Effect Of Sylvia Plath's Use Of Common Words On Reader's Mood

Literature allows the creators to portray expressive emotions behind masks of ink allowing readers to ponder the strategic placement of each phrase coupled with its meaning. Plath outwardly expresses her complex emotions and underlying feeling of conflict, contrasting to Teale’s depiction of Charlotte who expresses conflict rather painfully ashamed of her body and desires-betraying her ideals and upbringing. Contextually both biography and events occurring when Plath and Teale were creating are crucial; Plath’s concerns relating with relentless solipsism- with several suicide attempts and battling with mental health issues, while Teale’s 21st century views and knowledge on Freudian Theory influence her vision of Victorian repression, presenting a dichotomy and searing conflict in the characters; a schizophrenic undertone is present in the depiction of Bertha and Jane. As Schmidt says on Plath: … “It needed not only great intelligence and insight to handle the material…It takes a kind of bravery …” Teale’s “Bronte” shows the struggles to expose oneself choosing to hide truth, she exemplifies this through Charlotte removing her bandages and exposing herself within her novels, just as Plath’s “Lady Lazarus” reveals herself to the crowd.

“To negate one's self is not to commit suicide, rather it is the transformation of the social content of the 'self' to such a degree that it effectively ceases to exist in its present form.” Plath has transformed herself to the point where she would rather be non-existent. Plath employs negation in “Tulips” where she wishes to triumph from her transformation and end her life without interference. The tension in the poem is between the speaker’s desire for the simplicity of death and the tulips encouragement towards life. Her negation arises from trying to be someone who she never was; her marriage to Hughes began as a genuine passion yet transformed into an act that broke and exhausted her, leading to the creation of the “ Jailer” which she meant to include in “Ariel”. She presents a dichotomy of the victim and aggressor herself as the victim while the aggressor embodies various forms: Hughes, her mother, father, and those who read her poetry. “Tulips” possesses no rhyme scheme, the length of each line varies indicating her body is trapped in each stanza yet her mind is free to roam within. Straightforward direct diction allows us to see a woman who is broken and tired of being someone that she is not: “...Now I have lost myself, I am sick of baggage…” She sees herself in the light; “…flat, ridiculous, cut paper shadow… ”. The degrading adjectives she uses to describe herself render her non dimensional; absence of self and fear of identity is evident. Throughout she degrades herself to inanimate objects such as “pebble” “cargo boat” as if she is actively negating herself. 

She personifies the tulips: “breathing” “tongues” “talks to my wounds” - she fixates on negation throughout the poem but now is drawn to the tulips’ harshness. Perhaps this attraction could be balancing the oblivion of death with the responsibility of life however, could also be highlighting suffocation experienced from society around her. Plath presents us with a dichotomy, craving death, yet being drawn to life. Malcom suggests: “there was a strange conflict of what was expected of Plath and what was exacted of her.” Plath’s true thoughts were what were exacted of her she no longer had to act; in her poetry she could convey her mental process. Similarly Teale presents this through the eldest Bronte, Charlotte. Expected to be the obedient, genteel woman carrying out domestic tasks, yet within her literature she exposes her act and portrays her alter ego. Through anti naturalistic retrospective structure, Teale shows the childhood Bronte family. Here Branwell is gifted with a leather bound book; Charlotte reaches for it and is swatted away: “ but what am I to do with it?” Branwell has no use for the book. Teale shows Charlotte’s passion for literature and creativity, as she constructs a “beautiful daughter”, “tall, dark exquisite creature” and then Bertha enters in a “flame red dress” “rolls on the table in arousal”. Here Teale explores the conflict present in Charlotte, reinventing herself from the plain woman she was to a thing of beauty, yet this “beauty” degenerates into Bertha. Like Plath, Charlotte negates herself, doing as what is expected of her, her mind is plagued with desires and conflict about who she is, arising from her repression and being faced with the stares of society around her like the eyes of the tulips alongside the peanut crunching crowd. To free herself, she uses literature as an escape presenting her inner complexities.

Teale presents Charlotte as the docile Victorian woman, yet also presents the audience with a character suffering with personality disorder. When Charlotte left Haworth to study in Belgium she fell in love with her professor Mr Heger. 

