CENTRO DE CIÊNCIAS HUMANAS LETRAS E ARTES
COORDENAÇÃO DOS CURSOS DE GRADUAÇÃO PRESENCIAIS DE LICENCIATURA EM LETRAS
LICENCIATURA EM LÍNGUA INGLESA
JHONATHAS DO NASCIMENTO SILVA
MENTAL ILLNESS IN SYLVIA PLATH’S CUT AND ELM: AN ANALYSIS OF THE POEMS THROUGH THE FEMINIST DISABILITY THEORY
JOÃO PESSOA
NOVEMBRO/2022
MENTAL ILLNESS IN SYLVIA PLATH’S CUT AND ELM: AN ANALYSIS OF THE POEMS THROUGH THE FEMINIST DISABILITY THEORY
Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso apresentado ao Departamento de Letras Estrangeiras e Modernas, locado no Centro de Ciências Humanas, Letras e Artes como requisito para obtenção de grau em Licenciatura em Letras (Língua Inglesa) pela Universidade Federal da Paraíba.
Orientadora: Dra. Renata Gonçalves Gomes
JOÃO PESSOA
NOVEMBRO/2022
MENTAL ILLNESS IN SYLVIA PLATH’S CUT AND ELM: AN ANALYSIS OF THE POEMS THROUGH THE FEMINIST DISABILITY THEORY
Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso apresentado ao Departamento de Letras Estrangeiras e Modernas, locado no Centro de Ciências Humanas, Letras e Artes como requisito para obtenção de grau em Licenciatura em Letras (Língua Inglesa) pela Universidade Federal da Paraíba.
Orientadora: Dra. Renata Gonçalves Gomes
BANCA EXAMINADORA Data de aprovação: 30 de Novembro de 2022
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Dra. Renata Gonçalves Gomes (DLEM/UFPB) - Orientadora
_________________________________________________
Dra. Débora Souza da Rosa (DLEM/UFPB) – 1ª Titular
_________________________________________________
Dra. Danielle Dayse Marques de Lima (DLEM/UFPB) – 2º Titular
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Dra. Débora Gil Pantaleão (DLEM/UFPB) – Suplente
Este estudo tem por objetivo analisar doença mental em dois poemas de Sylvia Plath que fazem parte da coletânea Ariel, a partir da perspectiva da Teoria Feminista da Deficiência.
Para isso, são extraídas representações de doença mental nos poemas Corte e Olmo, são detectadas marcas que estabelecem relações entre mulheres e doença mental, e por fim, é discutido a percepção da Teoria Feminista da Deficiência sobre doença mental e os papéis de gêneros normativo. Este estudo é significativo para aumentar a noção de que entre as deficiências existem as doenças mentais, assinalando como a sociedade enxerga deficiências e entende o que é ser humano, sujeito ao mesmo tempo múltiplo e instável. Nesse estudo é feita uma revisão de literatura do estilo de poesia confessional (WATERS, 2016) e da Teoria Feminista da Deficiência (GARLAND-THOMSON, 2002), além de reunir diversas percepções de como a sociedade observa deficiências (MOLLOW, 2015; DONALDSON, 2002; KITTAY, 2011; SONTAG, 1990). A análise é composta por uma breve introdução à coletânea Ariel, com análises individuais dos poemas Corte e Olmo, e conclui-se com um exercício de comparação e contraste dos dois poemas. Os poemas estão intrinsecamente ligados à doença mental em seu uso de metáforas que representam o colapso mental do eu- lírico, assim como também faz uso de phanopoeia, melopoeia e logopoeia de Pound (1951), para retratar na mente do leitor, formas relacionadas à doença mental.
Palavras-chave: Poesia confessional; Doença Mental; Teoria Feminista da Deficiência;
Corte; Olmo.
This study aims at analyzing mental illness in two confessional poems by Sylvia Plath from the Ariel collection through the Feminist Disability Theory perspective. To be able to do that, representations of mental illness are extracted from the poems Cut and Elm, marks that establish a relation between women and mental illness are detected, and are discussed through the Feminist Disability Theory perception of mental illness and normative gender roles. This study is significant to increase the awareness that amidst Disabilities there are mental illness, pointing out how society sees disabilities, and to understand what is to be human, a multiple and unstable being at the same time. The study produces a literature review about the confessional style of poetry (WATERS, 2016) and the Feminist Disability Studies (GARLAND-THOMSON, 2002), as well as gathers many perceptions of how society observes Disabilities (MOLLOW, 2015; DONALDSON, 2002; KITTAY, 2011; SONTAG, 1990). The analysis section contains a brief introduction on the Ariel collection, with individual analysis for the poems Cut and Elm, finishing with a comparison and contrast exercise. The poems are intrinsically linked with mental illness in their use of metaphors that represent the mental collapse of the persona, as well as make use of Pound’s (1951) phanopoeia, melopoeia, and logopoeia to picture mental forms related to mental illness in the reader’s mind.
Keywords: Confessional Poetry; Mental Illness; Feminist Disability Theory; Cut; Elm.
1 INTRODUCTION...8
2 POETRY AND FEMINIST DISABILITIES STUDIES...13
2.1 Confessional poetry, Sylvia Plath and Ariel...14
2.2 Feminist Disability Studies, Mental Illness and Gender Roles...19
3 CARPET ROLLS...24
3.1 Cut: Thumb Stump!...26
3.2 Elm: Break up in pieces...33
3.3 Comparing and contrasting Cut and Elm...41
4 CONCLUSIONS...43
REFERENCES...45
ANNEXURE...48
1 INTRODUCTION
Sylvia Plath was an American author of both prose and poetry, incredibly talented, and one of the most important female writers of the twentieth century (STEINBERG, 2004).
During her lifetime, she published many short stories, poems in US magazines and later in the UK, a poetry collection titled The Colossus and other poems (1960), and her only novel The Bell Jar (1963); after she died in 1963, there were many other collections of her prose published, most of them edited by Ted Hughes, including children’s books, short stories, collections of her letters, her journals in two versions, most of her poetry in compilations like Crossing the Water (1971), Winter Trees (1971), The Collected Poems (1981, which gathered all poems Plath wrote and won the 1982 Pulitzer Prize), Selected Poems (1985), and Ariel (1965). The Ariel compilation, in particular, is the peak of her confessional writing and focuses initially on motherhood, progresses into scenes of marriage, affairs, hospitalization experience in miscarriages, feminism and freedom from a male-dominant setting, wars, Mythology (Greek and Celtic), suicide attempts, mental breakdowns, and concludes with feelings of hope for better times to come after winter passes. It is widely known that Sylvia Plath suffered for years from Depression and attempted suicide many times, and as a confessional poet, her writing reflected part of these episodes, exposing mind and feelings (STEINBERG, 2004; HUGHES, 2004). Therefore, the present study aims at investigating mental illness through two confessional poems in Sylvia Plath’s collection Ariel (PLATH, 1965) from the Feminist Disability Theory perspective.
