativity in the light of which she sees herself as an autonomous female self. The mirror imagery thus signifies the consciousness of the woman speaker who verbalizes the creative process of the woman artist when she initiates into the inner world in search of her true self.
Since her childhood Sylvia Plath was greatly impressed with the character of Alice in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass whom she refers to, as Pamela J. Annas has quoted as, “my muse Alice,” climbed through the mirror into another world (3). Preoccupied with the curiosity to know what lies within the mirror like Alice, Sylvia Plath believes that mirror not only stands for the rational and logical view of this linear world to be registered through the senses, but also what lies beyond this tangible world.
The Mirror as Symbol of Passivity and Female Subjugation
The female protagonist in Plath’s “Mirror” identifies herself with the inanimate mirror, which faithfully reflects whatever comes within the line of its vision. She has got no identity of her own except those assigned to her by her male counterpart such as wife, mother, daughter and living doll to cater to the needs of her master who is “Lord of mirror.” Freedman points out that this mirror is a symbol of female “passivity” and “subjugation” and that “figure gazing at and reflected in the mirror is neither the child nor the man the woman-as-mirror habitually reflects, but a woman.” She feels that in this patriarchal world she is a powerless and passive creature who is expected to have everlasting beauty and youth. However, with the passing of time, she grows old and with that, her beauty fades away.
But Plath’s female protagonist senses the vicious conspiracy hatched against her very existence. She cannot loiter purposelessly in this tortuous world of passive adaptability and tries to understand what it means and has meant so far. She wants to recognize the mysterious depth of her role as an archetypal-mythical hero poet to throw away the stereotypical images of her own in the random and transformative poetic process. She puts everyday sanity at risk in search of healing truth that lies behind accepted structures of belief. On the chariot of her creativity with a sharp sword of poetic power like an epic hero, she runs amuck through the safely preserved conventional glories and inhibitions of patriarchal abyss. For Plath, interior journey is a source of recuperative powers; and that a sojourn into inner realm fills her being with refreshingly creative energy. She writes in her Journal entry October 17, 1951, “I don’t know why I should be so hideously gloomy … . But at least the lower I go the sooner I’ll reach bottom and start the upgrade again” (39–40).
The Lake-Mirror and Interior Journey
The interior journey begins when the mirror transforms itself into a lake and with the emergence of lake, the woman/artist departs from this world to recreate a new mythos, different from the prevailing ones. As Stewart suggests that her creativity enables her to make an alternative world, “If imprisoned in the labyrinth by outside forces, she must fly skyward. If her heritage is menial, she must create herself in new image. If she suffocates in traditional settings, she must find breathing space” (108).
Rosenblatt counts three stages of initiatory process: “The first stage in the initiatory process involves transformation of external setting of the poem — landscape, seascape or hospital — into the symbolic landscape of death” (574). The second stage is the “stage of transformation, the self undergoes drastic forms of self transformation in order to escape from the violence of death-world. Paradoxically, this escape takes the form of physical destruction, including self-mutilation, dismemberment, or symbolic annihilation” (575).
The mirror is the semiotic realm where the female poet suffers the pangs of psychic death followed by spiritual rebirth. The mirror renders and solves the central issue of identity by splitting her consciousness into subject and object. It is only in this dark realm of lake-mirror that the young girl confronts her double. The double selves imply an immediate self in this material worldview and a total self, which remains a mystery unless it emerges in its totality after the ritual initiation and when it smashes the angel of the house.
The young girl meets her true self — “terrible fish” — she gets confused whether this is her self or not. The terrible fish with Leviathan-vigor eats and digests the stereotypical image of young girl and after a long sojourn in her Piscean eon comes onto the surface of the lake as an autonomous female self to terrify this world. All the thoughts, sense impressions, and experiences of young girl are offered up to the lake of spiritual world. “The terrible fish” is significant to represent her picture as a mature self.
Sylvia Plath strongly believes in her creative powers as she herself remarks in her Journal entry, “All I need to do is work, break open the deep mines of experience and imagination, let the words come and speak it all, sounding themselves” (162). Similarly, she celebrates creativity in her “Lady Lazarus” too, when she declares: “Dying / Is an art, like everything else” (43–44).
The Drama of Psychic Striptease: Key Poems
Each day the woman sees her face in the mirror and the mirror, not only takes note of every physical change in her, but also records every atom of experience falling upon her unconscious. Her conscious self tries to ignore her failures and inadequacy; however, they are faithfully inscribed to perfection in the record of mirror. She “comes and goes” staring into the mirror’s reality and then reaches the point when “faces and darkness” intervene and the mirror becomes a lake, “Now I am a lake,” an entrance to the terrain of unconscious when she leaves behind the world of waking consciousness (15, 9–10).
