Sylvia Plath: Poetry and Existence 9781472505897, 9781472513939, 9781472536150, 9781472535412

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
1 Who is Sylvia?
2 Poem for a False Birth
3 The Baby in the Bell Jar: the Symbolism o f the Novel
4 The Schizoid Problem in Creative Writing
5 Doing, Being and Being Seen
6 The Fabrication of False Selves and Daddy
7 Mother and Children
8 Be(e)ing
9 Psychotic Poetry
10 The Artist, Responsibility and Freedom
Bibliography
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
R
S
T
V
W

Citation preview

SYLVIA PLATH Poetry and Existence

Bloomsbury

Academic

Collections:

English

Literary

Criticism

This carefully chosen selection of 56 classic works of literary criticism comes from the archives of Athlone Press, one of the most distinguished publishers of English criticism i n the period 1950—2000. The volumes in the collection cover all periods and styles of literary criticism, from Beowulf to Pinter, and include works of literary theory as well as studies of specific periods, writers or works. Authors include Herbert Grierson, Barbara Hardy, Christopher Norris, George Kane, EMW Tillyard, Patricia Ball, Geoffrey Tillotson, David Holbrook, and John Sutherland. All titles are issued in cased bindings as complete facsimile editions; ebook versions are also available. Titles i n English Literary Criticism are available in the following subsets: English English English English

Literary Literary Literary Literary

Criticism: General Theory and History Criticism: Pre-1700 Criticism: 18th—19th Centuries Criticism: 20th Century

Other titles available in English Literary Criticism: 18th—19th Centuries include: Aldous

Huxley: A Study of the Major Novels, Peter Bowering

Dylan Thomas:

The Code of Night, David Holbrook

The Existential and its Exits: Literary and Philosophical Perspectives on the Works of Beckett, Ionesco, Genet and Pinter, L. A. C. Dobrez The Irish Drama The Filibuster: The Literary

of Europe from Yeats to Beckett, A Study of the Political

Criticism

Theory and Personality: T.S. Eliot: Mystic,

ofT.S.

ideas of Wyndham Lewis, D. G. Bridson

Eliot: New Essays,

The Significance

Katharine Worth

ofT.S.

David Newton-De Molina Eliot's Criticism,

Son and Lover, Donald J. Childs

Brian Lee

SYLVIA PLATH Poetry and Existence David Holbrook

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC COLLECTIONS English Literary Criticism - 20th Century

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L O N D O N • NEW D E L H I • NEW Y O R K • SYDNEY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Pic 50 Bedford Square London WC1B3DP UK

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www.bloomsbury.com B l o o m s b u r y is a r e g i s t e r e d t r a d e m a r k of B l o o m s b u r y P u b l i s h i n g P i c First published in 1976 This edition published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Publishing pic © David Holbrook, 2013 Allrights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or b; any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storag or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. David Holbrook has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the author. Bloomsbury Academic Collections ISSN 2051-0012 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 9781472505897 (Hardback) ISBN: 9781472513939 (ePDF) ISBN: 9781472536150 (Bloomsbury Academic Collections: English Literary Criticism — 20th Century) Entire Collection ISBN: 9781472535412 (Bloomsbury Academic Collections: English Literary Criticism) L i b r a r y of C o n g r e s s C a t a l o g i n g - i n - P u b l i c a t i o n D a t a A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

Printed and bound i n Great Britain

Sylvia Plath Poetry and Existence

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Sylvia Plath Poetry and Existence by

David Holbrook

T H E A T H L O N E PRESS L o n d o n and Atlantic Highlands, N J

This paperback edition first published 1988 by T H E A T H L O N E PRESS 44 Bedford Row, London WC1R

4LY

and 171 First Avenue, Atlantic Highlands, NJ 07716 ISBN

0 485 12062 3

Originally published 1976 by The Athlone Press © David Holbrook 1976 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Holbrook, David Sylvia Plath : poetry and existence. 1. Plath, Sylvia — Criticism and interpretation I . Title 81V .54 ISBN

PS3566.L27Z/ 0-485-12062-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Holbrook, David Sylvia Plath : poetry and existence. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Plath, Sylvia — Criticism and interpretation. 2. Psychoanalysis and literature. [PS3566.L27Z71988] ISBN

0-485-12062-3

I . Title.

811'.54 (pbk.)

Printed and bound in Great Britain at the University Press, Cambridge.

87-14410

The strife o f thought, accusing and excusing, began afresh, and gathered fierceness. The soul o f L i l i t h lay naked to the torture o f pure interpenetrating inward light. She began to moan, and sigh deep sighs, then m u r m u r as i f holding colloquy w i t h a dividual self: her queendom was no longer whole; i t was divided against itself. One moment she w o u l d exult as over her worst enemy, and weep; the next she w o u l d w r i t h e as i f i n the embrace o f a fiend w h o m her soul hated and laugh like a demon. A t length she began what seemed a tale about herself, i n a language so strange, and i n forms so shadowy, that I could but here and there understand a little... Gradually m y soul grew aware o f an invisible dark­ ness, a something more terrible than aught that had yet made itself felt. A horrible Nothingness, a Negation positive infolded her; the border o f its being that was yet no being, touched me, and for one ghastly instant I seemed alone w i t h Death Absolute! I t was not the absence o f everything I felt, but the presence o f N o t h ­ ing. The princess dashed herself f r o m the settle to the floor w i t h an exceeding great and bitter cry. I t was the recoil o f Being f r o m Annihilation. George Macdonald, Lilith

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Acknowledgements I should like to thank the many students i n Cambridge, Australia and Devon, f r o m w h o m I have learnt much i n discussing the poems o f Sylvia Plath. I should like to acknowledge the generous support o f Masud Khan, the distinguished psychoanalyst and Editor o f the International Library o f Psychoanalysis. I have learnt something f r o m a study b y Connie Richmond, The Worlds of Sylvia Plath, an essay for the Certificate o f Education, University o f Kent. I am also under a considerable debt to m y wife, f r o m w h o m I have tried to learn about woman over twenty-five years, and from whose responses to this book I have gained fresh insights into feminine modes and meanings. I am also indebted for help from D r Peter Lomas, the psycho­ therapist, w h o read the manuscript for me, and to Miss O l w y n Hughes for information about certain aspects o f the poet's life. D.H.

NOTE A l l excerpts from the writings o f Sylvia Plath quoted i n this volume are reprinted by arrangement w i t h the Estate o f Sylvia Plath and Faber & Faber L t d . A t its request the permission fees required by the Estate have been sent to Writers' Action Group.

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Contents 1 W h o is Sylvia?

i

2 Poem for a False B i r t h

23

3 The Baby i n the Bell Jar: the Symbolism o f the N o v e l

65

4 The Schizoid Problem i n Creative W r i t i n g

109

5 D o i n g , Being and Being Seen

135

6 The Fabrication o f False Selves and Daddy

151

7 Mother and Children

187

8 Be(e)ing

212

9 Psychotic Poetry

239

10 The Artist, Responsibility and Freedom

271

Bibliography

298

Index

303

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I Who is Sylvia?

This book attempts to use interpretations from psychoanalysis and kindred disciplines to improve our understanding o f th6 poetry o f Sylvia Plath. I t is an extended essay i n literary criticism undertaken because I value Sylvia Plath's w o r k as an artist, and believe that she has important things to tell us about her particular k i n d o f experience. I also believe that she suffered a characteristic sense o f existential insecurity i n our w o r l d , the most significant aspect o f w h i c h was her feeling that she m i g h t lose her sense o f meaning i n life and her capacity to t h r o w her imagination over the world—the capacity to perceive i n an intentional way. N o t unre­ lated to this, as I believe, she had, i n her private phenomenology, a fatally false sequence i n her logic: she believed that death could be a pathway to rebirth, so that her suicide was a schizoid suicide. Again, this cannot be discussed w i t h o u t reference to the atmo­ sphere o f the contemporary arts, which displays at this moment a dangerous rejection o f life, m o v i n g towards nihilism and an abandonment to hate. M y first paragraph, however, reveals a dilemma. W h o or what do we mean, when we speak of'Sylvia Plath'? M y material is the poetry and the novel: I am not a biographer. B u t i t w i l l be clear that i f I deduce from certain kinds o f symbolism i n the poetry that Sylvia Plath had schizoid characteristics and the special k i n d o f problems which belong to this condition, I am extrapolating f r o m the poems to the person, and here there may be, or may not be, confirmation or illumination from biographical facts. Y e t the poems are often fictions, while others are clearly autobiographical. The lovely poem The Night Dances is evidently about her o w n actual baby: and this is confirmed by a note by her husband.

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Leaving Early, by contrast, w o u l d seem to be a poem about an imaginary person w h o visited the w o m a n upstairs. But, evidendy, i f I am to examine the meanings o f the poems i n the light both o f the psychology o f their author and o f her groping towards a philosophy o f existence, I must also talk about the w o m a n as revealed i n the poems and novel. This is the more important n o w that 'Sylvia Plath' is the object o f a fashionable cult, not least because o f her suicide and her schizoid tendencies, and is also a heroine o f women's liberation movements. Her rejec­ tion o f certain kinds o f femininity (and, as I w o u l d put i t , her hatred o f certain aspects o f woman), for example, have been pre­ sented at certain poetry festivals as important human truths. M y view, w h i c h I shall t r y to justify by extended analysis o f her poetry, is that very often what she says about male and female and other subjects is grossly distorted and false. M y interpretation o f these falsities is part o f a whole series o f works, in w h i c h I am t r y ­ ing to distinguish between true and false solutions to the problem o f existence, between philosophies based on love and those based on hate. Another reason for discussing the 'actual w o m a n ' , despite the dangers and difficulties, is that Sylvia Plath's w o r k presents us w i t h a disturbing problem, not least i n education. I f we believe that the reading o f literature refines the emotions and helps to civilise us, what then do we expect to gain when we offer adoles­ cent students works for study w h i c h seriously falsify experience? In schools today, students are often obliged to apply themselves for examination purposes to essentially nihilistic works f r o m modern w r i t i n g , i n an atmosphere i n w h i c h they are not urged to examine these works from their o w n lights, because that m i g h t annoy the examiner, but must simply absorb them and submit to the implication that these works are offering profound human truths. Yet, i n the light o f philosophical anthropology, such as I try to invoke here, these works may be offering falsifications or forms o f moral inversion which are absurd, or even deranged, and may even do harm to the sensitive and responsive young person. For all her immense creative effort, Sylvia Plath could not save herself. W h a t , then, do we say about the effects o f her art on us? A n d especially on the young? Can we detach ourselves from the seductive idolization o f suicide and infanticide in Edge (Ariel,

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p. 85), written only t w o weeks before she committed the former act herself? H o w do w e regard the zany idolizations o f suicidal techniques i n The Bell Jar? Some m i g h t say that this doesn't matter—art is only art and does not affect us so directly. Yet, i f we give assent to the libidinal attachment to death i n Edge, what values can we invoke to condemn those w h o b l o w up children w i t h terrorist bombs or harm their consciousness w i t h cruel exploitation? A n d what do we say about her o w n act, w h i c h deprived the w o r l d o f a fine creative spirit, orphaned her o w n children, and jeopardised the life o f a neighbour? W e can surely only disconnect our response to a poem like Edge from events in life which follow from i t as a direct consequence, either b y a cul­ tivated aestheticism w h i c h cold-bloodedly refuses to recognise links between culture and living, or by a lapse into moral inver­ sion w h i c h is prepared to sacrifice life to the indulgence o f the senses or the solipsistic m i n d . B o t h these tendencies are, o f course, found i n contemporary culture. B u t the terrible cruelty i n the former is made clear enough i n the character o f Gilbert Osmond in Henry James's Portrait of a Lady, leading to a serious forfeiture o f capacities for l i v i n g (as i n Isabel Archer), and also i n the charac­ ter o f Prince Daniyal i n L . H . Myers's The Near and The Far, i n w h o m the aesthete's indulgence goes w i t h cruelty. The latter, analysed recendy i n Phillip Rieff's Fellow Teachers, w i t h its Roman antecedents, is a f o r m o f egoistical nihilism that could mean the end o f civilization itself. T o abjure discrimination is no service to the artist herself, i n this case, w h o saw love, i n her best w o r k , as 'the one/Solid the spaces lean on . . . ' The essential value to invoke is concern and, as we shall see, the poem Edge is false because i t conceals in its seductive beauty a false logical step—luring us into accepting that the beauty-enjoying T has the right to destroy the life i n others. As the expression o f inner truths, art cannot be exempted any more than any other human activity f r o m the need to pursue t r u t h : art may illuminate falsities, but i f i t seeks to glamorise or enshrine falsity, then i t must be questioned—not least at a time when survival itself is i n question. Care and concern, in the light o f philosophical biology, are primary realities o f the evolutionary process: i f care and con­ cern are jeopardised, as they are by the substitution o f hate for love in the ideology o f much contemporary art, we need to examine

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the likely consequences. As John V y v y a n says, discussing the emergence o f birds and mammals in his Sketch for A WorldPicture (1972), one o f the requirements for a more complicated adult form in animals was 'a longer span o f childhood, demanding a steady increase in parental care, and from this sprang a unique set o f relationships. It is evident that these relationships, when they were further developed i n the group, have led to vices as well as virtues; but i t is fair to emphasise the virtues. I n a mammalian family, the parents must love and teach; the young must respect and learn; and dispositions appropriate to these needs are w o v e n into the fabric o f a mammalian community. There is nothing mysterious, therefore, i n the evolution o f what we call the virtues. The higher forms o f life could not have come into existence w i t h ­ out them; and i t w o u l d require only one generation o f purely selfish parents for all the mammals—and most o f the birds—to become extinct' (p. 143). This v i e w o f the evolutionary basis for love w o u l d seem to be reconcilable w i t h the w o r k o f philosophical biologists like F.J.J. Buytendijk, the psychoanalysts and existentialist analysts, and w i t h phenomenology. Yet, in a great deal o f contemporary art i t is the vices w h i c h are stressed. A n d at the centre o f this movement i n the arts there is to be found a hatred especially o f the child: for example, Ted Hughes's play Orghast, as described i n Orghast in Persepolis, focusses on a hatred o f the infant and displays immense guilt about this. I n his wife Sylvia Plath we find a hatred and fear o f an infant w i t h i n her, unborn and menacing w i t h its hunger, combined w i t h an out-going love o f her o w n children, finding them at times fulcrums for her whole existence (Nick and the Candlestick). I n Edge these t w o ambivalent streams converge, and the love o f her children becomes an intense, but insane, desire to merge them into her o w n perfect birth-death. Fortunately, she was spared the enaction o f this terrible confusion and left her children alive. F r o m this brief digression into the realms where poetry and philosophy—and psychology—merge and meet, i t w i l l be evident that for m y purposes I cannot restrict myself to a mere literary analysis. W e cannot solve the problems w h i c h arise from even a single phrase ('masturbating a glitter', for example) w i t h o u t m o v ­ ing beyond the words into the realms o f investigative psychology,

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and this w i l l mean, i n some spheres, conjecturing, about the life, as I did i n m y study o f Dylan Thomas. A n d i n analysing the psychology o f Sylvia Plath I shall take certain works, like the poem Tulips, or the novel The BellJar, as largely autobiographical, while reminding myself that there is also a sense i n w h i c h they are fictions, too. B u t there are places where Sylvia Plath makes i t plain—some­ times b y slips—that these works are autobiographical.* For example, i n The Bell Jar, the T-voice talks o f the presents she received as a g i r l w o r k i n g i n journalism: For a long time afterwards I h i d them away, but later, when I was all right again, I brought them out, and I still have them around the house. I use the lipsticks n o w and then, and last week I cut the plastic starfish o f f the sunglasses case for the baby to play w i t h . (pp. 3-4) B u t whose baby? A t the end o f the novel there is no question o f 'Esther' being married, or having a baby. The slip betrays quite clearly that Esther 'is' Sylvia Plath, and that when she speaks o f 'being all right again' she is speaking o f her o w n breakdown and recovery: the baby was M r s T e d Hughes's. M y justifications for employing insights f r o m various forms o f psychotherapy are several. First, I believe that w e cannot under­ stand her poetry well, and at times not at all, unless we recognise that she has a topography o f her o w n , w h i c h is that o f the w o r l d as the schizoid individual sees i t . Secondly, as I have suggested already, we must defend ourselves against her falsifications, especially when they are the object o f cults, i n an atmosphere i n which we are being urged to cultivate our psychoses and endorse decadence and moral inversion. Here, as w i t h Edge, i t is often a question o f re-examining our 'cool'—that is, our tendency to accept a certain low-key tone o f voice. One o f the aims o f the schizoid individual is to persuade us to accept his sometimes fanatical inver­ sions o f reality and truth, as common-sense. Thus, i n discussing suicide, Sylvia Plath writes: 'The trouble about j u m p i n g was that i f y o u didn't pick the right number o f storeys, y o u m i g h t still be * S h e d e s c r i b e d The Bell Jar as ' a n a u t o b i o g r a p h i c a l a p p r e n t i c e w o r k w h i c h I h a d to w r i t e i n o r d e r to free m y s e l f f r o m the past' ( q u o t e d i n N a n c y H u n t e r S t e i n e r

(1973), P- 85).

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alive when y o u h i t b o t t o m . I thought seven storeys must be a safe distance' (The Bell Jar, p. 144). There are some paragraphs o f Jonathan Swift, another schizoid writer, i n w h i c h one is invited to follow along w i t h the same cool­ ness, as throughout A Modest Proposal. B u t here w e need to pay especial attention to the words 'right' and 'safe'. Here, the 'right' number o f storeys is that number w h i c h make up a height that w i l l certainly k i l l y o u : 'safe' means that there w i l l be no chance o f survival, and thus the w o r d takes on a grotesque ambiguity. But, once we unravel the schizoid false logic, i t is possible to see where these ambiguities come f r o m : for her, i t was 'safe' to be dead, as w e shall see. B u t f r o m our point o f view, we must insist, to be smashed to death is not 'safe', and since we do not share her myths about suicide, we w o u l d expect to be alive when we h i t bottom. The delusions w h i c h make such a series o f sentences insane, however, are beneath the surface, belonging to the inner psychic reality. A n d they belong to another schizoid characteristic o f Sylvia Plath—her dissociation f r o m her o w n body, and the inner reality o f 'somewhere else'. Esther speaks as i f she wants to k i l l something ' i n ' her o w n b o d y : ' I t was as i f what I wanted to k i l l wasn't i n that skin or the thin blue pulse that j u m p e d under m y thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get at' (The Bell Jar, p . 156). ' A whole lot harder to get at' is a light-hearted w a y o f saying something that is terribly true —that we can exert no power over the 'psychic tissue' and all its inherent faults: but her use o f the phrase is ominous, i m p l y i n g a murderous impulse. Because any approach to psychic reality is so disturbing to us, even to begin to explore such problems o f exis­ tence as those o f Sylvia Plath often arouses fierce resistance and opposition. (It is quite c o m m o n for people to have to leave seminars o n her poems, because they cannot bear the inevitable confrontation w i t h psychic reality.) Fortunately, we are able to examine the truths o f psychic reality more coolly today, as a result o f the w o r k o f a number o f inves­ tigators since Freud. A n d we are particularly fortunate in having a number o f recent studies w h i c h have penetrated the schizoid problem: R. D . Laing's The Divided Self; H a r r y Guntrip's Schizoid Phenomena, Object-relations and the Self, W . R. D . Fairbairn's Psychoanalytical Studies of the Personality, and various papers

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b y D . W . W i n n i c o t t , Robert Daly, Aaron Esterson, Marion Milner, Melanie Klein, and Rollo M a y . A l l this w o r k w i l l be here referred to as the 'schizoid diagnosis': I believe that a phenomenological analysis o f the poetry and symbolism o f Sylvia Plath also extends the schizoid diagnosis, and already (according to Masud Khan) the present w o r k has been applied, on being circulated i n manuscript, i n clinical w o r k . Sylvia Plath's message about schizoid experience, i f we can hear it, may unlock many private languages, and help schizoid individuals to find what they most desperately need—the opportunity to communicate. It is immediately clear that Sylvia Plath had a 'dividual self. Throughout her w o r k there are images o f selves w h i c h are p e t r i ­ fied, cracked, automaton, patched up, and divided against t h e m ­ selves. Perhaps one o f the most characteristic is the double self i n In Plaster i n w h i c h the real body-self inside the plaster cast is the 'tenant', and w i t h o u t w h o m the outer self w o u l d 'perish w i t h emptiness'* A t the heart o f the self in Poem for a Birthday there are all kinds o f objects, including a (male) puppy, while elsewhere inanimate objects, like darning dollies, take on a terrifying life o f their own—while the self in despair becomes a bundle o f weapons (T fly about like clubs', Elm). The tenant i n her dividual self at times seems only to b l o o m 'out o f her as a rose/Blooms out o f a vase o f not very valuable porcelain . . . '—and this theme o f inner worthlessness is often struck, as she searches w i t h i n herself for substantiality, sometimes finding only the vacuum at the heart o f a tornado. It should be clear by this point that I am not simply saying that Sylvia Plath was ' i l l ' , or dismissing her w o r k as 'sick'. There is a schizoid condition in her: but this cannot be discussed w i t h o u t reference to the problem w h i c h the schizoid individual is singu­ larly equipped to recognise—the problem today o f living i n a schizoid society, i n a w o r l d which seems to have lost its meaning. As H a r r y Guntrip shows, from the case-histories he discusses (1961), there are some individuals w h o are extremely successful i n their professional w o r k yet w h o go to the psychotherapist and declare ' I am nobody'. This type, he says, is found i n high propor­ tion i n intellectual life, which attracts those w h o , because they are schizoid, create an abstract w o r l d i n which to live, because they cannot find themselves real, i n a real body, i n a real w o r l d , i n

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ordinary existence. B u t as V i k t o r Frankl (1969) declares, a person may at times be i l l , or may i n some aspects o f his existence be dis­ turbed—yet his actual existential anguish cannot be dismissed as 'sick'. T o be tormented b y the problem o f the meaning o f life, or b y existential dread, is to be human, or even especially human. So, we need to examine both the disturbed falsities and their philosophical extrapolations, and to search for what Fairbairn detects i n any schizoid person: 'deep d o w n , the schizoid needs to love and be loved'. T o this w e may add the need for meaning, as emphasised b y existentialist therapy and DaseiM-analysis.* Masud Khan has said (in a private communication) that Sylvia Plath 'pushed to its extreme a process o f nihilistic purity o f self w h i c h started w i t h Rousseau... the Utopian notion o f an idolized inner self invariably entails an unacknowledged and permissive random hate o f the actual given human reality and all that i t offers'. This may be applied not only to Sylvia Plath but to our culture i n general, as i t is affected b y fashionable nihilism and the cult o f 'schizophrenia'. Discussing the problems o f the psychotherapist i n w o r k i n g w i t h schizophrenics i n an essay 'The M a d Psychiatrist', Leslie Farber (1966) relates h o w the therapist may come to fall i n love w i t h the high drama o f his patients, so that ordinary life comes to seem 'pallid and artificial'. This is the danger o f a schizoid culture: i t comes to put that care and love on w h i c h human exis­ tence depends into contempt, by contrast w i t h the great dramas o f hate. The greatest danger i n this is that even our best human potentialities, satisfactions, and meanings may become inaccessible to us. This is not the place for a detailed examination o f theories o f the origins o f the condition k n o w n as schizophrenia, or o f the schizoid state. I have examined various theories elsewhere. The most fashionable attitude today (developed f r o m some o f the 'politics o f experience' o f R. D . Laing and especially f r o m the w o r k on the 'death o f the family' o f D a v i d Cooper) is that 'society' creates situations i n which some families tend to mystify certain weaker members, and make them into scapegoats. Peter Lomas, i n True and False Experience (1973), takes a more moderate • D i w e m - a n a l y s i s takes it c u e from H e i d e g g e r ' s c o n c e p t o f ' b e i n g - u n t o - d e a t h ' . Its c e n t r a l c o n c e r n is w i t h the i n d i v i d u a l ' s n e e d to assert a m e a n i n g f u l sense o f ' b e i n g there' against n o t h i n g n e s s , o f significant existence. See p . 295 b e l o w .

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view that 'a family w h i c h has such a powerful capacity to under­ mine the adolescent has probably failed to provide the child, at an early age, w i t h a strong sense o f identity: i n other words, the p r o ­ cess is a cumulative one' (p. 123). The weakness o f identity comes before the social processes o f mystification and scape-goating: we need to look at deeper existence problems. Various incidents and elements i n a child's life may impair his or her capacities to acquire this strength o f identity: the too-early birth o f a sibling, a parent's illness or death, or even the child's o w n hypersensitive expectations may well contribute to feelings o f emptiness and weakness. W i t h Sylvia Plath, this is a delicate problem to discuss. Even i f one only interprets the writings, as I intend to do, i t is impossible to avoid noticing that her protagonists tend to blame others, especially the mother, and later (as i n Daddy) the father. Yet i t is also clear from (The Bell Jar for example) that the actual mother did everything she could to help her daughter— and, indeed, reports say that the poet had a happy relationship w i t h her mother, w h o n o w has to bear not only the anguish o f her suicide but also the unhappiness o f seeing the evident hatred i n the poetry made plain. I n truth, i t w o u l d seem that the angry blame directed at mother and father i n some o f Sylvia Plath's writings has no grounds, but arises out o f the same delusions which made her regard suicide w i t h such rapture or fantasy her father as a Nazi. For some reason, because o f some failure o f the normal p r o ­ cesses o f g r o w t h o f identity, she felt 'let d o w n ' b y 'life'—and this blame turned against those from w h o m she had expected some­ thing she felt she d i d not get. I n no normal dimensions o f experi­ ence is there any evidence that anyone d i d less than a human being could d o : the origins o f her schizoid state, I suggest, lay i n p r o ­ cesses which no-one can consciously alter, between infant and mother. Peter Lomas (1967) quotes f r o m Thomas Blackburn's poem For a Child: A n d have I put upon your shoulders then, W h a t i n myself I have refused to bear, M y o w n and the confusion o f dead men, Y o u o f all these, m y daughter, made m y heir, The furies and the griefs o f which I stayed Quite unaware?

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It is important to stress here, at the beginning, i n order to t r y to alleviate some o f the inevitable distress caused not b y interpreta­ tion, but b y the mere existence o f the w o r k , that the processes and experiences o f existence w h i c h Sylvia Plath expresses and w i t h w h i c h w e must deal i n analysis belong to a sphere quite beyond the categories o f blame or attribution o f faults and neglect. She expresses such blame: a great deal o f what we have to say exone­ rates those w h o brought her up and lived w i t h her. She expresses hate: we declare this w i t h o u t justification. Those w h o d i d bring her up may console themselves by the emphasis placed i n our criticism on the immense creativity o f her questing spirit—that i n itself is tribute to their care and love. The confusion in her soul over life and death was a basic fault w h i c h arose out o f processes so subtle that they are quite beyond human volition, as are catastrophes such as spina bifida or m o n ­ golism. W h i l e her o w n capacity for love and j o y was given her b y her family and those w i t h w h o m she lived, the conditions i n her inner reality were evidendy so deep that no-one could have done anything to alleviate or cure them, unless i t were a psycho­ therapist o f profound insight and infinite patience, like the late D . W . W i n n i c o t t . W e only have to read such cases as the very complex ones o f 'Lola Voss' or 'Susanne U r b a n ' i n the w o r k o f L u d w i g Binswanger, to realise h o w much effort w o u l d have been required, far beyond the resources o f any untrained person. So, while we need to recognise that to be spiritually distressed is only to be human, i t is also clear that Sylvia Plath was mentally ill, as she herself tells us, at times. She had periods o f not being able to cope, and she attempted, and eventually managed, suicide, and these were clear signs, whatever Alvarez may say, o f psychopathological states. Yet because o f her schizoid condition, she was also able to have insights which make her seem at times more sane than w e ordinary people are. W e need only consider the way i n w h i c h she penetrates to the cold-bloodedness o f the w o r l d o f fashion j o u r n a l ­ ism, i n The Bell Jar. 'Fashion blurbs, silver and full o f nothing, sent up their fishy bubbles in m y brain. They surfaced w i t h a h o l l o w pop' (p. 104). The emptiness o f this w o r l d , she shows, is an emptiness o f consciousness—and has at its heart a fundamental and poisonous spiritual vacancy, symbolised by the meal o f

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ptomaine-contaminated crab-meat which the girls consume as part o f a p r o m o t i o n racket. (When they nearly prove 'expendable' to the advertising w o r l d , they are sent 'presents' to help them get well—all o f w h i c h empty hedonism the novelist delineates w i t h a dry, caustic irony.) I t is i n such a w o r l d that m u c h more de­ humanized atrocities can be carried out, like the execution o f the Rosenbergs, while those w h o are corrupted by its ethos are indif­ ferent, and live comfortably b y the morality o f hate: ' " I ' m so glad they're going to die." Hilda arched her cat-limbs i n a y a w n ' (p. 104). As we shall see, because o f her schizoid condition, this writer is able to plumb the deeper problems o f being-in-the-world. Yet the poems and The Bell Jar present us w i t h a number o f perplexing difficulties, t o o — o f h o w to respond. W h i l e we can easily share the author's horror at the dehumanization o f the American scene, our problem is that w e cannot share her solutions. Her protagonist's enthusiasm for suicide, and the way i n w h i c h this enthusiasm is glamourised, are a desperate and inverted 'remedy'. N o r can w e share what goes w i t h these—the protective sang-froid o f her prose whose flippancy belongs itself to the dehumanization (and is akin to the terrible 'objective' language of'body-count' and 'overkill'): 'The idea o f being electrocuted makes me sick . . . I thought i t must be the worst thing i n the w o r l d ' (The Bell Jar, p. 1). Perhaps we put this failure o f tone d o w n to the callowness o f a y o u n g girl, trying to be sophisticated. Is Sylvia Plath guying the k i n d o f individual w h o adopts the 'cool' o f fashionable journalism? W e may be less sure w h e n w e come to this: 'for a while i t seemed to me that the only w a y to stop it w o u l d be to take the column o f skin and sinew from w h i c h i t rose and twist i t to silence between m y hands' (p. 130). This is h o w Esther thinks about her mother, w h e n she cannot sleep, and the older woman's snoring annoys her. B u t w h y does Esther hate her mother so much? ( ' I could see the p i n curls on her head glittering like a r o w o f little bayonets', p. 129).* * In view of m y remarks above (see page 10) about the autobiographical nature of much of Sylvia Plath's work it is perhaps desirable that I should note explicitly that in her o w n writings the frequent references to mothers and mother-figures have a complex motivation and must not be construed as references to Sylvia Plath's real mother. N o r must any comments I base on them be taken i n this sense. As I try to show, profound questions o f the artistic identity and of the develop­ ment of the human psyche are involved here. T h e forces at work are largely

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O f course, the American suburbs are oppressive w i t h their silence, and Esther finds a menace to her freedom i n the creaking o f D o d o Conway's domestic pram wheels—one can see w h y Sylvia Plath appeals to the Germaine Greers o f our w o r l d . B u t w h y is she made to say: ' I made a point o f never living i n the same house w i t h m y mother for more than a week' (p. 125)? The answers to our perplexities i n responding to such w o r k , I believe, may be found eventually, i f we pay sufficient attention to her signs and symbols. A persona is trying to say something to us (of w h i c h the author could have been unconscious). The w o r d 'glittering', for example, is a key w o r d . One theme we shall have to pursue is that o f the child, the infant, w i t h i n us and, to use Fairbairn's most important insight, the 'regressed libidinal ego'. This is a dynamic o f the personality w h i c h embodies the hungriest part o f us, w h i c h is still i n a sense a baby whose hunger has never been satisfied. The hunger is essen­ tial existence-hunger, a hunger for substantiality o f identity and for meaning: but because the infant existence-experience is so embodied, i t feels like a hungry m o u t h . Y e t because o f its fear o f encountering the w o r l d , i n all its insubstantiality, i t retreats into the w o m b , whence i t becomes a menace to on-going existence. This unborn baby thus becomes the focus o f dread i n the schizoid person. A n d this baby, as shall see, is the focus o f a great amount o f hate i n much modern culture, representing, indeed, that sensi­ t i v i t y and even creativity—not least o f 'female element being'— w h i c h w e cannot bear, because the w o r l d is so u n w i l l i n g to accept it. Yet again, as is clear from Sylvia Plath's w o r k , those w h o are preoccupied w i t h meaning, like her, yearn for that very cre­ ativity, and yearn for that infant to be brought to birth. Indeed, all her effort, both positive, in her poetry, and negative, i n her suicide, was directed to loving this regressed libidinal ego, and bringing h i m into existence: the significance o f that ' h i m ' w i l l appear later. But, o f course, such dynamics mingled as they are w i t h hate, are extremely dangerous. This explains a great deal. W h e n Esther u n c o n s c i o u s : w e see t h e i r o u t c o m e b u t are o n l y j u s t b e g i n n i n g to u n d e r s t a n d t h e i r causes a n d t h e processes b y w h i c h t h e y operate. W h e r e w e c a n o n l y w i t h difficulty u n d e r s t a n d , w e s h o u l d b e careful n o t to offer j u d g e m e n t s based o n the r o u g h - a n d r e a d y c r i t e r i a o f n o r m a l d a i l y existence.

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is staying i n her mother's house, fearing to become like her b y identification, a mere domestic woman, condemned to a babyraising life like D o d o Conway, she regresses. The fear o f identi­ fying w i t h her mother and becoming a w o m a n (which w e shall examine later) is associated w i t h a fear o f becoming a child again, because the immature child is i n a fierce desperate need, and menaces b y its hunger. This explains the regression i n Esther's hand-writing: B u t when I took up m y pen, m y hand made big, j e r k y letters like those o f a child, and the lines sloped d o w n the page from left to right almost diagonally, as i f they were loops o f string lying on the paper, and someone had come along and b l o w n them askew, (p. 137) This, as w e shall see, is a characteristic image o f Sylvia Plath: a sense that w r i t i n g on the page has somehow come unstuck, so that i t lies there, and one could even crawl into it—or i t m i g h t even crawl o f f the page.* B u t the regression symbolised i n the hand­ w r i t i n g is the message: 'there is a child i n me'. Later Esther puts this child-writing on Doctor Gordon's desk, but he is too insulated in his vanity to understand the signal: I thought D r Gordon must immediately see h o w bad the handwriting was, but he only said, T think I w o u l d like to speak to your mother. D o y o u mind?' ' N o . ' B u t I didn't like the idea o f Doctor Gordon talking to m y mother one bit. I thought he m i g h t tell her I should be locked up. I picked up every scrap o f m y letter to Doreen, so Doctor Gordon couldn't piece them together and see I was planning to r u n away, and walked out o f his office w i t h o u t another w o r d . (pp. 142-3) ' W i t h o u t another w o r d ' is a significant phrase. Communication has broken d o w n , because the phemenological meaning has not been taken. N o w the processes so well examined by Esterson and Laing (1964) are about to begin—in the next paragraph Esther's mother is crying, because her daughter, she has been told, must have electro-convulsive therapy. Yet the mother eagerly assents * C f . ' T h e little p a r a g r a p h s b e t w e e n the pictures e n d e d before the letters h a d a c h a n c e to get c o c k y a n d w i g g l e a b o u t . ' The Bell Jar, p . 145.

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to the institutionalization w h i c h she also feels is a disgrace. That is, i n response to her message (that Esther has w i t h i n her an u n g r o w n infant) the 'patient' is met w i t h a process o f labelling, treatment and coercion—directed at her because she is ' w r o n g ' , so that she n o w becomes a k i n d o f scapegoat. I n the light o f the w o r k o f W i n n i c o t t and Fairbairn, however, I believe that the patient is not only being 'punished' for failure to conform to social and family norms (as Laing and Esterson might urge)—but for revealing the horrors o f the inner v o i d , and the urgent needs o f that h u n g r y unborn child-self w i t h i n , and even for expressing a tragic aware­ ness o f the human predicament w h i c h this brings. This infant hungers to be seen: the solution to the existence problem depends upon i t , and yet the psychiatrist does not understand. I n Poem for a Birthday, as we shall see, a desperate feeling haunts Sylvia Plath—if only her clear messages could be heard. I f people could only see h o w terrible were the things she was speaking of, they could see what was w r o n g : her tragedy was that they were unable to. Her poems thus bear a significant relationship to Esther's handwriting at this moment o f regression. This is not to say that the poems are regressed: but their symbolism has its o w n message, that things are 'bad', and when she despaired o f this message being received, she sank into nihilistic despair and distor­ tion. The w o r l d , instead, acclaimed her blackest falsification, while failing to hear the voice o f catastrophic regression, and loss o f hope and meaning. The blankness faces Esther. The Doctor cannot understand. The mother (despite her care and concern) is the butt o f resentment, because communication seems to have failed. N o w , the mother is i n collaboration w i t h the psychiatric powers that offer Esther E C T . The mother knows very well that there is a serious danger (as the Doctor has said) that Esther may have to go to hospital: but she hasn't fully taken her daughter into her confidence—so there is a k i n d o f ' d o u b l e b i n d ' : ' " D o n ' t I a/ways tell y o u the truth?" m y mother said and burst into tears' (p. 143). The 'collusion' between the mother and the psychiatric authori­ ties is the kind o f process criticised b y psychologists like Esterson (1964). B u t what is crucial, as The Divided Self itself showed, is that i n the mystifying processes the patient's true meanings are lost. W e

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do n o t hear what is really w r o n g : and i t is this that is disastrous. The present w o r k is offered as an attempt to understand the meanings o f such a self, i n some ways unborn. I t is clear f r o m The BellJar that everything goes w r o n g w i t h Esther f r o m this moment, when she expected to be understood—and was not. Funda­ mentally, I shall argue, this failure to be understood meant that Sylvia Plath had to w o r k out, unaided, her sense o f h o w to bring the unborn self to birth. A false conclusion to the problem o f selfdefinition developed, because, as I hope to show, death became confused w i t h birth, and regression took the path to the tomb. T o find meaning i n life, she had to die. W e can see this confusion quite clearly, after the horrible moment at w h i c h Esther wants to strangle her mother: I feigned sleep until m y mother left for school, but even m y eyelids didn't shut out the light. They hung the raw, red screen o f their tiny vessels i n front o f me like a w o u n d . I crawled between the mattress and the padded bedstead and let the mattress fall across me like a tombstone. I t felt dark and safe under there, but the mattress was not heavy enough. I t needed about a ton more weight to make me s l e e p . . . (p. 130) Somehow, for Esther to overcome her breakdown (which is a total failure o f perception), she needs to get into some k i n d o f a cave—here, the w o m b - l i k e cavity under the mattress (matrix). B u t at the same time this is described i n tomb-like terms, and to be really effective, the mattress w o u l d have to become a t o m b lid. A few days later, she reads about a suicide i n the newspaper: I brought the newspaper close up to m y eyes to get a better view o f George Pollucci's face, spotlighted like a three-quarter moon against a vague background o f brick and black sky. I felt he had something important to tell me, and that whatever i t was might just be written on his face. (p. 144). As w e shall see, the moon-image is important here, as is the curious exploration o f the man suicide's face. The message about the need for re-birth is not being understood: perhaps the message she seeks, i n answer to her existential problems, is to be found in that face o f the man w h o has killed himself, w h o is ' i n death'.

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Esther's father, like Sylvia Plath's, is i n his grave, and she has not been really happy since the age o f nine, when he died. 'Daddy' is i n the w o r l d o f death—and the suicide has just gone there. Since the mother has shown no understanding i n her face, and D o c t o r Gordon does not understand the message o f the handwriting— perhaps the answer is there, in George Pollucci's look as he faces death ? Perhaps the answer to the problem o f existence lies 'through' that face, i n the death world? I n The Bell Jar there are many indications that Esther's problem is that o f an insubstantial identity, w h i c h is craving to become substantial enough to live: ' I felt myself melting into the shadows like the negative o f a person I ' d never seen before i n m y life' (p. 10). O n pp. 21-2 she takes a hot bath w h i c h is described as i f i t were a re-birth, and hears voices whispering t w o different names at her door, 'as i f I had a split personality or something'. Another character is described as staring 'at her reflection i n the glossed shop windows as i f to make sure, moment b y moment, that she continued to exist' (p. 105). These are recurrent themes i n Sylvia Plath's w o r k . Reading the novel w e are continually aware, that Sylvia Plath's w o r l d was full o f the possibility o f non-existence. B u t this is also associated, in Esther, w i t h a hopless loss o f faith i n the future, just as death-as-rebirth is resorted to f r o m fear o f a loss o f intentional vision. The figs on her imaginary tree o f fulfilment turn black and drop (p. 80); and like the protagonist o f the poem The Disquieting Muses, Esther tries to become a woman—but cannot (pp. 78-9). Increasingly, there is a loss o f the capacity for creative becoming, o f future. T r y i n g , i n her insomniac fantasies, to imagine a future stretching away like telegraph poles, Esther says, I saw the years o f m y life spaced along a road i n the f o r m o f telephone poles, threaded together b y wires. I counted one, t w o , three . . . nineteen telephone poles, and then the wires dangled into space, and t r y as I w o u l d , I couldn't see a single pole beyond the nineteenth, (p. 129) There is something very strange and sinister i n Sylvia Plath's ritualistic thinking about periodicity and her lack o f confidence i n a future after a certain 'number' o f years. Her father died when she was nearly nine: Esther cannot see beyond nineteen: Lady

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Lazarus 'dies' every ten years: somewhere, again, i n this numerical magic is the clue to beginning. A t about her third decade Sylvia really dies. A l l these belong to attempts to sustain creativity: i n the end hope o f this is lost, too. I have discussed the w a y i n w h i c h Esther 'is' Sylvia Plath, and there is magic in this, too. W h e n Esther is speaking o f w r i t i n g a novel she says: ' M y heroine w o u l d be myself, only i n disguise. She w o u l d be called Elaine. Elaine. I counted the letters on m y fingers. There were six letters i n Esther, too. I t seemed a lucky thing' (pp. 126-7). There are six letters i n 'Sylvia', and i t shares some o f its letters w i t h 'Elaine'. Here Sylvia Plath reveals that she used a kind o f childish magic, i n incantations and rituals employed to deal w i t h life's problems. This element o f magic and the deficiency o f a sense o f identity we may link w i t h the central theme o f this study, the failure o f confidence i n the imagination, and i n the future. From moment to moment, Sylvia Plath's protagonists cannot deal from a secure self w i t h a w o r l d recognised as real. Sometimes they t r y to t h r o w fantasy over the w o r l d : sometimes the w o r l d seems to contain terrible, irrepressible ghosts, w h i c h she cannot allay or assuage. Psychoanalytical theory asserts that the capacity to see the w o r l d i n a meaningful w a y is linked w i t h the capacity to love and the experience o f being loved. W i t h o u t this k i n d o f rich security o f love-experience, and the capacity for meaningful seeing that can follow f r o m it, her poetry represents an immense attempt to over­ come what she calls 'neutrality', and to exert creative intentionality i n perception: . . . I only k n o w that a rook Ordering its black feathers can so shine As to seize m y senses, haul M y eyelids up, and grant A brief respite f r o m fear O f total neutrality. (Black Rook in Rainy Weather, The Colossus, p. 42) She does not ask for a miracle, ' T o set the sight on fire/In m y eye', but she knows that the Blakean vision is possible, to transcend normal reality:

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A certain minor light may still Leap incandescent O u t o f kitchen table or chair As i f a celestial burning took Possession o f the most obtuse objects n o w and then— Thus hallowing an interval Otherwise inconsequent B y bestowing largesse, honour, One m i g h t say love. She hoped that angels m i g h t flare at her elbow: and she sought to find everyday objects manifestations o f heavenly truth. She knows that life is w o r t h living because o f its 'peak moments': but these perhaps she finds rare? Yet she wanted ordinary life to be mean­ ingful: For me, the real issues o f our time are the issues o f every time —the hurt and wonder o f l o v i n g ; making i n all its forms, child­ ren, loaves o f bread, paintings, building; and the conservation o f life o f all people i n all places. (London Magazine, 'Context', February, 1962) Yet i n the end what she calls 'neutrality' overtook her, perhaps because, as she says i n the same poem, she could only 'patch, together a content o f sorts'. She dreads the loss o f meaning. Her problem becomes one w h i c h has been expressed b y many poets. In a story b y Walter de la Mare a character says, ' I have come to the end o f things. For me the spirit, the meaning, whatever y o u like to call it—has vanished, gone clean out o f the w o r l d , out o f what we call reality'. This is the central problem for the modern artist, that when a confidence i n love fails, there can also be a loss o f confidence in a benign universe, and so meaning seems to dissolve, while the hold on reality breaks d o w n , and hope dissolves into futility. This schizoid feeling about the experience o f reality yields those terrifying moments i n the w o r k o f Sylvia Plath when the sense o f the self-in-the-world falls apart: For a minute the sky pours into the hole like plasma. There is no hope, i t is given up. (Berck-Plage, Ariel, p. 30)

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I n a poem like Getting There, i t seems that she felt her whole w o r k i n g life was, or should be, a spiritual journey, like that o f W i l l i a m Blake. B u t she ends up, we may say, overwhelmed b y the literal, the 'objective', the material dominance o f 'matter i n motion', and i n dismay, like the heroine o f The Wishing Box, she seeks renewal in death. B y m y phenomenological analysis o f her poetry, I hope to t r y to show w h y this happened. She had the conscious desire expressed above, to 'conserve the life o f all people'. B u t i t is obvious from her poetry that, beneath her sociable exterior, and her capacity for j o y and creativity, there were intensely negative dynamics. The question arises o f the degree to w h i c h these were exacerbated b y outside influences. I do not discuss many biographical facts about this poet. I t is clear f r o m the poems that Sylvia Plath was deeply affected by the breakdown o f her marriage: but there are as obviously destructive dynamics i n herself that may well have contributed to that breakdown. Here what interests me most is the question o f the destructive dynamics i n our culture, i n w h i c h there are many powerful advocates o f actually 'cultivating' derangement. I t is often denied that cultural influences can harm anyone: but to believe this w o u l d seem impossible to anyone w h o believes that culture is primary i n human existence. Moreover, i t is quite clear f r o m certain studies o f the operations o f the human consciousness, that i t is possible for certain individuals, w h o have adopted a life­ style and philosophy based on moral inversion, to influence others. One o f the slogans o f the German Baader-Meinhof terrorist gang was '24 hours o f HATE each day': and we have this kind o f moral inversion i n culture as well as politics. Perhaps the strangest aspect o f our w o r l d today is that, even as violence and hate increase, people deny that there can be any influences on consciousness which could bring these events about, or make the situation worse. Yet i n the arts there are those like Peter Brook w h o actually teach the actor to 'discover something o f his o w n potential madness', while A . Alvarez encourages the artist to 'cultivate his psychosis'. I f the logic o f schizoid inversion o f values is taught, then i t w i l l be learned. This is clear from Fairbairn's analysis (1952) o f schizoid states and their intellectual implications. The origin o f schizoid conditions lies in the failure o f the infant to find himself

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accepted and loved, 'in his o w n right'. W h e n his love, and his need to love, seemed to be rejected, he concluded b y infantile logic, that love is harmful. F r o m then on, he must needs base his moral system on hate. Hate is not the opposite o f love, but its inversion— and basically i t manifests an aggressive and hostile attempt to coerce 'the other' into supplying what, i t is felt, should be supplied—care and concern.* B u t one o f the motives behind this reliance on hate is highly m o r a l : the schizoid person feels that since love is so 'bad' that i t may damage the 'other', i t is better, ethically, t o hate, since this is less dangerous. But, when the individual becomes desperate, he may adopt an immoral position: 'The i m m o r a l motive is determined b y the consideration that, since the j o y o f loving seems hopelessly barred to h i m , he may as well deliver himself over to the joys o f hating and obtain what satisfaction he can out o f that' (op. c i t , p. 27). As I have tried to show elsewhere, the present evident tendency towards extremism, violence, gross indecency and moral inversion in the arts has developed out o f a loss o f faith, not only religious faith, but faith o f any k i n d i n human qualities and imagination. The brutality i n our culture is a manifestation o f having nothing to say, and o f a loss o f confidence i n trying to say anything. As a substitute for the satisfactions o f creativity based o n love, on human 'meeting', and essential collaboration i n symbolism, many have taken to forms o f intoxication. Nietzsche said that when man loses a sense o f whither he is going, he may t r y to overcome his feeling o f emptiness b y 'intoxication b y music, intoxication b y cruelty'. The cruelty i n much present-day fashionable art is examined b y Phillip RiefFin Fellow Teachers: speaking o f those w h o follow 'radical chic', he writes, ' I fear their minds, w h i c h are prepared to be violated b y any idea'—while they g r o w 'violent i n their expression'. A similar fear is expressed by Theodore Roszak in Where the Wasteland Ends, w h o says o f many young directors in the theatre, ' A madhouse imagery o f mass murder, canni­ balism, necrophilia, Grand Guignol fills their w o r k . . . they forget that art has any other function than to mirror the horrors Yet, o f course, resort to violence and nihilism need not be the * See the psychoanalytical theories of Michael Balint in Primary Love and Psychoanalytic Technique (1952). T h e schizoid in fact cannot avoid the conclusions of his 'infantile logic' because he knows of no other alternative premises.