Exploring mental illness represented specifically in Sylvia Plath’s Ariel and adopting the Feminist Disability Theory is necessary due to three reasons. First, as human beings, we ought to fix the concept of mental illness spread in our society, as well as cultural stereotypes and beliefs around disabilities settled by a dominant group of people (SONTAG, 1990;
GARLAND-THOMSON, 2002). Investigating this field using Plath’s confessional works is an opportunity to bring to discussion how disabilities are represented and explored in art, particularly, in the post-war literature of the second half of the 20th century. Also, it is significant to understand why and how statistically female-dominant disabilities, such as Depression, magnify our perception of the existence of normative gender roles in our society (GARLAND-THOMSON, 2002). For instance, such disabilities and their effects on women
are so great that the World Mental Health Report, a document aiming to motivate and better instruct about mental health, developed by the World Health Organization (2022, p.22) states that “women tend to be more socioeconomically disadvantaged and more likely exposed to violence than men (…), also Racism or discrimination against a particular group (such as people with disabilities) increases the risk of social exclusion and economic adversity, (…) which undermine mental health”. Finally, this study is significant to increase the awareness that amidst Disabilities there are mental illnesses too. Disabilities are not only restricted to what we can perceive with our eyes when looking at the body, the concrete form, but is needed to take into account the individual’s mind, and what underlies in it. In short, to be able to counterattack the normative idea of disability, understand why it amplifies the existence of dominant gender roles, and collaborate in discussions that mental illnesses in the field of disabilities, we have: to (a) extract from the poems Elm and Cut Sylvia Plath’s representations of mental illness; (b) to detect marks that can trace a relation between women and mental illness in both poems; (c) discuss the Feminist Disability Theory view of mental illness using Plath’s poems and how its presence denounces normative gender roles.
The normative establishment considers mental illness as a worldwide social emergency. The World Health Organization presents, in its already-quoted World Mental Health Report, considerations that mental illnesses are clinical disorders that affect the cognition, emotional control, and behavior of an individual (WHO, 2022). For example, there are many mental illness, all of them have a straight impact on a person’s social life, just like Depression, a condition that 280 million people live with, and can lead to suicidal thoughts.
Another example is Bipolar Disorder, occurring in 40 million people globally, who live with alternating periods of depressive mood and intense energy torrents, and can also lead to suicide. Additionally, the document presents other mental illness, such as: Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Schizophrenia, Eating Disorders, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Autism Spectrum Disorder, and many more. All these nomenclatures only exclude and do not represent social integration though. According to Donaldson (2002, p.
112) in her analysis of the madness represented in the character of Bertha Mason inside Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, based on Disability Studies, argues in favor of a change in the way researches concentrate on medical models of illness. The way suggested by Donaldson is Garland-Thomson’s (2002) borrowed concept of “universalizing view” by Eve Sedgwick, which is very different from the normative “minoritizing view” seen so far. Of course, for
most of the listed mental illnesses above, there are treatments available for the public in need of assistance, like psychological treatment, psycho-social interventions, and medications, that can help. But this also reinforces the idea of disability as a private matter, because of this is necessary to change our perspective into a social one. Garland-Thomson (2002, p.5) argues in her article Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory, “disability is the most human of experiences, touching every family, and – if we live long enough – touching us all”.
Still correlated to the way society understands disabilities, we must explore two examples of how governments and their entities perceive and support people with disabilities.
In 2010, the United Kingdom Government Equality Office and the Equality and Human Rights Commission released a document that put together acts related to many pieces of legislation that covered one way or another discrimination related to sex, gender, race, disability, age, religion and beliefs, in many fields like Education, Work, Public Service, and Civil Courts. For example, in its Section 6, on Disability, categorizes it as a physical or mental impairment in a person. Additionally in the Equality Act 2010, in its First Schedule which determines supplementary information to legally differentiate disability and impairment, the key concept is if a person has a long-term effect impairment, which has lasted at least 12 months or more, and directly impacts daily activities, it is considered a disability, not an impairment anymore (GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED KINGDOM, 2010). For instance, a person has a mental illness, like bipolar disorder, and cannot keep up with a working schedule. As the person keeps trying without success, his/her condition worsens, because of the constant social pressure put on the individual to keep trying, and eventually, succeed.
Thus, the condition makes the individual deteriorate, affecting daily for longer periods, progressing into disability. The progression towards disability does not depend only on the individual though, for this reason, it makes necessary a social change around him/her, adapting schedules and environments, as well as looking for caring and inclusion, which is not predicted by this document (DONALDSON, 2002; KITTAY, 2011). Likewise, the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website defines disability “as any condition that makes it more difficult for the person with a condition to do certain activities and interact with the world around them” (CDC, 2020). Inside this definition, the CDC website also highlights the terminology people with disabilities, which is related to a group of people in a broad scope that has a disability, and their own needs. For instance, even if two individuals have the same condition, their daily needs living with their disabilities can be very alike, each one
necessitating a different caring approach. There are many disabilities (like movement, vision, and learning disabilities) that are easy to identify, and inside them there are mental illness (such as Depression or Bipolar Disorder), more concealed disabilities, not simple to notice, and accordingly, society must be prepared to include them, just as the CDC (2020) points out in a tab dedicated only to Disability Inclusion, providing fair treatment, universal designs for goods, and infrastructures in order to offer the chance to people with disabilities to make use of the world around them as much as possible.
Besides the medical and governmental points of view presented so far by entities like the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Kingdom Government, and the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), we should consider the social perspective of disabilities. In fact,
“Disability is a broad term within which cluster ideological categories as varied as sick, deformed, crazy, ugly, old, maimed, afflicted, mad, abnormal, or debilitated – all of which disadvantage people by devaluing bodies that do not conform to cultural standards.” (GARLAND-THOMSON, 2002, p.5).
That is, all disabilities end up collected in a single artificially created category, subsequently in other smaller groups in that same scope, and these sub-divisions of terms contrast and diminish people based on their bodies and minds. Those who do not follow artificially created standards established by a majority that, eventually, uses their choices to disregard the existence of bodies varieties, and minds too, turn out being oppressed, discriminated, and also isolated. Furthermore, Garland-Thomson (2002, p.5) stresses that the way disability was socially approached so far “indicates a fictional narrative of the body, just as race and gender”. This creates a normative social role that places people with disabilities as minorities socially oppressed from all sides by considering them as incapable and producing many types of discrimination and stigmas. For example, the previous paragraph presented the situation of a person diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, a mental illness in which a person switch constantly between high-energy bursts and depressive mood in a short period. Besides the constant pressure to adequate himself/herself to social demands and succeed, one will additionally carry the stigma of being a crazy person or mad person that does not know how to control and behave like everybody else. So, there is a consolidated system to stigmatize and put expectations over this person, without considering social support around the individual seeking inclusion, or understanding these expectations represent a fictional narrative of the
body, just as Garland-Thomson (2002) presents in her article. Consequently, people who follow these guidelines gain privileges over others. By making use of the Feminist Theory's intersectionality, is possible to bridge with Toni Morrison’s concept of Otherness in race studies, which points out the existence of an Other, a stranger, different from myself. In The Origin of Others, a compilation of her lecture given at Harvard in 2016, Morrison states that
“Racial identification and exclusion did not begin, or end, with blacks. Culture, physical traits, religion were and are among all precursors of strategies for ascendance and power”
(MORRISON, 2017, p.24). They can use the power of their privilege both to reinforce and protect their status quo and norms, as well as to stigmatize those who do not follow their guidelines, for instance, as disabled. Alternatively, many times if offered ways to standardize themselves through radical cosmetic surgeries which, according to Garland-Thomson (2002, p. 10), it is a practice “driven by gender ideology and market demand”.