Teale exploits this to formulate Charlotte’s dual persona by her creation of Bertha in “Jane Eyre”. In Act 2 with Branwell in Charlotte’s lap, Teale portrays Bertha driven with lust and sadomasochistic desire to be “beaten” and “be a dog” - she dehumanises herself paralleling to the animalism of Bertha’s visceral reactions: “rolling around in arousal” “biting violently”. Despite Charlotte’s craving to be established through her published works, through anti-naturalism, Teale’s diction shows us Charlotte’s inner desire was being dominated by men; heavily influenced by Charlotte’s upbringing in patriarchal society. Teale’s presentation of Charlotte is influenced by her post Freudian views. She clearly presents the “Id”-the primitive, instinctive component of personality and the “Superego”- incorporating the morals of society which are learned from parents and others. Teale’s vision of Charlotte possessing dual personalities is similar to Plath. However, we know that Plath suffered severe mental health issues leading to multiple suicide attempts before her suicide in 1963. Basnett suggests: “…She wrote out of a driving need to shape her fluctuating states of mind into poetry…” this is evident as for Plath, poetry was a way to organise her emotion. Her symbolism and figurative language allow us to gain insights into her mind. Plath’s complexity of persona is evident within “Ariel” through dichotomy and intense emotion just as Charlotte used “Jane Eyre” as extrication for her true emotions exhibited through Bertha. Plath’s fluctuating personality is present throughout; in “Ariel” the reader does not know whether she desires a complete stop to life or rebirth. 

She begins in sensory deprivation “stasis in darkness” “substance-less blue”, lost in life, yet by the final line the metaphor “…I am the arrow…suicidal at one with the drive into the red, eye the cauldron of morning…”- suggests rebirth and triumph like the phoenix in “Lady Lazarus” but also suggests her liberation from her social and physical self is so complete that she asks to be construed either as a visionary seer, or someone who has now decisively moved beyond all the ‘hooks’ that might attach her to everyday existence. “Lady Lazarus” tackles her mental struggle yet there it is being judged, seen as a form of entertainment by the “peanut crunching crowd”- she desires utter removal yet, by the end triumphs. As Basnett quoted: “… She is the phoenix the libertarian spirit she is also just a good plain resourceful woman…”- implying how the phoenix is a façade for Plath to conceal her emotions, her craving for death. Her indecisiveness, ambiguity, the conflict between victim/aggressor and, empowerment are present in “Ariel” through the direct allusion to historical figures: she presents herself as Godiva admired for her bravery and then puts on the mask again as Shakespeare’s Ariel, the androgynous Spirit finally gaining freedom from Prospero in finality, presenting a cascading force of emotion, ultimately showing Plath’s freedom is death.

Both writers present complexities regarding conflicted emotions towards parental and family figures. Plath depicts the anguish of an unresolved and ambivalent attachment with her father. The death of Otto Plath when she was eight was a decisive experience, drawing her towards death and representing the profound deprivation of this significant parental figure. She is angry with her father for leaving her in “ Daddy” the aggression evident in blatant monosyllabic phrases: “stake in your fat black heart”- In comparing her own psychological turbulence to the Jewish victims she dwarfed the gravity of their pain. Plath’s raw use of the Holocaust raises awareness and coincides with belief that personal experiences should be made relevant. Her lack of association with the horrors gives her the ability to see it realistically and imaginatively at the same time, perhaps even making the suffering relatable to contemporary readers. She turns private pain, oppression and victimisation, into a public image concerning the modern victim. To compare her father to Hitler raises questions about Plath’s relationship with her father. Irving Howe states: “There is something monstrous, utterly disproportionate when tangled emotions about one’s father are deliberately compared with the historical fate of the Jews”- implying that Plath must have had a peculiar relationship with her father causing the surfacing of complex multiple personas. Soon after distancing herself from her dead father’s influence, she does the same with her mother. She titles the poem “ Medusa”; an allusion to the Greek Gorgon, but also her own mother’s name was “ Aurelia”; the genus name for a jellyfish species is “ Aurelia Aulita”- the striking similarity is evidence that this was not done subconsciously. She sees her mother as invasive reducing her to a serpent through the verb “hiss” and noun “tentacle”. A tone of suffocation is established. Schmidt suggests: “her mother filled the space her father left with directive love which she relished and resented”- For Plath, the image of her mother as Medusa allows her to achieve psychological distance. She clearly felt trapped by the expectations she believed her mother placed upon her, that is, to be the perfect daughter, happy wife, loving mother, and, successful poet. Believing she would never succeed, Plath felt suffocated. Through her poetry (and, specifically, in “Medusa”), she tried desperately to free herself from those preconceived notions she felt her mother and others were forcing on her. 

Teale presents a striking contrast to the feelings towards parents in the play. Charlotte has a very close relationship with her father. Patrick was diagnosed with cataracts, his treatment was conducted in Manchester in which Charlotte accompanied him and built a close bond, surfacing in her novel through the likes of Rochester, who at the end of “Jane Eyre” loses his sight, just as her father had issues with his; leading audiences to question whether this was done deliberately. Teale’s expressionism is crucial here as she uses the actor playing Patrick to also play Mr Rochester exemplifying Charlotte’s inner desire for older men to be the protagonists in her novels. Teale constructs a conflicted relationship between Charlotte and Branwell. When he returns from London she is disappointed with him and when she begins to criticise him for his affair, he replies with: “ …Defiled. Oh yes wouldn’t you like to know what that felt like”- Branwell wants Charlotte to confess her inner conflict. His physical assault reveals Charlotte’s fascination with Branwell’s sin. She is disgusted by it, (Teale referencing the superego) yet she cannot stop dwelling on the “ hot little itch” (Teale surfacing the Id) He continues “assaulting her” and she remains passive- “thrown on her knees”. Their verbal sparring shows how Charlotte had a bond with her brother that was shattered because of his recurring failures. She is bitter, angry like Plath at her father; yet she shortly after, “puts [Branwell’s] head on her lap” and consoles him as Bertha writhes around forcing her to accept her conflict.