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consequence o f loss o f faith. As I have tried to show, elsewhere, the composer Gustav Mahler was only too aware o f the menace o f nihilistic promptings that there might be no meanin in existence: but he placed this threat o f chaos, by Olympian effort, and strove, albeit w i t h o u t God, to find a sense o f meaning in existence, having its roots in love. M a n y artists today, not least Sylvia Plath's husband, Ted Hughes, stand at a cross-roads i n this dilemma, between their o w n true-self creativity and the false-self solutions offered by what Phillip Rieff calls 'wasp culture'—a significant phrase i n the present context, as we shall see. I n T e d Hughes's w o r k , there is a tendency to lapse into a glorification o f the solutions symbolised by the 'iron horseman', or by C r o w , or Krogon, w h o armour themselves, and deny their vulnerability; while being appalled b y their affinity w i t h aggressive animals: T o K r o g o n i t is his prisoners, the earth, his o w n body, his bond w i t h animal life on the one hand, w i t h spirit on the other: a compound crime he refuses to recognise, w h i c h is slowly dementing h i m . (Orghast at Persepolis, p. 97) The curative theme shows t h r o u g h : Agoluz's role is to convert the Krogonishness inherent in himself (his real father being Krogon) to a sane, rational, albeit limited and partial order, w h i c h is workable, (ibid., p. 96) B u t here, as i n Crow, the universe is alien, and i f one examines one's links w i t h other men, or w i t h the animal w o r l d , all one finds is increasing guilt, and increasing meaninglessness. The relationship between man and the universe can be seen—as i t is, say in Marjorie Grene's Approaches to a Philosophical Biology, or in John V y vyan's Sketch for a World-Picture, as a marvellous mani­ festation o f evolving life-forms, in w h i c h 'virtue' emerges almost as a creative principle o f the universe. Love, for example, seems a product o f the g r o w t h processes o f the higher mammals, and especially man. B u t this is not the w o r l d - v i e w that lies behind the w o r k o f Sylvia Plath and her widower.* Yet they, too, i n despair * See, f o r instance, T e d H u g h e s ' s playlet Eat Crow ( R a i n b o w Press, 1971) a n d A Crow Hymn ( S c e p t r e Press, 1970), b o t h e x p r e s s i n g a v i e w that e v e r y t h i n g , b y c o s m i c e n t r o p y , leads to d e a t h .

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and doubt, have sought to find meaning and order, b y creative effort, however distorted. T o help the artist today to be genuinely creative, rather than fall into dismay, we need to attend carefully to his meanings, and try to understand them. I f w e make a phenomenological analysis o f the meanings o f consciousness, as manifest i n their symbolism, w e may be able to hear the true voice o f creativity and compare it w i t h the false meanings o f hate and nihilism. This is what I t r y to do i n this analysis o f the meanings o f the poetry o f Sylvia Plath. I t r y to show that at times she went beyond sanity, towards a higher vision: and yet also, at other times, that she completely falsified the problem o f existence—albeit w i t h the aim o f t r y i n g to begin to live, when she felt she was alive but not yet living. Her predicament was terrible: but even more terrible was the w a y i n w h i c h our society applauded her most for the falsifications, while remaining deaf to her truth.

2

Poem for a False Birth

N o sooner do I turn to the poems than I am beset w i t h almost insoluble difficulties. I have to t r y to relate t w o languages: that o f literary criticism and that o f those disciplines w h i c h investigate the meanings o f consciousness. Moreover, I have to set out to bridge t w o methods, trying to foster the reader's possession o f poetic meaning, while endeavouring to discuss universal truths about the dynamics o f human personality as seen b y 'philoso­ phical anthropology'. The only w a y I can convince m y reader is b y making h i m feel that the poetry is illuminated b y what I am saying, and that the human condition o f w h i c h poetry speaks is susceptible to under­ standing. So, m y best w a y to begin is to find a poem central to the oeuvre and pursue a discussion o f it, even i f for the moment I find myself w r i t i n g an interpretation w h i c h w i l l seem strange, i f not mad, to the reader. I propose to begin b y making an analysis o f the poem at the end o f Sylvia Plath's collection The Colossus, Poem for a Birthday (pp. 80-8). B y a phenomenological approach, exploring the ambiguities and meanings o f every w o r d here, I shall t r y to demonstrate that this poem delineates Sylvia Plath's predicament in all its complexity and takes us into the heart o f the dilemma posed by her w o r k . A t the same time i t w i l l become evident that we need more than literary critical disciplines to fully understand her. I ask the reader to bear w i t h m y analysis o f this poem, ignoring for the moment certain problems o f the concepts and theory I shall be using. I shall return to these later. For the time being I want to show that Sylvia Plath was indeed, as she believed, speaking o f 2

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u n k n o w n areas o f human experience. B u t yet so acute is the difficulty o f such speaking that only b y supplying sense from newly available knowledge o f schizoid states can we hear what she is saying. Once we can hear we can discuss what is being said. Once we are familiar w i t h unusual areas o f awareness the poem can stand on its o w n as a penetrating record—often o f manifestations o f existence into w h i c h we enter only w i t h reluctance and pain. Yet unless we explore these areas we cannot solve the problems o f existence she raises. W e cannot go back to the situation before her questions were asked and pretend they have never been uttered. W e may begin w i t h the title: whose birthday is it? The significant phrases i n the poem are 'Tell me m y name', and ' I shall be as good as new'. The protagonist is i n a mental hospital and hopes there to be reborn: or, rather, to be born. (I have little doubt the poem is about the poet's o w n experience o f mental breakdown and treatment, o f w h i c h a fictionalised account is also given in the novel, The Bell Jar.) Fairbairn (1952) speaks o f h o w the schizoid individual, because he has not developed a certain capacity to defend himself against painful insights, can see w i t h remarkable clarity into his o w n condition. I n this poem such a person writes o f the dreadful experience o f being subjected to being 'made anew' by processes w h i c h yet never touch on her essential problem o f having, at the core, no adequate sense ofbeing. The first section is titled: Who. There is no question mark, as i f there is no hope that the question may be answered. Just as, later, her child is defined i n a poem title, You're..., here she defines herself as Who . . . , ( K i n g Lear can ask, ' W h o is i t that can tell me w h o I am?': but this contains the verb 1 AM, and the question demands 'reflection'—a response from 'encounter'.) In the back­ ground perhaps is ' W h o is Sylvia?'. B u t the question-mark-less Who suggests she has no hope o f reflection, and there is no sense o f 1 AM. A t this point an introductory note is necessary on the phrases i n this poem: 'the mother o f mouths', 'the mother o f otherness', 'the mother o f pestles'. A t a time o f rebirth she turns to the potential source o f being: Mother, y o u are the one m o u t h I w o u l d be a tongue to.

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W h a t does she mean i n Who, b y the above lines, and those that follow? Mother o f otherness Eat me . . . T o understand these lines we have to enter into very early feelings o f a bodily k i n d about being born—as w e do i n D y l a n Thomas's If My Head Hurt a Hair's Foot. Fairbairn says, 'The child's ego is a mouth-ego'. I n all o f us there is the remnant o f an unsatisfied infant hunger and this 'unborn' dynamic i n oneself (the 'regressed libidinal ego') feels like a hungry, all-devouring m o u t h . As Guntrip (1966) notes, schizoid patients w h o are seriously unful­ filled and, so, psychically hungry, may dream o f this unborn self as a baby, perhaps locked away i n a steel drawer. This 'baby' i n them has a tremendous hunger to exist—so, once i t is recognised, the patient may feel like 'ohe great m o u t h , wanting to eat up everything and everybody'. Individuals w h o feel inside themselves such a voracious hunger to exist, w i t h its roots i n primitive urges to suck, have intense feelings about the gates o f the body and also the hungry ' m o u t h ego' echoed everywhere i n their w o r l d . Since the schizoid individual feels such intense hunger directed at his 'objects' (those he w o u l d relate to—the 'significant other' and the 'world-asobject'), he comes to feel that the 'object' (the 'other') must have similar voracious feelings directed at h i m . Love seems a mutual eating—and, so, terribly dangerous. Ted Hughes explores such intense feelings o f mutual incorporation i n his Lovesong {Crow, p. 74): His kisses sucked out her whole past or future . . . She b i t h i m she gnawed h i m she sucked She wanted h i m complete inside her I n the m o r n i n g they were each other's face . . . I n The Divided SelfR. D . Laing discusses h o w , to the schizoid individual, love or indeed any human contact can seem full o f the dangers o f mutual incorporation. Every normal person feels this to a degree: lovers feel they want to 'eat one another up'. B u t

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insofar as the feeling is full o f fear, this arises f r o m infant anxieties o f an unconscious k i n d about the parents' sexual relationship. A t a time when sex can only be conceived as a k i n d o f eating, children fear that the parents may eat one another—and, i f they become excited and involved, they feeHhe combined parents may t u r n r o u n d to eat them, because o f their involvement. Sylvia Plath's recurrent imagery o f mouths is imbued w i t h this k i n d o f intense, primitive, bodily feeling belonging to infancy—although, o f course, what she is symbolising are psychic states o f being unborn. These bodily feelings are powerfully sexual. W e have k n o w n since Freud that children have strong sexual feelings o f maleness and femaleness and that these take Oedipal and Electral forms.* These are o f great importance i n Sylvia Plath, because o f her problems o f identity, as we shall see. She had intense Electral feelings for her father, full o f sexual (or sensual) under-currents, oral and genital feelings. These are evident i n The Beekeeper's Daughter (The Colossus, p. 75) A garden o f mouthings. Purple, scarlet-speckled, black The great corollas dilate, peeling back their silks. Y o u move among the many breasted h i v e s . . . These 'mouths', like the tulips i n Tulips, are female sexual organs, w h i c h dilate like eyes and 'peel back their silks', yearning for the father. Trumpet-throats open to the beaks o f birds. The birds sucking the honey f r o m the flowers are using a male proboscis to eat the pollen out o f the female flowers. The anthers nod their heads, potent as kings T o father dynasties. The male, phallic, parts o f the flowers are potent, and fertile: 'The air is rich' w i t h pollen (semen). 'Here is a queenship no mother can contest. . .' B u t since this queenship o f the flowers, w i t h w h i c h she identifies, has the male-anther potency w i t h i n itself, i t is a male femaleness. A n d since all its yearning is directed at the * F a i r b a i r n ' s p o i n t s h o u l d b e b o m e i n m i n d , that 'sensual' m i g h t b e a better t e r m t h a n 'sexual' w h e n discussing s u c h infantile b o d y

feelings.

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father, i t is Electral, incestuous, and therefore matricidal: ' A fruit that's death to taste . . .' The mother is ousted. B u t there is a penalty, o f paying the price for the taboo on incest, and for the matricide. The fruit that is tasted is not only death to the mother i f she tries to taste i t : but i t is death to the daughter. The Golden Rain Tree drips its powders down.* This is an image o f the phallus, casting seed: but i t is also an image o f urinary rain, o f a retributive k i n d . t The great corollas, w i t h w h i c h she identifies, w h i c h 'peel back their silks' are, strangely, also male penises, peeling back their foreskins. Her identification is so intense that not only does she yearn for D a d d y like the female flowers. She becomes a strange male-anther flower, involved i n terrible dangers—which are the dangers o f exposing oneself to being dealt w i t h i n a w a y o f whose nature and purpose one is uncertain: i t could be hate: i t could be jealous revenge: i t could be castration. The significance o f these feelings w i l l appear later.J Here there are intense complexities. Love—as to all schizoid individuals—is dangerous, a mouth-consuming thing. So, t o enter into sexual relationship w i t h the father is dangerous anyway. Secondly, he might well become angry and guilty at being seduced b y his daughter, while she becomes g u i l t y too. Further dangers l u r k i n her identification w i t h the yearning flowers and the male creatures i n intercourse w i t h them. T h i r d l y , there is competition w i t h the ousted mother, w h o m i g h t then appear i n a castrating guise—perhaps even f r o m the heart o f a flower, since the flowers, and the daughter w h o identifies w i t h them, represent the female object to w h i c h the father is drawn. Fourthly, Sylvia Plath (as I shall argue) seems to have experienced the mother's handling i n infancy, for whatever reason, as something meaning* In Jung's Man and His Symbols (p. 280) there is an illustration of Jan Gossaert's painting (now in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich) showing Danae being impreg­ nated by Zeus in the form of a shower of gold. This symbolises the marriage of heaven and earth. t T h e proper word here would be 'talion', the Freudian term from lex talionis, ' A n eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth*. T h e child is believed to fear talion retribution from those on w h o m he directs his sadistic urges to empty, to eat—or to enjoy sexually, since this is a form of eating. X Astonishingly, this poem, with its richness of Electral passion, is called by T e d Hughes 'one of her chilliest' (The Art of Sylvia Plath, p. 190).

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less and bewildering, largely composed o f 'impingement', a k i n d o f (male) 'doing', substituted for (female) being. Instead o f a female 'being for', what she experienced was 'doing' scraps o f maleness. Thus, what fascinates her about the flowers is the maleness to be found i n them. Fifthly, her o w n identity, having been composed o f male fragments, tends to give the flowers a male quality when she identifies w i t h them. A n d since such 'impinge­ ment is experienced as hate' (as W i n n i c o t t tells us), this makes the flowers full o f hate-dynamics and 'a fruit that's death to taste'. Moreover, since Daddy is dead, to identify w i t h h i m , and to have such yearnings for intercourse w i t h h i m even i n memory, threatens petrifaction and death. The poem thus takes us into the other w o r l d o f death w h i c h w i l l be found important i n her work. Tasting is something one does b y the m o u t h : so, tasting the flowers as the birds do w i t h their male beaks, and as she wants to do, is full o f dangers—of being subjected to a retributory attack f r o m the same source as the seed: o f being annihilated, even i n enjoying the flowers w h i c h her father moved among and w h i c h his bees enjoyed. She is a w o m a n inclined to do male things— but fearing terrible consequences, as we shall often see. ( I f she sucks at the father's penis i n using h i m as a substitute for the mother w i t h her breast, may not his ' m i l k ' be a taste o f death?) The focus o f these complex primitive feelings is the need to be, reflected b y one's parents, i n becoming a female being. I t is this confusion w h i c h lies behind the dreadful section o f Poem for a Birthday, Who, and its sterility and hopelessness, and, indeed, be­ hind many o f Sylvia Plath's poems. The mother is the ' M o t h e r o f otherness': that is, mother o f the-other-being-that-I-would-liketo-be—not this 'dead head' in the toolshed. But what she wants o f the mother is that she should 'Eat me . . .' H o w does the desire to be born have to do w i t h eating? Sex, as we have said, is a k i n d o f eating, to a child and, so, relating to the flowers (which are a rich source o f life), is eating, and full o f potential destructiveness. Yet (she feels) there must be a clue here somewhere to the deeply de­ sired birth. I t is somewhere in entering or being in, or emerging from, between ' t w o lips' like the mouths o f flowers (tulips)—some­ where i n the ' m o u t h ' experience (which is also the genital experi­ ence). Eating is h o w one grows: so, it becomes a symbol o f the w a y

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to psychic g r o w t h . This is all focussed i n that one phrase 'mother o f mouths'. O f course, Sylvia Plath knew consciously about copulation, conception and birth. B u t the adult can still have an unsatisfied curiosity at the deeper levels o f the psyche. He can go on in adult life, in symbol and fantasy, trying to answer problems he engaged w i t h as an infant, even though intellectually he knows the answers. The primitive curiosity is not satisfied.* So, the little unborn self reminds itself: I said: I must remember this, being small. There were such enormous flowers, Purple and red mouths, utterly lovely. The hoops o f blackberry stems made me cry. (Who) Once upon a time she loved, as a child, the great flowers and their mouths, i n w h i c h there seemed to be the secret o f coming into life. N o w she is reduced to being small again, to being a litde g i r l punished b y conventional psychiatric treatment, so she tries to remember this early promise, and its secret. She remembers, too, dimly, the blackberry stems which, bent like hoops (and seen thus b y a child), made her cry—by scratching her. That is, she has here a d i m remembrance o f the threat o f impinging hate w h i c h w e have noticed i n The Beekeeper's Daughter. B u t the berries are also d i m l y associated w i t h black eyes that see (see p . 48) and w i t h blackberrying w i t h Daddy (see p. 242). The blackberry hoops merge w i t h an image o f the wires o f the electro-convulsive therapy apparatus and the 'berries o f the dark' w h i c h her (Pinsulin) treatment brings her. These too are 'fruits that are death to taste'. That is, they are punishments, inflicted upon her b y those she trusts (who are thus parents), i n the same w a y that (she fears) the parents w i l l punish her for her involve­ ment i n their sex. N o w they light me up like an electric bulb. For weeks I can remember nothing at all. * S e e C h a p t e r i o , ' P r i m i t i v e F a n t a s y ' , i n The Masks of Hate; also p . 91, w h e r e I discuss M e l a n i e K l e i n ' s t h e o r y , a n d suggest I a n F l e m i n g ' s p a r a n o i d - s c h i z o i d f a n ­ tasies are b a s e d o n 'unsatisfied infantile c u r i o s i t y ' a b o u t p a r e n t a l sex.

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Electro-convulsive therapy brings the same impingement o f hate w h i c h she feared as a death f r o m the flowers. A n d i t destroys the delightful visions she had as a child round these Electral images. N o w she is ' W i t h o u t dreams o f any sort'. Y e t she knows her pre­ dicament, and here we can return to the image w i t h w h i c h w e began our reading. Mother, y o u are the one m o u t h I w o u l d be a tongue to. Noticeably, the phrase is 'a tongue'. I n The Beekeeper's Daughter she identifies w i t h various kinds o f flower or parts o f flowers, anthers, petals. B u t here she wants to be 'a tongue' i n the mother's m o u t h . This means that she wants to be spoken, out o f her mother's m o u t h , as a creature that can herself say i A M . B u t the image o f the tongue merges into that o f a penis. Here physical feelings are involved, i n complex w i t h forms o f activity to do w i t h the gates o f the body—eating, kissing, sucking, speaking, having sexual intercourse, being born, thrusting one's beak into a flower, displaying one's potent anthers, having dripped upon one a golden rain from heaven. A l t h o u g h being a tongue i n the mother's m o u t h is i n some respects a passive image—it is also a male image, o f thrusting one's tongue into the mother's m o u t h like a lover, or thrusting one's penis into the mother's sexual organ, or thrusting one's body, b y 'reptation' through it, for the yearning is to be born out o f the mother's b i r t h passage, as well as for being confirmed b y the mother's speaking o f one, i n creative reflection. M o u t h and vagina are paths to an inner w o r l d , the container, inside, cavern, vacuum, or t o m b : but also through into another w o r l d , hopefully a new w o r l d . I n The Beekeeper's Daughter, as we have seen, the father is dead. T o enter too closely into union w i t h h i m m i g h t bring one into the w o r l d o f the dead. The 'otherness' w h i c h is sought, then, m i g h t lead not to life-in-life, but to death-in-life.* Later we shall see the terrible consequences o f such lack o f confidence i n both parents and their internal imagos. As paths to life (as they are to the child) they could also be paths to death. * S e e t h e p h e n o m e n o l o g y o f ' R u d o l p h ' b e l o w , p . i6off. T h e m a r r i a g e o f h e a v e n a n d e a r t h c o u l d g i v e o n e greater life o n e a r t h , b u t c o u l d also t a k e o n e , l i k e E u r y d i c e , i n t o t h e o t h e r w o r l d b e y o n d death.

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I n Tulips the flowers sent to the protagonist i n hospital as a 'getwell' gift are resented and seem hateful and threatening. I n The Bell Jar when Esther's mother brings her a bunch o f roses as a get-well gift, she rejects them and thrusts them into the wastepaper basket. Relationship is at times intolerable: 'You're not to have any more visitors for a while.' I stared at Doctor N o l a n i n surprise. ' W h y that's wonderful.' ' I thought y o u ' d be pleased.' She smiled. Then I looked, and Doctor N o l a n looked, at the wastebasket beside m y bureau. O u t o f the waste-basket poked the blood-red buds o f a dozen long-stemmed roses. That afternoon m y mother had come to visit me. (The Bell Jar, p . 214) Here, the roses are not female genitals or mouths, as are the flowers i n Tulips, but male phalluses ( ' p o k e d . . . b u d s . . . l o n g stemmed'). The hatred directed at them springs perhaps f r o m 'Electral' envy at the mother's possession o f the father, as i f she has his penis inside her. But, as w i l l appear more fully as w e proceed, I believe there is a deeper resentment, w h i c h is rooted i n a belief that i n infancy the mother proved unable to give her anything but 'pseudo-male impingement'. As w e shall see, the most disturbing aspect o f The Bell Jar is Esther's hatred o f her mother. A n d this hatred o f the motherimago pervades Sylvia Plath's poetry, mingled w i t h dread, resent­ ment, and rage. I n The Bell Jar the roses are symbols o f that death w h i c h belongs to hate, directed i n revenge against the mother w h o (she believes) has not been able to love. That afternoon m y mother had brought me the roses. 'Save t h e m for m y funeral,' I ' d said. M y mother's face puckered, and she looked ready to cry. 'But, Esther, don't y o u remember what day i t is today?' 'No.' I thought i t m i g h t be Saint Valentine's day. 'It's your birthday.' A n d that was when I had dumped the roses i n the wastebasket. 'That was a silly thing for her to do,' I said to Doctor N o l a n .

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Doctor Nolan nodded. She seemed to k n o w what I meant. ' I hate her/ I said, and waited for the b l o w to fall. B u t Doctor Nolan only smiled at me as i f something had pleased her very, very much, and said, ' I suppose y o u do.' (p. 215) Here w e have an account o f the moment also referred to i n Poem for a Birthday, b y the phrase 'wastebasket gaper'. I t is at this k i n d o f point that the literary critic, faced w i t h a w o r k i n w h i c h the negative and distorted dynamics are so intense, begins to wish he had the benefits o f the therapist w h o knows his patient and has years o f training and experience behind h i m . W e need to strive to see the individual using symbols i n the here and n o w as an adult, to t r y to find solutions to life-problems o f an intense k i n d . Phenomenologically, i t w i l l not do to explain these symbols i n terms o f their 'cause' i n infantile experience. I t w o u l d not do to conclude that Sylvia Plath's problems are explained b y some postulated failure o f her mother's care. The b l o w to her infant happiness f r o m her father's death has coloured her o w n interpretation o f her early relationship w i t h her mother, and also distorts her account o f her o w n attitudes to her mother, insofar as she 'is' Esther. She loved her father passionately, and there were intense Electral feelings i n that (of a little girl wanting her father as a lover and supplanting the mother). B u t n o w , after his death, she wants to follow h i m into the w o r l d o f death, to get f r o m h i m the 'reflection' she still needs and could not get f r o m the mother. W h i l e she expected normal retaliatory vengeance f r o m her shadow (or 'castrating') mother imago, for the Electral feelings, what happens to these feelings n o w that Daddy is dead? A d u l t sexuality was associated for the infant w i t h eating up and annihilat­ ing : her fantasy involvement in i t had brought fears o f retribution f r o m the combined parents. B u t n o w the mother has become a 'Shadow o f doorways' because she has eaten the dead Daddy and has h i m inside her. I n her impassioned desire to go d o w n into his tomb, she also wants to get into her mother's w o m b where Daddy, or Daddy's penis, is hidden. A n d she herself, we remember, wants to get back into the w o m b to be reborn. This is the answer to our problems over the hate expressed in the poetry and fiction for the mother: and i t is also the answer to

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the whole problem o f Sylvia Plath's hopeless logic—for i n the very place she seeks is death, and the black dead Daddy w h o m i n the end she rejects. He blocks the place from which, she hoped, she might emerge again. B u t she is also afraid o f the mother w h o , having eaten Daddy, m i g h t eat her ('Mother o f otherness/Eat me'), thus absorbing her into the shadows. The flowers are the mothers' genital ('two lips') w h i c h might, like her o w n heart, eat her, out o f sheer love (these phrases come from the poem Tulips), and take her d o w n to that w o r l d where dead Daddy is. So, the mother must be forestalled, nor least i n her love, because o f this menace. The hatred directed at the mother belongs to the same paranoidschizoid delusion w h i c h makes her think suicide a way to re-birth. The mother is a threatening shadow: the flowers are tigers: 'keep them for m y funeral'. The same kind o f frightened, and vengeful, rejection o f the mother is to be found i n Edge (Ariel, p. 85), where we find clues that her suicide may also i n part be a f o r m o f vengeance directed at the mother, ' w h o is used to this sort o f thing'—because she has eaten the father. A l l this, o f course, belongs to the logic o f a deeply distressed infant w h o cannot explain things otherwise. A l l we can say is that here we are dealing w i t h p r i m i ­ tive experiences w h i c h we are only just beginning to understand: something like the experience w h i c h according to D . W . W i n n i cott, his patient, 'George', had as a baby: ' F r o m m y point o f view it was just there that George was experiencing and re-experiencing being nothing, w h i c h is what i t feels like for a child when there is a dead imago i n the mother's inner psychic reality' (1971, p. 391). This sentence illuminates much in the consciousness o f certain artists. Such dead imagos haunt the w o r k o f Gustav Mahler (as i n the Kindertotenlieder), the poems o f Dylan Thomas, the stories o f George Macdonald and the plays o f Barrie. The shadows i n Sylvia Plath's w o r k symbolise voids in the mother's 'inside' w h i c h she believed she experienced. They represent fragments o f the experi­ ence o f emptiness where there should have been 'honey', or 'reflec­ tion'. Where she should have experienced 'being for', to enable her to feel ' I am', she experienced 'impingement', as a k i n d o f hate, and a false maleness. Her 'realisation' should have brought all the experiences o f being handled together i n the same body,

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i n the same w o r l d . * B u t i t d i d not. I n the absence o f a sub­ stantial sense o f being loved and 'seen' i n her o w n right she feels she had had to steal whatever forms o f 'male doing' she could grasp. Mother's femininity for some reason is not accessible: she had had to 'steal' maleness from mother (a breast that is a penis) and whatever she can i n this way from Daddy (beans, rose-buds, clubs, o l d tools, handles, tusks, pesdes—a 'cupboard o f rubbish'). There are fragments f r o m the mother's comings and goings and fading, half-remembered fragments o f memory o f Daddy w h i c h never cohere into anything but a cracked colossus or automaton. So, there is an urgent need for tenderness, a need to begin physical love play all over again to become whole b y loving handling: mouth-play at the nipple, kissing, speaking and being spoken of. T o be the tongue i n the mother's m o u t h is to identify so closely w i t h the mother that one is she: and yet, as she utters, and gives tongue, she 'speaks' one—she makes her child. T o want to be a tongue to the mother's mouth is to want to be made, between t w o lips. So, w e come to the central theme o f the need to be given an identity b y liebende Wirheit, loving communion. ' Y o u are the one m o u t h I w o u l d be a tongue to' means T w o u l d like to be spoken o f b y y o u , being part o f you, so closely identified w i t h y o u that i t w o u l d be as i f I were speaking, or being spoken, from w i t h i n y o u . ' A n d , ' I w o u l d like to be confirmed (born) out o f the lips o f y o u r m o u t h ( w o m b ) ' . Since the poem is about psychic parturition, this takes us into the area o f primary psychogenesis—what Guntrip calls 'the very start o f the human identity'. As I was w r i t i n g this chapter a newspaper reported h o w a woman's baby was restored to her four days after being stolen f r o m his pram. I n an interview she said: ' A t first I could not speak and dare not look at him. Then I fed him . . . W h e n he was away I felt I must have imagined having him . . .' (my italics). Such c o m ­ ments reveal that the child's discovery o f his identity is based on a creative psychic process: i f a baby is taken away f r o m her a mother suffers a 'schizoid illness'—and begins to lose the meaningful baby * S e e W i n n i c o t t , ' P r i m i t i v e E m o t i o n a l D e v e l o p m e n t ' i n 1968a p p . 145 ff., a n d ' C r e a t i v i t y a n d its O r i g i n s ' , i n 1971a, p. 65. I f a g i r l - b a b y l o o k e d i n t o h e r m o t h e r ' s m i n d a n d f o u n d a n u n c o n s c i o u s desire t o h a v e a b o y i t c o u l d l e a d t o s u c h p r o b l e m s as a r e discussed i n t h e latter, a n d i n this c h a p t e r .

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she has created i n imagination (or 'spoken'). W h e n this woman's baby was returned to her, she couldn't at first 'find' h i m , as the meaningful baby she had created. W h e n she feeds h i m she 'makes' h i m by feeding h i m and re-establishes his real existence for her. She 'speaks' h i m . O r rather, perhaps, she has to re-enter into that strange relationship in w h i c h she allows h i m to believe that he is she, or has made her, w h i c h we shall discuss further below. W i t h Sylvia Plath, I believe, something undermined catastrophically, for whatever reason, her experience o f this primary parturition at the start, perhaps 'from the moment o f birth', leav­ ing what Laing has called 'a vortex o f non-being', w h i c h was deepened and intensified by her father's death, and left her w i t h a baffled feeling—desperately needing reflection f r o m the mother but fearing this intense hunger m i g h t rebound on her, not least because the father is buried inside the mother. So, despite her evident concern, the mother was kept at arm's length.

I.

W H O

In The Bell Jar Esther rejects her birthday because i t can only be a 'non-birthday'. Here, the harvest is a non-harvest. I t is October: The m o n t h o f flowering's finished. The fruit's i n , Eaten or rotten. I am all m o u t h . October's the m o n t h for storage. Perhaps i n the background is Keat's Ode to Autumn: 'and fill all fruit w i t h ripeness to the core'. B u t she is not full. She is 'all m o u t h ' : her whole being yearns to come into existence. A n d where is she? This shed's fusty as a m u m m y ' s stomach: These halls are full o f w o m e n w h o think they are birds. A t first the poem seems to be about being in a garden shed i n autumn. B u t gradually we come to see i t is about a mental hospital ward. W h a t is stored there is no harvest, nor are the creatures hibernating, so as to come alive in the spring. There is a fusty

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hopelessness about the poem—about ever satisfying the regressed libidinal ego w h o hungers for fulfilment. A m u m m y is a dried corpse, w i t h a fusty stomach. B u t the w o r d obviously takes on the meaning o f ' M u m m y ! ' i n the light o f ' I am all m o u t h ' and what follows. The 'shed' is like a dry-as-dust w o m b , and the mental w a r d is like the inside o f a m u m m i f i e d mother. The short time (month) o f being out i n the w o r l d as a living creature is ended: the individual w i t h a dead identity is gathered i n w i t h the others, as part o f a grotesque harvest of'dead heads'. I am at home here among the dead heads. She is w i t h the fruit, w h i c h is either eaten or rotten: one is either loved or else one decays. B u t to be loved is to risk being eaten, and yet she wants the mother to eat her. Yet i n the shed (or ward) she is merely put away inside a fusty and sterile space, w h i c h is no good to her (as useless as she felt M u m m y was). As Laing notes, o f the Jonah theme i n the symbolism o f schizophrenia, 'to be eaten does not necessarily mean to lose one's identity'. Here Sylvia Plath examines the nature o f being eaten (in all the complex sense I have discussed above) in terms o f being born (or 'spoken'). The odds and ends o f dead heads i n the mental w a r d (or in the cup­ board o f herself) seem to amount to nothing. They do not seem edible. Fairbairn says that the schizoid individual, out o f desperation, and because he is not loved, steals the paternal penis and the mother's breasts, i n order to assemble something, as the basis o f identity. H e takes b y force that which was due to h i m by right but not freely given. B u t trying to steal love, he steals partobjects. Masud Khan attributes a girl's promiscuity i n one case to her need to steal men's penises, in order to fill a v o i d in herself (Khan, 1971). Other case-histories discuss a disturbed sense o f 'inner space' in the schizoid individual. Here, the 'shed' is not only the mental ward, but also the identity, in which are stored odd stolen tools, handles, and teeth w h i c h have gone rusty f r o m neglect ('rusty tusks'). Later there is a reference to herself as 'hairtusk's bride'. W h o is 'Hairtusk'? Is he the father's stolen penis? O r is he Fido Littlesoul, the puppyish infant self that gnaws away at the root o f the self? As w e shall see, the disturbing fact is that he is a he.

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It is evident as we take the poem symbol by symbol that all the fragments belong to an assemblage that is self-enclosed. W e should not take 'hairtusk's bride' as an invitation to start looking round for a real husband. N o t h i n g enters from outside, or hardly anything—her w o r l d is a largely encapsulated one, inside her garden shed. Laing relates this self-enclosure to the schizoid's urge to be omnipotent. He tried to be omnipotent b y enclosing w i t h i n his o w n being, w i t h o u t recourse to a creative relationship w i t h others, modes o f relationship that require the effective presence to h i m o f other people and o f the outer w o r l d . He w o u l d appear to be, i n an unreal, impossible way, all persons and things to himself. (Laing, i960, p . 78) T o Sylvia Plath, being incarcerated (harvested) i n the mental ward echoes this incarceration o f the w o r l d w i t h i n herself. Give-and-take is too full o f dangers: so, an inner w o r l d must be maintained, cut off in its closed circuit f r o m the outer w o r l d . The self itself has shrunk to something tiny and insignificant, like an elf. Let me sit i n a flowerpot, The spiders w o n ' t notice. The spiders w i l l neither pounce on her and eat her, nor stop spin­ ning their webs. Here there are n o big flowers, 'utterly lovely': there is only lifeless aridity: M y heart is a stopped geranium. —as i f i t has been nipped out. She is at the end o f a period of'treatment': yet instead o f open­ ing her heart as a ' b o w l o f blooms' (which 'opens and closes for sheer love o f me'—see Tulips) the geranium is 'stopped' and the flowerpot is empty. Yet she feels impingement, as D y l a n Thomas felt it, as having to do w i t h breathing difficulties.* There is an inver­ sion o f normal responses—the petals b l o o m upside d o w n : the *Winnicort believed h e h a d discovered links between birth traumata a n d b r e a t h i n g difficulties. S e e ' B i r t h M e m o r i e s , B i r t h T r a u m a t a a n d A n x i e t y ' , Col­ lected Papers, p . 174. S e e also t h e d i s c u s s i o n o f this i n m y Dylan Thomas: the Code of Night, p p . 168 ff.

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feelings are those o f resistance to what others w o u l d feel to be care: I f o n l y the w i n d w o u l d leave m y lungs alone. D o g b o d y noses the petals. They b l o o m upside d o w n . They rattle like hydrangea bushes. W e may compare this w i t h lines i n Tulips (Ariel, p. 20): I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted T o lie w i t h m y hands turned up and be utterly e m p t y . . . The v i v i d tulips eat m y oxygen. Before they came the air was calm enough, C o m i n g and going, breath b y breath, w i t h o u t any fuss. Breathing is unwanted. I t even seems an impingement to breathe. ' D o g b o d y ' smelling the petals is resented—as i n Tulips, the lovegift impinges, and the flowers threaten to eat the life-giving air, w h i l e the space around the patient is disturbed by resented eddies o f life. I n Who the flower-bushes are rattling like dead plants. W h o is Dogbody? A busybody w h o seeks to do good to y o u i n God's name? A dogsbody i n hospital—an orderly? I n T e d Hughes's Gog there is a reference to the 'dog's God'. I n T . S. Eliot's The Waste Land w e read, ' O keep the D o g far hence . . . ' , w h i c h some critics interpret because o f its capital initial letter as a reversal o f 'God'. A n y b o d y w h o comes along (doctor, mother, orderly, nurse, the Fido Littlesoul inside you) impinges on y o u . W h a t consolation is there? The poem is hopeless: the only con­ solation is the deadness itself: Mouldering heads console me, Nailed to the rafters yesterday: The w o m e n i n the mental w a r d are vegetables: yet they have a strange beauty: Cabbageheads: w o r m y purple, silver-glaze, A dressing o f mule ears, m o t h y pelts, but green-hearted, Their veins white as pork fat. O the beauty o f usage!

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The simple fact o f vegetable existence, w i t h a green heart, still seems to indicate hope somewhere, usage, usefulness. There is no usage here, certainly, except ill-usage perhaps. She remembers cabbages i n toolsheds, somewhere, being beautiful: somewhere is earthy life. One feels at home i n relation to the earth-object. B u t there seems little chance o f reflection—of eyes seeing one: The orange pumpkins have no eyes. A n d w i t h i n herself she has been taught to be petrified: This is a d u l l school. I am a root, a stone, an o w l pellet, W i t h o u t dreams o f any sort. W h a t Sylvia Plath is telling us is that the inhabitants o f the ward have the beauty o f living creatures. They are deluded (they think they are birds). B u t conventional psychiatry has destroyed their visions—so she becomes a dull root, a dead stone or a pellet o f skin and bone, rather than wisdom—vomited, eaten and dead, out o f an owl's inside ( ' I am round as an o w l ' ) . The only hope was i n the mother. So, she tries to go back to being little. N o w , she can remember nothing at all—and yet feels she is being taught something ( ' I must remember this . . .', 'made me cry . . .'). Yet what in fact is happening is that her little real self shrinks into a flowerpot, under a stone, or under a potlid, t o avoid persecution. Being punished when i n a hopeless situation makes the adult patient feel like a naughty little girl—so Sylvia Plath feels she is a tot. This minuscule self seems to emerge else­ where from bewilderment about the identity—as i n Alice in Wonderland or when, in George Macdonald's Phantastes, the lost anima is discovered as a little naked figure i n the cavity o f a locked ancient desk. There is a sense i n w h i c h Sylvia Plath spent all her life seeking her femininity (as queen bee, for instance) and never finding i t . Yet i t seemed not far away—'utterly lovely', i n the flowers in the garden in her childhood, as her father moved among the 'many-breasted hives'. W h a t she sought was a shower o f gold from heaven that w o u l d marry heaven to earth in the sense o f making heaven and earth meaningful. Instead, heaven, m o o n and earth remained sterile, fatherless, unreflecting, deathly, voracious —while there is no answer to ' w h o ' .

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F O R A 2.

DARK

FALSE

BIRTH

HOUSE

In the next section she speaks o f how, consequently, she has had to establish an identity out o f whatever comes to hand. N o t having a substance f r o m 'female element being' (which later we shall con­ nect w i t h heeing—and honey) she is a wasp making a self by (male) bustling and doing: This is a dark house, very big. I made i t myself. . . The inner edifice has to be made out o f intellectual effort, b y a 'thinking' version o f that impingement 'which is experienced as hate'—which is w h y i t is dark. I t is a shadow self (see Tulips: ' I see myself. . . a cut-paper shadow')* and made o f grey paper, Cell b y cell f r o m a quiet corner, Chewing at the grey paper, Oozing the glue drops, Whistling, wiggling m y ears, T h i n k i n g o f something else I see b y m y o w n light. | As we shall see, it is significant that the poet's father was an ento­ mologist and professor o f biology at Boston w h o wrote a book on bumblebees. J A bee is 'good'—it makes honey, and stings only when i t is necessary to die,for the purpose. A wasp only 'does', is a little tiger, yielding nothing useful like honey or w a x but only its d r y papery nest, and i t stings much more aggressively. I t is more 'male' than the bee. ('The bees are all w o m e n ' , Wintering, Ariel, p. 69.) Elsewhere she says, 'This is the light o f the mind, cold and planetary'. Since her self is a hollow, intellectual construct, made o f paper (regurgitated 'inner contents', mental doing, containing empty breath) i t could just as well become anything else, or, * T h e r e are s c h i z o i d e l e m e n t s o f a s i m i l a r k i n d i n t h e s y m b o l i s m o f s h a d o w s d e t a c h e d f r o m the self i n B a r r i e ' s Peter Pan a n d G e o r g e M a c d o n a l d ' s Phantasies. See also R i c h a r d Strauss's o p e r a , Die Frau Ohne Schatten. N o t h a v i n g a s h a d o w is n o t b e i n g personalised a n d e m b o d i e d — i . e . n o t p s y c h i c a l l y b o r n . t T w o grey, papery bags— T h i s is w h a t I a m m a d e o f . . . (Apprehensions, Crossing the Water, p . 57). J Bumblebees and Their Ways, M a c m i l l a n , N e w Y o r k , 1934.

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magically, could give b i r t h to anything. (She is a writer w h o makes a w o r l d o f paper and words w h i c h are breath.) B y the same process o f paper-making she could also make maps to show her­ self directions, or generate an identity: A n y day I may litter puppies O r mother a horse. M y belly moves. I must make more maps. The haphazard imagery expresses her desperation at n o t k n o w i n g what she is, and her uncertainty about taking on any form, finding any direction, or creating anything from her body that was sub­ stantial and trustworthy. W i t h i n her she has emptiness: . . . so many cellars, Such eelish delvings! T h r o u g h w h i c h she makes her way, groping and b l i n d : Moley-handed, I eat m y way. The m i n d , however dissociated, is aware that there is a body w i t h i n w h i c h there are tunnels and shafts: somewhere there must be a structure, yet as she explores it, she can find nothing secure or reliable (and she explores i t by male symbols, eels and moles). Y e t she can observe her predicament w i t h a strange (and, to use her o w n w o r d elsewhere, 'daft') wittiness: ' w i g g l i n g m y ears'—the image o f a wasp's antennae twitching as i t works is hilarious, trans­ ferred to an introspective self-seeking to create a self b y insect-like activity. Somewhere ' d o w n there' is the regressed libidinal ego, w i t h its hunger for nourishment—licking what he can f r o m the substance o f the self: T am all m o u t h ' and A l l - m o u t h licks up the bushes A n d the pots o f meat. He lives i n an old well, A stony hole. He's to blame. He's a fat sort. This ' A l l - m o u t h ' is the regressed libidinal ego, the 'dark thing', that 'sleeps', in her, 'looking out w i t h its hooks for something to

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love' (Elm). B u t there are here some strange things about ' h i m ' — not least the fact that he is a he (in poem 4, 'Fido Litdesoul' is also a he). W h y is Sylvia Plath's regressed libidinal ego a male? ( O r i t could be a puppy or horse?) I have argued i n relation to D y l a n Thomas that his problems o f identity perhaps originated when his mother handled h i m as i f he were another sibling that had died. W i n n i c o t t reports a man w i t h a split-off female element, w h o was handled as i f he were a girl. A g i r l patient o f Masud Khan had a split-offmale element, because she was handled as a boy. * I believe w e can argue, o n the basis o f m y analyses above, that Sylvia Plath has w i t h i n her identity a split-off male element built on hate—and this is all she has. She doesn't have any female core. A fragment o f maleness is the basis o f her identity and this consists o f an internalisation o f the mother's 'pseudo-male doing'. B u t since she identified so closely w i t h her father later she also confuses this w i t h his identity, and w i t h her internalisation o f his male element. So, she has a confused and fragmentary male identity, w h i c h is i n part bits o f Daddy, the Colossus: i n part formed o f the father's stolen penis; i n part a little puppy—a 'fat sort', or little animal— mumble-paws, Litdesoul, n o t k n o w i n g what i t is. She knows (however) that she is a girl, because o f her body. So, she is only a k i n d o f mate to the stolen maleness: Hairtusk's'bride. (In Birthday Present the 'tusk' is rejection, w i t h death lurking i n the back­ ground.) A l l - m o u t h is a 'fat sort' w h o is hungry and lives in a hole, licks up the bushes and the pots o f meat. 'He's to blame' i n some w a y : what for? For her existence, I believe: and so he is the father's penis, stolen and kept inside her, i n a vacancy i n the sterile and petrified core o f the self ('a stony hole') where the hunger to be has never been satisfied, and femaleness has never been found. The stolen father's penis w i t h its hungry m o u t h is thus identified w i t h the regressed libidinal ego, which is also 'to blame' for the present predicament: so, he is the butt o f the anti-libidinal ego, that is (according to Fairbairn), the dynamic i n the self that hates the weakness o f the baby-self. H e (Hairtusk—All-mouth—Fido Litdesoul) is hated and feared because he is a hungry m o u t h , a t

* S e e W i n n i c o t t , 1971a, p . 65; a n d K h a n , ' E n la r e g a r d a n t et e n e c o u t a n t , j e pensais a u n e i m a g e e n s u r i m p r e s s i o n a la t e l e v i s i o n : i l y avait les d e u x

personnes

distinctes superposees . . . ' (1971), p . 53. ( N o w i n E n g l i s h i n K h a n (1974), p 23 4.)

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glutton for one's m a r r o w . Yet he bears, as a 'fat sort', a resem­ blance to the tongue i n the mother's m o u t h : a baby i n a petrified matrix that cannot speak i t forth.* This complex primitive imagery surely symbolises Fairbairn's remarks, 'Deep d o w n , the schizoid individual yearns to love and be loved'? The poem goes o n Pebble smells, turnipy chambers. Small nostrils are breathing. Little humble loves! Footlings, boneless as n o s e s . . . In the last stanza w e have a flood o f tenderness—as i f for her o w n unborn children. B u t the tenderness is rather for the unborn aspects o f the self i n regression. As noted below, Guntrip reports that schizoid patients dream o f babies i n steel drawers or waiting in some w a y to be born. I t is such a baby she cherishes at the r o o t o f her being. It is w a r m and tolerable I n the bowel o f the root. Here's a cuddly mother. B y such strange visions o f her interior w o r l d , Sylvia Plath pene­ trates to her o w n deepest problems, the need to be mothered—as psychiatry could not mother her. She tries to mother herself. She wants to bring her baby-self to birth, f r o m her o w n bowels. A t the time when being alive, and especially being 'treated', is intoler­ able, the regressed libidinal ego, symbolised as 'little humble loves', is w a r m and tolerable, 'drawn back inside' the cuddly bowels o f the mother-self. I t is indeed strange that these regressed libidinal egos are plural She is a 'many-sounding-minded'-creature o f several 'systems'.f The 'boneless . . . noses' or 'footlings' are little baby penises or toes round w h i c h a true self could be built. She knows ' I have a * I n All the Dear Dears, a s k e l e t o n w h o stands f o r D e a t h threatens t o eat t h e m a r r o w o u t o f the poet's b o n e s : later t h e skeleton's s k u l l t h r o u g h t h e glass c o m e s to l o o k l i k e the m o t h e r ' s face i n a m i r r o r . I t is as i f the hunger to be reflected i t s e l f is l i k e a v o r a c i o u s D e a t h w h i l e t h e m o t h e r ' s face is u n r e f l e c t i n g l y s t o n y a n d b o n e ­ like. •f ' M a n y s o u n d i n g m i n d e d ' is a p h r a s e f r o m D y l a n T h o m a s . T h e c o n c e p t o f several systems is f r o m R . D . L a i n g (i960).

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self to recover' (Stings) and cries 'There o u g h t . . . to be a ritual for being born twice' (The Bell Jar)—hoping for 'a second chance to live' (Guntrip). 3.

M A E N A D

The name Maenad for a Bacchante is f r o m jjiaiuo[i.ai, 'to be m a d ' : it contains the English w o r d M(aen)ad. Section 3 simply means T went m a d ' : Once I was ordinary . . . —there was a time when I was not mad. H o w d i d I get like this? I sat as a child identifying w i t h m y father, taking i n w i s d o m f r o m him: Sat b y m y father's bean tree Eating the fingers o f wisdom. The 'bean tree' seems to have a special relevance for Sylvia Plath: it occurs again i n The Bee Meeting (Ariel, p. 60) where memories o f the father bee-keeper evoke v i v i d feelings about the beanfield in w h i c h there are: Feather dusters fanning their hands i n a sea o f bean flowers, Creamy bean flowers w i t h black eyes and leaves like bored hearts. Is i t blood clots the tendrils are dragging up that string? In the same field are: Strips o f tinfoil w i n k i n g like people . . . In this scene we have the juxtaposition o f several images which are o f intense significance to Sylvia Plath: shiny tinfoil like w i n k i n g eyes; leaves like hearts w i t h holes i n ; bloodclots (actually flowers that w i l l one day be edible—as beans). The flowers and tinfoil strips are bright eyes (the significance o f w h i c h w i l l be evident later), associated w i t h blood and the outflowings o f the heart. Taking into account the underlying physical imagery, o f primitive sexuality, what we have here are images o f love-hunger. (To Jung the father was the source o f spiritual wisdom, w h i c h becomes part o f the woman's animus, her internalization o f maleness taken f r o m the father.) So, to sit b y her father's bean tree, 'eating the fingers

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o f wisdom', is not only to take i n his instruction but to eat his penis—to take into herself the male elements o f his identity, feeling that she was stealing these, because love had not been freely given. Here, looking back on her childhood, The birds made milk. ' W h e n I was a child', she is saying, ' I thought that the birds' white liquid droppings were m i l k . ' This might be a natural thing for a little girl to think. B u t earlier we found the w o m e n i n the mental hospital wards thinking they were birds. So, the birds that make m i l k seem like breasts. The w o m e n think they are birds; the child thought that the birds were a k i n d o f part o f woman. Because o f the confusion o f part-objects, I believe, the birds are not only breasts, but also represent the penis w h i c h is like a little bird and can i n a sense make m i l k (and i f one has stolen i t instead o f the breast, the confusion is understandable). W h e n i t thundered I h i d under a flat stone. A child is afraid because o f guilt: when love has had to be stolen, the guilt arises f r o m the fear o f talion revenge which is expected f r o m God (who is a k i n d o f Daddy). A flat stone resembles a tombstone, so this is to play dead: but also i n being flat i t has no proud assertiveness—and such assertiveness might reveal the erect, colossus-like, phallic nature o f her male identity. That is, i f she stood up erect, i t w o u l d be obvious that she had stolen the father's penis, a lingam, a pestle. Here we approach a strange underlying fear i n Sylvia Plath: to be alive is to be ' w r o n g ' because life is sus­ tained by a stolen instrument o f love that does not really belong to you. T o hide under a flat stone is to assume a female prostrate posture, and so to escape. As we shall see, in The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath's protagonist's suicidal impulse comes immediately after her visit to her father's grave, as i f to find the secret o f her identity, which was perhaps in the 'female element' o f the father, l y i n g there under that stone, w i t h flowers 'where the person's navel w o u l d be' (down inside mother earth). W h y did she go mad? The mother o f mouths didn't love me. The old man shrank to a doll.