To help us see through the dust of discrimination, stigma, social norms, and privileged positions, and understand what is disability (in fact, what a human being is), we can work with the Feminist Disability Theory perspective. It has three compelling aspects that can give support to get into the investigation and reflection process of Sylvia Plath's poems Cut and Elm concerning its representations of mental illness and how it connects to normative gender roles. First, this theory integrates disability studies inside the range of analysis of the Feminist Theory, providing “profound insights, methods, and perspectives that would deepen disability studies” (GARLAND-THOMSON, 2002, p.2). In other words, adding disability studies into the scope of Feminist Theory offers an opportunity for expansion, working to aggregate more discussion into Feminist Theory, with new perceptions from disability studies. A second aspect, already presented earlier in this study, is that Feminist Disability Theory provides a
“universalizing view” of disability (Garland-Thomson, 2002). Not as an aspect that a minority of the population, a fact isolated from reality, distant from all of us affected by chance though, but all of us to some degree, our bodies and minds, sooner or later, during our lifespan. The last reason is again presented by Garland-Thomson (2002, p.4), that states “(…) considering disability [inside the Feminist Theory] shifts the conceptual framework to strengthen our understanding of how these multiple systems intertwine, redefine, and mutually constitute one another”. We, as human beings, intelligent complex life forms, are not limited to a single identity and constitute interaction with many others that are multiple too. As consequence of interacting, build together an entangled system which supports norms and endows privileges,
the social normative roles. Taking disability into account is possible to see more clearly how culture judge and mystify disability in our society. In short, Feminist Disability Theory is needed to observe disability through a feminist standpoint which has a prospect for expansion, to present disabilities through a universalizing view, and reveal how our identity is entangled with others that somehow influence us, constitute our society, and its dominant social roles.
For example, the Feminist Theory is so favorable for expansion that the feminist standpoint drove Garland-Thomson (2002) to compose her feminist sitpoint in Feminist Disability Studies, which also inspired Mollow (2015) in developing her setpoint theory in her article Disability Studies Gets Fat, defending a biological setpoint for a weight the body wishes to be. However, instead of visualizing disability from the perspective of society as a single entity, let’s put ourselves in another person’s shoes, Sylvia Plath specifically, an acclaimed author who had mental illness throughout her lifetime, and whose works were influenced by it.
2 POETRY AND FEMINIST DISABILITIES STUDIES
In this section the reader will find important concepts that guide this study’s analysis of Sylvia Plath’s poems to discuss Feminist Disability Theory standpoint, investigating questions surrounding the main subject of mental illness. The theoretical framework is divided into two brief sections in this study, that entangle to form a groundwork for the following analysis section. In the first part, concepts such as what poetry is, or the importance of metaphors and other figures of speech in poetry, will appear with the objective of leading to insights on what is the confessional poetry style. In addition to that, how it started, and who first explored it, and came to influence poetry collections later on, just like Sylvia Plath’s Ariel. Also, it is significant to discuss the confusion around the term confessional, which names this style, making use of the present investigation to clarify some misunderstandings widely found in academic research, mainly those on Plath, which directly blends the authors’
life facts with certain accounts that appear in his/her works. In the second segment, this study moves to highlight the Feminist Disability Theory, its perceptions around the relation between Mental Illness and Feminism, and how it is possible to relate it with normative gender roles build in our society. Thus, the reader gets in touch not only with many central researchers on
Feminist Disability Studies that expanded the boundaries of the Feminist Theory, for instance, but plenty of others that also used it to research Mental Illness in literature, as well as connecting with gender roles. In short, this theoretical framework section aims at providing readers with a concrete ground with the main analytical categories and their academic discussions for understanding the poems Cut and Elm by Sylvia Plath.
2.1 Confessional poetry, Sylvia Plath and Ariel
Before diving into confessional poetry, Sylvia Plath, and the poetry collection Ariel, we need to step back to the basics to understand the very concept of a poem in literature.
Poetry is a literary genre that, according to Norma Goldstein (2011) Versos, sons, ritmos1, work as an effect that makes the reader return to the text once again trying to unveil secrets to understand multiple meanings contained within a text. For instance, the text might be in verses, like those created by Plath, Homer, Pessoa, Coleridge, and Bishop; or in prose poetry like in works by Ana C., Baudelaire, Auden, Eliot, and many more. Moreover, Ezra Pound (1951, p.36), in his ABC of Reading, categorizes poetry as “the most concentrated form of verbal expression”. From the point of view presented by Pound (1951), the language used in the genre of poetry is usually condensed in form - similar to poems structured in verses, but not limited by this format - and charged with meanings by its author, provoking the reader to revisit and explore it in three different ways. First, making use of words that technically creates picture, a visual image in the reader’s mind to establish settings and, sometimes, adds motion, an approach named phanopoeia (etymologically2 from Greek phanai, which means to show something, to make something visible, bring to light, plus poiein, to make/create). The second way is applying words to produce specific sounds and maintaining rhythm patterns that bring forth emotional feelings in readers, an approach called melopoeia (etymologically from Greek melos, which means song). For instance, the author can use this resource to create the mood of the poem, representing an overjoyed and funny sensation, a repulsive one, or even gloomy and oppressive feelings. Finally, Pound also introduces a mix of both aspects presented so far, producing logopoeia (etymologically from Greek logos, which means reason or words). Pound (1951, p. 63) explains that logopoeia happens when “inducing both the
1 Original title in Portuguese. My translation in English: Verses, Sounds, rhythms (2011).
2 www.etymonline.com/
effects by stimulating the associations (intellectual and emotional) that have remained in the receiver’s consciousness in relation to the actual words or word groups employed”. Note that these concepts will be revisited during the analysis of the selected poems for this study.
