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Feminism: A Political, Cultural, and Economic Movement That Aims at Establishing Greater

Sylvia Plath struggled with mental health issues stemming from the loss of her father at a young age. This contributed to fears of abandonment and insecurity that are reflected in her poetry conveying melancholy and death. Her work was also influenced by feminism and psychoanalytic theories like the Electra complex. Plath is considered an iconic symbol of the creative writer struggling against patriarchal societies and gender roles.

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42 views1 page

Feminism: A Political, Cultural, and Economic Movement That Aims at Establishing Greater

Sylvia Plath struggled with mental health issues stemming from the loss of her father at a young age. This contributed to fears of abandonment and insecurity that are reflected in her poetry conveying melancholy and death. Her work was also influenced by feminism and psychoanalytic theories like the Electra complex. Plath is considered an iconic symbol of the creative writer struggling against patriarchal societies and gender roles.

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anjumdk
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Plath is one of those feminists who have sought to represent the suffering of women in a

particular world. Focusing on feminist issues through the lens of her own experience, she
was equally driven by a desire to achieve this while coping with a desperate lack of selfconfidence and low self-esteem. The loss of her father at an early age contributed to her
fears of abandonment and insecurity.
Nearly all her poems convey a sense of melancholy, gloom and death.
Feminism: a political, cultural, and economic movement that aims at establishing greater
rights and legal protection for women. Feminism includes some of the sociological
theories and philosophies concerned with the issues of gender difference (Heywood &
Drake, 1997).
According to Freud psychoanalysis, the Electra complex interpreted her longing to her
father. This led to repetition of the images of the dad and father figure in most of her
works. A representative example of Electra Complex in Sylvia's works is, Daddy
which was written in 1962, in which there is an angry tirade against the father who has
deserted her.
Since ancient times, people have linked creativity with madness or mental disorder.
According to one source, Plato asserts that creativity is a divine madnessa gift
from the gods, and Seneca records Aristotle's saying, No great genius was without
a mixture of insanity.

Plath's poetry is typically criticized for its display of emotion, excessive selfabsorption,
inaccessible personal allusions, and nihilistic obsession with death. In addition, some
critics object to references to the Holocaust in her later poetry, which, in the context of
Plath's private anguish, are viewed as gratuitous and inappropriate.
Plath herself is considered to be an iconic symbol of the creative writer and poet and
victim of male and patriarchal societies. Sylvia Plath struggled throughout all her life to
occupy the position appropriate to her, rejecting all discouraging voices inviting her to be
like other women who only mother their husbands and children, and not run after their
ambitions and dreams competing with the male counterparts. Thus, Sylvia Plath is
considered to be an influential and important American poetess of the twentieth century.

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