4

6

POEM

F O R A

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This is as clear a statement as any schizoid individual could make o f the origins o f her predicament. I t says that 'when I was an infant, m y intense oral needs, m y hunger for survival, were not met b y the mother w h o should have provided creative reflection for m y mouth-ego. I had to build m y identity o n maleness, so I stole m y father's " o l d man". B u t m y father died and m y memories o f his image faded—so I found myself w i t h n o inward possession o f h i m , based on secure identification, but w i t h a stolen penis that became a little doll i n m y hands'. F r o m this insight w e can see that the colossus, the statue-man she puts together f r o m scraps i n her w o r k , is a k i n d o f 'transitional object'—a teddy-bear or doll. Boys (Winnicott tells us) prefer hard transitional objects: girls prefer soft ones: the symbolism is that o f differences o f body and being. I n Sylvia Plath's case, because a soft breast-object could not be taken into the self (or mouth-object f r o m 'the mother o f mouths'), she has to substitute a penis-object, a male dolly.* Masud K h a n links sexual perversion to transitional object pheno­ mena and so the plaything here may be seen to have sexual under­ tones. T h e ' o l d man' that 'shrinks to a doll' is the stolen penis w h i c h is used i n a futile way to 'masturbate a glitter' (cf. Death and Co.); b u t (as w e shall see) his eyes are bald and unreflec­ ting. I n discussing these fetichistic (and penis-envy) elements in Sylvia Plath, as they may be linked f r o m this very revealing poem, I a m trying to prepare the reader for the amazing meanings o f her adoption o f male modes, and the ferocious resentment w h i c h developed later out o f desperation, when these failed her. A t last, i n Daddy (Ariel, p. 54), i n exasperation and frustration she decides that this w a y o f 'communicating' through the 'black telephone' to her father i n the other w o r l d must be given up, and she must castrate (or annihilate) herself o f the male phallusimago. Her repeated attempts to establish an identity b y the use o f the penis o f the 'colossus' take her a long w a y beyond the pitiful hopelessness o f Poem for a Birthday, towards murderous revenge: * C f . t h e ' d a r n i n g - e g g ' w i t c h w o m e n i n The Disquieting Muses, The Colossus, p . 58. A t t h e e n d o f t h e s h o r t s t o r y The Wishing Box t h e p r o t a g o n i s t , w h o h a s c o m m i t t e d s u i c i d e , is d a n c i n g w i t h ' h e r r e d - c a p p e d p r i n c e ' — t h e father's p e n i s .

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Daddy, I have had to k i l l y o u . Y o u died before I had time— Marble-heavy, a bag full o f God, Ghastly statue w i t h one grey toe B i g as a Frisco seal A n d a head i n the freakish Atlantic Where i t pours bean green over blue . . . Here Daddy is a petrified penis as big as a seal (in the bean green Adantic), corresponding to the b i g toe o f a Colossus w h o m , she feels, she could have made satisfactory if she had had time. (Her father died o f a disease w h i c h began i n his toe.) She has a photo o f h i m w i t h a cleft i n his chin. She makes a j o k e o f this cleft being there instead o f i n his foot. B u t the cleft is the cleft i n the stolen penis, and the black telephone that is 'cut o f f at the root' is the penis she castrates (and steals). But, i n truth, this big, hateconstructed, black, dead penis is her own split-off male element (animus), against w h i c h all her spleen is directed, i n ultimate hope­ lessness. Instead o f femaleness, all she has is a cleft i n the 'chin' o f a stolen phallus. This maleness as the basis o f her woman's identity is the secret behind her obsession w i t h darning dollies and other fetishistic symbols. The hopelessness is there i n Maenad: O I am too big to go backward . . . As Guntrip says, the schizoid individual, though he yearns for rebirth, is yet terrified o f being 'drawn back inside'—into a loss o f all objects, b y ultimate regression. She realises there is no going back: she is too big. As a child she believed that bird's droppings were m i l k . B u t now she is disillusioned, and the things dropping from the birds are merely feathers. I n many o f her images she is seeking m i l k : but what she gets is something y o u can neither eat, nor see y o u r ­ self in. F r o m the birds she thought were breasts, she gets only something o f w h i c h she can make no use—like the feather dusters in the beanfield i n The Bee Meeting or the snow flakes that merely settle on her o w n face i n The Night Dances, rather than a richness to be absorbed: also,

4

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The bean leaves are dumb as hands. the leaves o f her father's bean tree cannot speak to her (as the mother's m o u t h could). N o w , in the mental hospital, instead o f returning to begin again f r o m the 'bowel o f the root' and experiencing rebirth, she ex­ periences an autumnal m o n t h that is 'fit for little'. (The w o r d 'fit' evokes echoes o f ' W h y then I ' l l fit y o u w i t h the remedy', f r o m K y d , borrowed i n The Waste Land: 'Hieronomo's mad againe.') The dead ripen in the grapeleaves. Those w h o should seem like bunches o f grapes ripening under the viticulturist's care, are dead. A red tongue is among us. This tongue is not the tongue o f the mother o f mouths, but a tongue of flame—and a male tongue, or impinging penis. I t is the tongue o f flame she associates w i t h electro-convulsive therapy and being done to. I t is the tongue of false male doing, and i t is making her into an identity different from her o w n . Mother, keep out o f m y barnyard, I am becoming another. She is not to take the path o f being enabled b y the 'mother o f otherness', to find that other w o r l d o f being, b y being tongue to her mouth. She is becoming 'another' altogether—and the rejec­ tion o f the mother and 'female element being' is necessary for this. 'Another' here means 'other than female'. Instead o f giving herself up to the 'mother o f mouths' she is submitting herself to another devourer—'Dog-head'. Dog-head is a God-head, and he is a 'big love eater', but b y doing He is her doctor: Feed me the berries o f dark. I n Blackberrying (Crossing the Water, p. 24) the berries are as big as the ball o f her thumb, dumb eyes, and something like blood clots, 'squandering' their juices in love: B i g as the ball o f m y thumb, and d u m b as eyes Ebon in the hedges, fat

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W i t h blue-red juices. These they squander on m y fingers. I had not asked for such a blood sisterhood; they must love me. The giving o f ' i n n e r contents' by the berries is love: they almost offer her 'encounter'. Yet, to her, 'eyes' are dumb, even as blackberrying enhances her perception. In Tulips the protagonist's head is an eye that cannot shut: ' i t has to take everything i n ' . Here, in the mental hospital her eyes have to take i n the berries o f dark: Feed me the berries o f dark. The lids w o n ' t shut. The eyes that look for 'reflection' have darkness forced o n them. Instead o f the eyes o f berries she gets a c r o w n o f thorns: the 'hoops o f blackberry stems' are the cables o f the E C T machine. W h e n she is given shocks, she can't remember anything for weeks: so, the berries these 'hoops' force on her are berries o f oblivion, forced on her like light on an eye that w o n ' t shut. She has to see reality even as i t is meaningless to her. Time Unwinds f r o m the great umbilicus o f the sun Its endless glitter. Death, i n one o f its aspects, is masturbating this glitter. I n the death circuit o£being done to, i n a pseudo-male way, T i m e becomes a great, endless unwinding, beginning f r o m the sun. 'Glitter' and the umbilicus relate the image to the mother's eyes and b o d y : but the image is o f a cosmic (male) impingement, w h i c h she must accept. I t is a cosmic male orgasm. I must swallow i t all. —she must endure 'life w i t h o u t feeling alive' and she must put up w i t h her treatment, swallowing the berries o f the dark. The huge pressure o f a meaningless (and fatherless) universe must be allowed to press in on her. The others round her, also being treated b y E C T and other forms o f shock treatment, lie in odd postures—'their limbs at odds'. They seem to have no identities either. They are all in the 'moon's vat'. For Sylvia Plath the m o o n is a stony, blank, hard-hearted,

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indifferent face—her 'vat' thus a k i n d o f witch's cauldron. (In Edge, the moon's 'blacks crackle and drag'; i n The Couriers, there is a 'cauldron' 'crackling/All to i t s e l f on the top o f the Alps.) I n this light the blood is black . . . The petrifying influence o f the stony m o o nw i t c h is being exerted all around her: vast impingement. I n being changed into 'another', along w i t h all the others, she is being attacked b y the castrating mother herself. The coercive influence o f punitive psychiatry seems to her to belong to the same balefulness and is but another manifestation o f the failure to love. Tell me m y name. She has w o r k e d out b y n o w that what she is being taught is that the 'correct' thing for her is to accept a conformist (or false male self) identity, b y a ritual o f degradation.* Here arise startling implications, to do w i t h our concepts o f 'cure' and what society regards as a normal identity, as w e shall see.

4.

T H E BEAST

W e have seen many images o f the vacancy i n the identity where the female element should be. The Beast is about the deficiencies o f the male element. Here is the truth about the Colossus, w h o is not a Colossus at all, but 'Fido Litdesoul', a little animal, just a 'cupboard o f rubbish'—a collection o f stolen partial objects. Sylvia Plath often discusses the w a y i n w h i c h she seems 'mar­ ried' to various things or people, f r o m her plaster cast to the black telephone. For 'marry' here, I believe, we may read 'identify'. Her concept o f marrying belongs to the infant's primitive belief that M u m m y and Daddy virtually eat one another i n marriage. Her capacity for relationship seems to have remained on the basis o f primitive identification.! I n The Beekeeper's Daughter (The Colossus, p. 75) she is married to her father: * See Esterson (1970), p. 98. •f As Andrew Brink (1968) remarks of Daddy, ' W i t h L o v e inoperative hatred comes into play and is directed against the doubly resented object, the fatherhusband'.

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Father, bridegroom . . . —and as queen bee she marries his o l d age: The queen bee marries the winter o f your year. Failing i n 'female element being', she is a summer-queen-bee married to a winter-father, w h o is i n the 'dead season', for he is dead. As we see f r o m her other poems she has virtually made her colossus. Here, i n The Beast, she recognises that he doesn't really exist. He may have been the father w h o once paid her loving attention as a little g i r l : He kept b l o w i n g me kisses. I hardly knew h i m . But n o w she is really Duchess o f N o t h i n g , Hairtusk's bride. Hairtusk is maleness, again, the father's penis: but, like the bone and hair i n the glass case at Cambridge (in All The Dead Dears) all that remains o f her father's body. I t is like a rhinoceros horn, a male proboscis thing, a hairy (? 'wisdom') tusk, one o f the 'fingers o f wisdom', becomes a dried fetish, useful for doing, but useless in the quest for being. She married only a cupboard full o f fragments o f impingement—memories o f her father and fragments o f the mother's 'male element'. These are all she has on w h i c h to build a self and at the b o t t o m o f i t is still the hungry m o u t h ego. He's a destructive little puppy w h o gnaws at the darkness: and, as we have seen, he is male when he ought to be female. Yet, since he is the only structure on which she can build her identity, He w o n ' t be got r i d of: Mumblepaws, teary and sorry, Fido Littlesoul, the bowel's familiar. A dustbin's enough for h i m . The dark's his bone Call h i m any name, he'll come to i t . Here the 'beast' seems the animus, Jung's 'shadow o f the male in the female'. I t was formed f r o m Daddy, and from the 'male ele-

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ment' o f the mother as sources o f identity. These scraps o f ' d o i n g ' , assembled together i n her infancy, become her puppy-self (felt to be 'him').* This puppy-dog self is one element o f her complex, pitiful, regressed libidinal ego, the true self that longs to be born. This beast, once 'bullman' and ' K i n g o f the dish' (that is, a penis w h o has feasted on femaleness), is not the idealised false self o f hate w h i c h is the subject o f The Colossus and Daddy. Here the p r o ­ tagonist is disillusioned enough to see that her belief i n w h a t at first was a god-like creature, magical and larger than life, cannot be sustained. (Interestingly enough he is inflated here, ironically, i n a language borrowed from Dylan Thomas, w h o also used spells to t r y to create a w o r l d that was 'all him'.) Jung tells us that, through suffering, a w o m a n can embrace her animus, as part o f herself rather than a force that possesses her—and then 'he' can become an 'invaluable inner companion w h o endows her w i t h the masculine qualities o f initiative, courage, objectivity and spiritual wisdom' (1964, p. 194). In this section o f Poem for a Birthday Sylvia Plath has such a positive view o f her animus. She was once hopeful. Breathing was easy i n his airy holding. The sun sat i n his armpit. N o t h i n g went m o u l d y . The little invisibles Waited on h i m hand and foot. But she cannot keep her confidence i n the magic: D o w n here the sky is always falling. Hogwallow's at the w i n d o w . The star bugs w o n ' t save me this m o n t h . A grossness o f bodily need has brought her d o w n to the ' m u d sump' o f hopelessness. Her animus being thus reduced, he is no invaluable companion. Hairtusk has nothing to offer, to help sus­ tain Fido, the regressed libidinal ego, w h o has learnt to chew his meagre bone o f hope in the darkness, and is even inclined to accept a conformist self in ultimate humiliation. 'Tell me m y * Guntrip reports a patient's dream of a little dog in a box which has been there since he possessed such a dog as a boy. 'The dog represented a specifically distinct . . . a "true self" put in cold storage and awaiting a chance of rebirth* (1968), p. 209.

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name', in Maenad, becomes here, 'Call h i m by any name, he'll come to i t ' . Fido Littlesoul is familiar enough w i t h the bowels and a dustbin is enough for h i m . The creativity o f vision (the star bugs) have saved her i n the past. B u t now, after E C T , she is beyond saving: she is merely a drab i n the sty, i n Time's gut-end. She has been taught debasement and brought d o w n to the bottom—a fish puddle, a mud-sump, a sty, among emmets and molluscs, lesser creatures ( ' I k n o w the b o t t o m — I k n o w i t w i t h m y great tap­ r o o t ' : Elm). I n this humiliated state her regressed libidinal ego, composed o f little scraps o f rubbishy maleness, w i l l answer to any name, he is so hungry and needy: and abjectly conformist.

5.

FLUTE NOTES FROM A REEDY

POND

This hopelessness becomes i n the next section something like aboulia,* a psychological paralysis. The mouth-hungry patients, dehumanised, become primitive creatures o f the swamp: . . . frog-mouth and fish-mouth drink The liquor o f indolence, and all things sink Into a soft caul o f forgetfulness. The patients are under sedation, shocked or drugged. There is no real recreation: they are only manipulated mechanically like automatons, masked by horn. Whether there is any reference here to a device w o r n by patients I do not k n o w . W h a t one sees i n ­ wardly is the beaked mask o f characters i n the Italian Comedy, or perhaps Bosch figures in paintings. The horn is a hard shield; i t is aggressive and has sexual connotations: i n a sense it is the front­ line defensive face o f false male doing. Puppets, loosed f r o m the strings o f the puppet-master, Wear masks o f horn to bed. It is a k i n d o f living death. The essential reality o f death (which thrusts the problem o f meaning at us) is side-stepped, by spiritual death: * 'Inability, usually pathological, to make or to act on decisions' (Penguin Dictionary of Psychology). Hamlet suffers from aboulia.

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This is not death, i t is something safer. The w i n g y myths w o n ' t tug at us any more . . . The poem is a record o f the effects o f conventional psychiatry i n demythologising the psyche: no more Icarus impulses, no more soaring flights o f imagination: N o w coldness comes sifting d o w n , layer after layer . . . It is like snow, covering earth i n forgetfulness, an image w h i c h occurs i n The Bell Jar. The topography becomes unfamiliar: but yet the fall-out is menacing, bringing a cruel blankness. The flowers are gone, leaving only the skeletons o f umbelliferae—and there is no shelter: Overhead the o l d umbrellas o f summer W i t h e r like pithless hands. There is little shelter. H o u r l y the eye o f the sky enlarges its blank Dominion. As the myths are destroyed, so are the delusions. The sky becomes a blank vacancy o f unreflecting meaninglessness and the dead weeds, withered, offer no defence against its impingement. 'The stars are no nearer'—the modern scientific universe is simply matter i n motion, a blank dominion, w h i c h simply is, and we can come no nearer understanding the stars nor do they lend them­ selves to our imaginings. * W h a t the protagonist has lost is the hope that was i n death-asresurrection: The moults are tongueless that sang f r o m above the water O f golgotha at the tip o f the reed, A n d h o w a god flimsy as a baby's finger Shall unhusk himself and steer into the air. In this poem the nymphs (the w o m e n in the ward) are 'nodding to sleep like statues'. They are 'lamp-headed' because E C T has lit them u p : but they have gone empty-headed and petrified. Each has a lamp at the head o f her bed but their lights are out. W h a t is lost is * So, the sky is 'starless and fatherless' (Sheep in Fog, Ariel, p. 13) while each gesture 'flees down an alley of diminishing perspectives', and its significance 'Drains like water out of a hole at the far end'. (Insomniac, Crossing the Water, p. 21.)

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the capacity to sing: the birds have lost their feathers (they are moults: these feathers were once believed to be milk) and they cannot sing any more o f magical things. I f we examine the ' w i n g y myths' that are lost ' i n a soft caul o f forgetfulness', they are myths o f resurrection or rebirth-by-suicide. The dragonfly climbs to the tip o f the reed, and flies away like a g o d : like Christ he unhusks himself o f his o l d body to live a new life. This section o f the poem virtually says that, through psychiatric treatment, Sylvia Plath lost her belief that she could, like a dragon­ fly, one day 'unhusk' herself and, 'flimsy as a baby's finger',* be reborn. B u t this treatment d i d not r i d her o f her belief i n the m y t h o f schizoid suicide, though i t m i g h t have sunk i t for a time in a 'soft caul o f forgetfulness'. Neither d i d i t provide for the longed-for rebirth, while all i t destroyed was lovely vision. There is n o w neither true creative intentionality, nor the fantasy o f resurrection. F r o m everything her poetry tells o f the experience o f mental illness and conventional psychiatry, one gains a disturbing sense that 'treatment', based as i t is felt to be on doing and impingement itself, is felt to be based on hate. Because i t fails to find meaning, i t seems to be blind to, and to menace, possibilities o f finding a mean­ ing i n life. W h i l e i t may suspend delusions, i t may even so seem to confirm and reinforce the patient's o w n hate-solutions to the problems o f existence by seeming to put beyond reach solutions based on creativity and love. I t perhaps urged her closer to suicide as a choice to die, b y dispelling the w i n g y (Icarus) myths o f schizoid suicide, w h i c h have beneath them the w i l l to live at least. The patient seems left yearning for the chimeras o f w h i c h she has been 'cured'. However delusive, they at least contained meanings, i n which hope was 'locked up'. Imprisoned i n physicalism, conven­ tional psychiatry seems to reduce the human being to a puppy, statue or humiliated m o u l t or frog, and the w o r l d to a blank and meaningless mass o f matter. 'Perception takes the place o f apper­ ception.' I n the short story The Wishing Box, the protagonist commits suicide because she cannot t h r o w meaningfulness over the w o r l d . * The baby's finger, like the 'footlings, boneless as noses', is perhaps a source of re-creation she feels to be in the internalised father's penis. See Loveletter in Crossing the Water: 'I slept on like a bent finger', p. 44. 3

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A n y t h i n g to prove that her shaping imaginative powers were not irretrievably lost; that her eye was not merely an open camera lens w h i c h recorded surrounding phenomena and left i t at that. ' A rose,' she found herself repeating hollowly, like a funeral dirge, 'is a rose is a rose—' Agnes recalls 'her infinitely more creative childhood days'. She felt n o w 'a gaping v o i d i n her o w n head'. She could not bear the prospect o f a long life of'visionless days'. The story suggests that the loss o f the capacity for meaningful seeing and for filling the seen w o r l d w i t h imaginative significance is like 'some dark, malignant cancer'. Such a fear o f failure o f perception could per­ haps have been made worse b y the eradication o f ' w i n g y myths', by E C T . 6.

WITCH

BURNING

This v i e w is reinforced b y the sixth section w h i c h suggests that Sylvia Plath was 'taught' b y conventional psychiatry that the solu­ tion to the problem o f ego-weakness is to submit masochistically to hate and that hate can only be cast out by hate. O f course, w e must be careful here, because w e are responding to schizoid utterance, and, as w e shall see, there are occupational hazards i n this, o f ' f a l l ­ ing i n love' w i t h the schizoid individual and o f becoming involved in her paranoid feelings o f being 'oppressed'. B u t throughout all her w o r k , even when she tells us i t is 'mad', Sylvia Plath preserves her penetrating insights and her capacity for clear utterance, and utter sincerity. This is very terrible—like a martyr washing his hands i n the flames and praying aloud even as his flesh burns. B u t our task is to listen, and to respond. Being 'normal', w e are 'aware o f the risks' as the schizoid person often is not. That is, we shall suffer pain and deep disturbance, because o f our capacity for concern, w h i c h she sometimes lacks. Witch Burning is about the hate-self being burned b y the haters. In the marketplace they are piling the d r y sticks. A thicket o f shadows is a poor coat. I inhabit The w a x image o f myself/ a doll's body. Sickness begins here: I am a dartboard for witches. O n l y the devil can eat the devil out. In the m o n t h o f red leaves I climb to a bed o f fire.

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The poem is about the experience o f being l i t up 'like an electric bulb' b y E C T . She hopes that she w i l l be able to have her illness ('Sickness begins here'). B u t there is a poignant sense o f not k n o w ­ ing where the ' I ' is. Is she i n the 'thicket o f shadows' w h i c h is a 'poor coat'? Is she i n the 'doll's body' (cf. The Applicant, Ariel, p. 36)? She feels that the body on the E C T couch or the bed on w h i c h she receives insulin therapy is a w a x image o f herself i n w h i c h witches are sticking pins (hypodermic needles, shocks) as the mother gave the infant only impingement experienced as 'pestling'. I t is October, when the leaves are red—the end o f summer: she climbs on to a bed o f flame, hoping for a change o f season, towards maturity or spring perhaps—but she is uncertain whether this colour is on the w a y to winter and death, or whether it is a refining fire towards spring and birth. She hopes that this pain, this being done to, this hate, w i l l purge her hate (the verb is eat—and one devil is eating another b y oral hate w h i c h consumes rather than speaks). B u t that there was any true rebirth seems u n ­ likely, for she herself at the end o f the poem under discussion speaks w i t h bitter irony when, after describing the mechanical processes o f assembling parts into whole puppet-like creatures, she says, I shall be good as new. Following 'Tell me m y name' this utters only a w r y promise— ' I promise to be g o o d ' : w h i c h is the answer such conventional psychiatry requires, b y adopting the procedures o f punishment and coercion. I f w e study this feeling, i n the light o f Fairbairn's analysis o f the strange logic o f the schizoid individual, can w e not perhaps see that the coercive 'doing' o f shock treatment can teach a schizoid patient that ' I t is better to give oneself over to the joys o f hating' than to seek dangerous love? O n l y hate can cast out hate: a dangerous formula that could so easily lead to encapsulation w i t h i n a death-circuit. I n The Bell Jar the protagonist Esther says that under E C T she 'began to wonder what she had done', that she had to be punished so much. Here the protagonist concludes that she is being punished for having tried to c o m m i t suicide, or, to put i t another way, for trying to get herself reborn. I f y o u teach some­ one that they have been naughty trying to be born, are y o u not teaching them that next time they had better make sure they die?

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I t is easy to blame the dark; the m o u t h o f a door, The cellar's belly. I n The Bell Jar the protagonist crawls d o w n into the cellar to take her poison and this cellar is evidently a w o m b ; when she cannot sleep she makes her bed into a t o m b ; she cannot find her father anywhere, and when she gets to his grave she lays her cheek on the stone—and decides i n the next paragraph to k i l l herself. Some­ where, she feels, there is a chance o f rebirth, i f only one could somehow re-enter the ' m o u t h ' o f the 'belly': so, here, she is speaking o f the symbolism o f schizoid suicide. Is i t that she feels i t is 'easy to blame' the suicidal impulse, i f i t is misinterpreted? W h a t she was looking for i n those shadows was a new l i g h t : but . . . They've b l o w n m y sparkler out. O r does she feel that 'they' have taken the universal presence o f black threatening shadows i n her w o r l d as an excuse to put out the 'sparkler' o f her o w n flame—the very glitter that is the focus o f hope? W e noted earlier that 'all-mouth' was 'to blame': the menacing shadows w h i c h reflect his voracity i n the outer w o r l d are to blame, too. The whole poem is full o f schizoid guilt. As Laing says, this is likely to lead to self-enclosure. M i g h t not shock therapy, b y seeming to be punishment, be likely to make this worse? Instead o f being offered opportunities for rebirth, she is i m ­ prisoned: b y a w i t c h (the castrating mother figure), w h o is dead: A black-sharded lady keeps me i n a parrot cage. W h a t large eyes the dead have! I am intimate w i t h a hairy spirit. Smoke wheels f r o m the beak o f this empty jar. Being subjected to E C T is like being an imprisoned parrot ('Tell me m y name'). I t is a death, because she is meeting 'the dead' w i t h large, unseeing eyes, in the dark. A n d i t is like a rape: the hairy spirit, akin to Mahler's ape, is a paranoid projection o f her o w n hate, and this is n o w 'intimate' w i t h her. These images, like those o f smoke wheeling f r o m the beak o f an empty jar,* arise f r o m the * There could be here an echo of the dreadful motto to The Waste Land, ' N a m Sibyllam, quidem Cumis ego, ipse oculis meis vidi, in ampulla pendere . . .', ' . . . respondebat ilia: a7to6av£tv 6£Xco.'

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confused impressions o f a patient strapped to the treatment couch : they are, significantly, o f emptiness, death, rape, and meaningless 'doing'. In response to this punishment, the true self tried to shrink and preserve itself by being too tiny to be h u r t : I f I am a little one, I can do no harm. Here speaks the confused and terrified infant, w h o cannot under­ stand w h y , when she wanted love, she was given violence: I f I don't move about, I ' l l knock nothing over. One may glimpse here, I believe, the severely deprived child, rocking on its bed i n an institution, expressionless, listless out o f fear o f the consequences o f ' m o v i n g about' So I said, Sitting under a potlid, tiny and inert as a rice grain. Coercive therapy establishes inertness: yet, to the v i c t i m w h o hopes for a cure, this impingement, which fosters a conformist self, seems like the t r u t h : They are turning the burners up, ring after ring. W e are full o f starch, m y small white fellows. W e g r o w . It hurts at first. The red tongues w i l l teach the truth. Being 'burnt' is like being heated as a grain o f starch, w h i c h after a while bursts and expands. Instead o f the g r o w t h o f the true self she experiences a sense o f being suddenly filled i n inner space, f r o m the ' i n e r t . . . grain', w i t h something like popcorn: b y such imagery 'we g r o w ' can surely only be taken as the bitterest irony?* Again, she speaks as though confessing after punishment. She is ready to interpret and confess her faults o f feeling petrified, o f having intercourse w i t h death in the shadow o f petrification—if only she can give some shape. (She has, i n this poem, been a red tongue, a footling, a coat o f shadows, a w a x image, a doll's body, a dartboard, a parrot, a little one, a rice grain, a singeless moth.) But the end o f the poem merely dissolves into the fire, in w h i c h the T is lost. * C f . The Bell Jar. After E C T 'nothing had changed', p. 216.

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T H E STONES

The final poem about this episode o f breakdown and psychiatric 'cure' is called The Stones. I t contrasts the sterility o f being 'done t o ' w i t h the yearning o f the regressed libidinal ego to be. ' M e n d i n g ' is seen as 'patching': nothing fundamental is supplied for the existential needs. This is the city where men are mended. I lie on a great anvil. W h e n she broke d o w n The flat blue sky-circle Flew o f f like the hat o f a doll W h e n I fell out o f the light. As the cosmos flew apart, she sought to retreat to the w o m b (the cellar and attempted suicide): to find a w o m b that could 'speak' her. B u t i t was unable to. I entered The stomach o f indifference, the wordless cupboard. I n The Bell Jar Esther's suicide attempt follows an episode at home where she is overwhelmed b y the sense o f hate and indifference between herself and her mother. The novel conveys a dread o f the mother's impingement. Here i t is remembered as being crushed b y the stone penis o f a colossus, o f immense male-element d o i n g : The mother o f pestles diminished me. I became a still pebble. The stones o f the belly were peaceable, The head-stone quiet, jostled b y nothing. Here the image o f petrified self inside the stony male-mother merges into an image o f the father's tomb. There is a libidinal attachment, as in Tulips, to a withdrawal to a state o f being utterly non-human and turned to stone, i n ultimate inanition: 'jostled b y nothing'. O n l y , as she says here quite clearly, the hungry unborn infant w i t h i n , the mouth-ego, cried out—even in the suicide attempt.

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O n l y the mouth-hole piped out, Importunate cricket I n a quarry o f silences. The people o f the city heard i t . They hunted the stones, taciturn and separate, The mouth-hole crying their locations. Here she speaks o f her 'mouth-hole' w i t h affection, 'importunate cricket', as i f i t d i d not belong to her, or was a little creature inside her. W i n n i c o t t speaks o f a false self w h i c h can be so heroic that i t w i l l organise a suicide to 'save the true self f r o m insult'. Surely Sylvia Plath speaks at times from this false self, w h i c h has a deep love o f the true self, but yet cannot find i t as part o f the whole, or bring i t to birth? The people w h o hear the true self crying are feared b y her be­ cause they do not understand and are remote: they are 'taciturn and separate'. I n the cellar where she is seeking rebirth through schizoid suicide her regressed libidinal ego lies i n wait like a foetus i n a bottle (in alcohol?). D r u n k as a foetus I suck at the paps o f darkness. * They take her to hospital and revive her. She portrays this as an act o f coercion exerted on an unwilling subject w h o wanted to be a stone. Y e t i t is also a f o r m o f love—albeit misunderstanding love: again, she is subjected to (male) ' d o i n g ' : The food tubes embrace me. Sponges kiss m y lichens away. The jewelmaster drives his chisel to p r y Open one stone eye.f Being brought to life w i t h o u t real rebirth is a sterile and futile procedure. The 'doing' is an impingement w h i c h she resents. Again we have the dreadful image o f the head being a ('stupid *Cf.

G r o w n so wise grown so terrible Sucking death's mouldy tits. Sit on my finger, sing in m y ear, O littleblood. (Ted Hughes, Littleblood, Crow, p. 94). t A chisel cracked down on m y eye, and a slit of light opened like a mouth or wound . . . Then the chisel struck again' (The Bell Jar, p. 181).

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pupil') eye w h i c h cannot shut, cannot stop seeing. T o her, to see light can be hell: This is the after-hell: I see the light. A w i n d unstoppers the chamber O f the ear, o l d worrier. Water mollifies the flint lip, A n d daylight lays its sameness on the wall.* She sees therapy as a k i n d o f insane, sadistic optimism—a mere 'grafting' and stitching o f spare parts together: The grafters are cheerful, Heating the pincers, hoisting the delicate hammers. A current agitates the wires V o l t upon volt. Catgut stitches m y fissures. There was never a more v i v i d picture o f the state Laing speaks o f as 'life w i t h o u t feeling alive', and o f the schizoid feeling o f self as partially divorced f r o m b o d y : A w o r k m a n walks b y carrying a pink torso. The storerooms are full o f hearts. This is the city o f spare parts. M y swaddled legs and arms smell sweet as rubber. Here they can doctor heads, or any l i m b . . . T o one w h o does not feel 'ontological security' there is a bitter i r o n y about a place where 'they can doctor heads'. (The w o m e n in the wards were 'dead heads' as a result.) The bitterness becomes sardonic: O n Fridays the little children come T o trade their hooks for hands. Dead men leave eyes for others. * Hardy writes of the sense of schizoid futility which can be felt about daylight in deep grief, in The Going: A n d daylight hardens upon the w a l l . . . T o see unwillingly, because what is seen is meaningless, again, would seem to be connected with the substitution of perception for apperception which Winnicott sees as following the failure of creation reflection. See below, p. 142.

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Her inner child has been given n o t h i n g : implicitly she jeers at the medical profession as a racket which only pretends to resurrect. 'Suffer little children to come unto me'—they get hands for hooks, do they? In. Tulips the faces o f her husband and children seem like 'little smiling hooks': here children whose arms end i n cruel hooks can be given hands (hooks also fasten into eyes). The children are humanised (we remember h o w afraid she is o f the 'dark thing', w h i c h is 'looking out w i t h its hooks': also she inside herself is 'moley-handed') and their disabilities are removed. B u t the line is ironic—it is obvious she doesn't believe the miracle is possible. I f a hand has not g r o w n , the individual is touchless, ineffectual. (In his surrealist legend Lilith George Macdonald's protagonist grows a new hand when the o l d one, w h i c h could not open generously, is chopped off.) I t is true that some can see because they have been given spare parts f r o m the dead: but these mechanical marvels still leave the deepest existential needs untouched. These need love: but here Love is the uniform o f m y bald nurse. Here, love is the outward professional garb o f an impinger w h o is an unattractive male: i t does not come f r o m feminine 'being for', and so cannot reach to the depths o f need. ('Bald' is also almost synonymous w i t h 'blind' i n her w o r k . ) Yet, love is m y problem: m y need for i t is the curse o f m y existence: Love is the bone and sinew o f m y curse. 'Fixed stars/Govern a life' (Words): deep i n the psychic tissue there is a deficiency o f love, and a fear o f love. Psychiatry has merely 'mended' a 'case': there seems to be a flowering i n i t , but i t is elusive ('flowering's finished'). Love and the true blossom have not been created there: there is only a mended pot w i t h a rose stuck in it, whose essence still eludes: The vase, reconstructed, houses The elusive rose. Ten fingers shape a b o w l for shadows. In the centre o f the shape formed b y doing there are only shadows still:

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M y mendings itch. There is nothing to do. There is nothing to be achieved b y ' d o i n g ' : there is nothing really to be done about m y state. The last line is a bitter moan o f despair: I shall be good as new. —and at the same time a promise to the psychiatric examination board.

3 The Baby in the Bell Jar: the Symbolism of the Novel As we have seen, one central theme i n this writer's w o r k is that o f 'impingement': she w h o has had to make her identity out o f scraps o f ' b e i n g done t o ' is continually preoccupied w i t h the rela­ tionship between being forced to conform and the true self that seeks to fulfil itself. So, she is fascinated b y surgical operations, birth, executions, the psychiatric interview, E C T , sadistic acts, and suicide (the final doing-to-oneself). Although, since she is a schizoid individual, she tends to give us a paranoid view o f the relation between 'society' and the individual, she also exposes some o f the weaknesses in our society—areas i n w h i c h we fail to cherish being, to give individuals a chance to find the path to being able to say I A M , b y loving encounter. These are the themes o f her novel, The Bell Jar. One o f the most important symbols here is that o f birth, and we may relate her preoccupation w i t h i t to some o f D . W . W i n n i cott's insights. For example, he made the startling suggestion that the experience o f being satisfactorily born is itself a creative experi­ ence. One must not o f course sentimentalise this insight: i t is obviously possible to survive a difficult or delayed b i r t h w i t h o u t damage, for instance. I f W i n n i c o t t is right, however, what hap­ pens when childbirth is mechanised b y surgery? Perhaps some fundamental consequent problem o f the American identity is indicated b y Sylvia Plath's description in her novel o f a b i r t h w h i c h her protagonist, Esther Greenwood, observes i n a teaching hospital:

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some men i n lime-green coats and skullcaps and a few nurses came m o v i n g towards us i n a ragged procession wheeling a trolley w i t h a b i g white l u m p on i t . I was so struck b y the sight o f the table where they were l i f t ­ ing the w o m a n I didn't say a w o r d . I t looked like some awful torture table, w i t h these metal stirrups sticking up i n mid-air at one end and all sorts o f instruments and wires and tubes I couldn't make out properly at the other. The woman's stomach stuck up so high I couldn't see her face or the upper part o f her body at all. She seemed to have nothing but an enormous spider-fat stomach and t w o little ugly spindly legs propped i n the high stirrups, and all the time the baby was being born she never stopped making this inhuman w h o o i n g noise. Later B u d d y told me the w o m a n was on a drug that w o u l d make her forget she'd had any pain and that when she swore and groaned she didn't really k n o w what she was doing because she was i n a k i n d o f t w i l i g h t sleep, (pp. 67-8) Her account shows an obsession w i t h the parts and functions—the inert body and the clinical set-up. Her account is not coloured b y disgust, nor does she seek to alienate us b y dwelling on the sordid or horrifying. B u t her reality, while beautiful, is also terrible because i t is depersonalised: the baby's head stuck for some reason, and the doctor t o l d W i l l he'd have to make a cut. I heard the scissors clpse on the woman's skin like cloth and the blood began to run down—a fierce, bright red. Then all at once the baby seemed to pop out into W i l l ' s hands, the colour o f a blue p l u m and floured w i t h white stuff and streaked w i t h blood . . . (p. 68) Her exactness is possible because o f her uninhibited fascination w i t h 'inner contents', not least blood and babies. Her cool detach­ ment also displays a certain 'diminution o f affect', a clinical term in psychotherapy for an abnormal lack o f appropriate feelingresponse. This typically American clinical birth takes its place in the symbolism o f the novel alongside the execution o f the Rosenbergs

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by electrocution and the 'treatment' o f mental patients b y insulin shock and electro-convulsive therapy. These too are forms o f being done to, o f impingement. B i r t h has been removed f r o m the realm o f ' b e i n g ' and taken into that o f ' m a l e doing', and so i t is for her representative o f the attitude o f American society to human beings, w h i c h has its o w n schizoid characteristics (as in its attitudes to sex). Her symbolism throughout this novel thus yields understanding o f her o w n predicament and is at the same time a criticism o f her society. She also sees that what is lacking is creative reflection, 'meeting', confirmation: I didn't feel up to asking h i m i f there were any other ways to have babies. For some reason the most important thing to me was actually seeing the baby come out o f y o u yourself and making sure i t was yours. I thought i f y o u had to have all that pain anyway y o u m i g h t just as well stay awake. I had always imagined myself hitching up on to m y elbows on the delivery table after i t was all over—dead white, o f course, w i t h no make up and f r o m the awful ordeal, but smiling and radiant, w i t h m y hair d o w n to m y waist, and reaching out for m y first squirmy little child, and saying its name, whatever i t was . . . (pp. 69-70, m y italics) Here we have the w o m a n speaking, o f the needs o f being, and o f the beginnings o f identity i n 'encounter'. I n speaking o f ' m a k i n g sure i t was yours' and 'saying its name' she intuitively realises that the mother has a mirror-role f r o m b i r t h ('Tell me m y name'). She looks at the w o r l d as one driven b y a need to answer the question, W h a t is i t to be human? A n d so she can reveal the lack o f humanity i n American society, its failures to put human con­ siderations first. She relates, for instance, Esther's difficulty i n finding a doctor at a weekend, even for an emergency. Joan pulled up an Indian hassock and began to dial d o w n the long list o f Cambridge doctors. The first number didn't answer. Joan began to explain m y case to the second number, w h i c h did answer, but then broke off and said ' I see' and hung up. 'What's the trouble?'

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' H e ' l l only come for regular customers or emergencies. It's Sunday.' . . . Sunday—the doctor's paradise! Doctors at country clubs, doctors at the seaside, doctors w i t h mistresses, doctors w i t h wives, doctors i n church, doctors i n yachts, doctors everywhere resolutely being people, not doctors, (pp. 244-5) As the delivery theatre is depersonalised, so is the doctor's role i n the community. He is a doctor on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thurs­ day: a playboy at weekends. This, o f course, reflects a related split between social function and personal identity i n many other fields. Sylvia Plath's novel is haunted b y the experience o f the separa­ tion o f intellect f r o m body, b y dissociation. The search is to find 'where her protagonist's problem is', as we have seen: I wanted to tell her that i f only something were w r o n g w i t h m y body i t w o u l d be fine, I w o u l d rather have anything w r o n g w i t h m y body than something w r o n g w i t h m y head . . . (P- 9 3 ) J

Annoyed b y the continual attention to her body in a mental hos­ pital—the taking o f temperature that always gives the answer 'normal' for instance—Esther upsets a tray o f thermometers. almost immediately t w o attendants came and wheeled me, bed and all, d o w n t o M r s Mole's old r o o m , but not before I had scooped up a ball o f m e r c u r y . . . I opened m y fingers a crack, like a child w i t h a secret, and smiled at the silver globe cupped i n m y palm. I f I dropped i t , it would break into a million little replicas of itself, and if I pushed them near each other, they would fuse, without a crack, into one whole again . . . (p. 194, m y italics) The globe o f mercury is a symbol o f the mother's eyes, reflecting the self. So, the self is ' i n ' i t . Irritated b y the term 'normal', she angrily demonstrates that her identity is exceptional i n that i t can break into a thousand fragments, or reform into a whole. Y e t this self, being metallic, is pure and dehumanised and also dispersed like a swarm o f bees. The breaking o f the mercury is a strategy o f survival: she evades the constraints o f psychiatric coercion b y

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being continually mercurial ( ' I am the magician's g i r l w h o does not flinch', The Bee Meeting). The image is o f the 'intellectual c o l ­ lecting together o f impingements', as W i n n i c o t t puts i t , 'holding them i n exact detail and sequence, i n this w a y protecting the psyche until there is a return to the continuing-to-exist state'. The whole blob is this latter state: the mercury broken into a m i l l i o n globules is the psyche w h i c h seeks to survive b y fragmentation.* The impulse to preserve the 'exact detail and sequence' o f impinge­ ments is what generated the poems and the novel—it is i n this w a y that Sylvia Plath uses her 'collecting intellect'. The mercury also symbolises that longed-for area o f being, where 'creative reflec­ tion' is needed, to bring wholeness, and a secure feeling o f being i n one's o w n b o d y : a metal 'filling', pure and valuable, like the core o f the earth. W h i l e still at college, Esther Greenwood is thrust, b y the magic o f pseudo-events (by w i n n i n g a magazine competition), into the w o r l d o f image-promotion. She wants to be a poet: ironically enough, and symptomatically enough, she finds herself i n the w o r l d o f American commercial journalism, and media p r o m o ­ tion. Sylvia Plath's accounts o f the depersonalised and schizoid 'fun' behaviour o f this w o r l d o f N e w Y o r k nite life is horrifying because o f its stark realism. She has o n l y a touch o f the impulse o f a Scott Fitzgerald to find a starry-eyed significance somewhere i n this w o r l d o f B i g Spenders and manic 'liveliness'. Her style develops w i t h her insights. A t the beginning i t is somewhat slick and manifests the k i n d o f dissociation evident i n Madison Avenue. I n fashionable journalism the writer, because he is dependent o n advertising, must adopt the sophisticated air o f 'loving' our 'sickness' that we find, for example, i n Esquire and The New Yorker. The nervous, a w k w a r d qualities o f the style make it difficult for us to respond to i t at times: the underlying gravity is at odds w i t h the emotional triviality o f a callow, 'throw-away' language: It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs... I ' m stupid about executions. The idea o f being electrocuted makes me sick . . . I couldn't help wonder* "The image/Flees and aborts like dropped mercury' (Thalidomide, Winter Trees, p. 32).

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ing what i t w o u l d be like, being burned alive all along your nerves. I thought i t must be the worst thing i n the w o r l d , (p. i ) Later, however, the lighthearted throwaway style o f this k i n d o f w r i t i n g ('as i f I had a split personality or something')—gives w a y to a clarity whose simple directness convinces the reader that what is said is really meant. She soon begins to abandon the 'flip' tech­ nique w h i c h is incapable o f escaping f r o m its gawkiness into any­ thing deeper ('Girls like that make me sick'). She relinquishes this mode for axlirect and sparse gravity o f her o w n , a simplicity w i t h a black depth, o f w h i c h few American writers since E m i l y Dickinson and M a r k T w a i n have been capable—as i n the prose describing her first suicide attempt on skis (see below) I was descending, but the white sun rose no higher. I t hung over the suspended waves o f the hills, an insentient pivot w i t h o u t w h i c h the w o r l d w o u l d not exist, (p. 102) F r o m this gravity she is able to register, as against the cold per­ spective o f an indifferent cosmos, the triviality, the hate, the v i o ­ lence and weakness i n American 'fun' life. Esther's agony o f suicidal madness meets incomprehension i n those around her. She can record the manic desperation o f flat-and-hotel life i n N e w Y o r k , and the violence beneath the w o r l d o f Ladies Day, Vogue, and the Thirty Best Stories of the Year. She is able to convey not only the false bustle—but h o w , at the centre o f i t all, Esther Greenwood feels a terrifying emptiness: I felt very still and very empty, the w a y the eye o f a tornado must feel, m o v i n g dully along i n the middle o f the surrounding hullabaloo, (p. 3) This is a more disturbing image than appears at first glance, be­ cause the eye o f a tornado is a vacuum formed by the surround­ ing violence, and has a sucking power o f gigantic destructiveness. There is an emptiness at the heart: then what are 'inner contents'? This preoccupation w i t h what is 'good' or 'bad' w i t h i n is a con­ tinual theme, so there is an uncanny consistency about all Sylvia Plath's substance, emptiness, corruption or purity. W h e n Esther chooses a drink she chooses vodka, because i t is glassy and tasteless:

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I ' d seen a vodka ad once, just a glass full o f vodka standing i n the middle o f a snowdrift i n a blue light, and the vodka looked clear and pure as water, so I thought having vodka plain must be all right, (p. 11) I f she thinks o f herself giving birth she is 'white'. In The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath is often preoccupied w i t h air, water, snow, flowing blood, v o m i t , feelings o f emptiness w i t h i n , and menacing black shadows. Approaches to relationship brings a fear of'loss o f inner contents'. The schizoid individual fears that close­ ness to others may threaten h i m w i t h 'emptying', because love is associated w i t h intense hunger. W h e n Esther's closest friend begins to jitterbug w i t h a disk jockey, she dreads the incorporative oral element i n the sexuality that emerges. She feels herself threatened: 'shrinking to a small black dot . . . I felt like a hole in the ground'. Doreen ends up on this night out i n a manic w h i r l o f sensual intensity w i t h Lenny. Esther watches, fascinated b y the oral savagery: I noticed, i n the routine w a y y o u notice the colour o f some­ body's eyes, that Doreen's breasts had popped out o f her dress and were swinging out slightly like full b r o w n melons as she circled belly-down on Lenny's shoulder . . . Lenny was trying to bite Doreen's hip through her skirt when I let myself out the d o o r . . . (p. 18) The account has undercurrents o f fear and fascination w h i c h perhaps arise f r o m infantile primal scene fantasies. Sexual activity to her seems both full o f threatening dangers ( o f oral incorpora­ tion), and grotesque—because she cannot find the emotional meaning i n it. W h e n she 'summons' her 'little chorus o f voices' they tell her that she w i l l never be able to find meaning in physical sex. They also tell her that such sexuality is not her libidinal goal. The revulsion f r o m sexuality found in such poems as The Applicant and Berck-Plage is apparent here i n the novel. I f this is the path to love, then there seems little hope that she w i l l be able to satisfy her yearning. A n i n w a r d voice mocks her first efforts at love: You'll never get anywhere like that, you'll never get anywhere like that, you'll never get anywhere like that. Once, on a hot summer night, I had spent an hour kissing a

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hairy, ape-shaped law student f r o m Yale because I felt sorry for h i m , he was so ugly. W h e n I had finished, he said, ' I have y o u taped, baby. Y o u ' l l be a prude at forty.' (p. 155) B u t even because o f her bewilderment Sylvia Plath reveals the dilemma o f individuals i n a civilisation i n w h i c h identity has be­ come linked w i t h sexual prowess and i n w h i c h i t can only be expressed i n terms o f activity, or pseudo-male 'doing'. The deeper self, the area o f intimacy i n the realm o f ' b e i n g ' , is abused. V i r g i n i t y is a burden: one has to decide intellectually to lose i t : T decided to seduce h i m . ' I felt the first man I slept w i t h must be i n t e l l i g e n t . . . I wanted somebody I didn't k n o w and w o u l d n ' t go on knowing—a k i n d o f impersonal, priestlike official, as i n the tales o f tribal rites. (p. 240) W h e n she is deflowered 'all I felt was a sharp, startingly bad pain'. The experience is recorded w i t h cold detachment—though Sylvia Plath obviously does not feel that this is unusual, nor, I suppose, (schizoid attitudes to sex being so predominant) do most o f her readers. Esther suffers a severe haemorrhage, w h i c h is pronounced a 'chance i n a m i l l i o n ' . B u t the act was an insult to the body. Does the author see that the haemorrhage may well have been a psycho­ somatic manifestation o f the fear o f contact and 'impingement'? The deeply insightful persona o f the artist does, I believe, see this: but i t cannot be clearly 'placed' consciously. * Indicatively, Esther's most v i v i d relationships are w i t h a man called Constantin, w h o seems an 'unattainable pebble at the b o t t o m o f a deep w e l l , ' and w i t h a violent man called Marco w h o attacks her physically after giving her a diamond in jest, bruising her arm in 'play'—but really (evidendy) i n hate and revenge. The most striking sexual episodes are thus episodes o f hate. I n Marco, Esther encounters a fanatical split-off idealism. H e (she finds) worships an ideal vision o f p u r i t y projected over his cousin as anima, a pure, female element split o f f f r o m himself w h i c h he narcissistically adores. Obviously for such an individual i t is a question o f survival never to let this female * There is almost an air of triumph, in Esther's cold-blooded presentation of her doctor's bill: 'I was perfectly free' (p. 255). This act of 'cool' comes too at the moment o f 'cure'.