Between many linguistic aspects that are part of poetry and mainly support the possibility of multiple meanings in a small piece of information, it is important to highlight a rhetoric figure, more specifically, the metaphor. To put it simply, “a metaphor treats something as something else”, states Jonathan Culler in his Literary Theory contribution to the Very Short Introductions collection (1997, p.71). Furthermore, according to Terry Eagleton (1996, p.86) in Literary Theory: An Introduction, linguistically is possible to say that metaphor is created when one sign that possesses its meaning is changed for another sign, with a distinct sign to show readers how similar and complementary both are. For instance, Eagleton brings forth the possibility of connecting the sign passion to flame, and then to love, working as what he calls equivalents, and in doing so a word such as love is charged with even more meanings within it. Culler (1997, p.86) also completes his thoughts on metaphors using, as a more complex example, a passage from Wordsworth’s 1802 poem My Heart Leaps Up that says “The child is father to the man”, in other words, represents “the relationship of generations in a new light”. Of course, poetry is not only limited by metaphors, as Eagleton (1996, p. 86) clarifies, but it is very much different from general speech and usual written text forms, because it puts together “patterns of similarities, oppositions, parallelisms and so on, created by their sound, meaning, rhythm, and connotations”.
To advance in this study, it is fundamental to narrow down the genre of poetry, moving on to a unique style known as Confessional Poetry, which inspired many authors, Sylvia Plath included. The Cambridge Companion to American Poets, organized by Mark Richardson who also writes a long introductory chapter, presents the most recognized American authors of all times in a collection of articles by scholars and independent researchers spread mostly in North America and Asia. In chapter 28, entitled Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, and Confessional Poetry, the Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature at Northumbria University, Melanie Waters (2015, p. 379), states that the confessional poetry style was emergent in the 1950s and 1960s United States, of which the most renowned poets are Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, and Sylvia Plath. Also, she affirms this term was first coined by critic M. L. Rosenthal in 1959 (in a magazine called The Nation) when reviewing Lowell’s Life Studies poem collection. Waters (2015) remarks that
confessional poetry is characterized by content, not by a standard form, takes into consideration private fears, sufferings, as well as personal anxieties while approaching social taboos, like “mental illness, institutionalization, domestic violence, sexuality, incest, bereavement and suicide” (WATERS, 2015, p. 380). Furthermore, for the Foreword of the 1965 edition of Sylvia Plath’s Ariel, Robert Lowell (1965, p. vii) wrote that “Everything in these poems is personal, confessional, felt, but the manner of feeling is controlled hallucination, the autobiography of a fever”. Based on what has been shown previously, one can naturally assume confessional poetry is not directly related to the poet’s life facts, consequently, in the case of present study, do not consider Ariel’s poetic voice is just as Plath herself. It is significant for all research that somehow is related to confessional poetry to elucidate that one cannot misjudge the term confessional with autobiographical though, because they are not complete equivalents in literature.
There are reasons why readers and critics in general should not consider both confessional poetry style and the autobiography genre as interchangeable synonyms while dealing with literature. Waters (2015, p. 380-381) enlightens stating that Western societies customarily associate the nomenclature confessional without deviation to truth due to religious, legal, and political rhetoric which, as a result, link directly confessional poems and the lyric-self to the author personally, and his/her life facts. This general custom, according to scholars, should be avoided, for the reason that confessional poetry is not a mechanism for revealing truths publicly, but maybe half-truths (BRAIN, 2006, p.13). This fact relates directly to what Cesar (2016), in a compilation of her essays on literature entitled Crítica e Tradução3, acknowledged when connecting sincerity and faking in literary works.
Literature deals with this contradiction: suspects sincerity, pity and crystal- clear surfaces; starts faking to be able to say; denies believing word as a truthful mirror — even though it affirms explicitly.4 (CESAR, 2016, p. 220, my translation)
In other words, it is common in literature to deal with the dichotomy of reality x fiction, because some elements appear so real to the reader that starts considering it as a fact, an undeniable truth, although this is not how it works. Cesar is very precise with her words
3 Original title in Portuguese. My translation in English: Criticism and Transaltion (2016).
4 Original in Portuguese: A literatura mexe com essa contradição: desconfia da sinceridade, da pena e do cristalino das superfícies; entra a fingir para poder dizer; nega a crença na palavra como espelho sincero — mesmo que a afirme explicitamente.
declaring that in literature authors fake intentionally for being able to say what needs to get said, and as the reader, one should not consider it truth, even though on paper authors affirm explicitly. Finally, there is the problem of criticizing literature while taking into account the personal life of authors. According to Doche (2021, p.324), considering both poet and persona like a single entity obstructs a reader to enjoy a poem as a form of art, without taking advantage of all its literary potentialities. Consequently, this allows critics, researchers, and readers, in general, to take sides in favor of one author or another based on gossip and rumors, reaching positions of completely stopping reading the mentioned author(s) because something he or she said or did during their lifetime, not focusing on the literary work as art and apart from the writer. For example, during this research, many scientific papers were found in online repositories discussing the life of Sylvia Plath with her former husband, Ted Hughes, and how their complicated relationship is the main and only source of information to analyze Plath’s works. For this, it is necessary to assume a very critical positioning, since “You can spot the bad critic when he starts by discussing the poet and not the poem”, states Ezra Pound (POUND, 1951, p.84). Lastly, returning to Cesar’s 1977 essay o poeta é um fingidor5, she analyzes how Álvares de Azevedo, a 19th century Brazilian poet from the Romanticism movement, fakes his experiences and impressions freely in his poems. If someone wants or needs to research the life of an author aiming to understand who was the person, like Álvarez de Azevedo, the recommended method to identify and separate Azevedo’s fakery from what is real is suggested by Mário de Andrade and replicated in Cesar’s arguments in favor of analysis of letters and biographies, in which the real person is exposed, not through poems. Just as Fernando Pessoa’s Autopsicografia poem shows, we cannot believe entirely what a poet writes, because
The poet is a man who feigns And feigns so thoroughly, at last He manages to feign as pain The pain he really feels, (…)
(PESSOA, 1955, translated by Edouard Roditi)
Also, one of Ana Cristina Cesar’s (2013, p. 241) very short poems, available inside her Poética6 collection, says “we always think we are / Fernando Pessoa”7. So, this piece of text
5 My translation in English: the poet is a faker.
6 My title translation in English: Poetics (2013).
7 Original in Portuguese: a gente sempre acha que é / Fernando Pessoa
just shows that writers try to emulate what Pessoa’s persona declares saying that “The poet is a man who feigns”, faking feelings to be able to explore them through writing.
The collection of poems named Ariel, by Sylvia Plath, was first edited and published in 1965 by Ted Hughes, and republished in 2004, in an edition closer to the original manuscript, Ariel: The Restored Edition. In both publications, the reader will find a heroine- persona resisting a world dominated by normative gender roles that hurt, try to limit, and lie to her all the time, but still, she resists inside herself, supporting and confronting all odds.
Plath appropriates a centrally American tradition, the heroic ego confronting the sublime, but she brilliantly revises this tradition by turning what the American Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson called the “great and crescive self” into a heroine instead of a hero. (HUNGERFORD, 2016, p.
