Sylvia Plath and Her Attitudes Regarding Men

In reading "Ariel" by Sylvia Plath, I found the poem "Daddy" to be most representative in the tone of this rather autobiographical collection of Sylvia Plath's poems. In "Daddy" Plath tells of her relationship with her father, Otto "Daddy" Plath, her ex-husband, Ted Hughes, and men in general. She uses morbid imagery to express her negative feelings toward men. This imagery sets the tone of hopelessness and malice evident in other poems, including "Lady Lazarus" and "Tulips." Although these other works tend to be accusatory and morbid in nature, of Sylvia Plath's poems,"Daddy" is most directly so. Even in the first stanza of the piece, during which she describes her life as a foot inside of an oppressive black shoe she sets an attitude of despair. This metaphor also shows the submissive nature of her relationship with her father, and later with her husband. Her lifelong attempt to overcome this submission to men continues as she describes the "murder" of her father. In the second stanza, she explains, "Daddy, I have had to kill you, you died before I had time" alluding to her father's death and her struggle to "murder" his memory. In reality, Sylvia's father, Otto Plath, died when she was only 8 years old. For thirty years following his death, she sensed that her father's memory lived on inside her and negatively influenced all other relationships with men, especially her husband, Ted Hughes. (Axelrod)

After describing her relationship with her father as that of a foot within a shoe, Plath goes on to describe her father as a "bagful of God" and the "freakish Atlantic," referring to enormity with which she saw her father as a little girl. As a child, she felt Daddy Plath was huge and imposing, or "Big as a Frisco Seal." In this section, she again refers to her father's death, by mentioning a "Ghastly statue with one gray toe." The gray toe mentioned alludes to the gangrene that developed in his foot, a result of years of untreated diabetes. His foot was eventually amputated, but several complications that followed the procedure led to his death in 1940 (Axelrod)

Sylvia Plath goes on to compare her father to a Nazi and herself a Jew. This metaphor is similar in nature to the one in which Daddy Plath is a shoe. In both comparisons, Sylvia Plath is the passive figure, whether she is an encased foot or a submissive Jew living in a concentration camp. Her father represents the aggressive figure, as a cold shoe, or a Nazi tyrant. Like others in the collection of Sylvia Plath's poems, this describes her subservient position in her relationship, saying:

"I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue"

This metaphor that relates father to Nazi becomes more meaningful when one realizes the fact unmentioned in Sylvia Plath's poems: Daddy Plath was never a member of the Nazi party, and as a German American , he followed the events in Europe leading up to World War II with distress (Ford) By using metaphors that include harsh words such as "Luftwaffe," "barbed wire," and "Meinkampf" Sylvia Plath informs the reader of characteristics such as aggression and malice that she finds present in all men, but especially Daddy Plath.

Plath continues with negative metaphors about her father, by comparing him to a devil, or the "black man who bit my pretty heart in two." She tries in vain to escape her devil father by "trying to die" and allusion to her suicide attempt, during which she overdosed on sleeping pills, but survived when discovered and taken to the hospital where "they stuck me back together with glue." She continues with autobiographical metaphors involving the marriage to her husband, Ted Hughes, the supposed recreation of Daddy Plath.

Sylvia Plath's poems often taken on a morbid nature, and this is especially true in the end of "Daddy," for Sylvia Plath ends the poem by comparing Daddy Plath and Ted Hughes to vampires. In fact, Sylvia Plath compares the men to each other, by mentioning, "The vampire who said he was you...and drank my blood for seven years." The seven years mentioned alludes to Plath's seven years of marriage to poet, Ted Hughes, before Ted Hughes left Sylvia Plath for another woman. Finally, Sylvia Plath is able to kill the memory of Daddy Plath that has lived in her and through her husband, Ted Hughes. She compares the difficulty of this to driving "a stake in your fat black heart."

Sylvia Plath's poems often use sinister images to set a tone of despair-this is especially true for the most popular of Sylvia Plath's poems: "Daddy." The metaphors of shoe, Nazi, devil and vampire effectively showcase her negative attitudes toward men, especially her dead father and ex-husband, poet Ted Hughes. Using morbid imagery and gruesome metaphors and similes, Sylvia Plath both creates a biting autobiography and clearly conveys her hatred towards men.

Works Cited

Axelrod, Steven. "Sylvia Plath." The Literary Encyclopedia.

Ford, Karen. "Sylvia Plath." Modern American Poetry. .

Plath, Sylvia. Ariel. Danbury: Faber & Faber, Incorporated, 2001.