The ritual of initiation, leading to psychic death followed by spiritual rebirth, signifies the struggle between true and false self, and has become the ubiquitous motif in most of Plath’s poems. The mirror dispels the illusion of the female protagonist by projecting her true self and she gathers up her courage to execute the masochistic act of self-mutilation — killing the projected dummy — because what the female protagonist desires for is not the harmonious balance between two warring forces, but an inclusive flaking off the inferior false self. Judith Kroll demonstrates that “a life lived by the false self, is not life but an intolerable death-in-life which can be overcome only by dying to that life” (Kroll 12).
In “In Plaster,” the poetic persona sees herself from the other side of the mirror and suffers desperation and anxiety:
I shall never get out of this! There are two of me now: The new absolutely white person and the old yellow one, And the white person is certainly the superior one. (1–3)
But with the progression of the poem, this struggle culminates in her allegation of throwing out the white and beautiful mask with the acquisition of confidence in her real yellow self: “One day I shall manage without her, / And she’ll perish with emptiness, and begin to miss me” (55–56).
Similarly, in “Morning Song,” the woman tears off the imposed mask of motherhood by comparing herself with the floating clouds in the sky broken in rain to become a mirror lake, which reflects the gradual disappearing of the clouds at wind’s hand. She does not want to be credited with the honor of being a mother and identifies herself with the floating clouds, free to move in the open sky:
I’m no more your mother Than the clouds that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow Effacement at the wind’s hand. (7–9)
“Purdah” also demonstrates the recurrent pattern of rebirth motif of female protagonist with the extinction of her husband who suppresses her identity. Within the enclosure of oriental harem of her husband, she becomes an object rather than a living being. She also visualizes herself as a comatose and inert jade statuette, nothing more than a precious stone of her lord’s chattels. However, the latent self within her unconscious needs action on her part and comes on to the surface of the water when she becomes aware of her true self, to kill her male counterpart as a lioness after casting off the meek image of a living doll.
In “Face Lift,” the female protagonist suffers from anxiety and is apprehensive at the very notion of getting old because with the passing of age, she will lose her physical charm. Under the sedative effects of anesthesia, she visualizes herself moving in the palace of Egypt and then returning in the hospital ward. In the inner world begins the enactment of psychic drama as she ponders over her previous life. She visualizes herself a girl of twenty sitting in her “long skirts on” her “first husband’s sofa,” but this time she becomes “broody” (22–23). The psychic death of the false self culminates with resurrection of a new self “swaddled in gauze, / Pink and smooth as a baby” (33–34).
In “Ariel,” the poetic persona starts her heroic journey on the horse back like a legendary hero in classical treatise at dawn, assimilating within her the power of Ariel, a blithe spirit of fire and air from whom she receives kinesis and moves from submission to assertion. She is reborn as rebellious “White Godiva,” a masquerading form of the mythic White Goddess of Love and Death, who defies her husband. In her new identity, she declares:
White Godiva, I unpeel — Dead hands, dead stringencies. (19–21)
In “Daddy,” too, Sylvia Plath displays a picture of a role-rejecting daughter who, after bearing the pain of regression, turns out to be a slayer replacing a devoted daughter. She mediates on her submissive position in her psyche and from her unconscious brings back her father as a primeval aggressor to be loathed as Nazi German, a devil so that she may slaughter him for her own survival like a hero in folktale:
There’s stake in your fat black heart And the villager never liked you. They are dancing and stamping on you. They always knew it was you. Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through. (76–80)
Conclusion
Thus, mirror plays a significant role to show the drama of psychic-striptease. Changing incessantly from one identity to another to wear all sorts of masks ranging from a faithful wife to a glamorous mannequin, a sort of antipathy is aroused in psyche of female protagonist, who with the tempo of self-realization, hopes for rebirth and resurrection. However, the metamorphoses of the self in the dark dungeon of mirror are painful, but the self willingly suffers this poignancy because she sees the looming gleam of refreshed self. Through the transparency of the mirror, the whole drama of self-realization is clear before our eyes culminating in the triumphant emergence of female self as a lioness, a terrible fish, Phoenix and airy spirit, golden baby, Lady Godiva and Moon Goddess, capable of shattering the mirror of this patriarchal world.
Hence, the mirrors in Plath’s poetry reflect the male point of view regarding woman, “a perfect reflection of feminine ideal in male eyes” (Freedman). However, Plath undermines the imposed version of feminine identity and exhibits the persona’s genuine struggle during her interior journey to release herself from bondage of idealized femininity through the incarnation of a self, which is aggressively self-assertive. The all powerful and transformed female self, with an awareness of another world, returns to declare her triumphant emergence with dangerous exposure:
Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And eat men like air. (82–84)
Works Cited
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