620)
Thus, Robert Lowell (1965, p.vii), again in the foreword for the 1965 edition of Ariel, claims the persona, the main voice presented in all Ariel poems, is “one of those super-real, hypnotic, great classical heroines”. Indeed, this voice contrasts notably from any other of Plath’s poetic productions, so much Frieda Hughes (2004, p.7) declared, in the Foreword for Ariel: The Restored Edition, it first appeared around 1961 amidst what she named transitional poems, frequently characterized with urgency, freedom, and force in its verses, something detached from previous works published in magazines or that are part of her first poetry compilation published The Colossus and Other Poems (1960). Moreover, unexpectedly the main purpose of this heroine-persona is not the resolution of conflicts though, actually her objective is to increase readers’ awareness about persistent social struggles, mostly associated with gender roles and mental illness, “heightening them to a degree of glowing intensity” that, consequently, “burns the outside to ashes, leaving a dismay image of what remains”
(BOYERS, 1969, p.141). For example, this terrifying image portrayed in Ariel is brought forward by Boyers (1969) in an article called The Trepanned Veteran in which it is explored in several poems, such as Lady Lazarus, Daddy, Poppies in October, Cut, Elm, that impact who is reading with intention to capture his/her attention to point out an accusatory finger on existing social problems. So, the readers will be able to find many themes represented in this poetry collection, most of it from the inner perspective of this heroine that reflects outside conflicts on marriage, hospitalization, depression, freedom, war, motherhood, and so on.
Plath’s poetry in Ariel is powerful, and as a result, the immediate reaction after reading it is
feeling uncomfortable, but at the same time inflames reflection on readers, like: “why so much of it leaves them feeling empty, evasive, inarticulate”, completes Robert Lowell (1965, p.viii).
2.2 Feminist Disability Studies, Mental Illness and Gender Roles
After presenting counterarguments against interpreting poetry, more specifically confessional poetry, based on the Plath’s private life, it makes necessary to establish another perspective to guide this research, which is the Feminist Disability Theory. Initially, researchers recommend understanding what disability is, not from a medical, phallic, gender- dominant perspective though. The reason for that is, as Garland-Thomson (2002) states, disability is a socially constructed narrative of the human body, that diminishes individuals by devaluing bodies – minds, too – that do not follow culturally created standards. She also exemplifies just noticing the existence of terms such as “beautiful, healthy, normal, fit, competent, intelligent” (GARLAND-THOMSON, 2002, p.5-6), to value certain types of bodies over those that are not and cannot get included in such categories. This artificially developed narrative may include many groups socially set, such as madness, fatness, ugliness, learning disabilities, hereditary conditions, cancer, HIV, traumatic injuries, and so on (MOLLOW, 2015; GARLAND-THOMSON, 2002;2005; DONALDSON, 2002, KITTAY, 2011; SONTAG, 1990). An example of how society builds many narratives around these categories is explored by Sontag (1990) in the book Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors, primarily focusing on diseases like Tuberculosis and Cancer, and then in a second part, collected later, on AIDS. Sontag’s theory shows innumerable social interpretations surrounding these conditions, mainly creating stigmas, consequently, isolation of individuals.
Both Garland-Thomson (2002) and Kittay (2011) agree in the matter that disability should be considered an essential aspect of being human because the body itself progresses naturally into disability as time passes, and “if we live long enough”, our bodies will eventually reach a moment in time depending on caring provided by another person, even for simple daily activities that might get complex. For example, Kittay (2011, p. 51) defends in her article The Ethics of Care, Dependence, and Disability, that dependency is a key concept towards equality, because reciprocal exchanges in human interaction builds inclusion, just as she
experiences with her daughter, whom with caring, “can be included, loved, and allowed to live a joyful and dignified life”.
Based on these arguments offered by Garland-Thomson and Kittay, this study considers that it is essential to research disability from a new perspective, one which socially takes into consideration inclusion and adaptation. For this, Garland-Thomson (2002, p.4) argues in favor of investigating disability in a feminist context with the purpose of unmasking and reimagining the way disability is portrayed. The reason that led to select understanding disability from a feminist perspective is due to the collaborative nature of Feminist Theory and its intersectionality, which makes it possible to bridge with another theory like disability studies. Moreover, it rationally exposes how the social system works supporting artificial norms, that end up rewarding a minority with power, privilege, and status inside this norm, creating deliberated systems of social oppression (GARLAND-THOMSON, 2002). For instance, Anna Mollow (2015), in an article called Disability Studies Gets Fat, invites disability researchers to get fat, in other words, to advocate in favor of the fat justice movement goals identifying with it. Between many examples of social oppression that Mollow lists, she highlights how determined design decisions both disregard and repress fat people in daily occurrences, like in clothing which only small sizes are visually displayed and available for customers; architecture, which buildings have narrow halls for a great number of people passing through, the way chairs are patterned in small sizes; and public transportation, in buses with small chairs and narrow corridors, cars with the small interior, not at all comfortable, adaptable or even inclusive. Also, the Feminist Disability Theory reimagines the way we think of our bodies as dynamic and distinct interacting socially with others, the environment everywhere, moving away from the idea of exclusion towards inclusion (GARLAND-THOMSON, 2005). As a result, the focus will lie not on disabilities themselves, but in the act of including as much as we can in our society, taking into account structural and design adaptations for the existing multitude of bodies, equal access to social services, medical treatments, and recognize dependency and caring as positive forms of inclusion (GARLAND-THOMSON, 2005; MOLLOW, 2015; DONALDSON, 2002, KITTAY, 2011).
To be able to analyze Mental Illness from the Feminist Disability Theory perspective, one must take into consideration the body. According to Donaldson (2002, p.110-111), in her article The Corpus of the Madwoman: Toward Feminist Disability Studies Theory of Embodiment and Mental Illness, a study that proposes a new look over physiognomy and
madness, represented in the character of Bertha Mason of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, she states: “One of the goals of a feminist disability studies theory is that mental illness should be to examine […] scientific tropes of the mad body”, in other words, the scientific characteristics identified as an integral part of the mad body must be taken into consideration.
The topic body is also explored by Garland-Thomson (2002) while explaining the role disability plays in some of the domains which are part of the Feminist Theory (as well as representation, identity, and activism). For instance, she explains why women and people with disabilities are so socially oppressed based on their bodies:
Perhaps because women and the disabled are cultural signifiers for the body, their actual bodies have been subjected relentlessly to what Michel Foucault calls "discipline" (1979). Together, the gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, and ability systems exert tremendous social pressures to shape, regulate, and normalize subjugated bodies. Such disciplining is enacted primarily through the two interrelated cultural discourses of medicine and appearance (GARLAND-THOMSON, 2002, p. 10).
Besides, Donaldson (2002) delineates in her text two very important concepts for the present study, the difference between impairment and disability, that is the biological, concrete material, the physical body itself, and the body concept socially created. In other words, an impairment is directly related to the real body of a person and its particular physical characteristics that make that specific body unique, and distinct when compared to others.