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element be re-integrated w i t h i n himself. The vision is split o f f to keep i t pure. T o i m p l y that he or his cousin m i g h t really be mixed, ambivalent, human, brings an intense hate reaction. ' I am i n love w i t h m y cousin.' I felt no surprise. ' W h y don't y o u marry her?' 'Impossible.' 'Why?' Marco shrugged. 'She's m y first cousin. She's going to be a nun.' 'Is she beautiful?' 'There's no one to touch her.' 'Does she k n o w y o u love her?' ' O f course.' I paused. The obstacle seemed unreal to me. ' I f you love her,' I said, 'you'll love somebody else someday.' Marco dashed his cigar underfoot. The ground soared and struck me w i t h a soft shock. M u d squirmed through m y fingers. . . . Marco's face lowered cloudily over mine. A few drops o f spit struck m y lips. ' Y o u r dress is black and the dirt is black as well.' 'Slut!' The w o r d hissed b y m y ear. (p. 114) Esther is presented as having a compulsive fascination w i t h Marco, just as she is fascinated later b y the man whose attempted suicide she reads o f in the newspaper. These male imagos w i l l be­ come clearer i n their significance when we examine the poems. They stand for the animus—the negative male dynamic. Yet Esther's remarks about love are, b y contrast, characteristically feminine, too, and i t is this that Marco cannot tolerate, as the author partially sees. There is an underlying theme at this stage in the book, which is that o f the discovery o f femaleness and female capacities for sexuality. There is a desperation i n Esther's attempts to 'find' sexuality. O f course, some o f the ways i n which she thinks about

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sex belong to normal adolescence, the adolescent interest i n any experience going—and h o w well new experiences can be coped w i t h : ' I was quite proud o f the calm way I stared at all these grue­ some things.' This latter remark is about foetuses i n bottles, but i t could well be about her response to B u d d y Willard's genitals. Her unawakened reaction to nakedness is that o f a girl w h o finds the whole idea ridiculous: undressing in front o f B u d d y suddenly appealed to me about as much as having m y Posture Picture taken at college, where y o u have to stand naked in front o f a camera, k n o w i n g all the time that a picture o f y o u stark naked, both full v i e w and side view, is going into the college g y m files to be marked A B C or D depending on h o w straight y o u are. (p. 71) Here her quirky detachment does show a capacity to satirize the American impulse to reduce the person, i n the name o f 'objec­ t i v i t y ' , to a thing. Yet she is aware o f the pain o f the need for integrity i n love. Esther's relationship w i t h B u d d y seems at one stage to be p r o ­ gressing in a normal adolescent way, w i t h competitiveness deve­ loping between Joan Gilling and Esther. B u t then she learns o f Buddy's relationship w i t h a waitress, and is deeply hurt. She tries to take this coolly ('Buddy seemed relieved I wasn't angry', p. 72) but what stings is the double standard: W h a t I couldn't stand was Buddy's pretending I was so sexy and he was so pure, when all the time he'd been having an affair w i t h that tarty waitress and must have felt like laughing in m y face. (pp. 73-4) B u d d y has, that summer, actually slept w i t h the 'slutty waitress' thirty times, 'smack i n the middle' o f k n o w i n g Esther. She is offended b y Buddy's insincerity and hypocrisy. His mother preached virginity for men, and both she and B u d d y bring out moralistic mouthings: but B u d d y 'didn't have the guts to admit it straight off to everybody and face up to i t as part o f his character' that he was having a sexual relationship w i t h a w o m a n w h o was nothing to h i m , while demonstrating an interest in Esther. Esther cannot bear this hypocrisy o f American suburban life because i t is deadly to feeling. B u t she responds by deliberately

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becoming less tender. I n response to the shock, at Buddy's grossness, and the painfulness o f being made to feel inexperienced, Esther decides, i n that coldly determined American way, to get herself seduced. I felt so fine b y the time w e came to the yoghourt and straw­ berry j a m that I decided I w o u l d let Constantin seduce me. Ever since B u d d y W i l l a r d had told me about that waitress I had been thinking I ought to go out and sleep w i t h somebody myself. Sleeping w i t h B u d d y wouldn't count, though, because he w o u l d still be one person ahead o f me, i t w o u l d have to be w i t h somebody else.

The more I thought about i t the better I liked the idea o f being seduced b y a simultaneous interpreter i n N e w Y o r k City. (pp. 81-3) Sylvia Plath means this to satirise the stream o f sex-in-the-head consciousness o f American y o u t h ('one person ahead'). B u t while, in one element o f her style, she proceeds w i t h the tale as though she didn't care, there is another 'persona' w r i t i n g the book whose attitude persists under the 'taboo on tenderness', and w h o is aware o f the poignant underlying need for the 'significant other', and the need for love. Because o f this underlying gravity, the develop­ ment moves on to the first act o f attempted suicide i n the book— w h i c h is prompted b y desperation over the relationship w i t h B u d d y W i l l a r d . I t belongs to a dull ache deep d o w n i n herself. A t the end o f Chapter Seven, Esther is remembering this accident: Every time i t rained the o l d leg-break seemed to remember itself, and what i t remembered was a dull hurt. Then I thought, ' B u d d y W i l l a r d made me break that leg.' Then I thought, ' N o , I broke i t myself. I broke i t on purpose to pay myself back for being such a heel.' (p. 90) —'being such a heel' is meant explicitly to i m p l y that she was bent on paying B u d d y out for his waitress and is also reacting adversely against his parents' respectable pressures (T guess I ' l l be leaving y o u t w o young people. . .'). B u t at a deeper level, the skiing

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accident, w h i c h is described i n the next chapter, is a suicidal mani­ festation o f her desperation over being a woman, unable to respond to a man. This heel is on the black shoe o f false maleness. I n a significant passage at the beginning o f Chapter Seven Sylvia Plath's heroine begins to reflect on the absence in herself o f the feminine element. W h a t sets o f f this reflection is 'a stern muscular Russian girl w i t h no make-up': a non-feminine g i r l w i t h no mask o f Western image-femininity: I thought h o w strange i t had never occurred to me before that I was only purely happy until I was nine years o l d . After that—in spite o f the Girl Scouts and the piano lessons and the water-colour lessons and the dancing lessons and the sailing camp, all o f which m y mother scrimped to give me, and college, w i t h crewing in the mist before breakfast and blackb o t t o m pies and the little new firecrackers o f ideas going o f f every day—I had never been really happy again, (p. 78) The author does not make clear the connection between her unhappiness after the age o f nine, and the Russian male-like g i r l interpreter. The connection belongs to her private language. I t was Daddy w h o died when she was about nine, and the inter­ preter is a k i n d o f Colossus: she wears a double-breasted suit, and is a 'doer'. I n her, Esther sees a kind o f identity w i t h w h i c h she could identify in her desperate search to find what i t is to be a w o m a n . Yet she also sees that this w o u l d still be a f o r m o f pseudomale doing, leading to yet another f o r m o f petrifaction: I wished w i t h all m y heart I could crawl into her and spend the rest o f m y life barking out one i d i o m after another. I t m i g h t n ' t make me any happier, but i t w o u l d be one more little pebble o f efficiency among all the other pebbles, (p. 78) W e remember other pebbles: the baby a white pebble i n its mother's belly; Constantin 'a pebble': the protagonist i n Tulips becoming a pebble. I n the bewilderment o f not being able to find oneself a being-woman, one solution, albeit false, is to petrify oneself, and to cope w i t h the w o r l d b y such a hardness o f male doing ('barking'). The remedy is n o w one recommended by women's 'liberation'. F r o m Laing's w o r k , and from m y analysis o f Poemfor a Birthday,

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we can see that this desire to be petrified is a desire to shrink into an invulnerable state, to await rebirth. B u t this is to become insensitive, no source o f honey, unfeminine and inhuman. O n pages 78-9 o f The Bell Jar Esther ruminates (as does Sylvia Plath i n the poem The Disquieting Muses) on h o w she could not do any o f the things other girls do normally, such as cooking and short­ hand. 'The. trouble was, I hated the idea o f serving men i n any w a y . ' ' I was a terrible dancer'. I n the poem The Disquieting Muses (The Colossus, p. 58) the darning-egg dollies prevented the prota­ gonist f r o m dancing, made her tone-deaf and defemininised her. So the failure to become feminine is linked w i t h the failure o f responsiveness, creative power, perceptiveness, and hope for a fruitful realisation o f potentialities—under the influence o f symbolic objects w h i c h are like 'a bundle o f clubs', malignant male objects. T h e dread o f a failure o f potentialities is made clear i n the novel : I saw m y life branching out before me like the green fig-tree i n the story. F r o m the tip o f every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack o f other lovers w i t h queer names and off-beat professions, and another fig was an O l y m p i c lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. A lack o f a sense o f identity precludes her picking any o f these fruits: I saw myself sitting i n the crotch o f this fig-tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up m y m i n d w h i c h o f the figs I w o u l d choose. I wanted each and every one o f them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at m y feet. (p. 80) Esther is made to t r y to turn i t into a j o k e : she goes out to eat

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w i t h Constantin, and ' I t occured to me that the vision o f the f i g tree and all the fat figs that withered and fell to earth m i g h t w e l l have arisen f r o m the profound v o i d o f an empty stomach' (p. 81). B u t there is a problem, not o f an empty stomach but o f an empty identity, o f being responsive to others, a problem bound up w i t h her capacity to feel real i n a meaningful w o r l d , a capacity that should develop normally through love. There is no love in The Bell Jar. Most o f the relationships i n the book are negative ones. Esther and Constantin find themselves on a collision-collusion path o f mutual hate. B u d d y separates his sensual encounter w i t h the waitress f r o m his desire to have a real relationship w i t h Esther, and his other serious relationship is w i t h Joan, w h o seems herself a negative o f Esther, and is somewhat lesbian. B u d d y is w o r r i e d about his capacity to be a man to a w o m a n . Esther is fascinated b y male women, such as the 'doublebreasted' interpreter, and her feelings about other w o m e n i n the mental hospital are imbued w i t h more w a r m t h than her rela­ tionships w i t h men. The w o m a n she is most fond of, and most admires—Joan—hangs herself in the end, and beside her grave Esther hears her heart's brag, T am I am I am'. Underlying all these unsatisfactory relationships there is the constant theme o f the need to find the capacity to be. The relationships w i t h men seem unlikely to contribute anything to this end, since Esther finds men unreliable, insignificant, and often only targets for her hate. Her hatred o f man is a hatred observing man', and thus o f those impulses i n a w o m a n to be complement to man—to respond to man i n a w o m a n l y way. Constantin, w h o m she tries to encourage to seduce her, simply goes to sleep beside her. B u t then, there is a quite different tone—libidinal and elated— when i t comes to suicide. Here there is love and hope, para­ doxically ! I n the skiing incident elements are revealed w h i c h are new i n the novel—and w h i c h are given us i n a quite different prose to anything that has gone before: i t is no longer 'Esther's' rather zany prose, but a prose akin to the poetic voice o f Sylvia Plath. A small, answering point in m y o w n body flew towards i t . I felt m y lungs inflate w i t h the inrush o f scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, 'This is what i t is to be happy.' (p. 102)

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' I have been half in love w i t h easeful death'—something like the phrase o f Keats's comes to m i n d . The callow youth fades into inconsequential nothingness: the problem is not that o f 'sexual relationships' w i t h Buddy. There may be a problem o f rela­ tionship w i t h ' M a n ' , but only as part o f a deeper problem o f what it is to be. The prose becomes poetic: and yet w e are aware that Esther could singularly feel no such poetry i n love and sexuality. Esther (or rather, surely, 'Sylvia') glides here towards a purity o f relationship w i t h the cosmos. The sun is an 'insentient pivot'—and is, as I believe the symbolism o f the poems suggests, in a sense the dead father, w h o , n o w i n the w o r l d o f death, is insentient. The sun here, at this moment, is like the N o r t h W i n d Mother i n George Macdonald's At the Back of the North Wind, only i t is the father. I n contemplation o f this pivot Esther is sublimely happy—as she approaches death, which, since the skislope is a symbol o f the birth-passage, is also a regeneration. Esther thus seeks to escape f r o m the ambivalent, complex, mundanity o f her relationship w i t h Buddy, into a pure 'cosmic' marriage. ' I wanted to hone myself on i t till I grew saintly . . . ' . Esther, like Sylvia Plath i n her more psychotic poems, is thus i n love w i t h death, because ' i n ' death is the loved father, and his reflection offers the possibility o f a new and sharp sense o f being. This pure quest makes all earthly encounters ridiculous. M o v i n g towards the father-in-death provokes elation: turning towards the live mother prompts a loss o f creative relationship w i t h the w o r l d . These ambiguities parallel the strange confusion o f sexual roles. (As W i n n i c o t t has urged, we could benefit here b y talking less o f sexuality, homosexuality, lesbianism i n such matters, and talking instead o f male and female elements in the personality.) A crucial moment i n the novel comes in Chapter Ten, during w h i c h Esther decides to stay in her mother's house, despite the dangers she recognises i n the situation. I t could be said that this is the moment at w h i c h Esther chooses the path w h i c h must lead her to suicide and madness. She is invited on the telephone to j o i n some other girls for the vacation—even though her w r i t i n g course hasn't come up, but she does not choose freedom: One more m o r n i n g listening to D o d o Conway's baby carriage

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w o u l d drive me crazy. A n d I made a point o f never l i v i n g i n the same house w i t h m y mother for more than a week. I reached for the receiver. M y hand advanced a few inches, then retreated and fell l i m p . I forced i t towards the receiver again, but again i t stopped short, as i f it had collided w i t h a pane o f glass, (p. 125) This is the bell jar, coming d o w n . She sends an insult to B u d d y ('I did not want to give m y children a hypocrite for a father')— and chooses instead the dangerous relationship w i t h her mother. In this, she chooses the desperate path to rebirth (at this moment it is also a choice to w r i t e a novel, itselfan attempt at re-mothering). Against the glass wall o f the bell j a r is pressed the nose o f the pickled foetus. The bell j a r encloses the subject, so that she feels a sense o f having a sheet o f glass between herself and reality. This is the 'plate glass feeling' noted b y Laing and others i n schizoid patients. For instance, Guntrip (1966) writes: A somewhat common schizoid s y m p t o m is the feeling o f a plate glass wall between the patient and the w o r l d . . . A middle-aged w o m a n patient discovered i n the course o f analysis that she d i d not need the spectacles she was wearing and discarded them. She said: T realise I've only w o r n them because I felt safer behind that screen. I could look through i t at the w o r l d . ' (p. 63) The bell jar that comes d o w n is thus not only a barrier, but a shield: and inside the j a r is the regressed ego. The foetus i n the bottle is the 'pristine unitary ego' waiting to be born, but shrinking from the w o r l d , virtually dead, until an opportunity for rebirth offers itself. W e meet the bell jar explicitly i n Chapter Fifteen. The p r o ­ tagonist is leaving one hospital for another and hopes to leap to death f r o m a bridge as the car goes over it. She feels that wherever she is the bell-jar w i l l stand between her and reality . . . wherever I sat—on the deck o f a ship or at a street cafe i n Paris or Bangkok—I w o u l d be sitting under the same bell jar, stewing i n m y o w n sour air. (p. 196) W h i l e the bell jar is a symbol o f being enclosed, encapsulated,

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dissociated f r o m reality, its deeper symbolism as the w o m b becomes obvious on the following page where the jar seems rather like not c o m m i t t i n g suicide. M y r o o m was on the first floor... I f I j u m p e d I w o u l d n ' t even bruise m y knees. The inner surface o f the tall w a l l seemed smooth as glass, (p. 197) The bell j a r is a w o m b w h i c h contains the regressed libidinal ego that cannot find its w a y to become b o r n : T o the person i n the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the w o r l d itself is the bad dream, (p. 250) I sank back i n the grey, plush seat and closed m y eyes. The air o f the bell j a r wadded round me and I couldn't s t i r . . . (pp. 196-7) After ECT the bell j a r lifts a little: but on leaving hospital there remains the fear that i t w i l l come d o w n again. H o w d i d I k n o w that someday—at college, in Europe, some­ where, anywhere,—the bell jar, w i t h its stifling distortions, w o u l d n ' t descend again? (p. 254) Similarly, at the end o f Poem for a Birthday there is no real sense o f being reborn after treatment. Esther is interviewed by a board o f doctors w h o have already decided whether or not she is to leave. It is a false solution, a rebirth but w i t h o u t any resurrection i n terms o f ' b e i n g ' . I t is the closing bracket o f a period that began w i t h a ceremony o f degradation—her committal. She is but an 'applicant': 'There ought, I thought, to be a ritual for being born twice—patched, retreaded and approved for the road . . . ' (p. 257). The eyes o f the doctors at the end seem to be offering her an identity merely assembled b y impingement—the kind on which she pours scorn in her references elsewhere to puppets and dolls. A l l the hospital has offered is an irrelevant 'doing to', as far f r o m recreating her inner being as the original inadequate handling. The only rebirth, she becomes convinced yet more strongly, lies in suicide. The images o f rebirth i n The Bell Jar confirm the insights o f Guntrip into the schizoid suicide. As I have tried to show

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elsewhere this interpretation can also be used to illuminate the poetry o f D y l a n Thomas, whose alcoholism was a f o r m o f suicide (albeit an agonisingly slow one). I was fascinated b y Esther's remark that T had been so free I ' d spent most o f m y time on D y l a n T h o m a s . . . ' (p. 131). Sylvia Plath understood Thomas i n an uncanny way, through psychic affinity, and her sequence o f poems handed i n for the English Tripos at Cambridge shows h o w much she was influenced by h i m (e.g. Lament, published i n the Orleans Poetry Journal, N o . 52 i n Two Lovers and a Beachcomber: 'The sting o f bees took away m y father . . . ' The poem seems to echo Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night). It is possible that Sylvia Plath took over f r o m D y l a n Thomas the image o f a bottled foetus: i t occurs quite early i n her w o r k i n a poem about a glass paperweight. T o be confronted w i t h actual bottled foetuses in a medical laboratory is to Esther all too redolent o f meanings evocative o f the imprisoned self. Esther says early on that she likes 'looking o n ' : she has a compulsive need to record disturbing experiences: I f there was a road accident or a street fight or a baby pickled i n a laboratory jar for me to look at, I ' d stop and look so hard I ' d never forget i t . (p. 13) Fairbairn (1966) says There are probably few 'normal' people w h o have never at any time i n their lives experienced an unnatural state o f calm and detachment i n face o f some serious crisis, a transient sense o f 'looking on at o n e s e l f . . . such phenomena, I venture to suggest, are essentially schizoid phenomena, (p. 8) Sylvia Plath was one whose experience seemed often to be o f this 'deja v u ' k i n d (as recorded in her heroine's sexual experiences). The intense feeling o f ' l o o k i n g on' at everything f r o m the outside gives the uncanny 'cool' clarity to her vision. The actual babies i n bottles are shown to Esther at the opening o f the scene o f depersonalised birth. B u d d y took me out into a hall where they had some b i g glass bottles full o f babies that had died before they were born. The baby i n the first bottle had a large white head bent over a tiny

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curled-up body the size o f a frog. The baby i n the next bottle was bigger and the baby next to that one was bigger still and the baby i n the last bottle was the size o f a normal baby and he seemed to be looking at me and smiling a little p i g g y smile.

(P- 65) Taking refuge i n a light-hearted, trivialising style i n this early part o f her book, the author pretends that her heroine was not at all moved b y the experience o f such 'gruesome things' ('These cadavers were so unhuman-looking that they didn't bother me a bit'). This flip tone, however, is a defence. The w a y the image o f the pickled foetus recurs obsessively gives the lie to this posture. The image creeps back f r o m time to time, as when she turns to a copy o f Time or Life: 'The face o f Eisen­ hower beamed up at me, bald and blank as the face o f a foetus in a bottle.' (p. 93) The image colours her feelings about babies altogether: I leafed nervously through an issue o(Baby Talk. The fat, bright faces o f babies beamed up at me, page after page—bald babies, chocolate-coloured babies, Eisenhower-faced babies, babies rolling over for the first time... babies doing all the little tricky things i t takes to g r o w up, step b y step, into an anxious and unsettling w o r l d . . . (p. 234) T o an individual obsessed w i t h the unborn self, i t is obviously extremely difficult to face dealing w i t h a baby w h o needs total support i n developing its o w n identity. As Sylvia Plath discovers i n The Night Dances, the problem arises o f h o w one can do for one's o w n baby what has never been done for oneself. Whereas Esther regards dead babies w i t h detachment, live ones repel her: yet she yearns to be feminine, t o o : I smelt a mingling o f Pabulum and sour m i l k and salt-codstinky diapers and felt sorrowful and tender. H o w e a s y having babies seemed to the w o m e n around m e ! W h y was I so unmaternal and apart? W h y couldn't I dream o f devoting myself to baby after fat puling baby like D o d o Conway? I f I had to wait on a baby all day, I w o u l d go mad. (p. 234) Renouncing the mother's role is renouncing the female element

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in oneself. Esther thinks, as she climbs on the the examination table to be fitted for a contraceptive device: T am climbing to freedom, freedom f r o m fear, freedom f r o m marrying the w r o n g person . . . just because o f s e x . . I was m y o w n woman, (p. 235) B u t she is i n part delighting not only i n freedom f r o m being feminine but ultimately i n freedom f r o m being human—and this as w e shall see can also be a search for a certain black purity. For those i n the bell jar life is a 'bad dream': the only hope is i n waking up. The foetus i n the jar is i n liquid w h i c h seems like the amniotic fluid. Death-by-water is a continual presence i n Sylvia Plath, and when the images are studied they are often revealed as images o f rebirth ('the/Water striving/To re-establish its m i r r o r . . .', Words, Ariel, p. 86). The images o f reflection symbolise the mother's eyes. Esther looks in the m i r r o r for confirmation o f her identity, after the disturbances set up i n her b y watching Doreen and Lenny, and finds i t warped, impure. I t is a symbol o f failed provision for the emerging identity b y the mother's ' m i r r o r image role': The m i r r o r over m y bureau seemed slightly warped and much too silver. The face i n i t looked like the reflection in a ball o f dentist's mercury. —such a ball m i g h t dissolve, and so m i g h t she. The bath, too, becomes a symbol o f finding a new state i n re-birth. Feeling like a 'dirty, scrawled over letter', after becoming aware o f the sexuality o f others, Esther decides to take a hot bath: There must be quite a few things a hot bath w o n ' t cure, but I don't k n o w many o f them. Whenever I ' m sad I ' m going to die, or so nervous I can't sleep, or i n love w i t h somebody I w o n ' t be seeing for a week, I slump d o w n just so far and then I say: T i l go take a hot bath.' (p. 21) It is like being i n the amniotic fluid in the w o m b but to Esther the bath may also be a coffin: I remember the ceilings over every bath tub I've stretched

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out i n . . . I remember the tubs, t o o : the antique griffin-legged tubs, and the modern coffin-shaped tubs . . . I never feel so much myself as when I ' m i n a hot bath. She lies i n this one for an hour and I felt myself g r o w i n g pure again. I don't believe i n baptism or the waters o f Jordan or anything like that, but I guess I feel about a hot bath the w a y those religious people feel about h o l y water. I said to myself: 'Doreen is dissolving, Lenny Shepherd is d i s s o l v i n g . . . N e w Y o r k is dissolving, they are all dissolving away and none o f them matter any more. I don't k n o w them, I have never k n o w n them and I am very pure. A l l that liquor and those sticky kisses* I saw and the dirt that settled on m y skin on the w a y back is turning into something pure.' The longer I lay there in the clear hot water the purer I felt, and when I stepped out at last and wrapped myself in one o f the big, soft, white hotel bath-towels I felt pure and sweet as a new baby. (pp. 21-2) T o die is the ultimate freedom f r o m ambivalence, or 'stickiness', the mess o f human emotions: its purity is an escape from humanness. The suicide attempt on the ski slope is a quest for purity, like the bath, and the sky seems to be looking at her, reflecting: The great, grey eye o f the sky looked back at me, its mistshrouded sun focusing all the w h i t e and silent distances that poured f r o m every point o f the compass, h i l l after pale h i l l , to stall at m y feet. (p. 101) Reality 'stalls': there is a loss o f control as her impulse towards symbolic rebirth overcomes her. The interior voice nagging me not to be a fool—to save m y skin and take o f f m y skis and walk d o w n , camouflaged b y the scrub pines bordering the slope—fled like a disconsolate mos­ quito. The thought that I might kill myself formed in my mind coolly as a tree or a flower, (p. 101, m y italics) * C f . ' T w o lovers unstick themselves', Berck-Plage. T h e stickiness is the glue of bodily experience such as is loathed by Sartre: 'bad' inner contents, la nausie itself. See Masud K h a n above, p. 8.

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As she plummets d o w n , having recklessly flung herself into outer reality, Esther thinks, 'This is what i t is to be happy'. People and trees receded on either hand like the dark sides o f a tunnel as I hurtled o n to the still, bright point at the end o f it, the pebble at the bottom of the well, the white sweet baby cradled in its mother's belly, (p. 102, m y italics) This pebble-baby is pure, but there are no l o v i n g hands to receive her: there is only the harsh discovery o f reality. Instead o f the dis­ covery o f the breast, she is given a stone: ' M y teeth crunched a gravelly mouthful. Ice water seeped d o w n m y throat.' As i n Poem for a Birthday, to come round like this when one hoped to be born again pure and sweet is too dreadfully evocative o f the experience o f impingement. The attempt to subdue outer reality to the inner w o r l d fails: A dispassionate white sun shone at the summit o f the sky. I wanted to hone myself o n i t till I grew saintly and thin and essential as the blade o f a knife, (p. 103) —but she is 'stuck i n a cast for months' instead. The cast symbolises a false hard m o u l d or stony identity, instead o f the newborn self that should have emerged alive and w a r m f r o m the matrix. In all these perplexities Esther is shown to be poignantly aware that she is 'different'. I n one episode there is an acute contrast between the normal j o l l y company she is i n , b r o w n i n g hot dogs on the public grills at the beach, and her inner dissociation: any­ body w h o looked at her w i t h half an eye could see she didn't have a brain i n her head: A smoke seemed to be going up f r o m m y nerves like the smoke from the grills and the sun-saturated road. The whole landscape—beach and headland and sea and rock—quavered i n front o f m y eyes like a stage backcloth. I wondered at what point i n space the silly sham blue o f the sky turned black, (p. 166) The familiar blue o f our sky is a 'sham', to one whose dynamic o f identity, in its dealings w i t h external reality, has collapsed into a 'smoke'. This is the 'deja v u ' state o f w h i c h Guntrip writes: i t is the v i e w from the bell j a r : ' I thought d r o w n i n g must be the

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kindest w a y to die...'—because i t w o u l d be like being reevolved, i n the salt water. Some o f those babies i n the jars that B u d d y W i l l a r d showed me had gills, he said. They went through a stage where they were just like fish. (p. 166) She swims o u t : 'as I paddled on, m y heart beat boomed like a dull motor i n m y ears'. Even as she tries to die, or (by her logic) to become reborn, her body declares that i t is alive, 'singing i n her ear' like T e d Hughes's Littleblood. ' I am I am I am.' She is: but she is not. She seeks to be, but b y destroying the self in the bell jar. She tries to duck herself to death, but her tenacious hold on life defeats her: . . . the w o r l d was sparkling all about me like blue and green and yellow semi-precious s t o n e s . . . I knew when I was beaten . . . I turned back . . . (p. 170) A grey rock mocks her. Later she remembers h o w 'the rock . . . bulged between sky and sea like a grey skull'. W e meet this rock in her poetry: i t is the white skull under the surface: i t is an appre­ hension o f the real death that is not rebirth. I t is the reality o f the stone colossus outside the jar, for Daddy and death often merge: so, i t is the stone at the heart o f being. I t is also the pestle o f impingement, merged w i t h Daddy's deathly grey b i g toe. A n d i t is real death, for death seems the ultimate impingement, o f false male doing or being-done-to. This death i n reality she meets when Joan is buried: There w o u l d be a black, six-foot deep gap hacked i n the hard ground. That shadow w o u l d marry this shadow, and the pecu­ liar, yellowish soil o f our locality seal the w o u n d i n the w h i t e ­ ness, and yet another snowfall erase the traces of newness i n Joan's grave. I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag o f m y heart. I am, I am, I am. (p. 256) ' I am' is what the heart says: but the agony is being unmistakeably alive when the 1 A M feeling in the identity does not complete and confirm the bodily existence. W h e n she tries to hang herself Esther discovers a dichotomy

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between the impulses o f the living organism and the impulses o f the human identity; But each time I w o u l d get the cord so tight I could feel a rushing i n m y ears and a flush o f blood i n m y face, m y hands w o u l d weaken and let go, and I w o u l d be all right again. Then I saw that m y body had all sorts o f little tricks, such as making m y hands go l i m p at the crucial second, w h i c h w o u l d save it, time and again, whereas i f I had the whole say, I w o u l d be dead i n a flash, (p. 168) Who

is the T ?

I w o u l d simply have to ambush i t w i t h whatever sense I had left, or i t w o u l d trap me i n its stupid cage for fifty years w i t h o u t any sense at all. A n d when people found out m y m i n d had gone, as they w o u l d have to, sooner or later, i n spite o f m y mother's guarded tongue, they w o u l d persuade her to put me into an asylum where I could be cured. O n l y m y case was incurable, (p. 168) T o find oneself i n one's o w n body seems to her a trap: to be really human seems a loss o f freedom. Esther believes (from read­ ing paperbacks on psychology) that she is incurable and that 'The more hopeless y o u were, the further away they h i d y o u ' (p. 169). W h a t she fears is that she w i l l be removed from all hope o f being reborn out o f the bell jar, b y society's rejection o f her as 'mad'. R. D . Laing is taken to i m p l y b y his w o r k that those w h o are labelled as 'schizophrenic' are victims o f the political coercions and mystifications o f a mad society. This view w o u l d seem to be that adopted b y critics w h o find that Sylvia Plath's myths speak for 'us' (e.g. A . E. Dyson's remark i n a review o f Ariel that her last poems 'are among the handful o f writings b y w h i c h future generations w i l l seek to k n o w us and give us a name'). This view seems to me, however, to be a dangerous over­ simplification which should perhaps be corrected in the light o f the w o r k o f Fairbairn and Winnicott. There are manifestations o f collective psychopathology in our society, such as war and pre­ paration for war, and there is insanity i n the w a y we accept these as normal. The execution o f the Rosenbergs preoccupies Sylvia Plath's heroine in The Bell Jar because i t was an insane act committed

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b y 'society'. She sees i t as insane when the 'normal' w o r l d does not, because, as a schizoid individual, she can see into what is happening w i t h dreadful clarity. The fashion w o r l d was p r o m o t ­ ing bile green that year. She says to one o f the magazine women, 'Isn't i t awful about the Rosenbergs?' 'Yes!' Hilda said, and at last I felt I had touched a human string . . . 'It's awful such people should be a l i v e ' . . . ' I ' m so glad they're going to die.' (p. 105) This paranoid hate merges w i t h the image-promoting w o r l d and its poisonous emptiness ('bile green w i t h nile green, its kissing cousin'). Here we w o u l d seem to find confirmation o f the 'politics o f experience' o f R. D . Laing and his view that schizophrenia is the inevitable product o f this k i n d o f society. B u t there is another problem—which is w h y , among all the other human beings i n this society, Esther (or Sylvia Plath) should be so susceptible to breakdown? A n d w h y she should come to feel, as she d i d at times, that the only w a y to deal w i t h a schizoid society is to take the path o f ultimately dehumanising oneself"? Esther's thoughts about suicide and her impulse to suicidal acts are obsessional—so obsessional that the novel becomes at times the love-story o f a g i r l w h o adores suicide: but the obsession is not 'placed': i t is the author's. As A n d r e w B r i n k (1968) notes i n his essay, Sylvia Plath is left i n the end w i t h only one possible identity: 'she-who-commits-suicide'. The life o f her protagonist is the story o f one w h o is involved i n a 'meaningless succession o f mere activities to keep a self i n being'. There is no other w a y in which she can behave: her life is all false male 'doing', and this, i n the light o f m y phenomenological analysis, has an intrapsychic aspect. The psychiatry she experiences is no less an attempt to 'manufacture a sense o f being she does not possess'. I n the novel Esther finds a nurse sewing her name on everything. 'Where is everybody?' ' O u t . ' The nurse was w r i t i n g something over and over on little pieces o f adhesive tape. I leaned across the gate o f the door to see what she was w r i t i n g , and i t was E. Greenwood, E. Greenwood, E. Greenwood, E. Greenwood.

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' O u t where?' ' O h , O T , the g o l f course, playing badminton.' I noticed a pile o f clothes on a chair beside the nurse. They were the same clothes the nurse in the first hospital had been packing into the patent leather case when I broke the m i r r o r . The nurse began sticking the labels on the clothes, (p. 199) The economy o f symbolism here is one w i t h the mordant cool­ ness o f the prose. 'Everybody' is 'out': the self is a body out o f the clothes, w h i c h are not w o r n , but passed f r o m hospital to hospital. The nurse sticks the labels on to the clothes: the being recognises neither the name, nor the clothes. H a v i n g broken the m i r r o r i n w h i c h she fails to find her identity reflected, she passes on, like the clothes, separated f r o m her identity. N o t e that the nurse simply does not say: ' W h y , look, honey, I ' m sewing your name o n ! ' This institutional depersonalisation is, as Jules Henry (1966) says, an indication o f h o w , i n Western society, 'humanness is ebbing'. Note, too, the reference to breaking the mirror, for w h i c h she is being punished—the punishment taking the f o r m o f having one's identity institutionalised. Instead o f a coherent reflection she has the ball o f mercury which dissolves at a b l o w into millions o f fragments: or the implosive threat o f shadows. I thought the most beautiful thing i n the w o r l d must be shadow, the m i l l i o n m o v i n g shapes and cul-de-sacs o f sha­ d o w . There was shadow i n bureau drawers and closets and suitcases, and shadow under houses and trees and stones, and shadow at the back o f people's eyes and smiles, and shadow, miles and miles and miles o f it, on the night side o f the earth, (p. 155) Identification becomes a process not o f being reflected by others so much as desiring to become them, i n a desperate search for a sense o f identity. Esther cannot decide w h o she is: and she refuses to be glib about i t : W h e n they asked me what I wanted to be I said I didn't know. ' O h , sure y o u k n o w , ' the photographer said. 'She wants,' said Jay Cee w i t t i l y , 'to be everything.' I said I wanted to be a poet. (p. 106)

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So for Esther (and we may assume for Sylvia Plath) 'being a poet' was an act o f asserting the Dasein. N o w , lying on m y back i n bed, I imagined B u d d y saying, ' D o y o u k n o w what a poem is, Esther?' ' N o , what?' I w o u l d say. ' A piece o f dust.' Then just as he was smiling and starting to look proud, 1 w o u l d say, 'So are the cadavers y o u cut up. So are the people y o u think you're curing. They're dust as dust as dust. I reckon a good poem lasts a whole l o t longer than a hundred o f those people put together.' 'People were made o f nothing so much as dust, and I couldn't see that doctoring all that dust was a bit better than w r i t i n g poems people w o u l d remember and repeat to themselves when they were unhappy or sick and couldn't sleep, (pp. 58-9) I n this way Esther can transcend her sense o f non-fruition She learned as a child h o w to find life i n words: T wanted to crawl in between those black lines o f print the w a y y o u crawl through a fence, and go to sleep under that beautiful b i g green fig-tree' (p. 57). Just as Esther wants to find an identity b y crawling into the Russian w o m a n interpreter, so she wants to crawl into her w r i t i n g to find an identity there (as d i d Sylvia Plath herself). B u t w i t h o u t confirmation i n intersubjectivity there can be no confident identity and no creative perception; so the meticulous attention to creativity, though i t could help w i t h the Dasein problem, cannot cure her dissociation o f personality, i n the depth o f the 'psychic tissue'. Chapter Ten, in w h i c h Esther goes home, begins after she has been beaten up b y Marco the woman-hater, and traces the story o f her breakdown. I t begins: 'The face i n the m i r r o r looked like a sick Indian.' I n the train w i n d o w ' A wan reflection o f myself, white wings, b r o w n ponytail and all, ghosted over the landscape.' The attack b y the man i n hate, the collapse o f the image-world o f N e w Y o r k bustle, the vacancy o f 'fun', have exposed the empty centre o f herself. W h a t she sees in the m i r r o r is an alien ghost, not a self reflected. She keeps a mark o f blood on her face, because (she doesn't say so, but w e feel it) i f she can be attacked i n hate, at least she is real (even though she throws the 'grey scraps' o f the

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clothing that seems to give her an identity into the air o f N e w Y o r k f r o m a building). There are at least some 'inner contents' o n her face, so she must exist. The moment o f arriving home is deeply significant, i n the light o f Winnicott's insight into the mother's mirror-role. A summer calm laid its soothing hand over everything, like death. M y mother was waiting b y the glove-grey Chevrolet. ' W h y lovey, what's happened to your face?' (p. 119) This can be read as a failure to reflect. N o t e that Esther's mother doesn't say ' W h a t has happened to youV Esther needs the gentle­ ness o f M a r y : yet this is the most dangerous thing i n the w o r l d (as it is i n the poem Kindness). This fear o f the love she needs explains w h y Esther is so over­ come b y home, and feels too trapped in suburbia: The grey, padded car r o o f closed over m y head like the r o o f o f a prison van, and the white, shining, identical clap-board houses w i t h their interstices o f well-groomed green proceeded past, one bar after another i n a large but escape-proof cage. 1 had never spent a summer i n the suburbs before, (p. 120) This is a characteristic adolescent feeling. But, as w e see later, Esther's hostility to her mother is horrifiyingly strong. A n d it is directed against the mechanical nature o f her mother's routine: A t seven I had heard m y mother get up, slip into her clothes and tiptoe out o f the r o o m . Then the buzz o f the orange squeezer sounded f r o m downstairs. . . Then the sink water ran f r o m the tap and dishes clinked as m y mother dried them and put them back i n the cupboard. Then the front door opened and shut. Then the car door opened and shut, and the motor went b r o o m - b r o o m and, edg­ ing off w i t h a crunch o f gravel, faded into the distance, (p. 121) A l t h o u g h her mother calls her 'lovey', she seems i n the home to offer only mechanical 'doing'. The whole effective smooth routine o f suburbia seems to Esther a threatening 'impingement', hateful.

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She had hoped to escape, into a kind o f creativity, i n her w r i t i n g course. B u t she receives a b l o w at once w i t h her mother's announcement: T think I should tell y o u right away,' she said, and I could see bad news i n the set o f her neck, ' y o u didn't make that w r i t i n g course.' (p. 120) So, trapped i n suburbia, her hate turns against all the w o m e n around her, their respectability, their prying, their creaking p r a m wheels—until the idea o f being in p r o x i m i t y w i t h such femaleness seems stifling. The paraphernalia o f domesticity, especially o f feed­ ing children, provokes Esther's crisis: D o d o raised her six children—and w o u l d no doubt raise her seventh—on rice crispies, peanut-butter-and-marshmallow sandwiches, vanilla ice-cream and gallon upon gallon o f Hood's milk. She got a special discount f r o m the local milkman, (p. 123) The mothering w o m a n seems to mock her o w n need to be mothered, which, as she encounters i t at home, seems to threaten hopelessness: I watched D o d o wheel the youngest Conway up and d o w n . She seemed to be doing i t for m y benefit. Children make me sick. I had nothing to look forward to. (p. 123) Yet when she tries to lift the telephone to take action and find a way out, as we have seen, the bell j a r intervenes. As we have also seen, the mother is regarded as dangerous: In the d i m light o f the streetlamp that filtered through the drawn blinds, I could see the pin curls on her head glittering like a row of little bayonets, (p. 129, m y italics) In her need for glittering eyes, Esther, paranoically, sees daggers. So, she feels an impulse to k i l l the unfortunate middle-aged woman w i t h 'a snore ravelling from her throat' w h i c h is a 'column o f skin and sinew' Esther wants to 'twist to silence'. * The language * T h e 'column of skin and sinew' bean a significant resemblance to the under­ lying penis-image: cf. ' I am nude as a chicken neck' (The Bee Meeting) and 'The

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here is illuminating. 'Ravelling' for instance invokes Macbeth w h o had 'murdered sleep' that 'knits up the ravelled sleeve o f care'. The breath that comes out o f the mother only 'ravels'—entangles, knots. Esther wants to murder her in her sleep. B u t i n the back­ ground is the bafflement I have analysed—of the father l u r k i n g within, w h o is also the destructive and malignant animus, even an aspect o f Death. Moreover, i n wanting to k i l l her mother she is liable to destroy her only hope o f being reborn. Yet she knows that her mother cannot n o w provide any means o f being reborn: she can only feel repulsion at the contact and p r o x i m i t y between them. Psychiatry offers no mothering either. N o t h i n g is more poignant than the account o f false fathers and mothers in Esther's experience o f psychiatry. W h e n she has an insulin reaction she screams for Mrs Bannister the night nurse: ' A n d when M r s Bannister held the cup to m y lips, I fanned the hot m i l k out on m y tongue as i t w e n t d o w n , tasting i t luxuriously, the w a y a baby tastes its mother' (p. 213). Since the time o f Esther's experience insulin shock therapy has been discontinued as too dangerous and in any case, even when successful, i t often left only a deadened and confused personality. It was also found that successful therapy was not the effect o f the drug at all, but the effect o f the concern expressed b y the doctors and nurses on account of the danger o f the drug. I t was a k i n d o f brutal mothering. W h e n we k n o w this, i t is pitiful to read o f an Esther w h o is able to speak o f her true predicament, and yet only receives f r o m those who care for her further impingement that seems dreadfully irre­ levant. Esther wants to taste her mother but all she gets is 'reac­ tions' : when she comes round f r o m attempted suicide she hears a voice calling 'Mother'. C o m i n g round she looks hopefully into a reflecting object, only to find i t is Daddy's black shoe. The connection between this shoe-symbol and death is clear f r o m an incident when the girls attending the Ladies' D a y 'ban­ quet' are poisoned b y crabmeat ('it was chock-full o f ptomaine'). Sylvia Plath's shortest paragraph is: Poison. only thing I could think of was turkey neck' (The Bell Jar, p. 71). T h e above murderous moment seems to relate to images of castration aimed at the castrating mother (who must be castrated before she castrates Esther).

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T o her, 'inner contents' are fascinating. T o her protagonist, 'There is nothing like p u k i n g w i t h somebody to make y o u into o l d friends' (p. 45). As she recovers she has a vision o f Doreen as the Virgin Mary: . . . her blonde hair l i t at the tips f r o m behind like a halo o f gold . . . I felt a sort o f expert tenderness flowing f r o m the ends o f her fingers. She m i g h t have been Betsy or m y mother or a fern-scented nurse. I felt purged and holy and ready for a new life. ' W e l l , y o u almost died,' she said finally, (p. 49) This rebirth is false: i t is not even real death. B u t when Esther first comes r o u n d : The next thing I had a view o f was somebody's shoe. It was a stout shoe o f cracked black leather and quite old, w i t h tiny air holes i n a scalloped pattern over the toe and a dull polish, and it was pointed at me . .. (p. 47, m y italics) W h e n she drops a razor on her calf: The blood gathered darkly, like fruit, and rolled d o w n m y ankle into the cup o f m y black patent leather shoe. (p. 156) After this episode she goes to her father's grave. ' Y o u do not do, black shoe' i n Daddy (Ariel, p. 54) gives us the clue to the symbol­ ism o f these shoes. W h e n she loses her virginity to the mathematics professor she bleeds badly f r o m the ruptured h y m e n : 'the blood trickling d o w n m y legs and oozing, stickily, into each black patent leather shoe' (p. 243). Esther's first sexual act, in the search for 'meeting' is a k i n d o f death: so her 'inner contents' flow d o w n into her shoes. Shoes are associated w i t h death because Daddy died f r o m a diseased toe. B u t the protagonist w o m a n in Sylvia Plath is often 'in Daddy's shoes', because her identity is constructed around Daddy. The way in w h i c h these shiny black shoes confront Esther at deathly moments symbolises the focus o f her quest for 'creative reflection': instead o f the mother's eyes, she finds the black shiny shoe o f the father pointed at her. She hopes to get f r o m the father

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what she d i d not get f r o m the mother, but what she gets is a black threat as i f o f hate and death. The mother seems unable to give reflection because she d i d not m o u r n . The truth w o u l d seem to be that, i n life, Sylvia Plath's mother h i d her grief f r o m her c h i l d : so, by strange infant logic, she was not grieving enough, and the daughter must take on this role. I had a great yearning, lately, to pay m y father back for all the years o f neglect, and start tending his grave. I had always been m y father's favourite, and i t seemed fitting I should take on a m o u r n i n g m y mother had never bothered w i t h . (p. 175) This suggests an element i n Sylvia Plath's predicament (cul­ minating i n Daddy) o f not being able to relinquish the dead Daddy, however menacing he is, because mourning was incomplete. The graveyard disappoints Esther. The stones i n the modern part were crude and cheap, and here and there a grave was r i m m e d w i t h marble, like an oblong bath-tub full o f dirt, and rusty metal containers stuck up about where the person's navel w o u l d be, full o f plastic flowers. I couldn't find m y father anywhere, (p. 176) As we have already seen, the bath-tub is to her both a coffin and a place o f rebirth: so the tombs seem to have a navel l i n k i n g them to the surface ('the voices just can't w o r m through'). The images o f b i r t h persist. Esther is dressed in a black mac she has bought that m o r n i n g : she had asked the sales girl i f it was water-repellant. I n the background are strange feelings about 'inner contents' (tears, amniotic fluid, and perhaps 'golden rain') associated w i t h intense emotional needs, and paranoid dread. The episode is 'seen' as through the eyes o f a child. W e recall how, as Esther begins to experience her break-down, she regresses: That m o r n i n g I had tried to write a letter to Doreen, d o w n i n West Virginia, asking whether I could come and live w i t h her and maybe get ajob at her college waiting on table or something. But when I took up m y pen, m y hand made big, j e r k y letters like those o f a child . . . (p. 137) This s y m p t o m meant nothing to the psychiatrist treating her w h o

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is, smooth, vain, w o r l d l y , and encapsulated i n his o w n denial o f 'being'. B y her father's tomb she regresses again, and this yields one o f the most m o v i n g pieces o f w r i t i n g i n the book. Then I saw m y father's gravestone. It was crowded right up b y another gravestone, head to head, the w a y people are crowded i n a charity w a r d when there isn't enough space. The stone was o f mottled pink marble, like tinned salmon, and all there was on i t was m y father's name and, under it, t w o dates, separated b y a little dash. (p. 177) The 'dash' is his life. Sylvia Plath is obsessed w i t h decades perhaps because her o w n father died when she was little. W h a t is between decades seems insubstantial and meaningless. Even the gravestone belongs to the w o r l d o f mass-production, ugliness, the indifference to people i n the mass w h i c h is America: A t the root o f the stone I arranged the rainy armful o f azaleas I had picked f r o m a bush at the gateway o f the grave­ yard. Then m y legs folded under me, and I sat d o w n i n the sopping grass. I couldn't understand w h y I was crying so hard. Then I remembered that I had never cried for m y father's death. M y mother hadn't cried either. She had just smiled and said what a merciful thing i t was for h i m he had died, because i f he had lived he w o u l d have been crippled and an invalid for life and he couldn't have stood that, he w o u l d rather have died than had that happen. I laid m y face to the smooth face o f the marble and howled m y loss into the cold salt rain. (p. 177) It is an important moment o f m o u r n i n g : but i t does not enable her to let Daddy go. Significantly, the next paragraph begins brus­ quely : T knew just h o w to go about i t . ' Leaving a note ('I am going for a long walk') Esther attempts sui­ cide efficiendy at last—or rather only more or less efficiently, since she survives. She records her compulsive tidiness in preparing for the event, and descends to the cellar (compare the cellar and its significance i n the 'bee' poems): '. . . this secret, earth-bottomed c r e v i c e . . . I . . . crouched at the m o u t h o f the darkness, like a

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troll.'* The symbolism is both o f an entry into her father's grave, and o f an entry into the w o m b , too. The prose becomes lyrical w i t h love, and w i t h caul-symbols: Cobwebs touched m y face w i t h the softness o f moths. W r a p ­ ping m y black coat round me like m y o w n sweet shadow, I unscrewed the botde o f p i l l s . . . (p. 179) I n the ensuing record o f sensation there are images o f reptation w h i c h suggest b i r t h again: . . . m y head rose, feeling i t [the darkness], like the head o f a w o r m . . . I was being transported at enormous speed d o w n a tunnel into the earth . . . a slit o f light opened, like a m o u t h or a w o u n d . . . I tried to r o l l away from the direction o f light, but hands wrapped round m y limbs like m u m m y bands, and I couldn't m o v e . . . through the thick, w a r m , furry dark a voice cried, ' M o t h e r ! ' A i r breathed and played over m y face.' (pp. 180-1) The symbolism here is complex. She identifies w i t h the l i b i d i n ised internalised penis o f the father ('the head o f a w o r m ' ) w h i c h is entering the mother's body. She is also Christ i n the T o m b , f as anyone must be i n this civilisation w h o is wrapped i n bands i n a h o l l o w cave. She is a m u m m y . She is inside the w o m b ('warm, furry, dark'). She is being reborn. She is wrapped i n m u m m y bands (navel wrappings) and is being handled as a baby at birth. She is breathing i n air. Her account gains its force f r o m the u n ­ canny presentation o f the near-death w i t h j o y , w i t h a sense o f * C f . D y l a n Thomas, 'In the groin of the natural doorway/Crouched like a tailor/Sewing a shroud for a journey . . . ' — a recurrent image in his work. Esther feels 'as i f I were being stuffed farther and farther into a black, airless sack with no way out' (p. 136)—an image which also recurs in D y l a n Thomas w h o spoke of the 'sad sack of the self and who was fascinated by Houdini. See Dylan Thomas; the Code of Night, p. 142. •f Identification with Christ seems to be a common schizoid manifestation. I have heard of a schizophrenic patient in a mental hospital, who stabbed a fellowpatient, in order to be executed and to 'rise as Christ in four days' time.' T h e association in Sylvia Plath's mind between being in the cave, and being Christ who, like Lazarus, rises from the vault is clear in a number of places. In Nick and the Candlestick the room is a cave, he is the baby i n the barn, and there are strong references to Christ, communion and resurrection. In Tulips the dead shut their mouths on freedom 'like a Communion tablet' and in Mystic she asks 'What is the remedy ?/The pill of the Communion tablet, the walking beside still water?'

