Daddy

Sylvia Plath’s poetry is well known for its deeply personal and emotional subject matter. Much of Plath’s poetry is confessional and divulges the most intimate parts of her psyche whether through metaphor or openly, without creating a persona through which to project her feelings, and through the use of intense imagery. Plath’s attempt to purge herself of the oppressive male figures in her life is one such deeply personal and fundamental theme in her poetry. In her poem, “Daddy”, which declares her hatred for her father and husband, this attempt is expressed through language, structure, and tone. (Perkins, 591)

Sylvia’s father, Otto Plath, was a German immigrant and an entomologist who specialized in bumblebees. Plath described him to a college roommate as “an autocrat . . . I adored and despised him, and I probably wished many times that he were dead. When he obliged me and died, I imagined that I had killed him.” (Perkins, 590) Plath’s father was a tyrant and ruled over her with an iron fist. Plath felt that her father, to suit his particular needs and whims, molded her. Plath’s relationship with her husband, poet Ted Hughes, was not much healthier. In 1962, after only seven years of marriage, Plath learned that her husband was having an affair. Two months later and five months before Plath committed suicide, Hughes left her for Assia Gutman. Plath had been subservient and coy towards Hughes, deeply loving and admiring him.

Hughes took Plath for granted and left her when he was no longer interested. She was devastated.

It is through such poems as “Daddy” that Plath expresses her feelings of malice toward her father and husband for the way that they treated her. Plath felt dominated by both her father and husband. “Daddy” describes these feelings of oppression and her battle to overcome the power imbalance. The intensity of this conflict is made extremely apparent as she uses examples that cannot be ignored. The atrocities of Nazi Germany are used as symbols of the horror of male domination. The constant and crippling manipulation of men, as they introduced oppression and hopelessness into her life, is equated with the twentieth century's worst period. Plath’s father is transformed into a “Panzer-man,” a “Fascist,” and a “bastard.” Words such as Luftwaffe, the aircraft known as the “Angels of Death” used by Adolf Hitler during WWII, and Meinkampf, Hitl...

... middle of paper ...

...ounces them all and frees herself of their demands in the last stanza:

There’s a stake in your big fat heart

And the villagers never liked you.

They are dancing and stamping on you.

They always knew it was you.

Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.

This stanza reveals that Plath has finally ridden herself of her father’s control- he is dead now. Plath is most likely represented in the villagers who “never liked” her father and are now “dancing and stamping on him,” rejoicing over his death. She always knew he was a monster and no she is rid of him. Plath has cleansed herself of the domination placed on her by her father and husband. (Giles, 2229)

Bibliography

Giles, Richard F. “Sylvia Plath.” A Critical Survey of Poetry. Englewood: Salem Press, 1982. 2220-2231.

Perkins, David. “Sylvia Plath.” A History of Modern Poetry. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard, 1987. 590-595.

Plath, Sylvia. “Lady Lazarus”. Ariel. New York: Harper & Row, 1966. 6-9.

Plath, Sylvia. “Daddy.” The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry. Ed. Jay Parini. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. 675-678.

Stevenson, Anne. Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1989.