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Sylvia plath and ted hughes comparative essays
Sylvia plath birthday present
Sylvia plath birthday present
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Compare and contrast the writers’ presentation of tormented mind in Rebecca and Birthday letters.
Rebecca, which is a bildungsroman novel and Birthday letters both have elements of tormented minds which are effectively caused by the darker side of love, memory, honesty and betrayal.
‘Rebecca’ looks into the faults of the class structure and upper class society. It shows the narrators inability to accept her new social class when marrying Maxim which adds to her torment. The narrator is told by Mrs Van Hopper she will never fit in at Manderly because of her social class, and tells her she is making a “big mistake" marrying Maxim and that she will "bitterly regret" it, this foreshows the struggle that she will face during her marriage with Maxim
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Maxim has to retain the honour of his name and this means putting on a facade about his marriage with Rebecca. This is because in the 1930s, when the book was set, divorce was viewed as a sinful and unacceptable act thus destroying his name. The novel Rebecca also shows the duties and limits and of both men and women in 1930s and the social stigma that they faced, Maxim was tortured by the fact Rebecca was going to supposedly have another man son and he would inherit his fortune, it tormented him to such an extent he killed Rebecca. Maxim is tormented by the memory of his marriage to Rebecca and his eventual murder of her which adds to his inability to move on with his life with the narrator, the very fact that Ted Hughes produced ‘Birthday letters’ 35 years after Sylvia’s death displays that he can neither move on and is still tormented and troubled by her death. Almost every poem in ‘Birthday Letters’ is addressed directly to Plath, after so many years he still has clear memories of events and experiences that he shared with …show more content…
The poem ‘The Dogs Are Eating Your Mother’ refers to the actions of feminist critics who blamed Ted Hughes for Sylvia Plath’s death. Sarah Lyall said Plath was turned into a “tragic feminist icon” and that Ted Hughes’s was casted, “in the eyes of many, as her executioner”. Her death was seen as horrifying. The poem ‘The Dogs Are Eating Your Mother’ references the way in which Sylvia died, Hughes stated how “She leapt from our window” it seems less disturbing if she leapt from a window in comparison to placing her head in the oven with the gas turned on. If she leapt out of a window it would have been as though she was flying. Likewise in Rebecca, the narrator was suggested by Mrs Danvers to commit suicide in front of an open window when she says “Why don’t you go none of us want you here”. This shows the extent of how tormented both the narrator and Sylvia were, as they were both driven to the thought of suicide. The narrator was tormented because she could not control her marriage and would rather have died than to see it fail and Rebecca was tormented because she had cancer and could not comprehend the thought of her beauty deteriorating. Ted Hughes wanted privacy after Sylvia’s death for the sake of his children. This is expanded upon in the poem through the single stanza of “so leave her”.
Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca Rebecca has been described as the first major gothic romance of the 20th century; Mrs. Danvers’ character is one of the few Gothic interests within the novel. Her unnatural appearance and multi-faceted relationship with Rebecca provides scope for manifold interpretations and critical views. Furthermore, Mrs. Danvers connection with Rebecca and Manderlay is a sub-plot in itself, making Mrs. Danvers the most subtly exciting character in the novel.
While Rebecca was with her mom she was portrayed as an African American young women, living in a lower class home, and attending an underprivileged school. Rebecca’s mom is preoccupied with work so much so, that she fails to notice how alone and miserable Rebecca really is. She then turns to her friends for the love and affection that she is not receiving at home. In an article Rebecca states “As a little girl, I wasn 't even allowed to
In the novel, Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway, a royal wife, shares almost similar views of the world with Septimus Warren Smith, a former soldier who fought in the World War I and now suffering from hallucination. These two characters share many things in common albeit the fact that they are not known to each other and they have not shared anything in their lifetimes. The novel is an in-depth “day-in-the-life” view of Mrs. Dalloway featuring what she thinks about her life, other people’s lives, her real feelings and the feelings of other people. She is told the story of a former World War I soldier and she takes her time to reflect in the man’s life and experiences. His life appears more like hers not in how they both live but their feelings, which is why I hold the view tha...
The themes that are similar in both of the novels are that guilt is detrimental to oneself and that redemption is key to happiness. These points are especially
With the final lines give us a better understanding of her situation, where her life has been devoured by the children. As she is nursing the youngest child, that sits staring at her feet, she murmurs into the wind the words “They have eaten me alive.” A hyperbolic statement symbolizing the entrapment she is experiencing in the depressing world of motherhood.
One of the main themes in Rebecca, by Daphne Du Maurier, is identity. This theme is evident in the main protagonist. The first way the main protagonist displays the theme of identity, is by not having a specific name. She is a simple, plain servant to Mrs. Van Hopper. Mrs. Van Hopper treats her as if she is nothing, making it obvious that the main protagonist does not know who she truly is, other than Mrs. Van Hopper’s servant. The second portrayal of the theme of identity in Rebecca is displayed when the main protagonist becomes involved with Maxim. Maxim finds the main protagonist unique and intriguing. He quickly starts to try and figure out who the main protagonist truly is by spending alone time with her. Soon, Maxim realizes she is
In the book, Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier, there exist a big emphasis on social class and position during the time of this story. When we are introduced to the main character of the story, the narrator, we are right away exposed to a society in which different privileges are bestowed upon various groups. Social place, along with the ever present factor of power and money are evident throughout the story to show how lower to middle class groups were treated and mislead by people on a higher level in society. When we are introduced to the narrator, we are told that she is traveling with an old American woman; vulgar, gossipy, and wealthy, Mrs. Van Hopper travels across Europe, but her travels are lonely and require an employee that gives her warm company. This simple companion (the narrator) is shy and self-conscious, and comes from a lower-middle class background which sets up perfect for a rich man to sweep her off her feet. The narrator faced difficulties adapting to first, the Monte Carlo aristocratic environment, and second, to her new found position as Mrs. De Winter, the new found mistress of Manderley.