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security and satisfaction. B u t the outcome is futile: later she asks T want to see a m i r r o r ' . W h a t she sees offers no confirmation o f a new self. A t first I didn't see what the trouble was. I t wasn't a m i r r o r at all, but a picture. Y o u couldn't tell whether the person i n the picture was a man or a w o m a n , because their hair was shaved o f f and sprouted i n bristly chicken-feather tufts all over their head. One side o f the person's face was purple, and bulged out i n a shapeless way, shading to green along the edges, and then to a sallow yellow. The person's m o u t h was pale b r o w n , w i t h a rose-coloured sore at either corner. I smiled. The m o u t h i n the m i r r o r cracked into a grin. A minute after the crash another nurse ran i n . (p. 185) The sexless image o f a w o m a n w h o simply fell to earth under the influence o f drugs fails to confirm the hope o f a new identity: a nurse snarls, ' A t you-know-where they'll take care o f her I' Be­ cause she broke the mirror she is to be sent to another hospital, where there is closer coercion: her mother says, ' Y o u shouldn't have broken that mirror. Then maybe they'd have let y o u stay'. The symbolism o f the need for a mirror, her need for its smash­ ing, and the needs o f the soul thus expressed i n the light o f the fact that the mirror is a symbol o f the mother's reflecting eyes, is very poignant—not least when she is told, ' Y o u should have behaved better, then'. It is easy to blame the dark: the m o u t h o f the door The cellar's belly . . . Witch Burning, Poem for a Birthday W h a t psychiatry provides for Esther is a series o f false fathers and mothers, w h o offer forms o f 'doing' which are directed t o ­ wards 'curing' her, implicitly blaming her for hankering after shadows, doors and cellars. B u t i n destroying these hankerings, they've b l o w n her 'sparkler out', obliging her to conform and adopt a 'correct' identity that no longer seeks b y ' w i n g y myths' to solve the problem o f being. Her deeper, real self seeks something

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more radical. T o reflect this radical need w o u l d be true care, true love. B u t though her mother, and Philomena Guinea, care enough to pay for her treatment, they are still felt, at the deepest level, to be false parent-figures, mystifying her. This falsity is detected i n her earliest encounter w i t h psychiatry — i n D r Gordon. She sees h o w this k i n d o f individual is protected b y his egoism f r o m understanding. Doctor Gordon's features were so perfect he was almost pretty. I hated h i m the minute I walked i n through the door. I had imagined a k i n d , ugly, intuitive man looking up and saying ' A h ! ' i n an encouraging way, as i f he could see some­ thing I couldn't, and then I w o u l d find words to tell h i m h o w I was so scared, as i f I were being stuffed farther and farther into a black airless sack w i t h no w a y out. (pp. 135-6) Esther finds no intuition—none o f the female element she needs— in D r G o r d o n : ' I could see right away that he was conceited'. Far f r o m telling her ' w h y everything people d i d seemed so silly, be­ cause they only died i n the end', he adopts a posture w h i c h makes it obvious that he is unable to allow himself the discomfort o f experiencing her ego-weakness. H e cannot tolerate humanness because he cannot bear to be human. She cannot tell h i m she is afraid. She hallucinates as an alternative someone w h o is almost a Winnicott—a modest, non-pretending, reflecting analyst w h o is concerned w i t h helping her find herself: capable o f 'giving the patient back what he brings'. W h a t she gets is someone w h o intends to do things to her: to impinge: 'Suppose y o u t r y and tell me what y o u think is w r o n g . ' I turned the words over suspiciously, like round, sea-polished pebbles that m i g h t suddenly put out a claw and change into something else. W h a t did I think was wrong? That made i t sound as i f n o t h ­ ing was really w r o n g . I only thought i t was w r o n g , (p. 137) A t once he rejects her need to have her predicament existentially experienced, to have someone feel her despair, w h i c h is real enough, i n the body and being. D r Gordon turns out to be one o f those 'hidden anti-socials' o f

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w h o m W i n n i c o t t speaks, w h o identify w i t h authority to suppress individuality. She enters his hospital—a house o f correction. There were people: but T realized that none o f the people were m o v i n g . ' I focused more closely, trying to p r y some clue f r o m their stiff p o s t u r e s . . . but there was a uniformity to their faces, as i f they had lain for a long time on a shelf, out o f the sunlight, under siftings o f pale fine dust. Then I saw that some o f the people were indeed m o v i n g , but w i t h such small, birdlike gestures I had not at first discerned them. (p. 149) I f the schizoid person's fear is o f being petrified, then D r Gordon is the k i n d o f psychiatrist w h o w i l l petrify them. They pass a w o m a n being dragged along: the image is one o f repression, b y a blindness to the meaning o f madness, the blindness o f violence: D u m p y and muscular i n her smudge-fronted uniform, the wall-eyed nurse w o r e such thick spectacles that four eyes peered out at me f r o m behind the round, t w i n panes o f glass. I was trying to tell w h i c h eyes were the real eyes and w h i c h the false eyes, and w h i c h o f the real eyes was the wall-eye and w h i c h the straight eye, when she brought her face up to mine w i t h a large conspiratorial grin and hissed, as i f to reassure me, 'She thinks she's going to j u m p out the w i n d o w but she can't j u m p out the w i n d o w because they're all barred.' (p. 150) The preparation o f Esther for E C T echoes the childbirth scene— and the execution o f the Rosenbergs. I shut m y eyes. There was a brief silence like an indrawn breath. Then something bent d o w n and took hold o f me and shook me like the end o f the w o r l d . Whee-ee-ee-ee-ee, i t shrilled, through an air crackling w i t h blue light, and w i t h each flash a great j o l t drubbed me till I thought m y bones w o u l d break and the sap fly out o f me like a split plant. J wondered what terrible thing it was that I had done. (pp. 151-2, m y italics) A l l the puzzled self can feel is a horrible sense that i n some way for w h i c h she is by no means to blame, she has committed some

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appalling offence. The offence has been to offer the symbolism o f a 'strategy o f survival': so i t feels as i f what was wrong was to wish to he, to live, to be born. Esther finds herself remembering a violent electric shock she had received in her father's study. ' A scream was torn f r o m m y throat, for I didn't recognise it, but heard i t soar and quaver i n the air like a violently disembodied spirit.' One trauma recalls another: and brings back only the 'disembodied' dissociation o f it. The essential needs remain unfulfilled. D r Gordon, asking her h o w she feels, repeats his inane, vain, irrelevant remark about Esther's college having been a wartime station for the women's armed services, hinting at his o w n sexual prowess and smartness. Esther decides she is through w i t h h i m . B u t when she does so, she finds her mother, too, thinks i t is a question o f 'deciding' to be 'alright'. M y mother smiled. ' I knew m y baby wasn't like that.' I looked at her. 'Like what?' 'Like those awful people. Those awful dead people at that hospital.' She paused. ' I k n e w y o u ' d decide to be alright again.' (P- 154) Mother and psychiatrists collude, to urge Esther to p u l l herself together—she must decide not to have a real identity, and not to stand out from other people i n such unrespectable ways: though the mother also sees that the patients have been made dead b y ECT.

Chapter Fifteen opens w i t h Esther imprisoned i n Philomena Guinea's black Cadillac, on her w a y to an even more expensive psychiatrist, for w h o m the lady novelist is n o w paying. Philomena Guinea, at the peak o f her career, has 'taken an interest i n the case' after reading about Esther i n the papers, and after having been told the girl 'thinks she w i l l never write again'. B u t Esther can feel no gratitude: ' I knew I should be grateful to M r s Guinea, only I couldn't feel a thing.' She is i n the bell jar 'stewing i n m y o w n sour air'. Everyone winds her into a knot (in Laing's sense o f the w o r d ) . D r Nolan, a w o m a n this time, is even more sinister than D r G o r d o n : she coerces i n such a nice way. Esther tells her about the E C T . W h i l e I was telling her she went very still.

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'That was a mistake,' she said then, 'It's not supposed to be like that.' I stared at her. ' I f it's done properly,' Doctor N o l a n said, 'it's like going to sleep.' ' I f anyone does that to me again I ' l l k i l l myself.' Doctor N o l a n said firmly, ' Y o u w o n ' t have any shock treat­ ments here. O r i f y o u do,' she amended, ' I ' l l tell y o u about i t beforehand, and I promise y o u i t w o n ' t be anything like what you had before. W h y , ' she finished, 'some people even like them.' (p. 200) D r N o l a n promises, but only to reassure her patient, and to prepare her for a gentler coercion. Her intention (Sylvia Plath sees) is not to respond to the inner dynamics o f Esther's true self, but to encourage her to accept the annihilation o f her existential perplexities—a f o r m o f socially acceptable self-negation. One morning Esther finds she is having no breakfast—because she is on the list for shock-therapy. A l t h o u g h D r Nolan comes over at once, Esther still feels she is being 'done to', and indeed has been treated like a child, and not consulted i n case i t frightened her. I n the meantime she has been given injections, the purpose o f w h i c h she is not t o l d : they turn out to be insulin. Esther only finds this out f r o m another patient—a situation which exposes D r Nolan's methods o f 'dealing w i t h ' her patients. She has a disturbing reac­ tion. Each o f these incidents conveys v i v i d l y the w a y i n w h i c h the 'patient' is treated i n such a w a y as to undermine her value and volition as a human being, as b y demonstrations o f no confidence. The psychiatrists demonstrate that they conceive o f their w o r k i n terms o f cutting up patient's psyches as a surgeon cuts up a patient's body: they, too, are pestle-wielders, rather than sources o f creative reflection. D r Nolan, too, is a petrifier. Valerie shows Esther her scars 'as i f at some time she had started to sprout horns, but cut them off'. 'I've had a lobotomy.' I looked at Valerie i n awe, appreciating for the first time her perpetual marble calm. Valerie's independent personality is destroyed for ever:

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T can go to t o w n , n o w , or shopping or to a movie, along w i t h a nurse.' ' W h a t w i l l y o u do when y o u get out?' ' O h , I ' m not leaving,' Valerie laughed. ' I like i t here.' (p. 204) She is forever reduced to total dependence. She is no longer 'angry'—because as an individual she has ceased to exist. I n the physical annihilation o f her 'brain' complete conformism has been obtained. W h i l e no doubt such drastic measures may be thought neces­ sary is some agonising cases, there are those i n psychiatry w h o see them (as Sylvia Plath does) as forms o f annihilation o f the per­ sonality, o f the ultimate destruction o f autonomy and freedom. The dangers are discussed b y W i n n i c o t t : The surgeon w h o does a leucotomy w o u l d at first seem to be doing what the patient asks for, that is, to be relieving the patient o f m i n d activity, the m i n d having become an enemy o f the psyche-soma. Nevertheless, we can see that the surgeon is caught up in the mental patient's false localization o f the m i n d in the head, w i t h its sequel, the equating o f m i n d and brain. (1958, p. 253) The patient really seeks 'full-functioning in order to be able to have psyche-soma existence' B u t the irreversible brain changes make this forever impossible: the only value is i n 'what the operation means to the patient'. Elsewhere W i n n i c o t t calls i t an insane delusion between surgeon and patient. He says M y o w n personal horror o f leucotomy and suspicion o f E C T derives f r o m m y v i e w o f psychotic illness as a defensive organisation designed to protect the true s e l f . . . (p. 287) That is, insanity is a 'strategy o f survival'—all too easily met b y coercion and the failure to see the meaning o f the mechanism w h i c h attempts to defend the regressed libidinal ego and give i t a chance. Is such therapy an attack on the defensive organisation because o f its individual visionary qualities, because i t is a quest for 'being'? In these circumstances, w i t h marvellous irony, Sylvia Plath makes Esther reflect on her birthday roses. I t is a birthday in w h i c h

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there is no rebirth. I t is not to be celebrated because she feels born dead. A l l is waste—her mother's gift o f flowers on her birthday; the pretence in hospital o f bringing about rebirth; the roses w h i c h mock her no-flowering. So—to the waste-basket. ' O u t o f the waste-basket poked the blood-red buds o f a dozen long-stemmed roses' (p. 214). Her mother has been quizzed: She never scolded me, b u t kept begging me, w i t h a sorrowful face, to tell her what she had done w r o n g . She said she was sure the doctors had thought she had done something w r o n g because they asked her a l o t o f questions about m y toilet training, and I had been perfecdy trained at a very early age and given her no trouble whatsoever, (p. 215) Details o f potty-training are no more relevant to this catastrophe than the guilt induced by E C T . The 'poking' buds, symbolising the sad truth o f the 'mother o f pestles Esther experienced, speak plainly o f the t r u t h f r o m the wastepaper basket. Whatever went w r o n g belongs to strange dynamics o f love, not 'child management'. The American psychiatry Esther experiences is blandly con­ vinced o f its o w n truth, built as i t is into a system, w i t h text­ books, machines, institutions and training programmes. Esther is not deceived b y the hygienic niceness o f i t all: i t may be all very k n o w i n g and pleasant. I t tolerates even hate as nice, while to express hate is 'pleasing'. B u t the road to existential security through despair and suffering is closed b y a smile. So, Sylvia Plath maintains an ironic underplay: ' W h a t was she trying to prove? I hadn't changed. N o t h i n g had changed . . .' The E C T is merely a little more cosily offered (Christian names this time) but no less violent: the patient is a frightened, beaten child: T h r o u g h the slits o f m y eyes, w h i c h I didn't dare open too far, lest the full view strike me dead, I saw the high bed w i t h its white, drumtight sheet, and the machine behind the bed, and the masked person—I couldn't tell whether i t was a man or a woman . . . 'Talk to me,' I said.

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Miss Huey began to talk i n a l o w , soothing voice, smoothing the salve on m y temples and fitting the small electric buttons on either side o f m y head. . . . she set something on m y tongue and i n panic I bit d o w n , and darkness w i p e d me out like chalk on a blackboard (p. 226) Esther has sought out her father ('I couldn't find m y father any­ where') and has laid her cheek on the cold stone o f his grave. She has sought for love, i n the spirit o f the line i n Sylvia Plath's poem The Moon and The Yew Tree (Ariel, p. 47), ' H o w I w o u l d like to believe i n tenderness'. B u t the need for love is ignored, i n favour o f the application o f a shocking machine. A masked sexless figure wipes the 'me' out. I t is all done i n such a polite way, like putting d o w n unwanted suburban cats. B u t i t is still like the execution o f the Rosenbergs—a society eradicating the dynamics o f being which i t paranoically fears. After much regular E C T ('for h o w long?' 'That depends', Doctor Nolan said, 'on y o u and me'—i.e. 'Be a good girl and w e w i l l stop'), the bell-jar lifts a little. ' I felt surprisingly at peace. The bell jar hung, suspended, a few feet above m y head. I was open to the circulating air' (p. 227). B u t what has happened is a detach­ ment, a dissociation, rather than an engagement and enrichment. I took up the silver knife and cracked o f f the cap o f m y egg. Then I put d o w n the knife and looked at i t . I tried to think what I had loved knives for, but m y m i n d slipped f r o m the noose o f the thought and swung, like a bird, i n the centre o f empty air. (p. 228) It is after her 'cure' that Esther enters desperately and coldly into her horribly depersonalised sexual relationship w i t h the mathematics professor, and nearly bleeds to death. As a 'cured' w o m a n she sends h i m the doctor's bill for 'fixing' the haemorrhage from her hymen—while making i t impossible for h i m ever to see her again! I t is as i f Sylvia Plath is telling us that psychotic dis­ sociation is the product o f such 'cure': this is the 'after hell' (see Poem for a Birthday, last section). A l l that her therapy achieves is symbolised by the snow i n the last chapter that blankets the asylum grounds: 'the sort that snuffs out schools and offices and churches and leaves, for a day or more, a pure, blank sheet i n place

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o f memo pads, date books and calendars.'* Sylvia Plath's uncanny insight is not deceived. 'Treatment' merely freezes her. The heart o f w i n t e r ! Massachusetts w o u l d be sunk i n a marble calm . . . B u t under the deceptively clean and level slate the topo­ graphy was the same. (p. 249) A few memories are suppressed; the landscape underneath has not changed: h o w could i t be different? I remembered the cadavers and Doreen and the story o f the fig-tree and Marco's diamond and the sailor on the C o m m o n and Doctor Gordon's wall-eyed nurse and the broken thermo­ meters and the negro w i t h his t w o kinds o f beans and the twenty pound I gained on insulin and the rock that bulged between sky and sea like a grey skull. Maybe forgetfulness, like a kind snow, should n u m b and cover them. B u t they were part o f me. They were m y landscape, (p. 250) She resents the forgetfulness w h i c h is all her experience o f therapy has brought: i t has deadened perception and suppressed aspects o f her personality. Her self is in the symbolism o f her strategies o f survival. Rebirth could only come creatively f r o m the ego involved i n the defence mechanisms: other ways out are false and a death. Her w a y to find herself was i n the life-rhythms and symbols o f her madness. Her mother wants 'all this' to be for­ gotten 'like a bad dream'. H o w impossible to forget what has at its centre the failure ever to be I—-'blank and stopped'. W h e n she departs, she feels politely that she should feel reborn. I had hoped, at m y departure, I w o u l d feel sure and k n o w ­ ledgeable about everything that lay ahead—after all, I had been 'analyzed'. Instead, all I could see were question marks. I kept shooting impatient glances at the closed boardroom door. M y stocking seams were straight, m y black shoes cracked, * Cf. 'Coldness comes sitting down, layer after layer' in Poem for a Birthday. See above, p. 54. Both passages evoke 'Winter kept us warm, covering/Earth in forgetful snow' from The Waste Land. 'The heart of winter' here evokes 'The very dead of winter' from The Journey of the Magi.

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but polished, and m y red w o o l suit flamboyant as m y plans. Something old, something new. . . . (p. 257) She gets out, like an applicant, i n the black shoes o f her father, the stockings o f her mother, the red suit o f flamboyance as i f o f the flames o f the witch-burning she had suffered, or as i f i t were her wedding day. Something o f her old self: but what is new? The suit? W e recall the former images o f mere clothes, empty, labelled. The 'board' are so important. B u t all they offer is another conformity. There is nothing fundamentally new i n the situation: except that she has agreed to agree, in the city o f spare parts. Yet under E C T some o f the 'sap' has 'flown out o f her'. I n Poem for a Birthday ' I am as good as new' takes on a new irony. I t means both ' I shall be good as gold' but also implies that the newness is that o f a 'retread'. I have dealt at length w i t h The Bell Jar because, first novel as i t is, I believe i t to be an important record for our time. W h i l e i t is important to resist giving total assent to Sylvia Plath's v i e w o f psychiatry and society, the novel displays her consistent attention to the problem conventional psychiatry fails to keep at the centre o f its preoccupations: the desperate need o f the schizoid individual to love and to be loved, to be understood, and to begin to be, rather than be 'done to'. The question remains, o f course, h o w this can ever be achieved on the scale necessary for public medi­ cine, and this raises the question o f the degree to w h i c h the ordinary c o m m u n i t y fails to make its contribution to being. B u t i n literary studies, our concern is w i t h the phenomenological meanings and here The Bell Jar is a courageous record that illuminates many aspects o f our schizoid civilisation.

4 The Schizoid Problem in Creative Writing Leslie H . Farber (1966), i n his chapter 'Schizophrenia and the M a d Psychotherapist', says that schizophrenia is 'a disorder consisting o f a double failure i n areas that m i g h t loosely be called meaning and relation'. Sylvia Plath was not schizophrenic: her utterance is often extraordinarily clear. B u t because o f her schizoid condition, w e are driven i n reading her w o r k , as I have shown, to complete certain meanings, add interpretations, and establish certain con­ nections—and so there are many difficulties o f artistic judgement, as w i t h many modern works. A parallel example is afforded, per­ haps, b y the strangely 'unfinished' paintings o f Francis Bacon. I f (as W i n n i c o t t has said) he is 'striving to be seen', our seeing is an attempt to complete what is incomplete. B u t are we, as audience, to serve the artist? O r should he enrich us? M a y we not i n our troubled reactions be at the receiving end o f a 'breakdown o f meaning and relation', and so depleted? Perhaps all he has done is to make life more difficult for us? O r has he forced on us the problem o f existence itself? B u t what regeneration does he offer us? In our society, i n any case, it is difficult enough (as is clear from The Bell Jar) for human beings to feel whole, and human, and able to exert their freedom and autonomy. The schizoid individual especially is tormented b y these problems o f becoming a person. W i n n i c o t t (1968, a) discusses this as a consequence o f the failure o f integration. He categorises the primary processes o f development in the infant as '(1) integration (2) personalization and (3) the appreciation o f time and space and other properties o f reality—in

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short, realization' (p. 140). I n normal life we take these processes for granted. The therapist works w i t h people i n w h o m these p r o ­ cesses are not complete. T o understand their nature we have to open our eyes to 'a great deal that had a beginning and a condition out o f w h i c h i t developed'. These processes o f developing a self w h i c h feels real and which can perceive a real w o r l d are bound up w i t h the development o f ego-strength. Where there is egoweakness, this has come about through a failure o f ego-relatedness. This may be linked w i t h the whole problem o f seeing a meaningful w o r l d : the artist works between the need to feel whole, and the need to see the w o r l d i n a meaningful way. W e can learn from this. W i n n i c o t t links the capacity to believe i n a benign w o r l d w i t h an 'ego-supportative environment' w h i c h has become 'built i n to the individual's personality' so that: there is always someone present, someone w h o is equated u l t i ­ mately and unconsciously w i t h the mother, the person w h o i n the early days and weeks, was temporarily identified w i t h the infant, and for the time being was interested i n nothing else but the care o f her o w n infant. (1965, p. 36) It is this ego-supportative element Sylvia Plath seeks in herself, but does not find. She lacks what Guntrip (1966) called a 'conviction', i n terms o f feeling, not merely i n idea, o f the 'reality and reliability for [herself] o f good objects i n the outer w o r l d ' . This is not the same as a capacity to fantasy good objects. W e must distinguish between enjoyable remembering on the basis o f actual good experience, and compulsive anxious fantasying and thinking as an effort to deny actual bad experience. (pp. 226-7) I n her w o r k i n consequence there seem to be t w o compensatory activities at w o r k . One is 'compulsive fantasying' intended to deny bad experience—as when Sylvia Plath is w r i t i n g aggressively i n Lady Lazarus or Daddy—proclaiming her indifference to some malignity that menaces her. Secondly, as i n The Beekeeper's Daughter, she is engaged i n 'enjoyable remembering', but i n some desperation (the queen bee 'does not show herself). So she assembles scraps o f memories o f Daddy ('he w h o keeps

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m y being'), a 'cupboard o f rubbish' divided disastrously against itself. Having no confidence i n her internal reserves, she cannot find the universe benign, and cannot see i t as meaningful. So, the need for re-birth is at one w i t h the need to experience the w o r l d : but because o f the confusions I have examined, w e often find her rituals are death-births. W e can see this i n a poem like Face Lift (Crossing the Water, p. 17): Y o u bring me good news from the clinic, W h i p p i n g o f f your silk scarf, exhibiting the tight w h i t e Mummy-cloths, smiling: I ' m all right. W h e n I was nine, a lime-green anaesthetist Fed me banana gas . . . Mother to myself, I wake swaddled i n gauze, Pink and smooth as a baby. W e have here images o f Daddy, o f the mummy-cloths being re­ moved (from a new baby), and o f the self-mothering itself b r i n g ­ ing a new self to birth. W h e n she becomes hopeless this search for birth through death takes destructive paths, as i n Lady Lazarus, which declares raucously that the big strip-tease o f death must be frequendy repeated, while i n Edge (Ariel, p. 85), one o f her last poems,* there is a bitter expression o f an ultimate loss o f hope that even her death can generate a creative response i n the m o o n mother's face: The m o o n has nothing to be sad about, Staring f r o m her hood o f bone. A n d so she lapses into futile vengeance: and can seduce us into nihilism. The search for integration and meaningful perception lies be­ tween these poles. O u r problem o f response to the art is that o f trying to decide when she makes creative gains and when she promotes desperate dehumanisation. Some poems are very much in the balance. In Tulips (Ariel, p. 20), for instance, the protagonist is l y i n g i n * 'Balloons, Contusion, Kindness, Edge and Words belong to the last week of her life*. (The Art of Sylvia Plath, p. 193.)

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hospital and finds a strange j o y i n being depersonalised, w h i c h seems to be strongly regressive.* The nurses w h o tend her are faceless and anonymous, and they cannot be distinguished one f r o m another. As W i n n i c o t t tells us, the baby at first does not k n o w that all the experiences that happen to h i m are happening to the same person: thus, he does not experience himself as the same person. I t takes time for h i m to become realised.f I n Tulips Sylvia Plath is re-experiencing and relishing (because o f the pain and fear o f being operated on) her regression to the state o f an infant passively experiencing 'impingement': The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble, They pass the w a y gulls pass inland i n their white caps D o i n g things w i t h their hands, one just the same as another, So it is impossible to tell h o w many there are. M y body is a pebble to them, they tend i t as water Tends to the pebbles i t must r u n o v e r . . . Being a patient i n hospital under repair is like being a baby tended b y a mother. B u t the experience is given here w i t h such delight i n detachment—as i f the mothering were mechanical and had none o f the elements o f primary maternal preoccupation. The body is tended like a stone, impersonally as i f i t were petrified. The nurses 'must' tend her. Their handling o f her is a f o r m o f remote doing ('Doing things w i t h their hands'): but there is no quality o f spontaneous confirming love as f r o m one T to a ' T h o u ' in their care, meticulous as i t is: they are non-human, like gulls. The gulls here are the birds i n Poem for a Birthday: the nurses 'pass the w a y gulls pass inland in their white caps . . . one just the same as another', '. . . i t is impossible to tell h o w many there are'. B o t h bird images are o f remote breast-symbols, tending and soothing, but not enabling the infant to piece the various experiences o f handling into one 'object called mother', i n relation to one self. Since the self and object remain fragmentary, perception itself is experienced as something passive: the patient's head 'has to take everything i n ' . The poem symbolises a relationship w i t h an * Tulips, T e d Hughes tells us, 'records some tulips she had in the hospital where she was recovering from an appendectomy' (ibid), t 'Primitive Emotional Development' (1968a, p. 145).

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'impinging' reality 'on a conformity basis', while perception itself is resented and relinquished. I n Tulips w e have a fundamental ambiguity at the heart o f Sylvia Plath's w o r k expressed—whether to stay i n the w o r l d and suffer the pain o f ego-weakness, b r whether to take the path o f desperate attempts to be born again. I n the end, she seems to be wanting to come back despite the pain: the salt water o f tears belonging to health. There is thus both a positive and negative drive i n Sylvia Plath's feelings about experience. A n d because o f the schizoid characteristics i n them, her experiences are both like ours, and at the same time unlike ours, i n certain v i v i d ways. W e might, for example, feel deper­ sonalised i n hospital, as her protagonist does i n Tulips. B u t w e w o u l d be unlikely to feel as threatened as her protagonist b y a gift o f tulips w h i c h look to her like the m o u t h o f a voracious animal— our 'mouth-ego' is not so rapacious. N o r do we normally feel so strangely divorced f r o m our bodies, as Sylvia Plath often does. Yet there is, again, a sense i n w h i c h people can become strangely divided f r o m their bodies, and i n w h i c h the sense o f identity seems at times impossible to sustain, in terms o f the whole body and being in the w o r l d . So, we can sympathise w i t h her feelings o f alienation, though we ought to be startled, despite her bland tone, when she speaks o f her body as i f i t were not 'her', and o f h o w she needs to 'ambush' it, to have the 'whole say' and be 'dead i n a flash' (The Bell Jar, p. 168—see above, p. 88). W e perhaps never feel so divided as to see ourselves i n some k i n d o f conflict w i t h the body, trying to o u t w i t i t i n order to prevent i t clinging to life—because l i v i n g in the body seems intolerable. Such a degree o f the sense o f 'life, w i t h o u t feeling alive', o f a failure o f personalisation, o f a feeling as o f not being i n one's o w n body and o f not being the same as it, is psychopathological. Jung once told a group o f students about a young w o m a n w h o dreamt 'Jack Frost' had entered her bedroom and pinched her on the stomach. She woke and discovered she had pinched herself. B u t she was not frightened and did not react emotionally. This filled Jung w i t h foreboding: and the girl later committed suicide w i t h the same unfeeling hand. A mechanical feeling about our bodies is, however, also an aspect o f our thought about ourselves, in an age o f 'objective'

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science, i n w h i c h we are functioning organisms i n a w o r l d w h i c h is 'matter i n m o t i o n ' only. W e tend to think o f ourselves, other l i v i n g creatures, and the w o r l d as 'nothing but' mechanical entities—much the same w a y as Sylvia Plath portrays a human being i n The Applicant. V i k t o r Frankl reports coming across a book i n w h i c h man is defined as 'nothing but a complex biochemical mechanism powered b y a combustion system w h i c h energises computers w i t h prodigious storage facilities for retaining encoded information' ( ' N o t h i n g b u t . . . ' i n The Alpbach Seminar, ed. Koesder and Smithies). This k i n d o f view is immanent i n our thinking about ourselves. I t is characteristic o f our time that, i n The Bell Jar, Esther feels as i f she is i n conflict w i t h an 'internal drive' that belongs to her body and is i n opposition to her m i n d . I n Berck-Plage (Ariel, p. 30), written under the shock o f death and encounter w i t h cripples, Sylvia Plath conveys a horrified sense o f human life being meaninglessly mechanical.* Esther inevitably regards her mental illness from a reductionist point o f view. I had bought a few paperbacks on abnormal psychology at the drug store and compared m y symptoms w i t h the symptoms i n the books, and sure enough, m y symptoms tallied w i t h the most hopeless cases. (The Bell Jar, pp. 168-9) Cartesian dualism lies behind her absurd delusion (not u n k n o w n among neurologists and even brain surgeons) that the ' s e l f is i n the head, together w i t h whatever is ' w r o n g ' w i t h the self: I wanted to tell her that i f only something were w r o n g w i t h m y body i t w o u l d be fine, I w o u l d rather have anything w r o n g w i t h m y body than something w r o n g w i t h m y head . . . (P- 193) Such a feeling both seems natural to us, since our intellectual patterns and modes are 'imprisoned i n physicalism'f. B u t we need * '. . . we had visited Berck-Plage. . . . Some sort of hospital or convalescent home for the disabled fronts the beach. It was one of her nightmares stepped into the real world. A year later—almost to the day—our next door neighbour, an old man, died . . . In this poem that visit to the beach and the death and funeral of our neighbour are combined' (Ted Hughes, The Art of Sylvia Plath, p. 194). f See Ledermann, 1972. Also the work of Peter Lomas, R . D . Laing, Marjorie Grene, Frankl, and Roger Poole.

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to recognise h o w schizoid this strange dissociation o f 'self f r o m 'body' is. Sylvia Plath shows us h o w a schizoid individual may even seem at times to be detached f r o m his body, as i f 'looking d o w n on the self, and may even feel (like Alice) that she has no authority over her members. So, the individual's 'life-world' may be bound up w i t h the feeling, i n a dehumanised urban environ­ ment, o f being essentially empty and dead, disembodied and shadowy: Piece b y piece, I fed m y wardrobe to the night w i n d , and flutteringly, like a loved one's ashes, the grey scraps were ferried off, to settle here, there, exactly where I w o u l d never k n o w , i n the dark heart o f N e w Y o r k . (The Bell Jar, p. 117) So, the identity is 'grey scraps' (like the grey scraps o f waspchewed paper she offers as the basis o f her identity i n Poem for a Birthday), made o f k n o w i n g oneself intellectually. B u t i n the dark heart o f megalopolis she cannot 'find' herself i n the realm o f 'being', because there is no provision for encounter. O n its part, American culture could not 'hear' her, having cut itself o f f so much f r o m recognition o f the intuitive, female element faculties o f being. The intellectual awareness w h i c h is dissociated f r o m whole being and autonomy also tends to take on a dynamic o f 'male analytical doing' w h i c h stands i n lieu o f being. I t thus becomes a w a y o f dealing w i t h the w o r l d , as a defence against collapse. I n Guntrip, Lomas, Fairbairn and W i n n i c o t t we learn o f this 'false self. I t is the outer shell o f bustling activity and coping, the 'mask o f horn', w h i c h conceals the emptiness at the heart o f our egoweakness, the centre o f the tornado. This explains the powerful and excited energy i n such an individual as Sylvia Plath, whose internalised structures and imagos sometimes seem more important to her than any person 'out there' i n the real w o r l d . They provided a k i n d o f environment to live in and to feel real i n : she crawls into the words that embody them. The conflict w i t h i n the self may be explained in terms o f inner conflict. The hungry 'all m o u t h ' or 'regressed libidinal ego' is subject to the 'anti-libidinal' aspect o f the self. The baby at the heart o f the self feels weak and so menacing: so, i t is hated b y the internalisation o f those rejecting aspects o f the mother that were

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sometimes turned on the child (or seemed to be). This explains the cruelty w e can turn on our o w n needs. As Fairbairn says, we have a libidinal ego characterised b y ever-active and unsatisfied desires w h i c h come to be felt i n angry and sadistic ways; and the attachment to the rejecting object results i n an anti-libidinal ego based on an identification which reproduces the hostility o f the rejecting object to libidinal needs. (Quoted i n Guntrip 1968, pp. 71-2) Such divisions can lead to powerful destructive energy turned against oneself. Inevitably the libidinal ego is hated and persecuted b y the antilibidinal ego as well as b y the rejecting object, so that the individual has n o w become divided against himself. This is easy to recognise in the contempt and scorn shown b y many patients o f their o w n needs to depend for help on other people or on the analyst. I t is seen also i n the fear and hate o f weakness that is embedded i n our cultural attitudes. (Ibid., p. 72) These observations are most illuminating culturally, for they reveal that much o f today's contempt, scorn and nihilism are manifestations o f weakness, and a hatred o f being human. Ted Hughes's play Orghast began ' w i t h a baby being stamped on on a mountainside',* while Edward Bond's Saved contains a scene showing a baby being smeared and stoned to death: both forms o f 'acting out' o f the anti-libidinal ego's hatred o f the regressed libidinal ego or litdesoul, whose weak existence threatens f r o m within. Sylvia Plath's poems display immense energy—especially towards the end. B u t in her later poems there is a development o f a closed death-circuit resulting from this k i n d o f conflict, and the need to escape from even more dreadful fears. Guntrip (1968) speaks o f the closed system o f the inner w o r l d o f internal bad objects and the antilibidinal ego, in w h i c h is concentrated all the patient's secret and repressed hatred o f his infantile dependent libidinal * 'Singing a lullaby, Furorg cradles a baby in his arms, and gives it to Ussa. Instructed by both Krogons, Sheergra stamps it to death . . .' (Orghast at Persepolis, A . C . H . Smith, 1972).

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ego, the source o f his bad weakness; but also his fear that i f he were to give up or escape f r o m his bad objects, he could be left w i t h no objects at all and be facing the ultimate, and what W i n n i c o t t c a l l s . . . the unthinkable a n x i e t i e s . . . (p. 202) This shows w h y , bound up i n the closed-circuit system, an individual can come to prefer self-destruction as a w a y out. A related problem here is that, as a schizoid individual moves into such encapsulation, he may become cut o f f f r o m all relation­ ships. A n d this draws our attention to the fact that for this k i n d o f person relationships i n any case are based on intense identification. W h a t looks deceptively like genuine feeling for another person may break into consciousness, when i n fact i t is based on identification w i t h the other person and is mainly a feeding o f anxiety and p i t y for oneself. (Ibid., p . 38) Guntrip here refers to a novel, Ngaio Marsh's Enter a Murderer, in w h i c h a character says, 'He was completely and utterly absorbed, as though apart f r o m me he had no reality'. In other words, the man was swallowed up in his love-object, had no true individuality o f his o w n , and could not exist in a state o f separation f r o m her. I t was as though he had not become born out o f his mother's psyche and differentiated as a separate and real person in his o w n right, and identification w i t h another person remained at b o t t o m the basis o f all his personal relationships. (Ibid., p. 39) I t seems clear that Sylvia Plath's capacity for relationship was affected by impulses towards identification o f the above kind—so that in a sense she could hardly exist herself in a state o f separation. The intensely consuming envy o f her kind o f identification is evident i n Shrike and the short story The Wishing Box. W h e n she feels deserted, as in Birthday Present, and Berck Plage, she has no defences against a malignant w o r l d that threatens to close in on her, echoing the voraciousness o f her o w n needs. Although the schizoid individual shrinks from close relationship, and suffers terribly from such proximity, Sylvia Plath did commit herself to close relationships—and bore the pain, in hopefulness o f being fulfilled. Her last poems are virtually cries o f anguish at the

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searing and wounding effects o f such relationships and the dangers i n them o f being swallowed up. As Guntrip says: Identification is a major problem i n the schizoid patient's relations to the external w o r l d , because i t leads to the danger o f over-dependence on objects, creates the fear o f absorption into them, and enforces the defence o f mental detachment. Thus the original schizoid withdrawal from an unsatisfying outer w o r l d is reinforced by this further obstacle o f detachment as a defence against risking dangerous relationships. One patient identified w i t h her w o r k as a means o f maintaining her personality w i t h ­ out risking any close personal attachment. Then she insisted that she would have to commit suicide when she retired because she would then be nobody. (Ibid., p. 40, m y italics) The schizoid individual thus lives i n a private hell, between fear o f extinction through loss o f relationship, and the menace o f annihilation by dangerous relationship: out o f this emerges the desperation o f the suicidal impulse to escape both dangers. Robert Daly (1968) explains from his special study o f schizoid states h o w catastrophic the experience o f close relationships can be for a schizoid individual: Unfortunately, this w a r m and favourable climate o f taking and being given to begins to fail almost as soon as i t begins to succeed. Compassion, assistance, or treatment are also familiar names for deceit, humiliation, and depersonalised subjugation... near success i n establishing a viable, dependent and dependable relationship w i t h another person becomes the breeding ground o f suspicion, querulousness, manipulation, procrastination and w i t h d r a w a l . . . (p. 405) So, in Kindness (Ariel, p. 83) for instance, the normal care offered b y others is a sickly sugar that merely 'poultices' a deep w o u n d : Sugar can cure everything, so Kindness says. Sugar is a necessary fluid, Its crystals a little poultice. O kindness, kindness Sweetly picking up pieces!

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M y Japanese silks, desperate butterflies, M a y be pinned any minute, anaesthetized. Even the care offered her i n hospital is seen as 'depersonalised subjugation', while normal human interaction is often full o f menace. T e d Hughes's Lovesong (Crow, p. 88) expresses the dangers o f intense identification i n several ways. Their heads fell apart into sleep like the t w o halves O f a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop I n their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs I n their dreams their brains took each other h o s t a g e . . . I n the morning, they wore each other's face . . . I n an interview w i t h John Horder (The Guardian, 23 M a r c h 1965) Hughes remarked that, There was no rivalry between u s . . . i n these circumstances y o u begin to w r i t e out o f one brain . . . w e were like t w o feet o f one b o d y . . . A w o r k i n g partnership, all absorbing. W e just lived i t . I t all fitted very w e l l . . . Yet, at the end, i n poems like Daddy, she seems to be rejecting this intense identification itself, because o f her resentment at i t . For instance i n Tulips the T o f the poem, looking i n hospital at the photographs o f her husband and child, says Their smiles catch onto m y skin, little smiling hooks —while i n Three Women (Winter Trees, p. 40), many deep resentments are expressed, at the claims o f relationship: Is this m y lover then? This death, this death? Children are Those little sick ones that elude m y arms . . . B i r t h is a death: I should have murdered this, that murders me. A n d one w o m a n speaker feels: The incalculable malice o f the everyday. 5

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The followers o f Women's Liberation movements w h o read Sylvia Plath f r o m the platform are not aware, o f course, that such a poem presents i n some o f its choruses an agonised, specifically schizoid v i e w o f female experience, love, and b i r t h : they take i t all as 'the truth' about all women's experience. T o see i t i n perspective we only have to listen to schizoid patients quoted b y Guntrip, w h o reveal their overdependence and the w a y i n w h i c h relationship threatens them because o f their insubstantiality o f i d e n t i t y : ' . . . I feel m y destiny is bound up w i t h theirs, and I can't get away, yet I feel they imprison me and ruin m y life...'. I believe i t is difficult to understand the intensity o f the k i n d o f identification Sylvia Plath experienced w i t h those near to her unless w e study the w a y i n w h i c h schizoid persons (as Laing showed) can actually fed they are someone else. Guntrip (1968) gives some instances: Another patient dreamed o f being 'grafted on to another person'. The 40-year-old male patient said, ' W h y should I be on bad terms w i t h m y sister? After all I am m y sister,' and then started i n some surprise at what he had heard h i m ­ self s a y . . . A young married w o m a n struggling to master a blind compulsive longing for a male relative she played w i t h as a child, said: 'I've always felt he's me and I ' m h i m . I felt a terrible need to fuss around h i m and do everything for h i m . I want h i m to be touching me all the time. I feel there is no difference between h i m and me . . . ' . (p. 40) As the psychotherapist comments: Identification is betrayed i n a variety o f curious ways, such as the fear o f being buried alive, i.e. absorbed into another person, a return to the womb. This is also expressed i n the suicidal urge to put one's head in a gas oven; or, again, in dressing i n the clothes o f another person. One patient feeling in a state o f panic one night when her husband was away, felt safe when she slept in his pyjamas. . . (Ibid., p. 40) The full horror and poignancy o f the schizoid condition is indicated by Guntrip's picture o f schizoid breakdown:

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The schizoid repression o f feeling, and retreat f r o m emotional relationships, may, however, go much further, and produce a serious breakdown o f constructive effort. Then the unhappy sufferer f r o m incapacitating conflicts w i l l succumb to real futility: nothing seems w o r t h doing, interest dies, the w o r l d seems unreal, the ego feels depersonalised. Suicide may be attempted in a cold, calculated w a y to the accompaniment o f such thoughts as ' I am useless, bad for everybody, I ' l l be best out o f the way.' One patient w h o had never reached that point said, T feel I love people i n an impersonal w a y : i t seems a false position, hypocritical. Perhaps I don't do any loving. I ' m terrified when I see young people go o f f and being successful and I ' m at a dead bottom, absolute dereliction, excommunicate.' (Ibid., p. 39) W h i l e the achievement o f her poetry was continually set against Sylvia Plath's feelings o f futility, i n i t at times she expresses this encroaching despair. I n Elm (Ariel, p. 25) for instance: I k n o w the b o t t o m , she says. I k n o w i t w i t h m y great taproot: It is what y o u fear. I do not fear i t : I have been there. Is i t the sea y o u hear i n me, Its dissatisfactions?— I have suffered the atrocity o f sunsets. I am incapable o f more knowledge . . . One o f the elements i n her anguish revealed here is a deep lack o f satisfaction. Robert D a l y suggests that we can call someone's behaviour schizoid i f his actions appear to follow a particular set o f remarkable and predominating rules' as he pursues, or fails to pursue, a succession o f goals. He has observed, for example, as one 'rule', that the schizoid individual cannot 'achieve any enduring satisfaction w i t h his activities'. I was told o f Sylvia Plath, b y M r J i m Lape, her headmaster i n Boston, that her success i n w r i t i n g seemed to bring her no satisfaction, even when she was young. I n her w o r k she seems confused at times about what satisfactions she

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should be obtaining and h o w she should relate means to ends. I n The Night Dances she finds encounter w i t h her baby puzzling and cannot feel the satisfaction she knows she should feel.* I n Edge the incapacity to relate ends and means, actions and thought, becomes acute. Because o f the schizoid individual's failure to relate ends and means, says Daly, his w a y can be likened to a series o f approach—avoidance c o n f l i c t s . . . Fantasies, feelings and decisions are so arranged that as one conflict-ridden goal is approached, the m o u n t i n g tendency to avoid reaching that goal becomes the path to another conflictridden g o a l . . . the most general characteristic o f this k i n d o f individual is that he is always in transition. He never (or seldom) arrives—for long. (Op. cit., p. 401) This is precisely Esther's predicament i n The Bell Jar, and that o f the protagonists i n many o f Sylvia Plath's poems. Transition is the theme o f Ariel the poem (and Ariel the b o o k ) ; as i n Getting There (Ariel, p. 43): H o w far is it? H o w far is i t now? T u r n i n g and turning i n the middle air . . . The ultimate goal is some rebirth, as here: A n d I , stepping f r o m this skin O f o l d bandages, boredoms, o l d faces Step to y o u f r o m the black car o f Lethe, Pure as a baby. —but there is confusion as to h o w to arrive at 'there'. D a l y also notes that i n this condition 'anxiety, i n some f o r m , is usually h i g h ' . M a n y o f Sylvia Plath's poems are full o f deep, menacing anxiety—even i n the midst o f a benign environment, as i n The Bee Meeting. B u t i n this, as i n many poems we find the following further 'rule' o f D a l y also exempified: 'The w e l l springs o f w o r t h are i n perpetual jeopardy, both from w i t h i n and * See below, p. 204fF.

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w i t h o u t ' , w i t h the result that 'self-esteem follows a j e r k y tempera­ mental curve'. 'These individuals describe themselves as having been alienated early i n life f r o m the coherent and affectionate regard o f others' (op. cit., p. 401). Throughout Sylvia Plath's w o r k one finds a continual theme o f being deprived b y those w h o , she feels, have given her stones instead o f bread and m i l k : I w o u l d get f r o m these dry-papped stones The m i l k your love instilled i n them . . . (Point Shirley, The Colossus, p. 24) I n All the Dead Dears (The Colossus, p. 27) mother, grandmother and great-grandmother are menacing: From the mercury-backed glass Mother, grandmother, great-grandmother Reach hag hands to haul me i n . . . Instead o f reflecting her, these past generations rise i n the m i r r o r to drag her d o w n into death, w h i c h is, 'The gross eating g a m e . . . ' . In The Disquieting Muses (The Colossus, p. 58). she speaks o f alienation among 'Faces blank as the day I was born . . . ' . I n The Moon and the Yew Tree 'The m o o n is m y mother' but 'The m o o n is no door'. I n Elm the m o o n is 'merciless' and 'scathes'. I n Edge 'she' stares unreflecting and indifferent f r o m 'her hood o f bone'. I n The Bell Jar Esther refers to ' m y mother's face anxious and sallow as a slice o f lemon' (p. 13). Sylvia Plath's poems are a combination o f vision and nightmare. Daly says: ' I n his efforts to escape this dilemma-ridden existence, the schizoid individual creates pretensions and dreams hopeful beyond all reason, as well as the darkest night the soul can impose on i t s e l f (op. cit., p. 402). As we have seen, Sylvia Plath often manages to combine both dreams and nightmares i n her poems— as i n Getting There, from ' I am i n agony/I cannot undo m y s e l f to the hopeful dream o f stepping out o f her o l d skin f r o m the black car o f Lethe reborn. Lady Lazarus expresses the boast that she can c o m m i t suicide w i t h o u t damage, beyond all reason, and find the same purity. B u t the late poems certainly contain indications o f a confusion such as Daly describes: Intense, demanding, strident wishes for precarious unions

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w h i c h require the most delicate adaptations are followed b y suspicion, withdrawal, self-recrimination, criticism and repudia­ tion o f others, and despair. Apathy, illusory thoughts, selfdestructive urges and murderous obsessions may at times preoccupy the sufferer . . . (Op. cit., p. 402). Similar violent urges are evident enough i n Lady Lazarus ( ' I eat men like air'), Daddy, Edge and Medusa. W e have already discussed the prevalent expression o f the following 'rule' i n her w o r k : 'disliked and disliking, misunder­ stood and misunderstanding, doubly bound and doubly binding in his relations w i t h others, the schizoid individual usually develops a remarkable, elaborate and complex set o f relations w i t h his body' (Daly, O p . cit., p. 402). One o f the aspects o f this confusion (Daly says) is the attempt to reify 'inexplicit wishes, fears and fantasies pertaining to the meaning o f body parts and functions'. As we have already noticed, this is a par­ ticular aspect o f Sylvia Plath's experience o f her body about w h i c h she displays at times a fetishistic or even perverted fas­ cination—for instance, i t is exciting when i t reveals its inside (see Cut). O n the other hand, her very integrity i n her quest is schizoid t o o : The ideationally schizoid individual quests for the truth i n the language o f ideas. He is always i n the process o f searching for, engaging in, or disengaging from, a doctrine, a concept, a set o f terms, or a final life-giving (and occasionally life-taking) principle. His transitions occur between being and nothingness. (Daly, O p . cit., p. 406, m y italics) This search extends itself to her disciplined w o r k on meaning. Behind her w o r k lay a training in the manipulation o f language 'from the outside' such as I discover and analyse as a schizoid-type activity i n D y l a n Thomas.* As Ted Hughes has shown: In her earlier poems, Sylvia Plath composed very slowly, consulting her Thesaurus and Dictionary for almost every w o r d , putting a slow, strong ring o f ink around each w o r d that attracted her. Her obsession w i t h intricate r h y m i n g and metrical schemes was part o f the same process. Some o f those * See Dylan Thomas; the Code of Night, pp. 123-36.

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early inventions o f hers were almost perverse, w i t h their brist­ ling hurdles. B u t this is what she enjoyed . . . (The Poetry Book Society Bulletin, February, 1965) Daly says o f the schizoid individual that 'he is convinced that only the truth w i l l save h i m , and he is equally certain that no formulation o f the real w i l l meet his remarkable specification'. B u t (as the theories o f W i n n i c o t t about the origins o f culture make clear) the quest for truth is bound up w i t h relationship: 'The bond o f human relatedness is the bond o f truth-sharing and actionmaking—making the truth actually t r u e . . .' For the schizoid individual, the difficulty is that when there has to be cooperation, truth is compromised. Inevitably, the truth itself becomes suspect for this reason, i n time. Daly's next paragraph surely applies to the stages o f Sylvia Plath's decline as w e can follow i t i n her poems: It is i n a state o f exhaustion and w i t h a sense o f futility that such individuals reach the day when no investigation is w o r t h conducting, no spiritual exercise merits any effort, and no prophet, master, or teacher can command, i n f o r m or instruct the wayfarer. Action o f any sort becomes more and more difficult to execute. Ideation may be refuted as a w a y o f life. But it now seems to have a life of its own, like unto dreams.* Conceptual activity becomes unbearable but endures—only n o w i n a f o r m apparently inseparable f r o m conscious control. Fantasies clash, overlap, decompose, and re-emerge i n twisted and bizarre (often paranoid) forms, terrifying the sufferer and creating confusion and uncertainty among those w h o attempt to cope w i t h such an individual's speech and gestures. I n this context, incessant symbolisations are sometimes stilled forever by a man who knows at last that death is the final truth, the great experi­ ment, the only reasonable subject left for h i m to investigate. (Op. cit., p. 408, m y italics and note) The fashionable acclaim for Daddy and Lady Lazarus is acclaim for the final, terrifying, paranoid fantasies o f such a sufferer, w h o knew—it seems—-that death was the last great experiment ('The big strip tease'). A . Alvarez's admiration for 'creative destruction' * ' . . . the letters separated writhing like malevolent little black snakes across the page in a kind of hissing, untranslateable jargon' (The Wishing Box).