Meanwhile, the concept of disability is connected with notions produced by society around the body, narratives of the body already mentioned by Garland-Thomson (2002), Donaldson (2002), and Sontag (1990). Additionally, Donaldson explains that
This configuration of the impairment-disability system has been particularly useful for people in the disability rights movement, who combat stigma and who protect the civil rights of people with disabilities: by shifting attention away from the biological (impairment) to the social (disability), one can effectively identify and address discrimination. (DONALDSON, 2002, p.111)
Finally, Donaldson (2002) acknowledges that it is significant to cast light on the fact that an impairment can only evolve into a disability when society creates barriers in the environment around it, “affective, sensory, cognitive, or architectural”, which agrees with those presented by Mollow (2015) and reproduced in the previous paragraph, limiting, isolating, and not including people with disabilities in general.
Just as scholars presented so far recognized that women and people with disabilities are targets of constant social discipline, disabled women are particularly besieged by oppression socially inflicted. Garland-Thomson (2002, p.17) again explores this topic confirming that “Depression, anorexia, and agoraphobia are female-dominant, psychological disabilities that exaggerate normative gender roles”. Furthermore, Alita Balbi (2012) develops in the thesis “The Less Deceived: Subjectivity, Gender, Sex, and Love in Sylvia Plath’s and Philip Larkin’s Poetry, the argument based on two reasons: because gender controls how people interact; and gender outlines most of how an individual understands itself compared to society. So, if normative gender roles guide the way people interact with each other, and comprehend themselves considering others in society and culture, consequently, socially imposed oppression might cause psychological disabilities in women. Scholars such as Mathew (2016, p. 579) in her Femininity in Sylvia Plath’s “Ariel” Poems: ‘Daddy’ and ‘Lady Lazarus’, mostly based on biographical elements of analysis like letters, journals, and memoirs, states that literary works, such as Plath’s, “reveal a complete hatred for the existing social order, frustration, pain ecstasy […]”. As a result, the Ariel collection poems are charged with signs of anxiety, depression, and frustrations, which come from an imposed normative gender role. Also, Christopher Simons (2011) writes in his article Mimesis to Myth: Gender Role Anxieties in the Writing of Sylvia Plath demonstrates mythic binary oppositions in Plath’s poetry, which represents many women's struggles with gender roles anxieties in the 1950s8, forced by social expectations of parents and friends to get married, became a mother and end up working as a secretary, receiving an unequal wage.
Matthew (2016, p. 586) indicates Plath’s poetry in Ariel as a “female statement out of the sexual battles between intellectual man and literary woman”. Based on this, one could recognize the existence of gender role tension between males, regarded academics and critics, and female writers, who kept persevering in publishing their works, instead of assuming an expected and established social role of a mother, for example. Simons (2011) states that the dipole of career-family is one of the main struggles of the ascending feminism in the post-war period. As Balbi (2012, p.121) points out while analyzing Sylvia Plath’s and Larkin’s poetic works, “the main criticism [they] make toward gender roles is that they are imposed on individuals and their relationships, even though they may not, and rarely do, correspond to
8 Of course, women struggled and still struggle nowadays in all parts of the world with inequalities originating from gender roles anxieties, but makes necessary to note that this study will limit the scope to the period reflected in Sylvia Plath’s poetic works, between the 1950s and 1960s.
their subjectivities”. Thus, normative gender roles create social tension, which depending on the context around a person, could lead to psychological disabilities in individuals struggling against imposed oppressive social systems and their norms, especially women suffering the most.
3 CARPET ROLLS
Before moving on to the proposed analysis it is important to recover the previous chapters, quickly reviewing some aspects presented so far in this research. In the Introduction, Sylvia Plath is briefly presented mainly through works, and the main themes explored. For example, one can identify in some of her poems some aspects related to motherhood, feminism, or even wars. Also, the section presents mental illness as the analysis focus, and for that, the Feminist Disability Theory (GARLAND-THOMSON, 2002) perspective guides this study. For instance, Disability is first shown from a medical approach, full of stigmas and prejudice, that oppresses and isolates people that do not follow cultural standards. Next, Disability is shown from a Feminist Disability Theory sitpoint which opposes body norms and argues in favor of adapting and including people with disabilities in our society. Finally, in the second chapter, the Theoretical Framework is outlined in two segments: Confessional poetry, Sylvia Plath and Ariel, in which the concept of poetry is explored, how poets provoke readers with mental images and sounds (working together or separately), the use of rhetoric figures like metaphors, the confessional style, its characteristics, as well as misunderstandings generated by the name of the style; in Feminist Disability Studies, Mental Illness and Gender Roles, social narratives around the body are exposed, how society creates stigmas and oppress, how the Feminist Disability Theory can help to promote inclusion and caring of the existing multitude of bodies, and how normative gender roles can be related to mental illness in women.
The main object of the present study is the poetry of Sylvia Plath, precisely two poems inside the Ariel collection. This book is available in two versions: the 1965 edition, edited by Ted Hughes, containing 40-43 poems, in which Mary’s Song and The Swarm were exclusive of the US edition, meanwhile Lesbos was censured in some countries such as the UK, and a foreword written by Robert Lowell; and the 2004 edition, edited by Karen V. Kukil, which respects the original manuscript order and contents left by Plath on her table before committing suicide (titled Ariel: The Restored Edition), and a foreword by Frieda Hughes, Plath’s daughter. Besides small editorial differences between versions, readers certainly will be able to find the two poems analyzed in this section9: Cut and Elm. Furthermore, as
9 Additionally, a third possibility for finding the poem Cut and Elm is looking in the compilation book titled The Collected Poems, also edited by Ted Hughes, in 1981, and published by Harper Perennial.
presented before, Ariel is a tricky compilation, since researchers and readers in general link all content of the poems to Plath’s private life. Usually, the reason for identifying the poem’s persona as Plath herself is because of the style used called confessional poetry, inspired by private life characteristics and social taboos. Another reason is that in Western societies the word confessional is related to truth, and consequently, readers end up considering Plath’s poetry as reliable images mirrored of her own life. In summary, this investigation has no intention of using facts of Sylvia Plath’s life as a medium of analysis but explores the elements related to mental illness that appear in her poetry through Ariel’s voice/persona in Cut and Elm, using the Feminist Disability Theory perception in two ways: the first moment with an analysis of both poems, and later on comparing and contrasting how the personas of the poems express mental instability.