In his narrative poem, Frost starts a tense conversation between the man and the wife whose first child had died recently. Not only is there dissonance between the couple,but also a major communication conflict between the husband and the wife. As the poem opens, the wife is standing at the top of a staircase looking at her child’s grave through the window. Her husband is at the bottom of the stairs (“He saw her from the bottom of the stairs” l.1), and he does not understand what she is looking at or why she has suddenly become so distressed. The wife resents her husband’s obliviousness and attempts to leave the house. The husband begs her to stay and talk to him about what she feels. Husband does not understand why the wife is angry with him for manifesting his grief in a different way. Inconsolable, the wife lashes out at him, convinced of his indifference toward their dead child. The husband accepts her anger, but the separation between them remains. The wife leaves the house as husband angrily threatens to drag her back by force.
...her room she will no longer be bound to her husband but rather free to do what she wants whenever she chooses to. Mrs. Mallard is at last apart from a person who was once somebody she loved but then started to dislike him because of his selfishness towards her. Then at last she comes to a point when she sees him and dies because she knows she will be jailed up again with his possession with her.
When Sylvia Plath was told her father died at the tender age of nine, she bitterly said, “I’ll never speak to God again.” In her brief but indispensable writing career, Plath distinguished herself in the poetical realm with her body of work that includes but is not limited to poems, short stories, and one semi-autobiographical novel. Her legacy lives on through her dark themes laden with powerful images such as the moon and skulls, while a father-type figure acts as a significant force either as a central antagonistic power or an influential shadow looming in the background. Brooding thoughts and despondent emotion overcome the reader when faced with one of Plath’s numerous works such as “Daddy,” “The Colossus,” and “Lady Lazarus.” Sometimes straightforward in understanding, Plath’s works contain intermittently placed, unique choices in diction like “mule bray, pig-grunt” throughout her works. On February 11, 1963, Plath was found with her head placed in her kitchen oven (death by carbon monoxide), yet she continues to resonate with people to this day; is it because we are able to relate to her melancholy and heartache? Or because of our sickening-interest in her suicide and the events that led to it? Maybe it is both. Because of her father’s death at a young age, Sylvia Plath’s poems underlies a theme regarding her suicidal demise and victimization at the hands of a patriarchal society, particularly from her husband, Ted Hughes, and late father, Otto Plath.
The most evident motifs in both novels are madness, nonacceptance and the concept of betrayal. that
Sylvia Plath was a troubled writer to say the least, not only did she endure the loss of her father a young age but she later on “attempted suicide at her home and was hospitalized, where she underwent psychiatric treatment” for her depression (Dunn). Writing primarily as a poet, she only ever wrote a single novel, The Bell Jar. This fictional autobiography “[chronicles] the circumstances of her mental collapse and subsequent suicide attempt” but from the viewpoint of the fictional protagonist, Esther Greenwood, who suffers the same loss and challenges as Plath (Allen 890). Due to the novel’s strong resemblance to Plath’s own history it was published under the pseudonym “Victoria Lucas”. In The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath expresses the themes of alienation and societal pressure on women in the 1950s through symbolism, an unconventional protagonist, and imagery.
Most women in Mrs Mallard’s situation were expected to be upset at the news of her husbands death, and they would worry more about her heart trouble, since the news could worsen her condition. However, her reaction is very different. At first she gets emotional and cries in front of her sister and her husbands friend, Richard. A little after, Mrs. Mallard finally sees an opportunity of freedom from her husbands death. She is crying in her bedroom, but then she starts to think of the freedom that she now has in her hands. “When she abandoned herse...
“Spinster” by Sylvia Plath is a poem that consists of a persona, who in other words serves as a “second self” for the author and conveys her innermost feelings. The poem was written in 1956, the same year as Plath’s marriage to Ted Hughes, who was also a poet. The title suggests that the persona is one who is not fond of marriage and the normal rituals of courtship as a spinster is an unmarried woman, typically an older woman who is beyond the usual age of marriage and may never marry. The persona of the poem is a woman who dislikes disorder and chaos and finds relationships to be as unpredictable as the season of spring, in which there is no sense of uniformity. In this poem, Plath not only uses a persona to disclose her feelings, but also juxtaposes the seasons and their order (or lack thereof) and relates them to the order that comes with solitude and the disorder that is attributed with relationships. She accomplishes this through her use of formal diction, which ties into both the meticulous structure and develops the visual imagery.
Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist, and short-story writer who suffered from depression. The death of her father, when she was only eight years old, was what triggered her depression. And because of that, most of her work revolve around the death of her father and her attempts of suicide. In her poem Lady Lazarus is about her attempts of suicide and how she feels about death. This theme of death and suicide can also be seen in the poems Daddy, which is about her deceased father, and Edge which is about a person who is about to commit suicide. Sylvia plath´s poetry centrally tends to discuss suicide and death as the main subject, which can be exemplified by the poem Lady Lazarus.