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is an endorsement o f this schizoid delusion. O f a certain schizoid type, w h i c h he must have met i n a woman, D a l y says, after a c o m ­ plex discussion o f her circles o f self-defeat: 'Then she plays another scene w h i c h may seduce yet another audience.' The huts clos o f moods arises essentially because 'traditional symbols o f personal affection and ideational truth have no demand quality for her'.* This is virtually what Sylvia Plath tells us i n The Couriers (Ariel, p. 12): A ring o f gold w i t h the sun in it? Lies Lies and a grief. . . Love is A disturbance i n mirrors, The sea shattering its grey one— Love, love, m y season. Daly says o f the psychological type just considered: ' I t is her largely inexplicit, radically idiosyncratic, and highly differentiated and ambivalent use o f affective cues that makes her actions so unpredictable and perplexing, both to herself and others' (op. cit., p. 410). Isn't this what we have i n such lines as: The w o r d o f a snail on the plate o f a leaf? It is not mine. D o not accept i t . Acetic acid i n a sealed tin? D o not accept i t . I t is not genuine. (The Couriers) M u c h o f Sylvia Plath's poetry arises out o f her perplexity over normal 'affective cues' and her consequent unpredictability W h y am I given These lamps, these planets. . . (The Night Dances, Ariel, p. 27) Daly concludes his insightful paper w i t h paragraphs w h i c h actually echo phrases w h i c h relate Sylvia Plath's condition phenomenologically to her poetic images. After the remarks * 'Demand quality' is a phrase from German existentialism, Aufforderungscharakter, that which draws out potentialities (see Frankl, 1967, p. 21).

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quoted above about 'seducing another audience', he says: 'The impulsively schizoid individual is often incoherent during her flight into sickness. . . this disturbed and disturbing individual is most often seen in terms of'splits' and ' f r a g m e n t s ' . . . ' This brings to m i n d N o w I break up i n pieces that fly about like clubs. . . . I must shriek. (Elm, Ariel, p. 25) B u t also: . . . she is, at times, very difficult to distinguish f r o m those whose behaviour follows the rules w h i c h are indicated b y the term 'psychotic'. The relationship o f her thinking to her action is confused b y nearly every k n o w n deviation f r o m traditional means-ends schemas. The tag-ends o f affects appear to be intensely and randomly displayed rage, lust, quiet incoherence, unresponsiveness, sullenness and sudden charm, just prior to desperate attempts at mutilation o f herself and others. (Op. c i t , p. 412) W h a t we can say, as readers, is that we travel the whole gamut o f these moods i n Daddy (Ariel, p. 54). 'Mutilation' is the impulse expressed i n 'the black telephone's o f f at the root' and this is an impulse i n fantasy to mutilate the self and others. The hope o f finding encounter w i t h Daddy i n the grave is rejected: 'The voices just can't w o r m through.' The latter evokes an image f r o m Marvell's To His Coy Mistress then worms shall t r y That long-preserved virginity w h i c h is both sexual and cadaverous. She castrates h i m , and castrates herself, so there shall be no hope o f reflecting intercourse. O u r phenomenology i n interpreting such meanings involves making what Daly calls 'extraordinary connections'. O n l y those w i t h special experience o f schizoid expression can 'guess at the specific connections that obtain among the words, gestures and moods that characterise the plight: and even they have difficulty i n decoding the troubled language o f the body w h i c h is often the major vehicle for communication' (op. cit., p. 412).

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D a l y speaks o f the struggle i n such a woman to 'repudiate her impulses', the alternative to w h i c h is to attempt to 'side w i t h the negative component o f her dilemma' I f the struggle fails, we may have a lapse into this attachment to nihilistic circuits—such as W . R. D . Fairbairn (1958) traced i n his patient I v y , w h o speaks i n terms w h i c h have a fury strikingly reminiscent o f Lady Lazarus and Daddy: ' I have no words to describe h o w I hate y o u . B u t w h y can't I just hate y o u and get on w i t h it? The only reason I can think o f is that I need m y hate for some other purpose. It's too precious to waste on y o u . I t is vital to m y internal economy not to waste hate on y o u . I feel I need the hate for myself. I need the hate to run myself on . . . I want m y hate to keep me short-circuited. Instead o f running myself on outside people and things. . . I get gratification from self-things... I feel I ' m like a skilled finan­ cier . . . Every bit o f hate has to be accounted for. . . . I hate y o u for trying to make me stop doing this. I need to hate y o u to get energy for m y inner persecution. I ' m breathing i t . I ' m i n an orgy o f destruction. I can't w a i t to get m y hands on myself to destroy myself. . .* This is m y life— a drawn out ecstasy o f slowly killing myself. That is w i c k e d ; and it's the only wickedness I can do. I want to be evil i n other ways, but I can't. I've sold myself to the D e v i l ; and this is the only way I can do i t . I ' m a w i l l i n g Isaac. The greater the frustration outside, the greater the ecstasies inside. I want to have no inhibitions i n bringing about m y o w n destruction. (pp. 374 ff.) The quest here is for a purity o f total moral inversion, that is obviously bound up w i t h a (black) purifying o f inner contents: I dedicate m y life to m y bowels. I used to think I wanted to get on w i t h life, and ordinary life is a nuisance. M y i n n e r economy is different from that o f ordinary people . . . m y anger to use for inner purposes. . . M y aim is to sail as near the w i n d as I can to killing myself. M y aim is to carry out Mother's and Father's w i s h e s . . . I do i t partly to please them, and partly to annoy them. I ' m going as near the w i n d as I dare to k i l l i n g * This ecstasy is paralleled in Lady Lazarus: ' I do it so it feels real', etc.

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myself. I don't confine i t to sexual t h i n g s . . . I extend i t to m y whole life . . . ordinary life is an interference w i t h m y neurosis . . . I feel m y unconscious life is m y true life; and i t is a life o f frustrated excitement, w h i c h I seem to regard as bliss. I feel I really have a strong urge to destroy m y s e l f . . . I want to see h o w near I can get to the edge o f the cliff. There is a bit o f me that keeps me alive . . . (Ibid.) This 'bit o f me that keeps me alive' is the pulse, the bloodflow, Litdesoul and Littleblood. I t is 'the old brag o f m y heart'—'1 AM, 1 AM' w h i c h she hears. ' I v y ' goes on i n a very Lady Lazarus w a y : . . . but m y real purpose is directed to killing myself and frustration. I have trouble over y o u ; for I don't want to tell y o u things. I f I have a relationship w i t h y o u , i t interferes w i t h m y death-circuit. . . Y o u interfere w i t h m y neurosis and m y desire to destroy myself. Y o u are just a nuisance. I t is daft to have a relationship w i t h y o u , because it just weakens m y inner purpose . . . The worse I get, the better I ' m pleased, because that is what I want,—which is a negation o f all that is r i g h t . . . I want to devote myself to w o r k i n g myself up to a state o f need and not having i t satisfied. This is involved i n m y desire for selfdestruction. I must accept that I frustrate myself. I expect that originally I was frustrated from outside; but n o w I impose frustration on myself; and that is to be m y satisfaction . . . I t is a terrible perversion. (Ibid.) Fairbairn speaks here o f 'an obstinate tendency on the part o f the individual to keep his aggression localised w i t h i n the confines o f the inner w o r l d as a closed system'. W e can see h o w the ten­ dency to maintain an inner w o r l d , w i t h powerful negative energies, can become a dynamic leading towards death. I n Sylvia Plath this inner circuit is bound up w i t h the w a y i n w h i c h her identity is based on fragments o f maleness that were experienced as hate. I n Daddy she is attempting to renounce the animus which possesses her w i t h its hate-impulses: yet, since she identifies w i t h it, she is turned against herself: i t was a 'terrible perversion'. The w o r d 'animus' is, o f course, from Jungian psychoanalysis, and it represents the personification o f male tendencies i n a w o m a n , both i n its good and bad aspects. The male element i n w o m a n can

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be a 'hard, inexorable power', as when a 'sacred conviction' is proclaimed i n a 'loud, insistent, masculine voice' (see Jung's Man and His Symbols, pp. 177 ff). Some o f the favourite themes o f the animus, says V o n Franz (who completed this book after Jung's death) are 'The only thing i n the w o r l d that I want is love—and he doesn't love me', and ' I n this situation there are only t w o possibilities, and both are equally bad', themes expressed i n Daddy for example. The animus is basically influenced b y a woman's father. Very often this animus is 'a demon o f death', as the animus i n a man can be, telling h i m ' I am nothing' and luring h i m to suicide. W h e n Sylvia Plath writes a poem like Love Letters (Crossing the Water, p. 44), i t sounds as i f she is w r i t i n g to a 'beautiful stranger': ' I knew y o u at once.' This is surely the Colossus w h o is also the animus? Viewed mythologically, the beautiful stranger is probably a pagan father-image or god-image, w h o appears... as k i n g o f the dead (like Hades's abduction o f Persephone). B u t psycho­ logically he represents a particular f o r m o f the animus that lures w o m e n away from all human relationships and especially f r o m contacts w i t h real men. The animus personifies all those semi­ conscious, cold, destructive reflections that invade a w o m a n i n the small hours, especially when she has failed to realise some obligation o f feeling . . . [nursing secret destructive attitudes . . .] A strange passivity and paralysis o f all feeling, or a deep insecurity that can lead almost to a sense o f nullity, may some­ times be the result o f an unconscious animus opinion. I n the depths o f the w o m a n , the animus whispers. ' Y o u are hopeless. What's the use o f trying? There is no point i n doing anything. Life w i l l never change for the better.' (Von Franz, O p . cit., p. 193) V o n Franz speaks o f a state o f possession—of w h i c h resemblances can be detected i n Sylvia Plath's poems—while the spell they cast on us, as does Edge, is o f this k i n d : Unfortunately, whenever one o f the personifications o f the unconscious takes possession o f our mind, i t seems as i f we ourselves are having such thoughts and feelings. The ego

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identifies w i t h them to the point where i t is unable to detach them and see them for what they are. O n l y after the possession has fallen away does one realise w i t h horror that one has said and done things diametrically opposed to one's real thoughts and feelings—that one has been the prey o f an alien psychic factor. (Op. cit., p. 193) This 'alien psychic factor' humiliating the anima or animus can become a 'collective infection' i n w h i c h men give w a y to impulses that do not belong to them. A n d this, as I hope to show, is w h y such art as Sylvia Plath's is so dangerous: her poetry seduces us, to taste o f its poisoned chalice. She herself recognised such dangers. I n The Swarm (Winter Trees, p. 37) she writes w i t h great insight o f the collective infection that can develop among men, i f they are persuaded to give w a y to impulses that 'possess' them. So i t is possible, i n the light o f her w o r k , to see h o w negative false solutions may arise fiom the impulse to seek rebirth and a new w o r l d (Napoleon, i n The Swarm, pursues the pink and gold domes o f Russia, as i f they belonged to a celestial city).* The strangest implication o f her w o r k is that conventional psychiatry seems to accentuate the negative dynamics i n the personality. F r o m the evidence o f The Bell Jar and Poem for a Birthday I believe we may suggest that E C T , for her, may even have reinforced the influence o f the hostile animus itself, as a dynamic. I n M a r i o n Milner's The Hands of the Living God there is a fascinating account o f the effect o f E C T on a schizoid patient: 'she said . . . that the patients she had seen w h o had had E C T looked "so peaceful—as i f they had died", (p. 13). 'She also felt that the patients w h o were getting ECT were getting something, and i f they were, w h y wasn't she?' I t is possible that such 'treatment' may encourage the individual to 'identify w i t h the aggressor w i t h i n herself and M r s Milner seems to suggest that E C T destroyed her patient's soul, and 'concern'—and even her capacities for g r o w t h . Besides this we may set Laing's observation that what the schizoid individual really believes in is his o w n destructiveness. Shock treatment perhaps teaches a schizoid individual that the solution to the problem o f life is to identify w i t h one's o w n aggression directed against oneself. I f so, this w o u l d seem to be a * See below, p. 231.

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heavy price to pay for the conformist identity induced b y conventional psychiatry o f a technological kind. Does Sylvia Plath tell us that shock therapy taught her that suicide was the 'correct' solution to the need to be re-born? I t is true that she spoke o f this episode o f shock treatment as: A time o f darkness, despair, disillusion—so black only as the inferno o f the human m i n d can be—symbolic death, and n u m b shock—then the painful agony o f slow rebirth and psychic regeneration. (Lois Ames, 'Notes towards a Biography', The Art of Sylvia Plath, p. 163) Surely, i n her last poems her recognition o f the regressed libidinal ego and o f her need to love seem to have become suppressed altogether. Love and meeting are rejected and she becomes encapsulated i n falsity, involved i n the cycles o f hate w h i c h led her into psychotic dissociation and self-destruction. As A n d r e w B r i n k (1968) has said: 'She found herself in suspended animation, w i t h o u t any c o m m u n i t y into w h i c h hostility could be fed to be given back as restoring symbols.' She was thus driven back into what Laing calls the 'separate "skin-encapsulated" ego' i n an everincreasing solipsism' (i960, p. 68). The problem o f the human being w h o wants to begin to be is that, insofar as he becomes conscious o f his need, he may not be able to bear i t . Guntrip (1968) notes that: 'The main practical problem for psychotherapy is "can the patient stand the return to consciousness o f his basic ego-weakness?" W h e n i t does return, he is most likely to feel " I can't stand it, I only want to d i e " ' (pp. 183-4). There were circumstances i n the life o f Sylvia Plath when, i t w o u l d seem, she felt she could no longer stand going on living. A t times she protects herself f r o m this pain by diminution o f affect, a withdrawal f r o m feeling. B u t throughout her w o r k there is a continual theme o f 'in m y end is m y beginning', not i n the Christian sense, but in ways i n w h i c h the imagery shows that death offered her a re-birth. I n Birthday Present (Ariel, p. 48), Sylvia Plath says o f what seems to be the imminent announcement o f some dreadful end, 'Let us sit d o w n to it, one on either side, admiring the gleam', 'Let us eat out last supper at i t . . . ' . The last supper is on the w a y to crucifixion—but also to resurrection. The veils hiding the 'message' are ' W h i t e as babies bedding . . . ' ,

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and the knife o f the pain o f it she w o u l d like to enter 'Pure and clean as the cry o f a b a b y . . .', This often intense, and often j o y f u l , feeling o f purity, hope and newness associated w i t h death takes on a crazy libidinal eagerness, especially i n The Bell Jar. I t has such a clear and untroubled logic that i t carries us along w i t h it and we too become deluded and fail to see that i t only makes sense i f one realises that her suicide was a schizoid suicide. A n d so we come to the essential clue to her predicament. Guntrip (1968) makes a thorough analysis o f the strange logic o f the schi­ zoid suicide: Schizoid suicide is not really a wish for death as such . . . there is a deep unconscious secret wish that death should prove to be a pathway to rebirth . . . schizoid suicide is at b o t t o m a longing to escape f r o m a situation one just does not feel strong enough to cope w i t h , so as in some sense to return to the w o m b , and be reborn later w i t h a second chance to live. Here is a dramatic instance o f . . . basic ego-weakness... W h a t is the mental condition w h i c h drives a human being into such a dilemma as needing to stop l i v i n g while not wanting to die? (pp. 217-18) Sylvia Plath's poetry expresses (and sometimes falsifies) this dilemma, and so did her suicide, as the ultimate false solution. Her poetry, at best, was a contest w i t h basic ego-weakness; at times the expression o f the attempt to 'escape' w i t h a 'second chance to live'. A t other times, because she was overcome b y negative feelings, not least those o f hopelessness and the schizoid impulse to 'give oneself up to the joys o f hating', she wrote poetry that deepened her o w n delusions. I n such moods she flew into what A n d r e w B r i n k calls 'abandonment': as he says, 'the resulting isolation is delicious . . . [with] accompanying self-pity'. She was 'sucking at the paps o f darkness', or 'death's m o u l d y tits', and taking i n the m i l k o f annihilation. Here the very disturbing problem arises o f w h y what was intended to redeem did not redeem: h o w poetry can become the 'product o f naked creativity turning in a void from w h i c h there is no satisfactory release into the inner ring o f health and connec­ tedness' (Brink). H o w is i t possible for a divided self to integrate, and to turn callously upon its very life? Guntrip says that the unconscious infantile ego, consequent

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upon a failure o f ego-relatedness, is ultimately 'very clearly experienced as a fear o f dying, when its threat to the stability o f the personality is felt': when exhaustion begins to develop, as i t periodically does, out o f this struggle to master this internal breakdown threat, then it may be experienced as a wish to die . . . a longing to regress, to escape f r o m life, to go to sleep for an indefinite period. (Ibid., p. 215). This life-tiredness, consequent upon a failure o f the true self to develop at the heart o f being, can culminate i n suicide. 'Whereas in depressive suicide the driving force is anger, aggression, hate and a destructive impulse aimed at the self to divert i t f r o m the hated love-object, i.e., self-murder, schizoid suicide is a longing . . . to return to the w o m b and be reborn later w i t h a second chance to live' (ibid., p. 218). T e d Hughes, her husband, wrote after her death, 'It is impossible that anyone could have been more i n love w i t h life, or more capable o f happiness, than she was' (Note i n Encounter, October, 1963). Perhaps one o f the most terrible aspects o f human experi­ ence is that a person can seem to be loving life, to be successful to all intents and purposes, and, to all people around her, to be alive and real—while at the heart o f being still feeling dead, unreal, overcome w i t h a sense o f futility, and full o f hate and nihilism. This is the schizoid tragedy.

5 Doing, Being and Being Seen

The capacity TO BE is drawn out i n the child, as we have seen, according to W i n n i c o t t , b y the special gifts o f the mother w h o is able t o allow her baby to make use o f her i n very special ways (see W i n n i c o t t 1968a passim and Guntrip 1961). This ability is associated w i t h certain feminine qualities w h i c h are found i n both men and women—but w h i c h are crucial between mother and infant i n the first months o f life. I f we are to understand schizoid art, w e need to follow Winnicott's theories here rather closely. W e shall find that they illuminate the k i n d o f problem o f existence already examined i n Sylvia Plath's Poem for a Birthday and t h r o w light especially on the problems o f meaning i n her w o r k centring around male and female, seeing and being seen, and the ability to perceive creatively and to be autonomous. In his long experience o f dealing w i t h mothers and infants as a paediatrician and analyst, W i n n i c o t t noticed i n the expectant mother an increasing identification w i t h her child. She becomes able and w i l l i n g to drain interest from her o w n self on to the baby. W i n n i c o t t also emphasises that b y an intuitive gift the mother 'knows' what is right for her baby. B y such uncanny gifts the mother enters a heightened state o f sensitivity before the baby is born, and this lasts for a few weeks after the birth. So weird is this state that our recognition o f i t has been heavily denied, and i n individuals the memory o f i t is suppressed. I f i t were not for the baby, the state a w o m a n goes into at this time w o u l d seem like a schizoid illness, and i t 'shows up as such i f the baby dies'. A t first, the infant knows no difference, says W i n n i c o t t , between himself and the breast from which he feeds. He feels he 'is' because the breast 'is'. Here is the origin, he says, o f ' k n o w i n g

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by identification'. I n discussing these matters W i n n i c o t t is, in fact, employing concepts w h i c h illuminate much i n poetry, i n p h i l o ­ sophy, and problems o f perception. W e may have observed the primary confusion ourselves sometimes, as when a baby puts his finger in the mother's m o u t h to feed her, as she is feeding h i m . The breast (or 'experience o f being fed and handled') can seem to a child like something w h i c h comes and goes—but w h i c h is not taken substantially into the self. Guntrip, taking a lead from W i n n i c o t t , argues from this that there are t w o ways o f ' k n o w i n g ' . The 'male' way o f k n o w i n g reaches its highest development perhaps i n objective scientific investigation. The 'female' way o f k n o w i n g is, i n the completest sense, the mother's intuitive knowledge o f her baby, but i t is also manifest i n art. I n the field o f gynaecology, W i n n i c o t t urges all doctors and midwives to realise that while they may k n o w all about health and disease, they do not k n o w thereby what a baby feels like f r o m minute to minute, 'because they are outside this area o f experience': 'only the mother knows'. The very vulner­ ability o f this female area o f being is also something o f w h i c h w e are all afraid, and so there is a good deal o f hostility to it—a tendency w h i c h itself is rationalised i n the mechanisation o f childbirth. W h e n a w o m a n is unable to enter into the state o f 'being for' her baby, she may behave in ways w h i c h leave a permanent impression on her infant. I n a successful nursing, the mother lets the baby make use o f her, and lets h i m treat her as i f she were his 'subjective object'—that is, part o f himself. B u t a mother w h o is unable to 'be for' the baby i n this way may well t r y to make up for her lack o f this capacity b y a kind o f handling that interrupts the baby's 'going-on-being'. This concept o f 'going-on-being' seems important to Winnicott, w h o knows h o w tenuous the baby's sense o f a continuous identity and body can be. O f course the processes are beyond conscious w i l l . B u t even in her desire to do the best for her child, a mother may handle her baby in a bustling, 'external' way, and i t does not feel right to h i m . She does not appear at the right moment and does not deal w i t h h i m as he yearns to be treated. This is a failure o f communication, of'encounter', at a very deep level. The consequence o f things going w r o n g in this way is, as

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we have said, to make the infant feel he is being impinged upon. This 'impingement' is experienced not only in such a w a y as to produce frustration, but actually as a threat of annihilation. This, according to W i n n i c o t t , is a very real primitive anxiety w h i c h comes long before any anxiety 'that includes the w o r d death in its description' (1968a, p. 303). 'The mother's failure to adapt i n the earliest phase', says W i n n i c o t t , 'does not produce anything but an annihilation o f the infant's self. . . Her failures are not felt as maternal failures, but they act as threats to personal selfexistence.' W h e n a nursing process goes w r o n g , even the mother's attempt to give loving care to her child is felt, mysteriously, as 'impinge­ ment'. This impingement is experienced as hate and even as the dreadful threat o f nothingness. There can be serious dislocation o f the capacity to find and relate to the w o r l d . It is perhaps something like this unsatisfactory experience o f the mother that lies behind Sylvia Plath's symbolism: the feeling she communicates o f trying to base her identity and dealings w i t h the w o r l d on such scraps o f experience as she could assemble, all being the experience o f impingement, felt as the experience o f hate in the psychoanalytical sense. This (in the formation o f her identity) was the experience o f a male w a y o f being handled. W h e n she tried to find reliable resources w i t h i n herself, often all she could find was pseudo-male doing and a collection o f impingements, her 'bundle o f clubs'. Winnicott's m a x i m is 'after being—doing, and being done t o : but first, being'. As Guntrip (1968) remarks, ' I f "being" exists, doing w i l l follow naturally f r o m it. I f it is not there but dissociated then a forced k i n d o f " d o i n g " w i l l have to do duty for both'. H e quotes a speaker i n a television programme, 'The Sense o f Belonging', w h o said, ' I plunged into marriage and motherhood and tried to substitute doing for being'. Guntrip comments that this woman's personality, insofar as i f sought to be female, 'remained a dissociated potentiality i n the absence o f w h i c h any amount o f busy " d o i n g " was like the superstructure o f a house w i t h no foundation' (p. 253). This is exactly what Sylvia Plath is telling us when she writes 'This is a dark house, very b i g / I made i t m y s e l f . . , ' (Poem for a Birthday). W h e n 'doing' is substituted for 'being', the experience o f doing, as Guntrip says, 'degenerates into

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a meaningless succession o f mere activities.. . p e r f o r m e d . . . as a futile effort'to keep oneself i n being: to manufacture a sense o f being one does not possess'. This may become a 'manic or obsessional compulsive activity, for the m i n d cannot stop, relax or rest, because o f a secret fear o f collapsing into non-existence'. B u t this doing (often i n an intellectual form) tends to be dissociated f r o m the deeper levels o f being and an individual caught i n the need to exert this kind o f thinking still cannot find the autonomy and authenticity o f the true self. The failure o f being, and the consequent weakness o f the core o f 'female element being', w i t h an inner emptiness w h i c h is compen­ sated for b y a bustling outward 'male' activity, may be related to the difference W i n n i c o t t postulates between true and false self, a theory developed b y Lomas on existential lines. The manic outward bustle is something o f a 'screen o f frondine troops', as Guntrip puts i t . The individual is not on a path o f development w h i c h is personal and real: he tends to be a 'collection o f reactions to impingement'—and this condition is what Sylvia Plath refers to when she talks o f being married to a 'cupboard o f rubbish', and describes Fido Litdesoul as finding ' A dustbin's enough for h i m / The dark's his bone'. The true self, w h i c h here is a litde puppy, is 'hidden behind a false self w h i c h complies w i t h and generally wards o f f the world's knocks', as W i n n i c o t t puts i t (1968b, p. 17). A l l kinds o f circumstances may affect the delicate intersubjective processes o f psychic parturition—the mother's illness, or absence i n hospital, or the birth o f one baby soon after another, or a bereavement. There is no clear 'reason'. I n normal parturition the mother recovers her self-interest 'at the rate at w h i c h the infant can allow her to'. As the child finds the mother as his 'objective object', that is, finds her as a real separate not-me creature, so she recovers f r o m her strange preoccupation (in w h i c h she has been feeling that she is the baby). This is 'psychic weaning', and i t is a normal process o f 'letting the infant go', towards becoming himself. B u t the mother w h o is experienced as unreflecting cannot wean her baby i n this way. The infant has 'never had her', so for h i m weaning has no point. The mother may become over-dependent on her infant: or she may wean h i m too suddenly: ' w i t h o u t regard for the gradually developing need o f the infant to be weaned' (Winnicott, ibid., pp. 15-16).

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N o r m a l weaning is a necessary 'disillusioning' process, that is, it is a w a y o f gradually allowing the child to discover a meaningful w o r l d that exists beyond himself. As we have seen, such processes are his path to 'belief i n a benign environment', through various stages f r o m absolute dependence, towards independence, so that he sees his whole w o r l d b y apperception, b y being involved i n its meanings—and does n o t simply, blankly, perceive i t . It was this successful psychic weaning, as the source o f the core o f being, that Sylvia Plath seems never to have fully experienced, for whatever reason. H e r poetry can be read as an attempt to re-experience i t : she must mother herself. W e have seen many o f the bodily feelings which arise from this need to be mothered, but one o f the most illuminating insights here is her need to be seen. I n many o f Sylvia Plath's poems w e are aware o f the impulse to be experienced i n this way, and to feel something. There are long stretches o f time i n a normal infant's life i n w h i c h a baby does n o t m i n d whether he is many bits or one whole being, or whether he lives i n his mother's face, or his o w n body, provided that f r o m time to time he comes together and feels something. (Winnicott, 1968a, p . 150) I n a paper on 'Alice and the Red K i n g , a psycho-analytical V i e w o f Existence' an American psychoanalyst discusses the kind o f need in human beings expressed i n the text ' T h o u God seest me'. D r Solomon quotes a patient's dream: There is a giant l y i n g on the grass. There is a big circle above h i m indicating that he is dreaming (like i n the comic strips). I ' m i n the dream just doing ordinary things. I get the idea that I exist only i n his dream. I t is important for h i m to stay asleep, because i f he wakes up, I w i l l disappear. This is a tremendous fear. (1963, p. 63) This obviously recalls the situation i n Through the Looking Glass, an evident schizoid fantasy. Sylvia Plath, is continually seeking to be seen i n this w a y : i n mirrors, i n water, i n eyes, she seeks for some reflection. Often, however, she finds nothing but a stony gaze. The most substantial element i n her m y t h o l o g y is the cracked Colossus, w h o sees

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nothing w i t h eyes i n w h i c h she is buried: 'The bald, white tumuli o f y o u r eyes.' Something like this Solomon found to be the predicament o f his patient w h o existed only i n the mind of her Colossus: Xenia . . . projected a good image o f herself into the m i n d o f the.father, as demonstrated b y her dream. It also became evident that she reintroduced the male image of her father into herself This led to her acquiring his masculinity as a spurious identity. She also displaced and projected her hostility to her mother on to her father, fortifying her own fears of his actual power over her. Defensively, her helplessness was also projected outwardly, allowing her to feel powerful and bossy over other people. This f o r m o f tyranny over the assumed helplessness o f others gave her a reason for her existence and created a f o r m o f temporary ego mastery. (Ibid., m y italics) This could be taken as a diagnosis o f Sylvia Plath's relationship w i t h the internalised father. The development o f the infant's perception o f the 'not-me' is bound up w i t h a sense o f the meaning o f the seen w o r l d . T h e mother has to allow h i m , at first, to believe that he is creating his w o r l d , and gradually as he creates i t he finds i t and perceives i t as meaningful. This is her w a y o f 'being for' h i m , allowing h i m to make use o f her. W i n n i c o t t thus comes to see that i n his psychic interaction w i t h the 'breast' the infant is discovering n o t only the w o r l d but himself. W h e n he says 'breast', o f course, he means all those aspects o f being attended to and fed which appear i n the baby's vision: ' N o w , at some point the baby takes a look round. Perhaps a baby at the breast does not look at the breast. L o o k i n g at the face is more likely to be a feature. W h a t does the baby see there?' (1971a, p. 112). F r o m his experience o f psychoanalysis W i n n i c o t t answers that 'what the baby sees is himself or herself: ' I n other words, the mother is looking at the baby and what she looks like is related to what she sees there. A l l this is too easily taken for granted' (p. 112). I f there is a long experience o f ' n o t getting back what they are giving', babies w h o 'look and do not see themselves' suffer a deep dissociation o f the capacity to see. 'Firstly, their creative capacity

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begins to atrophy, and i n some way they look round for other ways o f getting something back from the environment. . . Secondly, the baby gets settled in to the idea that when he or she looks, what is seen is the mother's face' (p. 112). O u r reaction to the second point is perhaps, 'but the baby is looking at the mother's face'. B u t i f that face is not a reflecting one, then i t can convey something like a de-creation o f oneself, that destroys one's capacity to see a meaningful w o r l d . I t is such a blank m o o n mother's face that stares from Sylvia Plath's poems, as we have seen. T o see a meaningful w o r l d is to see i t w i t h all one's being: this is apperception. W h e r e the mother's face does not reflect, 'percep­ tion takes the place o f apperception, takes the place o f what m i g h t have been a significant exchange w i t h the w o r l d , a t w o - w a y process i n w h i c h self-enrichment alternates w i t h the discovery o f meaning i n the w o r l d o f seen things' (Winnicott, ibid., p. 113). W h a t Keats called 'a greeting o f the spirit' i n our capacity to perceive the w o r l d i n a meaningful way, depends, therefore, upon the degree to w h i c h the mother, by responding to us i n her face, makes us feel real and alive, and able to get back from the w o r l d what we give o f ourselves, b y confirming us, and bringing out in us the capacity for 'creative looking'. T o Sylvia Plath i t seems that i f the mother's face can be mollified, all w i l l be well. B u t n o n reflection can bring a threat o f chaos, and the baby w i l l organise withdrawal, or w i l l not look except to perceive, as a defence. A baby so treated w i l l g r o w up puzzled about mirrors and what the mirror has to offer. I f the mother's face is unresponsive, then the m i r r o r is a thing to be looked at but not looked into . . . (Ibid., p. 113) Sylvia Plath w r o t e : Mirrors can k i l l and talk; they are terrible rooms In which a torture goes on one can only watch. The face that lived i n this m i r r o r is the face o f a dead man. D o not w o r r y about the eyes. (The Courage of Shutting Up, Winter Trees, p. 20) Unresponsive looking differs from the normal process: 'when the average girl studies her face in the mirror she is reassuring herself

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that the mother-image is there and that the mother can see her and that the mother is i n rapport w i t h h e r . . .' (Winnicott, ibid., p. 113). W i n n i c o t t postulates a historical process i n the individual, w h i c h depends upon being seen: W h e n I look I am seen, so I exist. I can n o w afford to look and see. I n o w look creatively and what I apperceive I also perceive. In fact I take care not to see what is not there to be seen (unless I am tired). F r o m this he deduces that psychotherapy itself should be 'giving the patient back what the patient brings': that is, supplying a mirror-role w h i c h is a creative w a y o f enabling die patient to find his or her o w n self. One o f the patients W i n n i c o t t quotes remarked that i t w o u l d be awful i f the child looked into the m i r r o r and saw n o t h i n g ! Another 'had to be her o w n mother'. Sylvia Plath's problems o f >erception arise because she could never really feel that ' W h e n I 00k I am seen, so I exist'. Her uncanny and acute visual perception was yet another w a y perhaps o f ' g e t t i n g something o f herself back f r o m the environment'. Sometimes, for her, the mirror seemed to threaten that i t w o u l d eat her, as i n All the Dead Dears. I n a poem called Mirror (Crossing the Water, p. 52) the m i r r o r speaks, and speaks o f h o w i t eats away the life o f the w o m a n w h o gazes into i t . The m i r r o r is 'silver' but although i t is felt to be valuable, i t is not w a r m and creative: i t gives back only an 'exact' reflection, to w h i c h nothing creative is contributed. I t is perception, unenrichened b y apperception.

{

I am not cruel, only truthful—• The eye o f a little god, four-cornered. I t is also voracious: Whatever I see I swallow immediately Just as i t is, unmisted by love or dislike. T h e m i r r o r is non-human, and cannot invest the w o r l d w i t h human meaning.

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Most o f the time I meditate on the opposite wall. I t is pink, w i t h speckles. I have looked at i t so long I think i t is part o f m y heart. B u t i t nickers. Faces and darkness separate us over and over. A w o m a n appears, trying to find herself in the m i r r o r reflection, and we see her as Magritte, the surealist painter, m i g h t portray her —desperately trying to see the real self but instead seeing only a mechanical reflection w h i c h has no meaning: N o w I am a lake. A w o m a n bends over me, Searching m y reaches for what she really is. Then she turns back to those liars, the candles or the m o o n . The candles and the m o o n are those sources o f light w h i c h cast a g l o w over the truth, that she is ageing. B u t there is no confidence in their 'natural' reflection: they are liars. 'Faithful' reflection is the mirror's realism—which is reflection w i t h o u t meaning. This faith­ fulness is rewarded b y despair: She rewards me w i t h tears and an agitation o f hands. The mirror's attitude, w e realise gradually, is one o f hate: its faithfulness is that o f a hate w h i c h has the intensity o f love. I am important to her. She comes and goes. Each m o r n i n g i t is her face that replaces the darkness. The poem is w r i t t e n as i f b y a m i r r o r seeking reflection. As i n All the Dead Dears, the m i r r o r represents the mother, while the w o m a n 'searching m y reaches for what she really is' is the self. But the mirror-mother eats the woman-self. B y her intense search for 'what she really is' the young w o m a n virtually c o m ­ mits suicide i n the m i r r o r , and an old w o m a n rises triumphant i n her place: In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old w o m a n Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish. This fish is old, scaly, and an ugly 'O-gape': the consuming mother w h o eats rather than creatively reflects. W h i l e the mirror seems predatory, the seen w o r l d may seem blank, be­ cause i t cannot be invested w i t h meaning. I n the short story,

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The Wishing Box, the protagonist kills herself because she could not bear going on seeing the w o r l d by perception, unredeemed by apperception. The utterly self-sufficient, unchanging reality o f the things sur­ rounding her began to depress Agnes. . . She felt choked, smothered b y these objects whose b u l k y pragmatic existence somehow threatened the deepest, most secret roots o f her o w n ephemeral being . . . She seeks to hallucinate . . . A n y t h i n g to prove that her shaping imaginative powers were not irretrievably lost; that her eye was not merely an open camera lens w h i c h recorded surrounding phenomena and left i t at that. The 'vistas o f the w o r l d ' are here not endorsed, when captured, by any confidence that meaning may be t h r o w n over them. As a mother herself, Sylvia Plath wants her children to see a meaning­ ful w o r l d . I n Child (Winter Trees, p. 12) she wants to fill the child's perception w i t h j o y and interest, because the w i n d o w o f its soul is so beautiful Y o u r clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing. I want to fill i t w i t h colour and ducks, The zoo o f the new . . . The child's eye is a pool ' i n w h i c h images/Should be grand and classical'. She does not want the child to see the w o r l d as . . . this troublous W r i n g i n g o f hands, this dark Ceiling w i t h o u t a star. — w h i c h is her w o r l d . The 'dark ceiling w i t h o u t a star' is the sky seen as Sylvia Plath often sees it. I t echoes 'the gaping v o i d i n her o w n head' (The Wishing Box). In the short story, Agnes has to keep staring at all kinds o f printed matter: reading kept her m i n d full o f pictures. Seized b y a k i n d o f ravenous hysteria, she raced through novels, women's maga­ zines, newspapers, and even the anecdotes in her Joy of Cooking;

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she read travel brochures, home appliance circulars, the Sears Roebuck Catalogue, the instructions on soap-flake boxes, the blurbs on the backs o f record jackets—anything to keep f r o m facing the gaping v o i d i n her o w n head . . . B u t as soon as she lifted her eyes f r o m the printed matter at hand, i t was as i f a protecting w o r l d had been extinguished. A t last her fear becomes explicit: Finally, a bleak, clear, awareness o f what was happening broke upon her: the curtains o f sleep, o f refreshing, forgetful darkness dividing each day f r o m the day before i t and the day after i t , were lifted for Agnes eternally, irrevocably. She saw an intoler­ able prospect o f wakeful, visionless days, and nights stretching unbroken ahead o f her, her m i n d condemned to perfect vacancy, without a single image of its own to ward off the crushing assault of smug, autonomous tables and chairs, (my italics) So the environment is not only unreliable and not benign: i t is also meaningless, and blank, while the self perceives i t unwillingly. Sylvia Plath discusses this i n Tulips and elsewhere. I n Insomniac (Crossing the Water, p. 21), the sky seems a black screen over the light o f death: The night sky is only a sort o f carbon paper, Blueblack, w i t h the much-poked periods o f stars Letting i n the light, peephole after peephole— A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things. This k i n d o f blankness may be associated w i t h dreadful images in Sylvia Plath o f ' b a l d eyes', or o f bald figures: 'She may be bald, she may have no eyes. . .' (The Tour, Crossing the Water, p. 61). W h a t is this eyeless, pink, inhuman ghost that lurks about Sylvia Plath's environment? Dead men leave eyes for others. Love is the uniform o f m y bald nurse. Love is the bone and sinew o f m y curse. (Poem for a Birthday) The words 'dead', 'eyes' and 'bald' are often juxtaposed i n Sylvia Plath. W h a t she is saying here is something like this:

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Here i n hospital I am being handled b y a bald male nurse i n an impersonal uniform. This is like being handled b y a male-like mother i n infancy, w i t h a bald face. This 'dead' handling left me w i t h dead sight, just as dead men (like m y Daddy) leave (dead) eyes for others (for me). But m y curse (madness) is fixed i n m y psychic tissue, and I can­ not see m y w o r l d , except as a dead w o r l d . His eyes are tombs. The connection between eyes, baldness and the mother's face is made clear elsewhere. For instance in A Life (Crossing the Water, P- 54): Touch i t : i t w o n ' t shrink like an eye-ball, This egg-shaped bailiwick A w o m a n is dragging her shadow i n a circle A b o u t a bald, hospital saucer. I t resembles the moon, or a sheet o f blank paper. She lives quiedy . . . like a foetus i n a bottle . . . a drowned man . . . Crawls up out o f the sea. In The Moon and the Yew Tree (Ariel, p. 47) she says 'The m o o n is m y mother'. So, w e may reasonably assert that the 'bald nurse' whose face resembles the m o o n symbolises the mother w h o (she feels) handled her 'blankly', the mother o f pestles, w h o is mingled i n her imagery w i t h the ' o l d man' shrunk to a doll. Yet there is an urgent desire to soften this blankness, because, while she has a face like bone, The m o o n is no door. She is separated f r o m her 'house' by a r o w o f headstones: that is, she is separated from!'coming into her o w n ' by death, and the m o o n mother offers no 'way through'. W h a t she wanted o f the mother was a reflecting assurance that she was loved i n her o w n right. H o w I w o u l d like to believe i n tenderness The face o f the effigy, gentled b y candles, Bending, on me i n particular, its m i l d eyes.

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But, when the saints float about the church: The m o o n sees nothing o f this. She is bald and w i l d . A note emerges here w h i c h is important for us: the feeling that candles could mollify the mother. This is struck again i n Candles (Crossing the Water, p. 41): These little globes o f light are sweet as pears. K i n d l y w i t h invalids and mawkish w o m e n , They mollify the bald moon. Here there is a deep underlying feeling that the mother could have been, should have been, 'gentled' or 'mollified' or made ' k i n d l y ' b y little globes o f light (as sweet as pears)—by candles. O f course the candles suggest a phallic interpretation, and so the father's mollification o f the mother b y sexual love. B u t perhaps w e can reach beyond Freudian interpretations and see them as lights o f meaning w h i c h could have come f r o m the father's benign influ­ ence, had he lived: 'Upside d o w n hearts o f light tipping w a x fingers'. F r o m Poem for a Birthday and The Bee Meeting we remem­ ber 'The fingers ofwisdom'. The hearts at the tips o f the w a x fingers are the love and spiritual w i s d o m coming f r o m Daddy's m i l k : A n d the fingers, taken i n b y their o w n haloes, G r o w n m i l k y , almost clear like the bodies o f saints. I n Poem for a Birthday the 'birds made m i l k ' . Here the m i l k y candles are the love- and meaning-dispensing tears she takes i n f r o m the father (in lieu o f the mother's breast). B u t he died, and so her mother was not mollified. These candles plumb the deeps of her eye: so, their love-light enters her eyes as i f entering a sexual organ. Here, under the surface, is the desire to develop the capacity to see w i t h vision b y taking in a loving reflection ('They are the last romantics. . . ' ) . It is touching, the w a y they'll ignore A whole family o f prominent objects Simply to plumb the deeps o f an eye In its h o l l o w o f shadows, its fringe o f reeds, A n d the owner past thirty, no beauty at all. (Ibid., p.41)

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They seem archaic because they represent 'the private point o f v i e w ' . This is a strange phrase. I t has, o f course, an explicit meaning: i n daylight, everything w o u l d be seen equally (the whole family o f prominent objects). B u t this meaning does not make much sense. W h a t does make sense is to read the poem as meaning ' I t is touching. . . and the exertion o f a private point of view for Daddy to pick me out (although I am thirty and not very beautiful) and pay me sexual attention'. The w o r d 'private' has an undercurrent (as i n 'hairy as privates' i n Berck-Plage) and point has a phallic emphasis, while 'view' means looking at i n a sexual way, the thrusting o f the phallic light into the eye as a sexual organ, and bringing the illumination that comes from loving and being loved. It is important to note that the eye has a ' h o l l o w o f shadows' and is a pool (which 'fringe o f reeds' makes it—the reeds being lashes). A t the end o f the poem are further significant images. The candles, although they mollify the bald moon-mother, are Nun-souled, they burn heavenward and never marry. They are thus the female aspect o f Daddy and she wants to keep them pure, ideal, and for herself. The candles are standing over her o w n baby (in Morning Song she says 'we stand round blankly as walls': i n Magi blank pure faces surround a baby). They are like guests at a christening. W h a t are they telling her? The eyes o f the child I nurse are scarcely open. In twenty years I shall be retrograde As these draughty ephemerids. W h e n she is fifty, the child w i l l find her as archaic as she n o w finds the candles: this w i l l be when her baby's eyes are open to what she is, bald like the m o o n perhaps. I watch their spilt tears cloud and dull to pearls. The candles are eyes n o w : their tears cloud and dull. I t is as i f the promise o f yielding vision fades. She goes on H o w shall I tell anything at all T o this infant still i n a birth-drowse? There is a ' m i l d light' and she sees there is love and care i n i t . B u t she does not k n o w what to tell her child, while the candles' tears

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merely cloud and dull to pearls. The clue to the deep underlying meaning is Those are pearls that were his eyes . . . W h a t dulls i n the candles are the eyes, or pools o f semen, in w h i c h she hoped to see herself. W e saw above that the moon's (mother's) face was like a blank sheet o f paper. The poems are an attempt to soften that blankness. B u t so too are the candles, and later w e shall explore further strange phallic images associated w i t h the father's love. Somehow, perhaps, the father can be made to reflect. The perplexity is evident in Words (Ariel, p. 86), where again we have a characteristic Plath topography. There is a pool, i n w h i c h the water is striving to 're-establish its m i r r o r over the rock'. B u t the rock 'drops and turns'—like the grey seal, and the rock elsewhere. I t is that dead petrified relic o f Daddy that seems a toe, or a foot, coming up from 'where the daft father went d o w n ' . Here i t drops and turns A white skull, Eaten b y weedy greens. . . 'Those are pearls that were his eyes', so to speak. B u t F r o m the b o t t o m o f the pool, fixed stars Govern a life. The circumstances o f her infant experience o f non-reflection and her father's death are n o w an ineradicable deterministic influence on her existence, like the influence o f the stars i n horoscopes. W o r d s are 'echoes travelling o f f f r o m the centre like horses' and Years later I Encounter them on the road— W o r d s d r y and riderless, The indefatigable hoof-taps. There is no connection made between the water and the sap w e l l ­ ing like tears, trying to re-establish the m i r r o r i n w h i c h she can reflect herself, and the word-echoes travelling o f f from the centre like horses, dry and riderless. They seem, in this poem to be desperate male-element attempts to find the possibilities o f reflec­ tion, even through tears, w h i c h might f o r m a pool i n which she

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could be seen. (This poem was w r i t t e n i n the last week o f her life.) I n Small Hours (Crossing the Water, p. 46) she describes herself i n cold, empty, stony terms, like an empty museum: I n m y courtyard a fountain leaps and sinks back into itself. Meanwhile, The m o o n lays a hand on m y Forehead, Blankfaced and m u m as a nurse. Again, we have the narcissistic fountain, 'nun-hearted and blind to the w o r l d ' : i n the next chapter we shall find an even more bizarre version o f this, w h i c h i n one sense is her well-spring.

6 The Fabrication of False Selves and Daddy M i x e d up w i t h the impulse to be reflected was a tendency to make false selves, out o f fragments, scraps and shadows. I am nobody . . .

(Tulips)

. . . they stuck me together w i t h glue. (Daddy) I see myself as a shadow, neither man nor w o m a n . . . (Three Women) Ariel (the poem) (Ariel, p. 36) is a poem o f the identity 'thawing and resolving itself into a dew'. I n fact i t is about riding her favourite horse. B u t as Alvarez points out, the horse is hardly there at all (Art of Sylvia Plath, p. 61). She becomes 'one' w i t h the horse: he rapes her away, like the bull Europa: 'Hauls me through the air'. She is 'White/Godiva'—T unpeel': all the attention o f the poem is on an inner j o y at losing herself in the excitement o f a morning ride. Yet this assertion o f vitality, characteristically, is expressed in terms o f a movement towards death. The child's cry Melts i n the wall. And I A m the arrow,

6

The dew that flies Suicidal, at one w i t h the drive

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Into the red Eye, the cauldron o f m o r n i n g . She becomes the dew and the dew is involved i n a 'drive into' this cauldron. I t 'flies suicidal'—a strange w a y o f regarding the normal m o r n i n g experience o f dew evaporating, as i f it were a loss. N o t e that the rising o f the sun, w h i c h i n normal experience is symbolic re-birth and beginning, is to Sylvia Plath a threat—the sun is an incorporative and glowering 'red/Eye', heating a 'cauldron' (a w o r d w h i c h suggests witches' brew or sinister alchemy).* There are recurrent images i n Sylvia Plath o f a swarm or pack, w i t h related images o f eating and stinging; identities are screened or disguised b y gloves or veils; there are recurrent images o f losing the contents o f one's 'inside', or having harm thrust into one, against w h i c h implosion some protection needs to be w o r n . There are also images o f vulnerability, and images o f coverings w i t h i n w h i c h there is nothing, or masks w h i c h disguise. Often she exploits the problem o f not being able to piece the self together, i n relation to the problem o f not being able to put the object t o ­ gether, and this leads to a complex problem o f getting the propor­ tions r i g h t (as i n The Colossus and The Swarm). The problem o f proportion seems to become acute over her images o f the male object. He is Napoleon, the bees, Daddy, the man w i t h asbestos gloves, the concentration camp doctor: she is a grain o f rice or a pebble, a bundle o f violent clubs, confused w i t h her plaster cast. W e can sum all these images up b y using the w o r d 'deper­ sonalization'. Laing (i960) uses this term about his schizoid patients and his words could be applied to Sylvia Plath's use of, and attitude to, many o f her figures: The people i n focus here tend to feel themselves as more or less depersonalized and tend to depersonalize others; they are con­ stantly afraid o f being depersonalized b y others. The act o f turning h i m into a thing is, for him, actually petrifying. I n the * In this way images which are usually benign become hostile or malignant: 'the atrocity of sunsets', 'The moon . . . is merciless. . . Her radiance scathes me . . ' "The moon . . . her blacks crackle and d r a g . . . ' , 'the moon/Dragged its blood bag, sick/Animal/Up over the harbour lights. . . ' Compare R . D . Laing's patient Julie, who was 'born under a black sun'—and whose mother is the black sun (The Divided Self, last chapter). Gerard de Nerval was haunted by a black spot and a black sun.

