Compare attitudes to suffering in poems from Plath’s Ariel.

Throughout Sylvia Plath’s poetry, various attitudes to suffering are presented. Most of her poetry encompasses a strong urge to escape the suffering unavoidably present in life by dying, however some aspects of her poetry lead the reader to feel as though she is content to live with this pain, merely accepting suffering as inevitable. As well as this, the suffering of women as a result of the patriarchal values of the 1950s displays Plath’s critical view of the position of women – so far that she mocks sexist archetypes and attempts to satirize the marginalisation of women. In Plath’s poetry, the poetic voice depicts how females often suffer as a result of their gender, which modern feminists would support. In The Applicant, the poetic voice says, ‘now, your head, excuse me, is empty.’ This highlights how women are portrayed as inferior to men and incapable of thinking for themselves. Firstly, this elucidates the unfair treatment they receive because of their gender, but it also expresses the gender imbalance in education at Plath’s time, shown through the phrase ‘your head… is empty.’ The New Historicist critic would support this by the fact that most girls left school by the age of 15 (Gender, Work and Education in Britain in the 1950s, Spencer), a fact of which Plath was constantly disdainful. Hence, Plath’s portrayal of the suffering of women is an excellent barometer for the time period during which she was writing, supported through her use of the conjunction ‘now’, making it all the more shocking to a contemporary audience due to its stark realism. Perhaps this explains why Plath was more popular as a writer posthumously, as her contemporaries may have found her writing too taboo or too realistic. Similarly, in Lady Lazarus, Plath satirizes the objectification of women. Mocking ‘the big strip tease’ by associating it with non-sexual body parts ‘hand and foot,’ the poetic voice brings to light the ludicrous nature of this sexism. Structurally, the following line uses hyperbaton to reverse the standard phrase, changing it to ‘gentlemen, ladies,’ in order to place men first, just as they are seen to be superior in society. Additionally, the irregular rhyme pattern throughout the poem changes here, with ‘ladies’ being one of the only words to rhyme in the poem, with the noun ‘knees.’ This indicates that, just as ‘ladies’ fit second within the rhyme scheme, the same is true within society. Thus, women suffer as a result of their marginalisation, clearly referenced within Plath’s poetry.