In this investigation, between a great number of poems available in the Ariel collection, Cut and Elm were chosen because of the hypothesis that both poems can be related to mental instability, and consequently, mental illness. For example, as will be demonstrated in this chapter, in Elm, some elements remind readers of mental illness like dark thing, shadow, the bottom, dark, metaphors that one could interpret as expressed forms of depression. Another reason is that the confessional style involves social taboos between its themes (WATERS, 2015), such as mental illness. Also, Cut and Elm can be read through the Feminist Disability Theory once both poems represent how multiple and unstable the human mind might be, tied with its experience of embodiment. In Cut, for instance, the wounded thumb made the persona mentally unstable to the point of associating the trauma on her body with other historical episodes of violence and trauma, or even thinking that her thumb is sabotaging and conspiring against herself. In summary, the following analysis explores mental illness and its different features in Plath’s confessional poems from a Feminist Disability Theory perspective. It is important to note these poems can be found within this investigation in the Annexure section, and throughout the analysis too.
3.1 Cut: Thumb Stump!
Before starting to analyze Cut10, some aspects of it need to be highlighted. First of all, the poem was written on October 24th, 1962, and consists of 40 verses divided into 10 stanzas, 4 lines each varying between 1-7 words. Also, one might note that Plath’s free versification contains rhymes, but not between all verses and, sometimes, quite close to one another, like wattle/bottle which are in different back-to-back stanzas, or in the same line, like pill/kill. Still related to rhymes within Cut, some are complete phonetic equivalents, although part of it includes near rhymes or similar sounds, such as balled/small.
Next, readers will immediately take notice of a dedication, located right below the title, to Susan O’Neill Roe. She worked as a live-in nanny for Plath, giving her “some relief and enabled her to write at night as well as early in the morning”, stated Steinberg (2004, p.108). Additionally, as the title suggests, Cut is about an accidental thumb cut, almost a mutilation, while cooking for a celebration at home. Another way of understanding the title of the poems is thinking about it in a metalinguistic way, which is related not only to the thumb’s cut, but also the cuts through and through the poetic structure of the poem. It causes so much pain that triggers the persona’s mind, tormented with traumatizing historical images of violence that she relates to her wounded thumb suffering, which is blamed for the incident at the end of the poem.
What a thrill –
My thumb instead of an onion.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of a hinge Of skin,
A flap like a hat, Dead white.
Then that red plush.
(PLATH, 1965, stanza 1-2)
In stanza 1, the persona is excited or anxious for some kind of celebration about to happen. According to Boyers (1969, p.143), that can be indicated in the opening line, “which is a giddy exclamation, almost light-hearted and playful”. Then, her own discourse is suddenly cut by a dash though, adding a tense pause, suspense in the air, something wrong
10 You can find the full version of the poem in Annexure 1.
took place. The persona states what happened, her thumb was cut instead of an onion, this information revealed two aspects: a location, in this case, a kitchen, consequently in a home setting; and an action, she is cooking meals for this party. Remember the poem was written in the 1960s, a period in which women still were expected to be housewives, and just as shown by Simmons (2011), a position carried with many anxieties that, possibly, could have led to the moment of accidentally cutting the thumb. Clearly, this is not the only way of understanding the situation around the poem, for it could simply have been a momentary distraction that drove to the cut. A description starts detailing the state of the thumb with its tip almost cut off, only a piece of skin remains connecting the whole thumb to the tip, comparing it to a hinge which indicates a possibility of door-like movement, showing the magnitude of the wound. Also, note that the hinge of skin is the enjambment present throughout the whole length of the poem, perfectly connecting and maintaining the poem’s content and form. For that, Sandra Stricker (2004) declares, in her article Plath’s Cut, an explanation that this description invites readers to go inside the wound, indicating something the persona would like to show us in there.
The second stanza continues the description that started in stanza 1. Because of the sense of continuation, one can identify the many enjambments connecting lines in the first stanza, as well as the first stanza to the second, just like the hinge still connects metaphorically both pieces of her thumb and the stanzas. Is it possible to think about what the use of enjambment means in the poem? The persona jokes through a simile, comparing the shape of the remaining skin to a hat that fits the thumb tip, and adds a description of it as dead white. The color white could indicate she thinks that the cut part of the thumb is dead, there is nothing to do to preserve it, and life has left the finger’s tip piece. Moreover, it could also be related to some images of violence that appear later in the poem. The stanza finishes with blood coming through the deep wound, appearing in an extravagant way.
Little pilgrim,
The Indian’s axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle Carpet rolls
Straight from the heart.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle Of pink fizz.
(PLATH, 1965, stanzas 3-4)
Cut’s third stanza is characterized by a personification of the thumb. The poem’s persona talks directly with it for the first time, an equal, gently naming it “little pilgrim”.
According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary11, a pilgrim is someone who journeys in foreign lands or travels to a holy place as a devotee, like those who first succeeded establishing a permanent colony in America. Also, it is the first time the persona brings historical images to the poem, in this case, the British pilgrims that traveled across the Atlantic Ocean to find a new home, a safe place to keep their devotion. Considering the fact this is a confessional poem, it is possible to infer that the use of a historical element, such as the pilgrims, could indicate the persona fled her homeland in search of a new place to live, an attempt to leave behind her private sufferings for a fresh start. Next, still addressing her thumb, she says that “the Indian’s axed your scalp”, which means that not only took the scalp but also cut a part of the head, more violent than it was supposed to be done. In this verse, there are two things to note: the term Indian could be considered insulting and outdated, a reflexive point of view of how society at that time perceived Native Americans. Furthermore, scalping was a “tradition shared by many Eastern tribes, [in which] scalping served to demonstrate triumph over an enemy, as well as capture of a foe’s personal power”, says Soodalter (2017) in HISTORY NET analysis of scalping by Native Americans and white frontier settlers during the period of expansion and conquering of West America territories.
Because of this argument, one could associate the fingertip loss as losing control of her own head, as an indication that she is also losing mental stability due to devastating trauma, not only related to the finger but something that happened before. The blood flowing around the cut creates an image similar to a turkey wattle, that keeps coming out without control creating a carpet around, a sign of the finger triumph over her mental instability, or traumas over her mind. Here turkey represents the Thanksgiving celebration that occurs at the end of November, an American tradition since the times of colonization, possibly the reason why the persona is in the kitchen, cooking. In addition, this is the start of the persona’s mental instability, consequently, of her mental illness, due to the severed finger which links episodes of violence in History to her own suffering.
Again, the presence of enjambment keeps connecting the stanzas, now by traces of blood, while leaving behind historical associations. What can prove the existing relation between wattle and blood is the first line of stanza 4, which declares the origin of the stream,
11 https://www.merriam-webster.com
the heart pumping blood for the whole body, consequently through the wound. Blood is easily related to life and energy, and because of the strong presence of blood in this stanza is possible to understand it as a loss of life energy. The persona looks like is walking somewhere, stepping on her own traces of blood that keep spreading around, while that seems to be happening she grasps her bottle of “pink fizz”. A bottle of pink fizz suggests an effervescent fermented alcoholic beverage, like a Rosé champagne or similar product, which explains why the persona jokes so much, she is, probably, intoxicated. Also, society signifies the color pink in many ways, most of them correlate it with femininity and women, which could reinforce the certainty of the persona being a woman. Besides, this stanza turns out the first rhyme of the entire poem, wattle/bottle, which generates musicality in the poem which, consequently, reinforces an image of a party going on using rhymes, thus creating the effect of logopoeia.