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face o f being treated as an ' i t ' , his o w n subjectivity drains away f r o m h i m like blood f r o m the face. Basically he requires con­ stant confirmation f r o m others o f his o w n existence as a person. (p. 48) Schizoid persons have a dread o f ' b e i n g turned, from a live person into a dead thing, into a stone, into a robot, an automaton, w i t h ­ out personal autonomy o f action, an it w i t h o u t subjectivity' (ibid, p. 49). Laing quotes several patients w h o suffer such problems. One felt he was only 'a cork floating on the ocean'. He reproached his mother for this failure: ' I was merely her emblem. She never recognised m y identity'. Laing quotes Medard Boss, w h o recounts a woman's dream: She was afire i n the stables. A r o u n d her, the fire, an ever larger crust o f lava was forming. H a l f f r o m the outside and half f r o m the inside her o w n body she could see h o w the fire was slowly becoming choked b y this crust. Suddenly she was entirely out­ side this fire and, as i f possessed, she beat the fire w i t h a club to break the crust and let some air in. (Ibid., p. 52) Laing then gives an account o f h o w a girl dreams o f turning her­ self into stone i n order to avoid being turned into stone b y some­ one else. ' I t seems to be a general l a w that at some point those very dangers most dreaded can themselves be encompassed to forestall their actual occurrence . . . T o consume onself by one's o w n love prevents the possibility o f being consumed b y another' (p. 54). This illuminates both Sylvia Plath's impulse to suicide and her search for purity, as through fire i n Lady Lazarus. The origins o f these impulses, as Laing sees, are i n 'a failure to sustain a sense o f one's o w n being w i t h o u t the presence o f other people. I t is a failure to be b y oneself, a failure to exist alone'. A n individual w h o depends so desperately upon identification cannot exist alone: an immediate rebirth must be sought i f the object o f identification is lost, and this explains h o w deprivation can be followed by des­ perate acts (as i n A Birthday Present). Often, i n criticism o f Sylvia Plath, the contempt she shows for 'appearances' is taken to show her strength. B u t this assumes too easily that she could judge these from her o w n secure self. Her contempt for conventional gestures is also a kind o f contempt for

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the false self in herself—for the mechanical modes, the inauthentic responses w h i c h are attempts to establish a self i n the w o r l d . A good deal o f her scathing irony is directed at the conformity o f the false self, w h i c h is being-for-others (cf. Esterson, 1970, pp. 57-8). It is this false self we see pieced together at the end of Poem for a Birthday: i t is The Applicant: i t is i n An Appearance (Crossing the Water, p . 23): The stars are flashing like terrible numerals. A B C , her eyelids say. This woman's morality is only whitewashing: I t is Monday i n her m i n d : morals Launder and present themselves. In Totem (Ariel, p. 76), the mortal remains o f Plato or Christ are seen thus: Their round eyes, their teeth, their grimaces O n a stick that ratdes and clicks, a counterfeit snake In the journey o f the soul there is no terminus, . . . only suitcases Out o f which the same self unfolds like a suit Bald and shiny, w i t h pockets o f wishes, Notions and tickets, short circuits and folding mirrors. I am mad, calls the spider, waving its many arms. The 'wishes, notions and tickets' however, are not the c o m m o n delusions and aspirations o f 'society', treated (as i n The Applicant) w i t h scalding satire. They are the pathetic scraps and oddments b y w h i c h the schizoid individual tries to assemble some k i n d o f self. It w i l l not thus do to see Sylvia Plath as a w o m a n 'speaking for all w o m e n ' , when she is expressing the impossibility o f being a w o m a n . N o r w i l l i t do to say that she 'uncovers that central core and cause o f dissatisfaction that can exist particularly i n marriage', such as is 'exposed b y Simone de Beauvoir i n The Second Sex', as Mrs Connie Richmond (1973) declares i n her study. Sylvia Plath does not speak for all women, unless we are to suppose all w o m e n schizoid. N o r is she speaking of'the subjection o f w o m e n ' :

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she is speaking, rather, o f h o w terrible i t is for a w o m a n to have to pretend to be a woman, when she cannot find herself to be one. A n d she is rejecting the mere trappings o f femininity, or o f being a wife, thrust upon a person, by social coercion, when she does not naturally find her w a y into them. The problem is discussed i n Three Women. A false identity seems to have been thrust upon one protagonist almost b y a Leda-like rape, b y coercion: Stars and showers o f gold—conceptions, conceptions. A n d the great swan . . . . . . his eye had a black meaning. I saw the w o r l d i n it—small, mean and black, Every little w o r d hooked to every little w o r d , and act to act. (Three Women, Winter Trees, pp. 41-2) This T h i r d Voice is a very terrifying one, that cries ' W h a t d i d I miss?'—and i t sounds to me closest to Sylvia Plath's o w n soul. W e sense i n the above lines a deep resentment, at being raped b y some male f o r m when ' I wasn't ready'. B u t this must be seen i n the light o f Sylvia Plath's feelings about 'impingement'. The terrible i n w a r d conflict o f grappling w i t h one's maleness, as an incorporation o f one's experience o f identifying w i t h the father and others i n their maleness, can be seen i n the same dream w h i c h Laing quotes f r o m Boss, to w h i c h I referred above: . . . a g i r l o f twenty-five years dreamt that she had cooked dinner for her family o f five. She had just served i t and she n o w called her parents and her brothers and sisters to dinner. N o b o d y replied. O n l y her voice returned as i f i t were an echo from a deep cave. She found the sudden emptiness o f the house u n ­ canny. She rushed upstairs to look for her family. I n the first bedroom, she could see her t w o sisters sitting on t w o beds. I n spite o f her impatient calls they remained i n an unnaturally rigid position and d i d not even answer her. She went up to her sisters and wanted to shake them. Suddenly she noticed that they were stone statues. She escaped in horror and rushed into her mother's r o o m . Her mother too had turned into stone and

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was sitting inertly i n her armchair staring into the air w i t h glazed eyes. The dreamer escaped into the r o o m o f her father. He stood i n the middle o f it. I n her despair she rushed up to h i m , and, desiring his protection, she threw her arms r o u n d his neck. B u t he too was made o f stone and, to her utter horror, he turned into sand when she embraced h i m . . . (p. 54) After this dream, repeated four times, the girl herself became 'petrified' physically. The sand, the glazed eyes, the stone, are all found i n Sylvia Plath's poems—even Daddy cracks and crumbles. But the mother, as a source o f femininity, is stony too and she finds horrifying gulfs and shifting shadows where she should be. I f any female element appears, i t is red, voracious, and malignant (Purdah, Stings, Lady Lazarus). I n Three Women Mother Earth is the vampire o f us all, her m o u t h is red, ' o l d winter-face, o l d barren one, o l d time b o m b ' . I n Three Women f r o m w h i c h these phrases come, the T h i r d Voice sees her baby as ' m y red, terrible g i r l ' : her cries are hooks t h r o u g h the glass. Encounter between female ele­ ment beings is always like this i n her w o r k . W i n n i c o t t says, 'being comes first: doing later'. B u t since being has not come first to Sylvia Plath there can be no security i n the effort o f putting a self together b y doing. She cannot get Daddy together as the focus o f identity. I n The Colossus (The Colossus, p. 20) w e read: I shall never get y o u put together entirely, Pieced, glued, and properly jointed. 'Daddy' cannot 'speak' her. A l l she has are the strange noises o f father w h e n she was an infant, and she associates these w i t h puz­ zling, as she d i d then, about w h a t he makes o f her: Mule-bray,* pig-grunt and bawdy cackles Proceed f r o m your great lips. It's worse than a barn-yard. Perhaps y o u consider yourself an oracle, Mouthpiece o f the dead, or o f some god or other. T h i r t y years n o w I have laboured T o dredge the silt from your throat. * Interestingly enough this word echoes Dylan Thomas's 'mule-bray' lament for the dead A n n Jones, w h o m he seeks to restore to life by incantation.

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He is like a great drowned statue: all her g r o w i n g life she has tried to open his m o u t h , so he could give his confirmation o f her iden­ tity, and give tongue. She cannot get f r o m h i m the spiritual wis­ dom o f the animus: I am none the wiser. She has to t r y to make h i m ( w i t h a desperate sense that i f he can­ not be brought to life, she cannot survive): Scaling little ladders w i t h gluepots and pails o f lysol I crawl like an ant i n m o u r n i n g . . . Glue is to mend the d o l l : lysol is to prevent his decay, and to purify h i m : Over the weedy acres o f your b r o w . . . —he is the w o r l d , w h i c h is his overgrown grave: T o mend the immense skull-plates and clear The bald, white t u m u l i o f y o u r eyes. His eyes are ' t u m u l i ' not only because they are the huge tombs o f the earth-object i n w h i c h he is buried. She too is buried i n them: his looking at her m i g h t have confirmed her existence. Since he does not reflect her, she fears she cannot exist. She is i n Greece and opens her lunch: the landscape o f ruined artefacts seems like the ' o l d anarchy' o f her petrified and scattered father: I t w o u l d take more than a lightning-stroke T o create such a ruin. The catastrophe which has scattered her colossus and w i t h h i m her hope o f integration is immense. So, she shelters as i f in one ear, w h i c h she feels perhaps can hear something o f her existence (as a 'cornucopia' i t has the shape o f life's riches), and offers shelter: Nights, I squat i n the cornucopia O f your left ear, out o f the w i n d , Counting the red stars and those o f plum-colour. The sun rises under the pillar o f y o u r tongue.

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—but she still cannot hear the riddle o f this sphinx. She is a bride o f nothing, M y hours are married to shadow . . . A n d she is no longer hopeful o f his live arrival, recreated as her awaited G o d or hero: N o longer do I listen for the scrape o f a keel O n the blank stones o f the landing. I n the direction of doing ( ' Y o u do not do') there was no hope. The w o r l d remains blank, w i t h o u t meaning, ' A w o r l d o f bald w h i t e days i n a shadeless socket' (The Hanging Man, Ariel, p. 70). She has had great difficulty in keeping hold o n Daddy's memory, b o t h for purposes o f identifying, and also for m o u r n i n g : she can­ not let h i m go, but yet she cannot hold on to h i m . He keeps t u r n ­ ing up, as the man w i t h asbestos hands, or as a bee-keeper. I t seems at times as i f someone—a malignant animus, a Nazi, or D e v i l — has taken over the 'good' Daddy. Daddy is 'bad' because he let her d o w n b y dying. W i t h childish contempt she calls h i m the 'daft father' for dying. B u t Daddy has become the core o f the self, and so is bound up w i t h her collection o f stolen male objects and her collection o f experiences o f impingement. 'Daddy' is thus a bundle o f tools, clubs, etc. all feeling like bones: A t twenty I tried to die A n d get back, back, back to y o u . I thought even the bones w o u l d do. (Daddy, Ariel, p. 55) She wants to get back to find a living relationship i n love, that could give her substance, and help her see the w o r l d i n a real way, not i n fear o f total neutrality. Yet she cries, ' I simply cannot see where there is to get to'. L o o k i n g at the graveyard i n The Moon and the Yew Tree she seems to be seeking a path into another w o r l d . But, 'The message o f the y e w tree is blackness—blackness and silence . . . ' . A related hopelessness pervades The Munich Mannequins (Ariel, p. 74). I t is as i f the poetess looks at a landscape that should be meaningful—but only succeeds in evoking her hopelessness about

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relationship as a source o f meaning. The mannequins are both yew-trees and idealised w o m a n figures, or idols: they resemble the stone muses. The yew trees are, ironically, called the tree o f life. They 'release' their 'moons'—it is as i f they have a menstrual flow w h i c h is sterile. They are perfect, i n sterility: Perfection is terrible, i t cannot have children. C o l d as snow breath, i t tamps the w o m b W h e r e the yew trees b l o w like hydras, The tree o f life and the tree o f life Unloosing their moons, m o n t h after month, to no purpose. The blood flow is the flood o f love, The absolute sacrifice. I t means: no more idols but me, M e and you. T o love is like a menstrual flow, a loss o f inner contents. The self and the object (husband, father) are idols. Yet, as A n d r e w B r i n k (1968) says: 'Natural acceptance o f the large impersonal cycles o f life is denied b y the pain o f relationships made too easily inter­ changeable; remembering the father, confrontation o f the y o u and me turns into impasse and immobilised idols can do nothing to advance life's possibilities' (p. 57). The father is present again as the 'black shoes' i n the hotel: . . . I n the hotels Hands w i l l be opening doors and setting D o w n shoes for a polish o f carbon Into w h i c h broad toes w i l l go t o m o r r o w . . . The daily routine o f life is meaningless and threatening. The black telephones stay on their hooks, 'glittering'. B u t they are 'digesting' 'voicelessness'. I n Daddy she rejects the black telephone, because 'the voices just can't w o r m through'. Here she expresses her frus­ tration that the 'thick Germans' are slumbering, while their black telephones lie fattening as i t were on the unspeakable. I t is as i f she is expecting a call that does not come, and is stamping her foot at the failure o f Daddy to emerge and communicate. The mother images are 'naked and b a l d ' . . . intolerable, w i t h o u t m i n d : dead

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dummies. There is no mirror-glitter in w h i c h i t m i g h t be possible to be seen and find meaning: 'The snow has no voice.' I n Little Fugue (Ariel, p. 71), the father is a 'dark funnel', d o w n back through the memory, merging into death. I t is there the father is: she cannot get to h i m because he has faded i n her memory. I f she could get back to h i m she w o u l d recapture the sense o f k n o w i n g what a man was; just as she was beginning to find out death took h i m . I remember a blue eye, A briefcase o f tangerines. This was a man, then! Death opened, like a black tree, blackly. Little Fugue is about the total failure o f communication, especially w i t h the dead father, and the w a y i n w h i c h this failure makes the w o r l d and oneself black: So the deaf and dumb Signal the blind, and are ignored. I like black statements The featurelessness o f that cloud, n o w ! W h i t e as an eye all over! Because o f the bald t u m u l i o f the eyes o f the Colossus, the w o r l d is stripped o f those meanings w h i c h apperception m i g h t give i t , blind. I n Little Fugue, the white cloud reminds her o f the eye o f a blind pianist on a ship, w h o felt for his food: again, this pianist is 'Daddy': His fingers had the noses o f weasels. I couldn't stop looking. W h i l e he could hear the ' h o r r i d complications' o f Beethoven, at the table there is a blankness. E m p t y and silly as plates, So the blind smile. B y contrast w i t h this unbearable meaninglessness she prefers the 'big noises', the Grosse Fugue. This music-memory becomes a black y e w hedge. A n d i t takes her d o w n a 'dark funnel' to the m e m o r y o f her father's voice:

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A y e w hedge o f orders, Gothic and barbarous, pure German, Dead men cry from i t . I am guilty o f nothing. The feelings she has about the pianist's fingers are full o f guilt because she once had an urge to castrate Daddy and steal his penis;* so, Electral feelings surge to the surface: The y e w m y Christ, then. Is i t not as tortured? She recalls an image o f her father A n d y o u , during the Great W a r I n the Californian delicatessen Lopping the sausages! They colour m y sleep, Red, mottled, like cut necks There was a silence! Great silence o f another order. In desperation, she sought to castrate her father. B y the infant's talion logic, he (in fantasy) m i g h t turn on her to castrate her. H o w can a girl be castrated? The answer is that she is composed o f the very male elements she has stolen: so, as we shall see, i n The Bee Meeting, the self is identified w i t h a penis that is like a neck that can be cut, as chicken necks can be chopped (see p. 215). W h e n necks are cut there is a silence. But then there was the b i g silence—of his actual death: d i d her castration fantasies k i l l him? I was seven, I knew nothing. The w o r l d occurred. She can't be blamed, because she was i n the latency period and 'knew n o t h i n g ' : Y o u had one leg, and a Prussian m i n d . * T h e connection between finger and penis is evident in the poem Cut, which has undertones of castration: 'Your turkey wattle/Carpet' echoing the 'turkey neck' image of Buddy Willard's penis in The Bell Jar.

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N o w similar clouds Are spreading their vacuous sheets D o y o u say nothing? I am lame i n the memory. The Prussian w i t h one leg is a partial m e m o r y : she is 'lame' in trying to remember h i m . W h e n he died, the w o r l d went blank. N o w , when the pianist reminds her o f her father, more blankness threatens because she cannot remember him, and he does not c o m ­ municate. The failure o f memory makes her actions and her per­ ceptions seems utterly meaningless. Because she cannot find the father to mourn, when her memories are stirred b y the blind pianist, 'similar clouds are opening their vacuous sheets' as when he died. I survive the while, Arranging m y morning. These are m y fingers, this m y baby. The clouds are a marriage dress, o f that pallor. I n Poem for A Birthday we hear w i t h some clarity and poignancy about the failure o f fathering and mothering, but w i t h o u t rage, blame, and malice. W h a t happened to t u r n her love (as w e find i t in the love-poem The Beekeeper) into the hate o f Daddy? Was i t , as A Birthday Present perhaps suggests, the breaking up o f her marriage? Yet, i n that she says, ironically, ' I am sure i t is just what I want'—and this is true i n a sense, because behind the veil o f estrangement is the death for w h i c h she yearns. 'Failure i n relationship w i t h the father-husband', says B r i n k , 'propels thinking into lethally repetitious patterns, calling up sub­ conscious material as i n the indictments o f Daddy. . . ' . He says that this is a k i n d o f existential reconstruction, but i t is a recon­ struction based on hate and has no positive direction. B r i n k quotes Laing relevantly on the schizoid individual: A n exile f r o m the scene o f being as we k n o w it, [she] is an alien, a stranger, signalling to us from the void in w h i c h [she] is foundering, a v o i d w h i c h may be peopled by presences that we do not even dream o f . . . As w e have seen i n Little Fugue, Sylvia Plath was well aware o f the way i n w h i c h there could be signals from a void, and the failure o f

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communication is centred on Daddy. From despair o f ever mak­ ing connection, she flies into negative dynamics. From her Poem for a Birthday onwards we have all the agony o f what Laing (i960) calls 'negative therapeutic reaction', i f therapy for her was the w r i t i n g o f poetry. I n any case, the schizoid individual, as he says, erects a tremendous resistance against understanding, w h i c h mani­ fests a threat: ' T o be understood correctly is to be engulfed, to be enclosed, swallowed up, drowned, eaten up, smothered, stifled i n or by another person's supposed all-embracing comprehension' (p. 46). In this, I believe, we have the clue to Sylvia Plath's increasing encapsulation. A l t h o u g h her poetry became increasingly clear, i t also increasingly crackled to itself on the top o f an Alp—enclosed in its psychotic logic. After deciding ' I am incapable o f more knowledge' i n Elm, she clung to isolation: ' I t is lonely and painful to be always misunderstood, but there is at least f r o m this point o f view a measure o f safety i n isolation', as Laing puts i t . I n her 'terrible autonomy', Sylvia Plath retreated from 'relationship and community'—from all hope o f normal (manic-depressive) satis­ factions (which are indulged i n by 'tame-flower-nibblers')—to battle w i t h the 'presences' o f her encapsulated schizoid-paranoid exile. (The words quoted are f r o m Laing.) She gives w a y to ' g i v ­ ing herself up to the joys o f hatred', culminating i n Daddy, a suicidal attack on her o w n false-self male structure. W e can see the enormous destructive energy behind this hate i n poems i n w h i c h she reveals feelings w h i c h belong to the infant's primitive feeling o f e n v y — o f wanting to 'empty' the other, out o f fear that the other may empty her. I n an early poem, The Shrike, Sylvia Plath's protagonist envies her husband's dreams while she lies awake, confined to her o w n thoughts: Shaking i n her skull's cage . . . I n her hunger she becomes a bird o f prey that thirsts to empty him: So hungered, she must wait i n rage U n t i l bird-racketing dawn W h e n her shrike face Leans to peck open those locked lids, to eat Crowns, palace, all

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That nightlong stole her mate, A n d w i t h red beak Spike and suck out Last blood-drop o f that truant heart. (Shrike, i n poems submitted for the English Tripos Examination, Cambridge, p. 7.) So close is her identification that his desertion into realms o f fancy is felt to be a dangerous deprivation. I n order to forestall the other's independence she seeks to empty his m i n d voraciously, even to take his blood into herself. This is both frightening, but yet exciting. That is, her envy is directed at trying to steal the capacity to see a meaningful w o r l d . I n despair o f this, the fury is turned o n herself. The Shrike is not a very interesting poem, but i t gives us clues to the origins o f many o f her later images. Lady Lazarus, for i n ­ stance, expresses the same intense envy and hatred, and urge to consume the insides out o f others: Out o f the ash I rise w i t h m y red hair A n d I eat men like air. The (mother) earth o f the Second Voice i n Three Women is a vampire: ' M e n have used her meanly. She w i l l eat them. Eat them, eat them, eat them i n the end'. I n Death & Co. she sees the same shrike reflected i n an aspect o f death, w h o seems as i f he intends to do to her what she has often wanted to do to others i n envy: I am red meat. His beak Claps sideways: I am not his yet. This beak is surely yet another 'mouth', and it, too, is w i t h i n her. Death is (in one o f his aspects) the mouth-ego—'All m o u t h ' , w h o licks up the bushes A n d the pots o f meat. (Poem for a Birthday) Death, w h o eats us all, echoes also the hungry regressed libidinal ego directed against i t . The dreadful hunger she sees everywhere

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round her is i n her—conflicting voraciousnesses o f her inner world. Death & Co. (Ariel, p . 38) is one o f Sylvia Plath's most macabre poems. I t may have reference to an actual occasion, i n w h i c h some American visitors upset Sylvia Plath b y talking about h o w babies look i n the morgue. B u t what this occasion set o f f i n the poet is a deeply disturbed fantasy o f a multiple and deathly animus (the visitors being, significantly, a homosexual writer and his companion). I n order to understand it, as arising from this inward fantasy rather than any outward incident, we need to allow our­ selves to go mad, and to make a mad response to a mad poem. I f we do, w e shall see a 'double exposure' such as Masud Khan reports, i n his response to a schizoid w o m a n patient (see above p. 42 note). The t w o figures o f the poem then become not only symbols o f t w o aspects o f death, but also t w o aspects o f an identity built on death. B o t h Death 1 and Death 2 are ' i n ' Sylvia Plath herself. Death 1 seems female. He concentrates on h o w the children w o u l d look i n their cot—but i t isn't a cot—it is a hospital ice-box. So, Death i is an anti-mother. He does not reflect, but 'tells me h o w badly I photograph'. He never looks up, and his eyes are 'lidded and balled'—like Blake's deathmask. That is, his eyes are like the eyes o f the Colossus, 'bald t u m u l i ' , or those o f the m o o n w h o is 'bald and w i l d ' . He shows birthmarks—scars w h i c h do not speak o f his giving birth, but o f the wounds given i n birth, the scars o f scalding, the poisonous effects o f predatory hate. The lines here become hallucinatory: The nude Verdigris o f the condor. The fantasy w h i c h was aroused b y the 'boy-friend' homosexual visitor w h o is male but w h o plays the part o f female is that o f a predatory animus, whose malice and envy are directed at creati­ vity, and her babies. He, the castrating man-mother, has a beak, and she is 'red meat'—a body, alive but not feeling alive, w h i c h is but carrion for Death. He is simply w i p i n g his beak, clapping i t menacingly: ' I am not his yet'. W h a t she finds echoed is the 'savage god' w h i c h lures her towards suicide and infanticide. He says the babies w o u l d look 'sweet' dead: he 'does not smile or

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smoke'. He offers no encounter except a predatory one; no love, but hate. A n d his menacing hate is fantasied as a cruel and con­ suming oral symbol—a bloody beak. His is the envious beak o f the shrike: her envy. This beaked fantasy figure is a key phantom, i n the w o r k o f both Sylvia Plath and her husband. The 'condor' here is echoed i n ' K r o g o n ' , i n Orghast, w h o , i n turn, is a version o f C r o w . (See also the drawings by Baskin i n the limited edition o f Crow.) The beaked figure is actually drawn for us b y Ted Hughes, in a sketch o f the physiology o f Orghast i n Orghast in Persepolis: o f this figure A . C. H . Smith says: The " b i r d l i k e " figure o f K r o g o n is k i n to C r o w (and Chronos), the terrifying creation i n his book o f the same name published and broadcast i n 1970, w h i c h itself stemmed f r o m the 'sleek, attent thrushes' i n his earliest w o r k , and was largely set i n 'the early w o r l d ' . The female principle o f M o a haunts his w r i t i n g . That the father o f the new baby feels threatened and, instead o f acting as the intermediary o f light, may seek to dispossess the sun, imprison the son, is the dark side o f the stories and poems he has w r i t t e n for children . . . the sequence i n w h i c h a man (Krogon, he became, not Agoluz) 'kills his wife and children thinking they are evil birds', he adapted from a tale w h i c h , although Japanese, he sees as 'central to the whole ChristianManichean area': i t had already occurred i n Crow. {Orghast in Persepolis, p p . 97-8) A t the same place, Smith quotes Hughes again as saying, 'the interior m y t h o l o g y o f the play is o f a piece w i t h m y early w r i t i n g ' , and 'at the level o f generalisation, on w h i c h this m y t h works, the writings o f most poets are one system and the same'. It is certain, then, that these fantasy figures are c o m m o n to those poets w h o m he said, 'wrote poetry as i f f r o m the same brain'. The beaked predator in Crow, i n the story referred to above, i n the poem Crow's Account of St George, is the protagonist's wife and children: A bell-ball o f hair, w i t h crab-legs, eyeless, Jabs its pincers into his face, Its belly opens—a horrible oven o f fangs.

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W h e n the scientist attacks it, '. . . his wife and children lie i n their blood' (Crow, p. 31). This paranoid-schizoid fantasy, then, is both the envy which threatens the female element (Moa) and the creativity o f the w o m b : but also the threat w h i c h comes from one's o w n creativity itself, the threat offered b y love (see Lovesong, i n Crow). T o be strong, one must direct one's attack at this source o f attack, i n order to anticipate its menaces: T h r o u g h slits o f iron, his eyes have found the helm o f the enemy, the grail, The w o m b - w a l l o f the dream that crouches there, greedier than a foetus, Sucking at the root-blood o f the origins, the salt-milk drag o f the mothers. (Gog, Wodwo, p. 152) Again, as here, normal creative existence is despised in favour o f the 'armouring' o f the 'iron horseman'. I n these symbols we have a m y t h o l o g y that may, o f course, be found i n m y t h and fairy­ tales. B u t also i n the w o r k o f Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, there is this c o m m o n symbolism o f a menacing beak-like figure, associated w i t h the female element, and threatening from the heart o f encounter and creativity: indeed, there is a sense i n w h i c h this is what Orghast is all about: the terrible fact that the father can be an enemy to his child, while Gog and Crow are heavy w i t h guilt that a father can be an enemy to the creative femaleness o f the mother, and must assault it. N o wonder the beaked predatory figure, w i t h male genitals, appears i n the drawing by Baskin on the jacket o f Crow! This is one aspect o f Death i n Death and Co., and is one nihilistic aspect o f Sylvia Plath's personality. The other, Death 2, seems more relaxed. He smiles and smokes. B u t he, too, is pseudo-female: his hair is long and 'plausive'.* He is a 'bastard'— * The word is not in the modern dictionary. But it occurs in Hamlet, in a most significant passage. T h e ubiquitous presence of the father's ghost generates a feel­ ing of Hamlet in Sylvia Plath. I believe the following lines lay in the background of her memory behind her anguished musings on the predicament of being threatened with the breakdown of reason: So, oft it chances in particular men, That, for some vicious mole of nature in them,

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that is, he is a mock-up, not a real element o f the identity. 'He wants to be loved'—a recognition o f the schizoid need, deep d o w n , to love and be loved. He is 'Masturbating a glitter'. This is perhaps the most perplexing phrase i n all Sylvia Plath's poetry— but the one, I believe, that takes us most deeply into her problem. Just as Death i is non-reflecting i n many o f his/her aspects, Death 2 is, at least, making an effort. B u t the effort is solipsistic, yet an attempt to establish creative reflection b y male means. The w o r d 'glitter' recurs i n Sylvia Plath, and is often used o f the shiny black shoe i n w h i c h she tries to see her reflection. This glitter is the 'spark' that reassures that one is alive ('the dew makes a star'; 'they've b l o w n m y sparkler out'). B u t the w o r d has another more astonishing symbolism: the glitter as I have suggested relates to eyes, and eyes to mirrors. The image is that o f a pool o f semen in w h i c h she cannot find herself reflected, because she cannot hope to find herself reflected by the mother. The logic o f infantile thinking here is simple: i f I cannot get a sense o f m y substantiality from the mother's breast, h o w can I get i t f r o m the father's penis? But, alas, the father is dead. The clue to this symbolism is i n Gigolo (Winter Trees, p. 14), a poem about a sexual athlete. I n this the protagonist w i l l ' m i l l a litter o f breasts like jellyfish', and has a w a y o f 'turning Bitches to ripples o f silver . . . ' — b y giving them orgasms. B u t the end is significant: I Glitter like Fontainebleau Gratified, As, in their birth—wherein they are not guilty, Since nature cannot choose his origin,— B y the o'ergrowth of some complexion, Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason; O r by some habit, that too much o'er-leavens The form of plausive manners;—that these men— Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect, Being nature's livery, or fortune's star,— His virtues else—be they as pure as grace, As infinite as man may undergo— Shall in the general censure take corruption From that particular fault; the dram of evil Doth all the noble substance often doubt T o his o w n s c a n d a l . . . 1, iv. 23-38

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A l l the fall o f water an eye Over whose pool I tenderly Lean and see me. A t this point I feel i t w i l l be useful to invoke an astonishing case-history, and its equally astonishing interpretation, both o f which illuminate Sylvia Plath's problem i n a bizarre and dis­ turbing way. This is the phenomenological interpretation o f the case o f one 'Rudolph' b y Roland K u h n , i n M a y (1958). Rudolph was a butcher's boy i n Z u r i c h w h o shot at a prostitute i n 1939. A phenomenological investigation suggests that Rudolph shot the prostitute because he wanted to get into the 'other w o r l d ' where his dead mother was. The only relevance to the poetry o f Sylvia Plath is the pheno­ menological interpretation o f certain o f 'Rudolph's' obsessions w h i c h provide a clue to her phrase 'masturbating a glitter' i n relation to death: He [Rudolph] masturbated a great deal, partly applying perverse procedures such as the use o f coins, ladies silk stockings, silk handkerchiefs, and parts o f animal intestines . . . for years he kept hidden a b o x fdled w i t h buttons, splinters o f glass, and pieces o f cloth. He said that f r o m early childhood he had searched for such objects, and, whenever he found one, w o u l d seize upon it, enjoy i t hugely, and cherish i t like a treasure. He also derived a great pleasure f r o m glittering coins. I n early years he had masturbated w i t h the help o f buttons and coins and he had carried small change in his mouth. This fancy could be traced to the time after his mother's death when he searched the entire house and occasionally f r o m the w i n d o w saw something glitter out i n the fields. He w o u l d then go out and comb the fields for the o b j e c t . . . (p. 3 84) These objects symbolised for h i m reflecting eyes which he had seen closed in death as an infant. W h e n his father died, Rudolph went to see his body, and then he behaved quite crazily: 'Again and again he opened and closed his father's eyes' (p. 373). W h e n he was about three and a half his mother died in childbirth. Rudolph followed the bloodstains to her body and climbed up on a chair to the corpse. He knelt on i t and touched the face w i t h his hands,

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saying, ' Y o u aren't dead, Mother, are you? M a r y says y o u are . . . Y o u are asleep, aren't you?' Rudolph's mother died just before Carnival time and her funeral was mingled w i t h riotous funmaking. Later Rudolph stole money and bought fireworks—and made himself conspicuous b y letting too many off. As soon as he had been found out, he came home, masturbated i n the lavatory and threw his fireworks out into the manure pit. So, Sylvia Plath's 'glitter' can be related to death. Because Rudolph had suicidal fantasies w e can also relate i t to suicide. The gleam o f eyes responding to one may be associated w i t h the aura o f relationship and the 'path o f love'. I f existential meaning is lost the 'light goes out o f the w o r l d ' . The 'sparkler' goes out. Rudolph was on one occasion cured o f a suicidal plan b y seeing the V i r g i n and child: 'The image o f the V i r g i n and child had shown a strange shimmer and looked as though i t were alive . . . This took place on the anniversary o f his mother's death'* (p. 386). Masturbation is an act i n w h i c h the child exerts a manic sense o f aliveness, and i n some ways connects himself, b y projection and fantasy, w i t h the parental sexual acts, and so w i t h vitality. Mas­ turbating w i t h glittering objects may have been a way o f feeling alive b y 'bringing the mother's eyes alive', just as the sparkling fireworks w o u l d invoke the manic carnival that occurred at the time o f his mother's death (when caught out w i t h them he threw them away and masturbated). Rudolph was saved f r o m suicide b y seeming to see the Mother o f Christ shimmer, on the anniversary o f his mother's death. As K u h n says: a church picture o f the V i r g i n M a r y came to life for h i m as her eyes assumed an extraordinary lustre. The k i n d o f smile w h i c h the picture showed must have been related to the smile so strikingly characteristic o f Rudolph himself— which, w e may assume, is likewise linked w i t h his mother's facial expression. (p. 423) In this case-history w e find phenomenological clues i n the sphere o f what K u h n calls 'somatic experience': a disturbed relationship * Cf.

T h e face of the effigy, gentled by candles, Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes. The Moon and the Yew Tree

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to one's o w n body. That Sylvia Plath had some k i n d o f schizoid disturbance o f relationship to her o w n body is I hope evident from m y comments above. One o f the central symbols in Sylvia Plath's poetry is the shiny black shoe, and Rudolph's case casts light on this too. He was a shoe-and-stocking fetishist, as well as being attached to glittering objects. Sylvia Plath combines both fascinations i n her black shoe: Daddy is the 'black shoe in w h i c h I have lived'. Rudolph shot at the prostitute because when he saw her naked her genital seemed the door to the other w o r l d o f death. W h e n he 'felt sexual sensations... he looked upon his glossy shoes and touched them fondly' (p. 389). Rudolph, K u h n believes, actually expressed love for his mother through this fetish 'and felt hampered i n the realisation o f her image b y the fetish-carriers. Killing, then, w o u l d mean not only removing the annoying object from this w o r l d but also, by turning i t into a corpse, making i t similar to the original beloved image w h o is also dead' (p. 390) So, in Death & Co., there is a powerful ambiguity. Sylvia Plath is full o f fear o f death, but is also i n love w i t h death: there is an admixture o f necro­ philia and necrophobia. There is a powerful undercurrent or sex-as-eating—annihilation ('His beak/Claps sidewise: I am not his yet': Cf. ' A fruit that's death to taste'). There is a mixture o f dismay and resignation to the logic o f her delusions: 'Somebody's done for . . .' A n identity has been annihilated (by 'doing') so that it is a state o f 'life but not feeling alive': and some body has been 'done for', that is, is to be made into a corpse. A glitter hovers over the children, i n Death I ' S image o f them, in an 'icebox'. B u t they are also stone, w i t h a simple 'frill at the neck' and 'flutings' to their gowns. Here, as K u h n says, ' I t is the realisation o f those dream-andfantasy contents w h i c h is feared' (p. 423). That is, Death & Co. is stark w i t h horror at the impending possibility that her dreams and fantasies w o u l d come true. Yet, i f we follow Kuhn's pheno­ menological analysis, w h i c h becomes very complex at this point, we can see such poems as a kind of mourning. Rudolph's despera­ tion arose out o f a need to mourn, retaining both the body and being o f his dead mother i n his m i n d . Sylvia Plath shows the same desperation, in t r y i n g to complete her mourning for 'Daddy'. T o her blank experience o f the mother is added a terrible feeling that

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she d i d not m o u r n enough for her husband: so, she feels cut o f f f r o m both. Rudolph searched for 'the lost and forgotten i n the periphery o f the body, namely i n the lustre o f eyes and garments'. Sylvia Plath does the same, i n her obsession w i t h glittering objects, w h i c h m i g h t offer a new vitality—but m i g h t also lure her to death. A t the moment when he saw the 'glitter' i n the V i r g i n Mary's face and i t resembled his mother's smile, Rudolph found being and body fused into a unit again 'and the path toward love was open to h i m ' . He was released f r o m the impulse towards suicide w h i c h had impelled his crime. Sylvia Plath, b y contrast, unable to bring together the t w o aspects o f her lost one, repre­ sented by the t w o aspects o f Death, could not find this path—and so she took the desperate paths o f hate. K u h n also links forgetting and killing—a conjunction w h i c h is evident i n Daddy, in w h i c h her attempt to forget ['bury'] 'Daddy' are indivisible f r o m attempts to destroy h i m . F r o m this point o f v i e w her anguish and suicide were the consequence o f an inability to complete the process o f mourning. K u h n quotes Rilke: ' K i l l i n g is one o f the forms o f our wandering mourning . . . ' . T r y i n g to unite the disparate elements o f her identity, all she can find i n herself is t w o death-maleelements, neither man w i t h a female component, nor female w i t h a male component. ( A n d this apparently makes her ideal for Women's Liberation!) N o t h i n g could be more terrible. The situation presents a logic from w h i c h there is no escape but the perfection o f becoming 'theirs'. I n Death & Co., she proclaims' I am not his yet' to one and T do not stir' to the other. She stands between them i n dreadful stasis. She hopes that 'The frost makes a flower'—and i t does, but only on the cold windowpane: outside it kills the flower. 'The dew makes a star—only insofar as i t reflects a star, or the sun's light. Behind these images is a tender, naive hopefulness—the hopefulness o f being reborn, and finding meaning. B u t 'a glittering button is not a being' as K u h n says. W e may compare the images in Death & Co., w i t h the delicate image in T e d Hughes's Full Moon and Little Frieda, i n w h i c h , i n the eyes o f the child, the surface o f water in a bucket 'tempts a first star to a tremor'. I n that poem perception is creatively intentional. I n Death & Co., a dull tocsin takes over: 'The dead bell', and the poem ends w i t h an ironic resignation. After this poem i t was not long before she became 'theirs'. A t the end o f the poem we have a

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feeling as o f the presence o f a corpse: 'Somebody's done f o r ' : the final 'doing'. The w o r d 'do' links the 'somebody's done for' w i t h the ' y o u w i l l not do' o f Daddy: both poems belong to a final desperate realisation that the false male identity based on the dead father is no good. So, she turns her hate on her o w n animus. As w e have seen, Fairbairn found a tendency i n the schizoid to 'maintain the inner w o r l d as a closed system' and to 'keep his aggression localised w i t h i n the confines o f the inner w o r l d ' , often displaying intense j o y i n this terrible indulgence, as was the case w i t h ' I v y ' . Sylvia Plath's withdrawal into this closed system o f aggression culminates i n Daddy (Ariel, p. 54). The structure and r h y t h m o f the verse is that o f a child's insolent rhyme. I was ten when they buried y o u . A t twenty I tried to die A n d get back, back, back to y o u . I thought even the bones w o u l d do. B u t they pulled me out o f the sack, A n d they stuck me together w i t h glue. A n d then I k n e w what to do. I made a model o f y o u , A man i n black w i t h the M e i n k a m p f look A n d a love o f the rack and the screw. W e may compare the lilt, and the oral sadism, w i t h children's sadistic abuse-rhymes: I didn't see anyone As ugly as y o u . . . Y o u r feet stink A n d so do y o u . . . A b i r d came near A n d pooed on y o u . . . One look at y o u A n d I think I ' l l spew . . . W i t h a face like that Y o u belong to the zoo. The regression to childhood anger is symptomatic. I n one sense

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she is 'blaming' Daddy for dying, when she was eight.* So, she speaks i n the voice o f a small girl, w h o wants to 'marry Daddy'. Insofar as she is married to a man (who is Daddy to her children), w h o m she feels has failed her too, he seems like Daddy w h o died too soon. B u t the poem's Daddy is w i t h i n the false self structure on w h i c h her hate is n o w turned. The poem is a love-hate poem w h i c h seeks w i t h great excite­ ment to castrate the stolen male penis w h i c h is her last insecure communication w i t h the buried father i n the w o r l d o f death: 'The black telephone's o f f at the root'. Consequently there are dreadful fears o f talion vengeance, w h i c h the frenzy o f hate is an attempt to hold off. Moreover we need to bear i n m i n d the displacement o f the hatred o f the mother. 'Daddy' is partly composed o f the mother's male-element-doing, the penis w h i c h has been castrated and stolen is partly the mother's, and for this an even more terrible vengeance is feared. T o h o l d o f f this fear, she has 'identified w i t h the aggressor', and this yields a false strength. O n schizoid guilt, R. D . Laing (i960) has this to say: The final seal on the self-enclosure o f the self is applied b y its o w n guilt. I n the schizoid individual guilt has the same para­ doxical quality about i t that was encountered in his o m n i p o ­ tence and impotence, his freedom and his slavery, his self being anyone i n fantasy and nothing i n reality . . . If there is anything the schizoid individual is likely to believe in, it is his own destructiveness. He is unable to believe that he can fill his o w n emptiness w i t h o u t reducing w h a t is there to nothing, (p. 98, m y italics) This is what Daddy is about. The poet is hopeless about ever solving her paradoxes. She must reduce everything to nothing. Y e t she is still in love w i t h Daddy, and wants to hold on to h i m , to complete her mourning, even though she resents this. W h a t such a person may then do, says Laing, is to 'destroy " i n his m i n d " the image o f anyone or anything he may be i n danger o f being fond of, out o f a desire to safeguard that person or thing i n reality f r o m being destroyed' (ibid., p. 99). She is trying to destroy Daddy in her mind, to protect h i m . I f there were nothing to want, nothing to envy, nothing to love, says Laing, there w o u l d * O r seven ('I was seven'—see above p. 161); or nine, whatever the actual number of years: the figure varies, in various fantasies.

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be nothing to reduce to nothing. The logic is strange: but i t belongs to a 'strategy o f survival'. The morality is powerful, i f deluded, and the object is to save being, b y dissolution: ' I n the last resort, he sets about murdering his " s e l f " — . . . he descends into a vortex o f non-being, but also to preserve being f r o m himself.' I n Daddy she tries to reject Daddy's black shoe, the symbolism o f which w e have seen, as an adequate basis for herself: Y o u do not do, y o u do not do A n y more, black shoe I n w h i c h I have lived like a foot For t h i r t y years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. Daddy I have had to k i l l you. I n The Bell Jar and Poem for a Birthday, being revived f r o m suicide is resented. Once again she is forced to undergo r a m ­ shackle conformity o f the false self. This pseudo-male structure is made up, as w e have seen, o f impingement, o f hate, o f doing, and 'bad inner contents'. The 'black telephone' which is 'cut o f f at the root' and stolen f r o m Daddy is (in Kleinian terms) i n the infantile primitive m i n d not only his penis, but also something w h i c h belongs to the inner stuff o f the lower b o d y : what has been stolen is also a l u m p o f excreta.* The rhymes f r o m childhood on w h i c h Daddy is based are full o f such impulses to expel bad stuff at others—'poo' being the implicit r h y m i n g w o r d . Here there are startling parallels w i t h Susan, M a r i o n Milner's schizoid patient i n In The Hands of the Living God. I n her fantasies the 'walking stick' faecal mass she d i d in her pot merges w i t h the father's penis she had taken into herself. M a r i o n M i l n e r says i n a note on pp. 50-1, ' i n part o f her m i n d , people were equated w i t h faeces, so that to let them go is at one and the same time both a loving and hating act—a k i n d o f murder, since i t is only when they are inside that they are felt to be alive—but also a loving act since only b y being let go can they be allowed a free separate existence'. ' D o ' , ' w o r m through', 'root' and the 'poo' r h y m e all seem to indicate this faecal undercurrent * Above, the black telephones in The Munich Mannequins were 'digesting' voicelessness.

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to the symbolism i n Daddy. Sylvia Plath is rejecting the 'bad inner contents' basis o f her identity, by excreting Daddy, i n an act w h i c h , as w e have seen, is both loving (to preserve h i m ) and hating. The sensual intensity o f her relationship w i t h the dead father's penis is evident too. The words ' s c r e w . . . I do, I do . . . the black t e l e p h o n e . . . at the r o o t . . . w o r m through' all suggest genital body-movements and feelings, o f a primitive k i n d . B y this coition w i t h the father, she, a patched-up identity, identifies w i t h the model she puts together o f h i m , w h i c h is sadistic, and based on hate: A n d I said I do, I do. So daddy, I ' m finally through. The black telephone's o f f at the root, The voices just can't w o r m through. She sees this relationship as a k i n d o f marriage forced on her ( ' I do'). She has married her father, bridegroom, i n the winter o f his year: a fruit that was death to taste. 'Finally through', however, is ambiguous. I t means T have finished w i t h this false-self con­ f o r m i t y to your model w h i c h they have forced on me'. B u t i t also means ' I have at last got through to y o u , into the realm o f death and I find that your death was terminal'. So, the voices can't worm through. I n the light o f her phrase 'eelish delvings' and other images i t can also mean 'at last I have passed you—stool—out o f m y body and have finished w i t h y o u as bad inner contents'. I n a sense this is a desperate end to m o u r n i n g : but i t is also the end, i n that she has nothing left to base her identity on. There is an implicit reference to her psychiatric treatment so that, as elsewhere, she implies that E C T was like being raped b y a sadistic father. B y what the therapists call transference she projected her feelings for her father over the doctor w h o did to her i n that way. But, she declares, Daddy was always cruel, even when he made her fall i n love w i t h h i m and more so when he seduced her into the grave. B u t 'being done to', though i t had the aim o f rescuing her f r o m such suicide attempts to get into the 'other' w o r l d where Daddy is, has the effect o f making her feel hopeless, merely, about anything Daddy could do for her. W h e n she says ' Y o u do not do', she means she has come to feel that she can sustain herself b y his

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male doing no longer. The struggle to build a self b y identifying w i t h the dead father w h o was kind and tender to her cannot be sustained, since Herr D o k t o r (the father-figures i n hospital w h o m she trusted) has betrayed her and subjected her to hate, E C T has taught her that Lucifer is only driven out b y a devil-woman, hate is necessary to exert against hate, and so the only path to salvation is through the ultimate self-hate which is Death. 'Punishment' has thus reinforced the hatred i n her, already directed against the need to love, so that her quest for love seems the most harmful thing o f all, and i t becomes more admirable to 'identify w i t h the aggressor'. W e have seen h o w the poet ' w o u l d like to believe i n tenderness': The Moon and the Yew Tree (Ariel, p. 47). B u t she has never seen the female face, 'Bending, on me i n particular, its m i l d eyes'. So, she never found a 'significant exchange' and 'self enrichment' alternating w i t h the 'discovery o f meaning i n the w o r l d o f seen things'. Her mirrors and seas and people do not confirm her: even psychiatric care tends to say to her T w i l l give y o u an identity— take that!' So she was driven to the ultimate renunciation o f all relation­ ship i n Daddy. The recklessness o f her hopeless and final abandon­ ment to hate is manifest i n the r h y t h m o f Daddy, something between children's ritual rhymes and My Heart Belongs to Daddy. Here we may compare the 'bride' theme expressed b y Laing's patient Julie w h o talks o f her fear o f being 'married' to another who w o u l d then invade or supplant her. B u t i f Daddy is rejected, what is left? For these reasons the poem can be no more than a defiant antic, and makes no real gain i n the direction o f genuine independence. I t is merely a false denial o f dependence: I f I've killed one man, I've killed t w o The vampire w h o said he was y o u A n d drank m y blood for a year, Seven years, i f y o u want to k n o w . Daddy, y o u can lie back n o w . The exorcism, however, is mere manic denial: the insights are too glib ('the vampire w h o said he was you'). The magic belongs to infantile omnipotence and magic, like a child driving nails into a doll in primitive hate ritual:

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There's a stake i n your fat black heart A n d the villagers never liked you. They are dancing and stamping on y o u . They always knew i t was y o u . Daddy, daddy, y o u bastard, I ' m through. A l t h o u g h she seems to be declaring her independence, the energy o f her hate is but a tribute to her need to go on hating. A n d r e w B r i n k (1968), using the Jungian term, points out that this attack on the male element moves towards negation w i t h damaging power i n Daddy: . . . her fullest rejection o f the terrible animus force w i t h i n , w h i c h only tightens its grip w i t h each succeeding description. As Jung has pointed out, the dogmatic, argumentative and domineering animus can rise to dominate the psyche as a whole, even cripple its integrating and restoring functions, and that is what happens h e r e . . . A l l natural circulation and reinforcement o f creative feeling stops and that leaves only one avenue o f escape, into oblivion, (p. 53) I n Sylvia Plath her false maleness, the animus on w h i c h she had to base her identity, comes into conflict w i t h the obvious fact (which she knew f r o m her body) that she was a w o m a n . Inside herself, Sylvia Plath finds an aggressive male projectile: 'white N i k e ' (Small Hours, Crossing the Water, p. 46). As we see when she identifies w i t h the Gigolo, she sometimes displays an aggressive attitiude towards other w o m e n , and a castrating, devouring attitude towards men. I n either case, the d r i v i n g force is the need to be 'found', defended against b y the displaced hostility to the mother and the rage directed against her spurious male identity. In Gigolo (Winter Trees, p. 14), she derides normal confir­ mation i n the family. The gigolo wants to have his sex i n total solipsism. A palace o f velvet W i t h windows o f mirrors. There one is safe, There are no family photographs, N o rings through the nose . . .