Teale’s exploitation of Charlotte’s complexities in persona are evident with her use of “Jane Eyre” through the depiction of Bertha. Despite this, Charlotte completely negates that she ever possessed multiple personalities and rather tries to deny it entrance and existence throughout the play. Teale’s construction of Charlotte inside and out, was designed to surface both the Id and the Superego. Unlike Emily who has accepted her schizophrenic nature evident in the duologues where Nelly is the strict, blunt voice directly contrasting to Cathy who is Emily’s alter ego. Teale’s subjectivity leads to the audience seeing Charlotte grappling with her identity; she cannot survive if one persona is trapped, she requires both to be the person that she is. Bertha is part of Charlotte yet she refuses to acknowledge this shameful fact until she sees Bertha on stage for the first time. After Branwell’s assault, Charlotte holds his head in her lap consoling him. Teale has Bertha “ emerge and crawl across the stage”- Bertha begins to release the repression and Charlotte’s id is uncontrollable. Through her blunt, short, direct sentences: “hurt me. Make me. Red, raw from the scratching. Won’t stop. Want me. Wish I was your dog ”-Charlotte’s darker desire is exposed and as Teale states, she “stares at the creature, both is fascinated and repelled”. She finally is confronted with her reality Teale forces her acceptance through derogatory, fast paced duologues between her id, herself who she is and her true feelings. 

Similarly like Charlotte, Plath In “Wintering” her intended final poem of “Ariel”, the speaker has come to her last, most important confrontation- with herself. With her work completed, and no demands upon her from others, she is able to give herself to the natural rhythms. “This is the easy time, there is nothing doing,” she says in the first line of the poem in a colloquial manner expressing her own ease and patience. A similar line later confirms that she views winter as a distinct phase, a certain kind of time: “This is the time of hanging on for the bees.” Her recognition that wintering is one part of a larger cycle of time is important because it qualifies the images of hibernation- leading readers to assume this is a poem about passivity and acceptance. The symbolic importance of the setting is further established through sound, repetition, and metaphors of the unconscious. The cellar parallels the core of the self, where normal perception fails her because she has never before been there. “Wintering in a dark without window, at the heart of the house... This is the room I have never been in. This is the room I could never breathe in”. The alliteration of w’s and h’s creates a tone of, solitary reflection, yet the sense of calm that these sounds convey doesn’t completely offset the agitation she feels in such surroundings. The repeated, “This is the room,” suggests how difficult it is for her to accept where she is. The gothic imagery, accompanied by the alliteration of the explosive b’s, incites her nervous dread: “The black bunched in there like a bat”. Plath concludes the poem with: “the bees are flying, they taste the spring” - in its finality she expresses a simple statement laced with ambiguity, is this hope and rebirth, or is this acceptance in death and conclusion? Linda Martin states “Expert and complicated poems, the series of five “Bee” poems describes the joy of creation, the role of the Bee community, the old queen who fights against dispossession by the more beautiful queens and survives”- Plath’s intention with “Wintering” draws clear parallels between life and death, acceptance and disregard.

Thus, both writers undeniably use literature as a means of expressing complexity of self as Plath’s poetry depicts feelings of entrapment by her gender, societal expectations and the need to conform, translating her state of mind into poetry, and Teale’s portrayal of the Bronte sisters influenced by their novels and her post 20th century knowledge. Plath’s emotive poetry is a method of exorcism, a way of releasing the demons of her past and achieving the freedom of expression she desperately desired, just as Teale presents Charlotte longing for freedom and acceptance. However, one must remember that the pain we see surfacing in Plath’s poetry cannot be comparable to Teale’s “Bronte” as she has constructed these characters through a post 20th century lens using expressionistic and antinaturalistic technique not reflecting the lives of the sisters themselves, only overstating the possibilities that could have occurred. Teale presents Charlotte’s mental struggle by using the novel “Jane Eyre”; she begins to realize that she must accept both parts to her persona to survive. Literature allows one to eradicate boundaries and convey the unspeakable, it is a powerful way of expressing the mental anguish and complexity of a shattered mind. Their suffering had resulted in phenomenal collections of raw emotion; what could not be verbalized, was inscribed.