A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run, Redcoats, every one.
Whose side are they on?
O myHomunculus, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to kill The thin
Papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man –
(PLATH, 1965, stanzas 5-7)
In stanza 5, the aftermath of the cut takes sequence with the reveal of what is taking place in the house and who are involved with it. Although the cut situation is desperately out of control, the persona still tries to get involved with the celebration, in other words, this means despite her impairment, she still tries to survive and get socially involved in the world surrounding her. Again, another rhyme, musicality keeps connecting stanzas 4 and 5, fizz/is, meanwhile stanza 5 still has run/one in the end. As a result, so far, each stanza creates a connection with the immediate previous stanza, both by the use of enjambment and by rhymes. The next sequence could be interpreted as the reaction of guests facing her accident.
“Millions of Redcoats” works as a metaphor for British nationals, due to the fact that in the
American Revolutionary War English soldiers were easily identified with the color red. In particular, she uses American history to describe images of violence, possibly inferring that she (the persona) identifies herself as American. Another interpretation is offered by Stricker (2004), who considers the Redcoats as metaphoric blood-cell soldiers racing through the wound similar to British soldiers packing around American colonists. Boyers analyzes the sequence of historical images related to violence exposed in the poem, stating that
What the succession of cultural references calls forth are notions of constant violence and persecution (…). The various examples of institutionalized violence, violence which is manifested in modes of behavior and policies practices by an entire culture, are not identified merely as counterparts of the more intimate varieties of aggression we can find in our own private lives.
(BOYERS, 1969, p.144)
This investigation already showed how normative social roles play an important aspect in social oppression. Cut is another way of demonstrating and representing the bloody and aggressive society we live in, in which episodes of violence affect entire populations to fit a new model, a new order established by a powerful minority. Alternatively, it can likewise involve our private lives, attempts to fit in these new rules and social standards like the poem’s persona is likely attempting to do.
In the next stanza, the persona realizes the pain caused by the cut on her thumb. It starts with a question: Whose side are they on? Based on what was shown in the previous stanza, one can consider she talks about the guests or her own blood, even though both are not helping to keep the situation together. She is in pain, again addressing her thumb, considering it a metaphoric Homunculus, or simply a tiny version of an artificially created human, she recognizes is feeling ill. But, what kind of illness is it? This investigation has shown so far that it is, potentially, a mental illness, due to hinted images triggered by physical pain she feels caused by the cut on her thumb, which awakes traumatizing violent images from the past, consequently, a past of violence that affects her mind. Progressing to the next line, the persona continues talking to her thumb affirming “I have taken a pill to kill”, which indicates two important aspects. One can reflect literally that pill in this case is a painkiller used for pain relief, but if it is a metaphor, then another interpretation suggested is related to overdose.
Because of her state, considering herself ill and the pain kicking in, her mind was desperately trying to get rid of the pain by taking too many pills, a metaphor for suicide by overdose. An
additional aspect identified are the rhymes thrill/ill, and pill/kill, the last is curious because they are located in the same line, musically reinforcing an image of illness by the sound ill.
In the seventh stanza, the persona continues developing thoughts on the pain she feels.
The sixth and seventh stanzas are again connected by an enjambment, which explores how painful it is in verses 25-26, saying “The thin // Papery feeling”, similar to a sharp pain, consistently reminding its presence all the time. Once again, she talks directly to the severed finger, but this time accuses it of what happened, to the point of believing it is a
“Saboteur//Kamikaze man” on a mission, in other words, the thumb acted on purpose. This could be an indication she considers her own body is against her, like an act of treason because of her mental instability, socially observed as a burden that outcasts her from everything else. Following these accusations, there is a dash indicating another pause, but a pause might have a meaning, and specifically, this one is similar to passing out for bleeding too much, since it happens suddenly, in the middle of the argument between the persona and the thumb.
The stain on your Gauze Ku Klux Klan Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes and when The balled
Pulp of your heart Confronts its small Mill of silence How you jump – Trepanned veteran, Dirty girl,
Thumb stump.
(PLATH, 1965, 8-10)
The following stanza shows the result of the cut and how have been taken care of.
What catches our attention is the description of bandages wrapping the thumb to protect against external elements. The white gauze stained with blood is a metaphor for the KKK hood format, again an image that resembles violence, this time caused by horrible racist practices of the Klan against African Americans. Another way the persona understands the bandages is like a “Babushka”, a piece of cloth culturally used by Russian grandmothers that are passed to the next generations of women in the family. This last interpretation is very
interesting due to the idea of passing something from one generation to the next, which resembles genetic diseases, passed from parents (or one of the parents) to their descendants.
Also, an important remark is the cut still bleeds and the bandages need to get changed over and over, by reason of it “Darkens and tarnishes”.
Stanza 9 continues the development of the blood pouring from the wound. The enjambment once again connects the stanzas and keeps the sequence of her thought. This specific stanza is full of sexual elements in which, according to Sticker (2004), is possible to consider the word “balled” as a reference to sexual intercourse, and as a result, “pulp” implies the fleshy, fruity insides of the vaginal interior. Stricker (2004) states the last two lines refer to the thumb’s “heart”, its core is in conflict with a “mill of silence”, indicating disappointment and unhappiness of sexual restraint, similar to systematic repression of female sexuality.
Based on that, Sticker (2004) affirms the possibility of this fact echoing to African women, precisely elderly tribal women in Africa, who perform on young girls rituals of female genital mutilation. Also, Garland-Thomson (2002, p.18) makes a connection between women with disabilities and sexuality, using the example of Ellen Stohl, she shows how society understands that becoming disabled is a form of losing identity and power as a feminine sexual being, and this is a suggestion of normative gender roles at play.
In the final stanza, the persona ceases thoughts about the thumb. Before that, the first line links to the last stanza, now with a reaction or involuntary movement of the thumb when stimulated, similar to touching a sensitive spot. Also, there is a sequence of terms used by the persona, which looks like cursing with a sequence of metaphors. First, “Trepanned veteran”, a metaphoric idea of the wounded finger as a partner soldier with a wounded head in which a trephine was used to perform an unwilling surgery inside the skull, in its mind, what can point out mental illness again. Next, “Dirty girl” can be considered in a sexual way, relating to the previous stanza’s idea development of female sexuality repression, implying to readers a notion that she considers her finger as a woman too. Finally, “Thumb stump”, her finger hurts, but cannot be removed, just like the inferior part of a dead tree that remains in a piece of land and need to be extracted out of the way, or her mental illness she cannot get rid of it. She might want her thumb, a metaphor for her own mind, removed anyway (trepanned), because something is not right and now people will see it as a physical impairment for her. The only way the persona finds out is by taking pills, a dangerous task if you do not know what are you doing, a desperate measure relying it could fix her mind again. In addition to that, naming her