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One can see h o w Sylvia Plath appeals to the women's liberators— since she presents the claims o f the family as a humiliation, as 'rings through the nose'. Bright fish hooks, the smiles o f w o m e n Gulp at m y bulk . . . The women's smiles are bright fish-hooks w h i c h m o u t h (like fish) at his big sexual parts, elsewhere described as ' m y engine'. A t a National Poetry Festival Germaine Greer claimed that Sylvia Plath was the most 'arrogantly feminine' poetess w h o ever wrote. A phenomenological analysis suggests that, while k n o w i n g well outwardly that she was a w o m a n , * Sylvia Plath could scarcely find w i t h i n herself anything that was feminine at all. She is, perhaps, the most masculine poetess w h o ever wrote, yet, since masculinity requires the inclusion o f the anima, she is not that either: she is sadly pseudo-male, like many o f her cultists. In one o f the bee poems (Stings) she says, T have a self to recover': and yet she fears that this 'queen bee', when found, w i l l be malignant, as we shall see. N o t k n o w i n g her femininity, and not having had a father on w h o m to exercise i t during adolescence, Sylvia Plath was unconsciously terrified o f h o w her female element, i f rediscovered, m i g h t behave. The problem is similar to that o f bringing the dead father to life: i f one brings h i m back, may he not be malevolent? I t is similar to the problem explored b y those w h o have lost their mothers, and seek to recover them f r o m the other w o r l d o f Death—like C. S. Lewis and George Macdonald. D . W . W i n n i c o t t tells us that infants have terrible fears o f a ruthless mother imago: this fantasy mother is much more terrible than any human being w o u l d ever be—she threatens to 'get out o f hand'. The child, as i t continues to experience the real mother, 'humanizes' this imago, and is reassured o f the limits o f human evil. But, f r o m time to time, this ruthless female figure turns up, in m y t h and legend, and in our dreams. Sylvia Plath, as we have seen, had to build her sense o f femaleness, as far as she could, round whatever she could take i n o f 'being' f r o m the father. B u t since Daddy is dead, to recover this female element m i g h t be to recover a malignant predator: * 'I am a woman. I love m y little lares and penates', she said, in an interview.

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Where has she been, W i t h her lion-red body, her wings o f glass? N o w she is flying M o r e terrible than she ever was, red Scar in the sky, red c o m e t . . . (Stings, Ariel, p. 65) In Purdah (Winter Trees, p. 17), the protagonist threatens to unloose on ' h i m ' , From the small jewelled D o l l he guards like a heart— The lionness, The shriek i n the bath, The cloak o f holes. The reader w h o takes Sylvia Plath's position to be one o f opposi­ tion to conventional marriage w i l l see this as a threat to destroy a husband w h o has made his wife into a doll. B u t i t is rather the expression o f the secret o f the schizoid w o m a n , w h o has w i t h i n her an impulse to annihilate the male—the animus which becomes malevolent because i t cannot find itself 'female-element-being' quality. I n Widow (Crossing the Water, p. 38), she writes: The moth-face o f her husband, moonwhite and i l l , Circles her like a prey she'd love to k i l l . . . In such images we glimpse the underlying hatred w h i c h the hostile dynamic i n Sylvia Plath directs at the animus. So, too, i n The Courage of Shutting Up (Winter Trees, p. 20) there is an under­ current o f rage at 'Bastardies, usages, desertions and doubleness'. I n this poem the male element Colossus-Daddy figure is engaged in pricking over the images o f sexuality, which are 'blue grievances': A great surgeon, n o w a tattooist, Tattooing over and over the same blue grievances, The snakes, the babies, the tits O n mermaids and two-legged dream girls. The surgeon is quiet, he does not speak. He has seen too much death, his hands are full o f it.

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So, i n Sylvia Plath's inner w o r l d there are t w o figures—the malevolent animus and the negative anima, at their deathly w o r k : in fact Death & Co. The T that may be recovered i n the name o f femininity rises w i t h hair o f flame and threatens to 'eat men like air'. She is a k i n d o f flying vagina ('red scar') which has male characteristics ('lionred body'). This b o d y - m o u t h is hungry, and i t lies under the surface i n Poppies in July (Ariel, p . 82): A m o u t h just bloodied Litde bloody skirts. In Berck-Plage and Three Women, M o t h e r Earth has a red mouth, which is the grave—and her vagina. This predatory vagina also eats men, and bears a resemblance to the vagina i n T e d Hughes's Crow's First Lesson (Crow, p . 16): A n d C r o w retched again, before G o d could stop h i m . A n d woman's vulva dropped over man's neck and tightened. This aggressive vagina belongs to the negative anima w h i c h is thrust before us continually i n our culture today. O n the other hand, the animus exerts its negative force. I n places, Sylvia Plath feels that she 'is' a penis. Therefore, she wants to use this penis, aggressively, on other women. Because o f these sexual feelings, she is guilty, too, and this increases her resentment. This aggression directed against femininity is clear i n The Applicant (Ariel, p. 14), w h i c h is basically a poem about the schizoid uncertainty o f being human at all. B u t when i t comes to the genitals, all she finds is a scar, w o u n d or gash. There aren't even stitches to show that something is missing (we are here i n the perplexities o f an infant girl over her o w n lack o f a penis). So, ' H o w can we give y o u a thing?'—that is, h o w can we give y o u a penis, since y o u can't prove you've lost one? (see below, pp. 262ff). I n Leaving Early (Crossing the Water, p. 33), she writes about a protagonist w h o is seemingly slipping away after a sexual encounter w i t h a woman. I t apparently arose from an incident in the flat above, the occupant o f w h i c h Sylvia Plath disliked for her grubbiness. Here the imagery is full o f sadistic sexuality. Seeing the geraniums, she says,

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The red geraniums I k n o w . Friends, friends. They stink o f armpits A n d the involved maladies o f autumn, M u s k y as a lovebed the m o r n i n g after. M y nostrils prickle w i t h nostalgia. Henna hags: cloth o f your cloth. They toe o l d water thick as fog. As i n Tulips, the flowers remind her o f bodily hunger, and here love seems an unpalatable, musty, bodily impulse (a toeing). She is disturbed b y confusions o f perception (old water thick as fog) and b y an image o f reflection: the m i l k y berries i n a pot B o w d o w n , a local constellation Towards their admirers i n the tabletop: Mobs o f eyeballs looking up. The w o m a n has 'paired' these w i t h 'ovals o f silver tissue' (mirrors): behind the woman's flowers w h i c h disgust her (because they speak o f love or 'friendship') lurks the castrating mother: she even has the father's dead toe. The other w o m a n is described i n terms very similar to those used to describe the mother i n The Bell Jar, as i f the protagonist were itching to burst her and destroy her The roses i n the T o b y j u g Gave up the ghost last night. H i g h time. Their yellow corsets were ready to split, Y o u snored, and I heard the petals unlatch, Tapping and tickling like nervous fingers.* W e may compare the horrifying moment i n the novel, at w h i c h Esther wants to strangle her mother. The same impulse w i t h its castratory undertones lurks behind the images i n Leaving Early . . . N o w I ' m stared at B y chrysanthemums the size O f Holofernes' head, dipped in the same Magenta as this fubsy sofa. * Her rival is 'here', 'ticking your fingers on the marble table' in The Rival, Ariel, p. 53-

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Behind this poem o f dislike o f a neighbour their lurks a hatred o f parental sexuality (the primal scene). She uses the term 'make i t ' , meaning, h o w d i d we get up t o the attic? B u t under the surface lurks the ambiguity o f the sexual use o f the term. H o w did we make i t up to your attic? Y o u handed me gin in a glass bud vase. W e slept like stones. Lady, what am I doing W i t h a lung full o f dust and a tongue o f w o o d , Knee-deep i n the cold and swamped b y flowers? The phrases, 'slept like stones', 'what am I doing' suggest sexual undercurrents, and 'Holofernes' suggests sadistic impulses turned against maleness. The physical sensations are those o f a hangover: but yet o f a wooden or stony encounter, full o f threats ('cold', 'swamped'). A n d there are characteristically aggressive undertones in Lady, your r o o m is lousy w i t h flowers. W h e n y o u kick me out, that's what I ' l l remember, Me, sitting here bored as a leopard In your, jungle o f wine-bottle lamps, Velvet pillows the colour o f blood pudding . . . (my italics) Often, Sylvia Plath writes as i f she were a savage animal among the chintzes, so to speak, waiting to spring and devour, w i t h 'tigery stripes', or a lioness. The association between this hatred o f w o m a n and her suicide is evident i n the virulent poem The Tour (Crossing the Water, p. 61) directed against 'Auntie', It simply exploded one night, It went up i n smoke. A n d that's w h y I have no hair, auntie, that's w h y I choke O f f and on, as i f I just had to retch. Coal gas is ghastly stuff. Her fridge bites: her furnace explodes, her M o r n i n g Glory Pool boils, hurts and destroys people. In this bizarre landscape o f home there is a 'bald nurse': She can bring the dead to life . 7

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That is, here is a 'midwife', w h o is a female dehumanised figure, who can carry out a schizoid suicide, 'for a very small fee' (in Lady Lazarus, 'There is a charge'). This deranged poem reveals the impulse, behind her aggressiveness and her suicidal savagery, to 'pay out' Auntie, w h o is the mother, and w h o is to be made into a 'sorry mother'. I t may be linked w i t h the aggressiveness w h i c h is clear i n Lesbos (Winter Trees, p. 34): Viciousness in the kitchen! The potatoes hiss. N o doubt the Women's Liberation fanatics see this, too, as a protest against the sordidness o f what they call 'shit w o r k ' . However, i t is difficult to k n o w w h o is speaking, and h o w we are to respond to the protagonist. Some critics have suggested that Sylvia Plath is talking to an alter ego. B u t I believe we are to take the 'voices', as we do those o f The Waste Land, or Gerontion, as representative fragmentary imagos o f 'modern w o m a n ' . One o f these says, ' m y child' is an 'unstrung puppet', W h y she is schizophrenic . . . She'll cut her throat at ten i f she's mad at t w o . Lady Lazarus 'does i t ' every ten years: here the same m y t h o l o g y o f periodic suicide is applied to this woman's child as a prognosis. The waspish w o m a n in Sylvia Plath's poems is evidently here, w i t h her tiger stripes and her hate. A n d there seems no doubt that she identifies to some degree w i t h this w o m a n . I n the background here there seems to be a memory o f a lesbian affair, associated w i t h the appearance o f a bloody moon. The lesbian moment was a valuable moment: O j e w e l ! O valuable! But m e m o r y o f i t is full o f guilty images o f the castrating, cold-male-doing, moon-mother: That night the m o o n Dragged its blood bag, sick Animal U p over the harbour lights.

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A n d then grew normal, H a r d and apart and white. The scale-sheen on the sand scared me to death. W e kept picking up handfuls, l o v i n g i t , W o r k i n g i t like dough, a mulatto body, The silk grits. A dog picked up your doggy husband. H e went on. The m o o n mother appears as a sick, bloody, animal, w h o later becomes hard, apart and white. The image is o f woman's b l o o d bag body, w h i c h later becomes distant and male. 'She' becomes Lamia, rejoicing i n the 'scale-sheen' o f the sand against her hands and its fetishistic glittering quality. But the encounter turns to hate: N o w I am silent, hate U p to m y neck, Thick, thick. O vase o f acid, It is love y o u are full of. Y o u k n o w w h o y o u hate. He is hugging his ball and chain . . . 'She' has (presumably) gone back to her man. That is that. That is that. Y o u peer f r o m the door, Sad hag. 'Every woman's a whore. I can't communicate.' As w i t h the w o m a n i n Leaving Early, her contempt and scorn for the unfulfilled encounter focusses on the decor: I see your cute decor Close on y o u like the fist o f a baby I am still raw, I say I may be back. Y o u k n o w what lies are for. Even i n your Zen heaven we shan't m e e t . . . Sylvia Plath is fascinated w i t h the hate she finds in the lesbian

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woman, and her combination o f domestic hopefulness, rejection o f her o w n femininity, and the 'liberation' that has simply de­ humanised her i n the name o f 'Zen'—leaving only 'viciousness i n the kitchen'. B u t she can give as much as she gets: so, they are ' t w o venomous opposites'. Such bitter encounters between herself and w o m e n are yet another version o f 'false male doing', i n lieu o f being or becoming: a manifestation o f the malignant animus.

7 Mother and Children

O n the other hand, there are poems i n w h i c h Sylvia Plath fulfils her femininity, and justifies her assertion, ' I am a w o m a n ' . After all, she had children, and, as i n The Night Dances, knew she could not but get satisfactions f r o m them. W h e n she had a baby, we are told, she hoped i t w o u l d reinforce her identity—an enormous burden to place on the child. W e may see the enormousness o f this need i n Nick and the Candlestick (Ariel, p. 40), a poem about her little boy, the second baby. She is insomniac, and the night is nightmarish w i t h malignancy. It is a w o m b i n the earth, and she is digging d o w n into i t , as i f into the mother's inside, w h i c h is also the tomb o f death, where the father's penis is, the long-dead father, o f whose resurrection she has n o w lost all hope. I am a miner. The light burns blue. —the air is full o f poison. W a x y stalactites D r i p and thicken, tears The earthern w o m b Exudes f r o m its dead boredom. The w o m b is bored w i t h containing this candle-phallus and the tears coming from it, standing for the potential love to be obtained f r o m the father—the hope o f reflection—yield nothing but bore­ d o m , because she has n o w become indifferent, as the hope o f a new existence fades. The darkness in this cave o f night seems predatory:

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Black bat airs W r a p me, raggy shawls, C o l d homicides. They weld to me like plums. In 'encounter', as M a r t i n Buber says, the human being develops a 'mansion o f consciousness' i n w h i c h to exist: ' f r o m man to man the heavenly bread o f self-being is passed'. W h e n this process fails, all that comes f r o m the death o f encounter, f r o m the cave o f psychic petrifaction, as here, is an emanation that wraps her i n death: n o t i n a shawl like a new-born baby, but i n rags, while the air feels like a horrible death-skin, welded to her like the skin on a p l u m . The o l d petrified cave is familiar to her, w i t h its calcium icicles, or remnants o f D a d d y : i n there the echoes are to be heard—the words galloping o f f like echoes f r o m the centre, as i n Words, i n her poetic quest. B u t there is no life there—even the newts are white. They are 'holy Joes' because they have become bereft o f all live qualities and colour, in their cavernous purity, all ambiguity forsaken for piety. B u t their whiteness (despite the reference to holiness) is the purity o f hate: so, too, w i t h the fish: A n d the fish, the fish Christ! they are panes o f ice, A vice o f knives, A piranha Religion, drinking Its first c o m m u n i o n out o f m y live toes. Sylvia Plath retains, as w e have seen, the strange logic o f the infant i n her psyche. O t t o Plath died from an infection w h i c h started i n his toe. This toe was also, b y displacement, his penis, w h i c h she has internalised, and w h i c h was also (dead) inside the mother. I n this cave o f death (which is a night i n w h i c h she is suffering some deep anguish) there is a bundle o f dead penises, which are all that is left o f the dead father. The child thinks o f parental sex as a f o r m o f mutual eating, sometimes like aggressive envy, and so the penis inside the mother is predatory—not least because i t is a dead penis. There is a central problem for the i n d i v i ­ dual w h o seeks to resurrect a dead loved one. Since their m o u r n i n g

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has to do w i t h guilt, this centres around the hatred they have felt at times for the 'bad' side o f the deceased. The whole problem o f grieving has to do w i t h the problem o f enabling this bad, black side o f the dead person to rest, and o f coming to terms w i t h the 'bad' feelings one has had for the person—because b y the same infant logic, one's hostility may have contributed to their death. So, there is always a possibility that i f one resurrects the dead object, i t may turn out to be hostile and malignant. So, i n this cave o f death, the internalised penises o f the father may be malevolent—and, since they are also his gangrenous toes, they may well start i n , like piranha fish, on her toes. Their 'piety' is that o f total pure hate, and their religion that o f knives, o f taking the inner contents out o f others—so the first communion w i t h the dead father i n there may be a vampire communion, o f these frag­ ments o f dead male aggressiveness sucking her blood. But, i n the midst o f this nightmare, there is a miracle: The candle Gulps and recovers i t small altitude, Its yellows hearten. So far i n the poem w e have been pursuing psychotic phantoms w h i c h are i n a sense projections o f her o w n shrike-like hate. B u t suddenly the atmosphere is transformed b y love. She catches sight o f the baby. The candle flickers, and i t is as i f she 'gulps', and recovers her sanity. The candle is not a vast phallic menace, but only a candle, and its mollifying power can hearten her, just as elsewhere the candles can light up the eyes o f the V i r g i n and create i n them some­ thing o f the mother's soft reflecting power. The colours 'hearten': Its yellows hearten. O love, h o w d i d y o u get here? O embryo Remembering, even i n sleep, Y o u r crossed position. The blood blooms clean In y o u , ruby. The pain Y o u wake to is not yours.

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H o w d i d the baby get into that cave o f ice and death? The 'cave' n o w is not the fantasy cave, but the home, struck w i t h some icy catastrophe o f object-loss. O f course, she had hoped to find a baby i n there—herself unborn, the regressed libidinal ego, her embryo. This baby-self has been 'crossed' (a w o r d which recurs i n D y l a n Thomas for the blocked embryonic self). B u t this baby is N i c k : and yet he is also Christ (as is the unborn self i n Dylan Thomas), w h o remembers his crossed position i n the cave f r o m w h i c h H e was resurrected. N i c k is thus the focus o f a hope o f rebirth, and i n h i m there is the promise o f a new start. His blood is not liable to be emptied, as 'inner contents', b y hate, but has the value o f a 'ruby'. H e does not have to wake to her pain ('This troublous/Wringing o f hands, this dark/Ceiling w i t h o u t a star', Child, Winter Trees, p. 12). H e is not her: so through h i m she knows out-going love, n o t based on desperate identification: Love, love I have hung our cave w i t h roses, W i t h soft rugs The last o f Victoriana. As a modern w o m a n , she feels that all that Victorian emphasis on the family, on good feeling, on love, is out-of-date: but neverthe­ less, she promises the last remnant to N i c k : for his existence re­ deems her universe. The universe, she believes, is that o f modern science—mere unintelligible matter i n motion doomed b y the laws o f entropy: let i t g o : Let the stars Plummet to their dark address, Let the mercuric Atoms that cripple drip Into the terrible well, Everything goes into nothingness: all matter has become malig­ nant and poisonous i n her w o r l d . W h a t is there to set against the nothingness o f a w o r l d in which she can find nothing but blankness, hate and poison? The answer is the Dasein o f her baby's existence:

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Y o u are the one Solid the spaces lean on, envious. Y o u are the baby i n the barn. N i c k is the new-born Christ: and as such is the pivot o f the universe, since his existence as the focus o f her love, gives meaning to life. I n the first part o f the poem w e have the spectacle o f a w o r l d wrecked because i t is bereft o f love-objects, so that no reparation can be made to them. Reparation is urgently necessary here, as i t is the only way to overcome the problem o f the guilt, bound up w i t h m o u r n i n g ; the only way to let the dead father go ( w i t h all the biting elements o f envy that focus on h i m ) is to make reparation, to restore wholeness to h i m , and to make sure his ghost is not predatory. I n Daddy o f course she tries to drive a stake into his heart to lay h i m . B u t hate cannot achieve reparation: so, the internal w o m b or cave i n w h i c h the dead Daddy has been per­ sistently sought, until exasperation overcomes her, even i n Nick and the Candlestick threatens to overwhelm her whole w o r l d . Except for where her baby sleeps—and f r o m that focus o f love i t seems that the w o r l d can be redeemed. O r , at least i t can be relinquished, and let go, because o f this one 'solid'. B u t then, she sees, the 'spaces' are envious o f this love: so, as w i t h the new-born Christ, the future is still ominous. The achievement o f this poem may well have contributed to the most important gain i n Sylvia Plath's whole life: her recognition o f the separate existence o f her children, so that she did not merge them into her o w n death, a possibility more than hinted at when she wrote Edge. The Nick poem is a t r i u m p h o f love, pursued w i t h great cou­ rage—and h o w unpalatable its meaning should be to the nihilistic avant-garde, for i t demolishes al] their fanatical immoralism. Her ultimate agony between the t w o poles o f acceptance and rejection o f love can be imagined. I n For a Fatherless Son (Winter Trees, p. 33), she shows she knows what i t must be like for a child w h o is fatherless: ' Y o u w i l l be aware o f an absence'—as she was. His sky is 'like a pig's backside', blank, showing 'an utter lack o f attention'. D i d she realise what i t w o u l d be like, for her o w n children to be motherless? One day y o u may touch what's w r o n g The small skulls, the smashed blue hills, the godawful hush.

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I n orphaning her o w n children she risked depriving their w o r l d o f meaning. The new existentialism and psychoanalysis have established a connection between love, encounter, and the capacity to perceive. Sylvia Plath is poignantly aware that i t is the failure o f love that has left her w o r l d blank. I n giving birth, she hoped i n some w a y to complete the birth processes, such as are normally completed i n infancy, i n herself. This hope pervades the long dramatic poem Three Women (Winter Trees, pp. 40-52). A l t h o u g h divided between voices, and between characters, this is essentially a poem about birth, as an experience o f Sylvia Plath herself. For instance, the girl secretary declares As a child I loved a lichen-bitten name. Is this the one sin then, this old dead love o f death? (P- 4i) —surely a reference to Sylvia Plath's libidinal attachment to her dead father, and her guilt at this? I n Three Women, i t is as i f she hoped that the experience o f birth w o u l d , at last, produce a sympathetic response i n the mother— softening her face, and thus offering the opportunity o f creative reflection. This, i n its turn, w o u l d open up the possibility o f meaningful perception (or full apperception). So, i t is a cosmic response to her b i r t h she seeks—a change i n the face o f the m o o n , and i n the earth itself: Mother Earth— She is the vampire o f us all. So she supports us, Fattens us, is kind. Her m o u t h is red. I k n o w her. I k n o w her intimately— O l d winter-face, o l d barren one, old time bomb. M e n have used her meanly. She w i l l eat them. Eat them, eat them, eat them i n the end. T h e sun is d o w n . I die. I make a death. (P- 45) So, to give b i r t h is to die, i n that one is making a new life w h i c h is another life to die: the ambiguity in her m i n d between death and birth is clear here. She identifies w i t h Mother Earth, w h o is but an ultimate f o r m o f predatory femaleness. The Earth is only like her, devoted to a love o f death

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. . . A n d n o w the w o r l d conceives Its end and runs towards i t , arms held out i n love. It is a love o f death that sickens everything. (P- 45) I n the connection she makes between feelings about death and birth, and about the whole w o r l d w e exist in, w e can see h o w her problems relate to those o f human survival. Three Women opens w i t h a statement o f the indifference o f the universe: here, the m o o n , w h o is elsewhere said to display an 'O-gape'. W o m a n here is abandonee: Is she sorry for what w i l l happen? I do not think so. She is simply astonished at fertility. (p. 40) Sylvia Plath's universe (like that o f T e d Hughes i n Crow) is a dead, passive and inert one—which, because o f its sheer indif­ ference, seems to be w i t h o u t benignity. So, she is i n conflict, between being obliged to see life and yet seeing all processes as only leading towards death, as i f b y u n i ­ versal entropy. The 'red seep' o f a 'show' w h i c h indicates to the w o m a n that she is pregnant reveals to her the life-process (which is also a death process). B y contrast, f r o m this feminine bodyreality, she sees the men as 'flat': There was something about them like cardboard, and n o w I had caught i t , That flat, flat, flatness from w h i c h ideas, destructions, Bulldozers, guillotines, white chambers o f shrieks proceed, Endlessly proceed—and the cold angels, the abstractions. (p. 40) This is the w o r l d of'male doing', our schizoid w o r l d . Her w o r k at the typewriter seems 'mechanical echoes' (and w e cannot fail to connect this w i t h Sylvia Plath's view o f her o w n poetry as 'Echoes travelling o f f from the centre . . . d r y . . . indefatigable . . . ' ) . So, the w o m a n is 'found wanting', between her w o m a n l y creativity, and the 'abstractions'. . . . A m I a pulse That wanes and wanes, facing the cold angel?

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Is this m y lover then? This death, this death? (P- 4 i ) This (second) w o m a n feels that her social function is a death: she is one-dimensional w o m a n . I am dying as I sit. I lose a dimension. The trains that roar i n her ears are, like those i n the schizoid fantasy o f the bees i n Swarm, the triumph o f 'the w o r l d o f outcomes'— making life meaningless: The silver track o f time empties into the distance, The white sky empties o f its promise, like a cup. (P- 4 i ) I n the modern w o r l d , 'fertility' is an event b y w h i c h (as w i t h the first woman) the universe is merely astonished. Male doing is a mere 'pulse' among the deathliness o f the triumphant w o r l d o f the I - I t . T o the t h i r d w o m a n conception is an imposition o f life, w h i c h feels like suffering the attentions o f the swan w h o raped Leda. She is forced to reflect the identity o f another I remember the minute when I knew for sure. The face i n the pool was beautiful, but not mine A n d all I could see was dangers: doves and words, Stars and showers o f gold—conceptions, conceptions! (p. 4 i ) The 'showers o f gold' are the rains o f semen w h i c h fall on the g i r l in The Beekeeper s Daughter. They are full o f talion dangers. B u t also they are the semen falling on Danae, transcendence. So, the submission to male impregnation is full o f fear as well as blessing. I n Winter Trees (the poem, p. 11), the doves ziepietas w h i c h 'ease nothing'—presumably the 'dove descending', as a manifestation o f the H o l y Ghost, the W o r d . Instead i n Three Women: I remember a white, cold w i n g A n d the great swan, w i t h its terrible look C o m i n g at me . . . There is a snake i n swans.

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He glided b y : his eye had a black meaning. I saw the w o r l d i n it—small, mean and black . . . (pp. 41-2) Here we have something not far away f r o m the black snake, w h i c h 'worms through', the black telephone, the black shiny shoe i n w h i c h she tried to see herself. That is, this third w o m a n speaks o f male doing, w h i c h is a black phallus, i n w h i c h perhaps one may find creative reflection. B u t she was not ready: yet . . . the face W e n t on shaping itself w i t h love, as i f I was ready. Here we have something like a face i n a Francis Bacon painting, t r y i n g to be seen. Each w o m a n finds the emergence o f the new identity a terrible shock. T o the second, the white sheets i n the maternity hospital are 'bald and impossible, like the faces o f m y children' (p. 42). She speaks o f 'the little emptinesses I carry', w h i c h are 'life' w h i c h has been ' s t i t c h e d . . . into me like a rare organ'. This w o m a n has tried to lapse into the realm o f 'female element being': . . . I have tried to be natural. I have tried to be blind i n love, like other w o m e n , B l i n d i n m y bed, w i t h m y o w n dear blind sweet one, N o t looking, through the thick dark, for the face o f another. (p. 42) The w o r d 'thick' here gives us a clue: 'through the thick, w a r m furry dark, a voice cried, ' M o t h e r ! ' (The Bell Jar). This again is Sylvia Plath saying that, as she tried to respond to her baby, there is an intrusion o f the need for 'the faces o f the dead'—of Daddy, o f the mother. Even to the 'calm' first w o m a n , i n hospital 'The sheets, the faces, are white and stopped, like clocks' (p. 43). The clock face is a face w h i c h is blank, w i t h 'hieroglyphs' and 'secrets' where there should be meaningful response. This w o m a n is the w o m a n o f Tulips, depersonalized i n hospital ('swabbed and l u r i d w i t h disin­ fectants') and the good mother o f The Moon and the Yew Tree (Ariel, p. 47): The moon is m y mother. She is not sweet like M a r y .

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Her blue garments . . . Dusk hoods me i n blue n o w , like a M a r y . (Winter Trees, p. 43) She awaits her 'cargo o f agony' resignedly. The t h i r d w o m a n fears death: ' A n d what i f t w o lives leaked between m y thighs'? (p. 44). The first experiences the cruel miracle o f birth. There is no miracle more cruel than this. I am dragged b y the horses, the iron hooves. . . D a r k tunnel, through w h i c h hurtle the visitations . . . Again, this is the dark tunnel o f the suicide attempt i n The Bell Jar. But birth is the creation o f agonies, rather than j o y s : FIRST

VOICE:

I am the centre o f an atrocity. W h a t pains, what sorrows must I be mothering? Can such innocence k i l l and kill? I t milks m y life. The trees wither i n the street. (P- 44) T o be born is to be born w i t h one's deadly faults i n the psychic tissue. Inevitably the verse recalls Elm (Ariel, p. 26) : Its snaky acids hiss. I t petrifies the w i l l . These are the isolate, slow faults That k i l l , that k i l l , that k i l l . The mother fills the infant w i t h poisonous m i l k that destroys her: the child destroys the mother b y the agony o f birth and b y empty­ ing her o f her m i l k . O u t o f this comes disintegration o f the ident­ ity, and the nothingness o f the w o r l d : I am breaking apart like the w o r l d . . . M y eyes are squeezed b y this blackness. I see nothing. (Three Women, p. 45)

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Here, loss o f inner content and depersonalised bodily feelings are linked w i t h the feeling o f being no-one: and ' w h o is he, this blue, furious boy . . . ?' A red lotus opens i n its b o w l o f b l o o d ; They are stitching me up w i t h silk, as i f I were a material. (P- 45) B u t this first w o m a n finds love i n her response to her baby, while her perception becomes 'clear'. W h a t d i d m y fingers do before they held him? W h a t d i d m y heart do, w i t h its love? I have never seen a thing so clear. (p. 46) The second woman, by contrast, feels she is a creator o f corpses. O f the moon's light she says I feel i t enter me, cold, alien, like an instrument. A n d that mad, hard face at the end o f it, that O - m o u t h Open in its gape o f perpetual grieving. I t is she that drags the blood-black sea around M o n t h after m o n t h . . . (p. 46) The moon-mother w h o created her femininity and w h o governs femininity by her 'string', as by governing the menstrual tides i n women, has left her, because o f its irresponsive blankness, . . . a shadow, neither man nor w o m a n , Neither a woman, happy to be like a man, nor a man B l u n t and flat enough to feel no lack. I feel a lack . . . . . . I cannot contain m y life. (p. 46) The stars merely 'rivet' abysses i n place: and here w e have again a statement o f Sylvia Plath's predicament. She cannot relate as a person to a real universe because she is neither a w o m a n w h o is really a man and content to be that, nor a man w h o is content to be made o f ' m a l e doing'. She feels a lack o f being and so she can­ not hold on to life.

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The third w o m a n sees her girl infant as Sylvia Plath m i g h t see her potentially new-born female self: . . . m y red, terrible girl. Her cries are h o o k s . . . Her m o u t h . . . I t utters such dark sounds i t cannot be good. (P- 47) The first w o m a n sees the babies i n their ward as 'made o f water'. They have no expression, but they are also 'these miraculous ones'. She, speaking o f all Sylvia Plath's positive feelings about being a mother and woman, is satisfied to be 'a river o f m i l k ' . W i n n i c o t t speaks o f how, after the intense preoccupation o f the confinement, a w o m a n 'recovers her self-interest'. That is what is happening here: The m i r r o r gives back a w o m a n w i t h o u t deformity. The nurses give back m y clothes, and an identity. . . . Here is m y lipstick. I draw o n the o l d mouth. (p. 48) She feels (as The Applicant m i g h t feel) that i n giving birth she has i n some w a y lost a l i m b : her body is lost inner contents. The third w o m a n is 'like a w o u n d w a l k i n g out o f hospital': . . . There is an emptiness. I am so vulnerable suddenly. (P- 49) She is a w o m a n suffering the vulnerability o f primary maternal preoccupation. The second voice recovers and declares It is I . I t is I Tasting the bitterness between m y teeth. The incalculable malice o f the everyday. (P- 49)

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The first feels exposed i n this state, and protects herself w i t h a 'screen o f front-line troops' or a 'mask o f h o r n ' : . . . i t is as i f m y heart Put on a face and walked into the w o r l d . (p- 50) The third feels It was a dream, and d i d not mean a thing. (p- 50) Sylvia Plath's poetic explorations o f the special states experienced b y w o m e n i n childbirth are valuable and important for their insights. For instance, she shows here h o w the m e m o r y o f b i r t h dread is soon suppressed. B u t w e must remember she is rendering an abnormal experience o f this state. For one thing there is a serious deficiency o f genuinely felt satisfactions i n the poem, while to her everyday life is full o f incalculable malice. T o give birth is not felt to be an achievement, while play and body response to the infant bring few rewards. There is also much bewilderment. She surrounded N i c k w i t h pinned up roses, a gesture towards love. I n Three Women one character says: I have papered his r o o m w i t h b i g roses, I have painted little hearts on everything. (P- 5 i ) — w h i c h is very different because she is evidently only going through the motions o f love. ' N o r m a l i t y ' is associated b y Sylvia Plath w i t h gestures w h i c h still seem to her meaningless, although one makes them. Each w o m a n expresses schizoid feelings: Parts, bits, cogs, the shining multiples. (p- 41) The face i n the pool was beautiful, but not mine

(P- 4 i ) . . . I have tried and tried I have stitched life into me like a rare organ . . . I have tried not to think too hard. I have tried to be natural. (p. 42) B i r t h for Sylvia Plath was the focus o f anxieties about the loss o f

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inner contents, o f love as emptying, o f feeling a mechanical organism at the mercy o f immense forces. I am dragged b y the horses, the iron h o o v e s . . . * (P- 44) It leads only to the failure o f reflection, and still more formlessness and meaninglessness i n consequence. She has unusual insights into the special state o f the mother. But, i n her awareness, these insights are so disturbed by her schizoid perspectives that what she largely conveys is a fear and hatred o f female creativity. This is w h y women's liberationists applaud her, because what they want to be liberated f r o m is being female and being human. Even the first w o m a n hears 'The swifts . . . shrieking like paper rockets' (p. 50)—her w o r l d is full o f terrors, while her positive feelings are almost caricatured: . . . I hear the m o o o f cows. I a m reassured. I am reassured. These are the clear bright colours o f the nursery, The talking ducks, the happy lambs. I am simple again. (P- 5 i ) Like Heidegger, Sylvia Plath sometimes despises all that is ordinary, and here her caricature o f the ' c o w ' k i n d o f woman smacks o f that 'schizoid superiority' w h i c h is exercised against those normal satis­ factions o f love the schizoid cannot understand, but really envies. T h o u g h one w o m a n says I shall meditate upon normality . . .

(P. 5i) i t is as i f she is going through the motions o f love, w i t h o u t really k n o w i n g what i t is. * See T e d Hughes, Gog: The rider of iron, on the horse shod with vaginas of iron Gallops over the w o m b that makes no claim, that is of stone (Wodwo, p. 153)

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I do not w i l l h i m to be exceptional. It is the exception that interests the devil. I t is the exception that climbs the sorrowful hill O r sits i n the desert and hurts his mother's heart. I w i l l h i m to be common, T o love me as I love h i m , A n d to marry what he wants and where he w i l l .

(P. 5 i ) This w o m a n does not want her child to be Christ. The love child is equated w i t h the c o m m o n and unexceptional person: by con­ trast, the schizoid individual is superior, but suffers. Sylvia Plath seems not to be w i l l i n g to admit that even the loved child is driven (because he too is human) to ask the existential questions—though he may ask them w i t h less desperation. The third w o m a n is aware o f a loss: . . . W h a t is i t I miss? Shall I ever find i t , whatever i t is? (P- 51) The swans have gone f r o m her life: she is no longer Leda. Yet while Sylvia Plath seems to feel that domesticity is a loss, after the big dramas o f birth, the whole poem ends on a surprising note o f hopefulness and life, despite insecurity. The streets may turn to paper suddenly, but I recover F r o m the long fall, and find myself in bed, Safe on the mattress, hands braced, as for a fall. I find myself again. I am no shadow T h o u g h there is a shadow starting from m y feet. I am a wife. The city waits and aches. The little grasses Crack through stone, and they are green w i t h life. (P- 52) The image o f the grass is the same symbol as that i n Das Lied von derErde: a symbol o f continuity o f life. She is not a shadow. The shadow has attached itself to her body and continues to speak o f death, but also o f her body-existence. She has recovered her selfinterest, as each w o m a n has, being to some extent confirmed b y the existence o f the child, the real experience o f birth that fdled

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their emptiness w i t h substance, w h i c h then came forth to respond to t h e m : and so teaches love, 'a tenderness that did not tire, some­ thing healing', she is aware o f the primacy o f love, even for one w h o sees other lovers 'Black and flat as shadows'—because she finds it so hard to understand this emotion. Her babies aroused i n Sylvia Plath deep feelings o f love, but also puzzlements about the nature o f created life and bafflements about h o w to respond. I n Morning Song (Ariel, p. n ) , the baby is like a watch 'set going' b y love—love seeming a mechanical act, as i n The Applicant, Berck-plage and elsewhere. Its 'bald cry' seems inhuman and i t 'takes its place among the elements'. A t the same time the baby feels human to her, and she calls i t ' Y o u ' and teases it playfully as 'fat'. O f course, in a sense the poet is registering the normal response by w h i c h w e all find a new baby primitive and, as yet, less than a person. She is recording the k i n d o f (schizoid) disturbances experienced by every gravid w o m a n . B u t the especial vividness o f her poem arises from her feeling o f schizoid detach­ ment f r o m her baby w h o seems, n o w he has left her body, to be isolated i n space, unrelated, and terrifyingly separate. That the baby is separate arouses i n her all the schizoid fear o f the loss o f confirmation o f the identity when a baby is not creatively reflected b y the mother: W e stand round blankly as walls. Since the baby, as 'inner contents', was distilled f r o m her i t mirrors her. Yet i n the child she sees her o w n self dissolve. Her inner contents being born out o f her, she loses the sense that she is the baby's mother: the image is one o f non-reflection that is the basis o f effacement. I ' m no more your mother Than the cloud that distils a m i r r o r to reflect its o w n slow Effacement at the wind's hand. One w o u l d expect the emergence o f the child as a separate being to deepen the feelings o f being a mother by the new reality o f relationship. B u t her interest in the child seems to evaporate becauseit isno longer 'her',filling her inner space w i t h something real. From her deep feelings o f insecurity o f existence however come the beautiful images in Morning Song o f evanescence evoked (as i n

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all o f us) b y the presence o f a new baby: ' A l l night your m o t h breath F l i c k e r s . . . ' The rest o f the poem is a deeply sensitive account o f the feelings o f a mother about her new child, given w i t h great control and economy, the images o f transience persisting: Y o u r clear vowels rise like balloons. Balloons are symbols o f evanescence w h i c h always fascinate chil­ dren, because they belong to coming and going—along w i t h fluff, rainbows and bubbles. They are full o f breath: y o u can see through t h e m : they are empty, except o f air. Balloons (Ariel, p. 80), reveals her o w n characteristic fascination w i t h them. T o her the Christmas balloons are 'soul-animals'. They seem like things w i t h life, but are full o f nothing but the invisible air that comes f r o m one's inside. As W i n n i c o t t points out the child's con­ cept o f 'spirit, soul, anima' derives from its fascination w i t h bub­ bles and breath, and 'whether i t comes primarily f r o m w i t h i n or w i t h o u t ' ('Primitive Emotional Development' i n 1968a, p. 154). T h o u g h they are capable o f delighting the heart 'like wishes', balloons can also vanish like breath or identities. Significantly, they vanish b y an act o f desire—when they are bitten: Y o u r small Brother is making His balloon squeal like a cat. Seeming to see A funny pink w o r l d he m i g h t eat on the other side o f it, He bites, Then sits Back, fat j u g Contemplating a w o r l d clear as water. A red Shred i n his little fist. Balloons does many things i n its small compass and w i t h controlled economy. Sylvia Plath makes the poem out o f her characteristic intuition that a baby wants to eat the w o r l d he sees, out o f desire for it. The lines themselves enact the baby's movements. The w o r d 'jug' gives us the child's podgy shape, his incorporative (empty j u g ) feeling and also the inside-out feeling one has when a balloon

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bursts and the expectation o f floating on i t is frustrated: is the clear water i n the j u g , or is the j u g i n the water? Something that expected to be filled, at any rate, is not. Having bitten, his w o r l d becomes 'clear as water'. The internal rhyme 'red/shred' enacts the child's astonished look at the scrap o f rubber i n his hand, and echoes the little explosion o f the bursting o f the balloon, w h i c h is only n o w heard, as an echo, so great is his astonishment. The 'red shred' seems like a scrap o f torn flesh i n the grip o f a child w h o feels that the extinction o f his w o r l d has occurred because he has somehow vented his oral cannibalistic impulses o n it. Sylvia Plath often writes out o f her existential insecurity as i f she expected the w o r l d to pop at any minute and become no more than a 'red shred' i n one's fist, as i t often seems likely to do, to an infant. The astonishing truth seems to be that this creative and playful poem about evanescence was written i n the last week o f her life. One o f the most beautiful and yet most disturbing o f Sylvia Plath's poems is also about a baby—The Night Dances (Ariel, p. 27). I t seems significant to me that for a long time I often read this poem and never brought i t into focus. I t meant hardly anything to me until I read a remark b y A n d r e w B r i n k that i t dealt w i t h 'childhood innocence'. Even so, i t was some time before I could grasp the poem at all. This experience seems to me n o w an important part o f the poem's effect. It is perhaps relevant to record the k i n d o f discussion I have found this poem generate i n seminars. Students are aware that someone is smiling at someone else and that intense feelings are involved. B u t they cannot at first be sure w h o the persons are. They feel there is perhaps a sexual meaning, implied b y the words 'night dances', 'hot petals', and the references to ' w a r m and human gestures'. They see that there is dread and a k i n d o f repulsion behind the words 'bleeding and peeling'. Yet they cannot bring into focus t w o human beings relating to one another. I t is only when they are obliged to consider more thoroughly the implica­ tions o f ' y o u r small breath' and 'the drenched grass/Smell o f your sleeps' that they begin to see that the poem is about, or to, a baby. Even then, they find i t difficult to decide whether the baby is yet born or n o t : the 'leaps and spirals' seem like the circular move­ ments o f the foetus i n the w o m b , yet to make 'gestures' i t must surely be outside the mother?

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A t the same time, students are troubled b y the lack o f hopeful­ ness i n the poem. They feel one should feel hopeful about a baby. Yet terrible stretches o f v o i d seem to lie behind i t : The comets Have such a space to cross Such coldness, forgetfulness. T h r o u g h the black amnesias o f heaven. and the poem ends, dreadfully, 'Nowhere'. Recognition o f the strange moods o f preoccupation i n w o m e n and men, i n relation to babies and infants, is rare i n literature. There are moments i n Tolstoy, and i n D . H . Lawrence. Coleridge, in pondering over the cradle i n Frost at Midnight enters into the developing life o f his baby.. I t is as i f he follows the development o f the mother i n relationship to her infant. A t first he, the infant and the flame merge: i n Winnicott's language he allows the infant to make h i m into the 'subjective object'. O r shall w e say, he experiences what the mother feels in relation to a child, w h i c h is to 'forfeit her self-interest' and to allow the infant to believe, to all intents and purposes, that he 'is' the mother, which, psychically speaking, he still is. B u t , as he progresses through this state i n imagination, he gradually 'finds' the baby as a separate person. He also 'finds' himself: I was reared In the great city, pent m i d cloisters d i m B u t thou . . . A n d he wishes for the baby that God shall f o r m his identity b y his creative reflection: He shall m o u l d T h y spirit, and by giving make i t ask. The effect o f this is to enable Coleridge to 'find' for his child a future i n w h i c h there is an intense and vital relationship between the new being and the outer w o r l d : apperception. A t the same time Coleridge himself 'recovers his self-interest'. The difference between the me and the not-me is celebrated as a process o f j o y i n

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being alive while the universe is felt to be benign—an environ­ ment that fosters g r o w t h throughout the seasons, and a rich sense o f being alive. T h o u g h the existential dread is still there under the surface ('Heard only i n the trances o f the blast'), there could be no deeper realisation o f the feeling o f being real and alive, i n a u n i ­ verse i n w h i c h one is at home.* This k i n d o f existential security is exactly what Sylvia Plath cannot feel. The effect o f the baby's presence o n her identity and her sense o f existence is to dissolve them into vast voids, and into a placelessness o f non-being. Yet both poems begin w i t h the k i n d o f insight recorded b y D . W . W i n n i c o t t when he says that 'the mother must be able to allow her baby to treat her as the "subjective object" or to let her baby believe she is him (1968a, p. 99). Entering into Sylvia Plath's experience, however, opens up for us something akin to Winnicott's experience when he first began to realise that 'there is no such thing as a baby', before the emerging human person is created: there is only a 'nursing couple'. Sylvia Plath is holding her baby—she is aware that i t is breathing and is w a r m and human, and also has a smell. Yet what puzzles her is the relationship between herself and the new being, as an identity. W h a t does this consist of? The situation, where she is concerned, is bedevilled b y her o w n ability to receive what is being offered: ' w h y am I given . . . ? ' As W i n n i c o t t points out, there is no individual at the beginning: there is only a 'set-up': there is only a complexity o f gestures offered and gestures received—in terms o f handling, response, and contact i n other ways w h i c h eventually establishes the 'kernel' or psychic baby. Moreover, 'The beginning is potentially terrible because o f the anxieties I have mentioned and because o f the paranoid state that follows closely on the baby's first integration, and also on the first instinctual movements, bringing to the baby, as they do, a quite new meaning to object relationships' (ibid.). Sylvia Plath is aware o f these dangers—because she herself seems not to have experienced a mothering w h i c h could prevent feelings o f disintegration or overcome the dread o f external persecutions. In consequence she is all too aware o f the terrible aspects o f the stage and its potentialities for disaster. She is left w i t h the paranoid * A fuller discussion of this poem is given in the present author's Dylan Thomas; the Code of Night, p. 7.

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state o f this moment i n infancy. This evokes i n her feelings o f disintegration and loss o f contact, w h i c h i n The Night Dances t h r o w up the chief symbols o f the p o e m : A smile fell in the grass Irretrievable! So your gestures flake offW a r m and human, then their pink light Bleeding and peeling T h r o u g h the black amnesias o f heaven. W h y am I given These lamps, these planets Falling like blessings, like flakes Six-sided, white O n m y eyes, m y lips, m y hair Touching and melting. Nowhere. I n these lines she expresses universal existential truths. Yet at the same time they are presented i n the desperate perspectives o f the schizoid individual. The t r u t h is that all relationship and identity are based on gestures the poem describes—signs w h i c h are no more than an expression or signal launched b y the individual into space. W h e n they are received and interpreted they become a language w h i c h has meaning for both beings. B u t i f they are not received they can indeed soar away into space for ever, meaning­ less and futile, like the gestures o f a dying spaceman lost f r o m a rocket ship. This sense o f the essential isolation o f beings i n space is often evoked i n us all by an infant. Sylvia Plath also sees, although she cannot grasp i t , that there is a phenomenological meaning i n the child's movements w h i c h is an expression o f its o w n self-directed freedom, as well as being something that belongs to 'encounter' w i t h the mother. Here some observations by the D u t c h phenomenologist and biologist, F. J. J. Buytendijk on the nature o f play seem relevant. He sees the 'spontaneous drive to movement i n the youthful organism' as a

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'drive to freedom'. Marjorie Grene (1968) gives an account o f his views thus: Play movements are goalless, undirected. They are circular, capable or repetition, and hence rhythmical. W e can see this in the rhythmical movements o f infants, w h i c h are produced i n circumstances o f boredom, impatience, or pain—whenever there is a situation o f confinement, or 'unfreedom'. W h a t is i n question here, Buytendijk argues, is a spontaneous drive to movement i n the youthful organism: i n the last analysis, a drive to freedom . . . I n the consequent r h y t h m o f tension and relaxa­ tion, the sense o f 'a promise that's kept', we get the essential dynamic o f play. (p. 156) Sylvia Plath shows herself intuitively aware o f the meaning o f her baby's circular movements, which express a claim for a kind o f 'freedom'. She relates them to her o w n desire for freedom— freedom from non-being and isolation. Y e t she cannot quite make the link, and ends only on that dreadful empty note, 'Nowhere'. Her poem is written out o f the experience o f a mother w h o does not k n o w (in her 'being') h o w to reflect in this creative way, to 'give the baby back what he brings' (and return a 'promise that's kept'). His gifts are tragically lost, being o n l y 'movements w i t h ­ out an end i n view'. She herself is preoccupied w i t h the horror o f not being creatively reflected. So she imagines the terror o f an unreflected baby, and feels deep p i t y for i t . B u t then, the p i t y establishes a bridge. As W i n n i c o t t says, the consequences o f non-reflection are ter­ rible. I f things go right, there is 'the beginning o f a significant exchange w i t h the w o r l d , a t w o - w a y process i n w h i c h selfenrichment alternates w i t h the discovery o f meaning in the w o r l d o f seen things'. B u t i f things go w r o n g perception takes the place o f apperception.* Sylvia Plath cannot find this self-enrichment i n herself, i n relationship to her baby, though she d i m l y sees that i t m i g h t be there: . . . I shall not entirely Sit emptied o f beauties, the gift * Coleridge knew of this problem and conveys it in his Dejection: an Ode. In this, in relation to problems of love, he looks at the thin clouds and stars, but cries, 'I see, not feel, how beautiful they are'.

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O f your small breath . . . W h y am I given These l a m p s . . . Instead o f a 'significant exchange w i t h the w o r l d ' she sees the infant's gestures as 'irretrievable' givings o u t o f 'inner contents', which, like the thin abstractions o f mathematics, may as well dis­ appear into the vacant universe for ever: A n d h o w w i l l your night dances Lose themselves. I n mathematics? Such pure leaps and spirals Surely they travel The w o r l d forever . . . 'Movements w i t h o u t an end i n view' as Buytendijk calls the play movements o f the youthful organism, go off into endless infinity. She can see that, i n making gestures, the infant is seeking the response that w i l l enable h i m to find a rich mutual reationship w i t h the w o r l d , such as Coleridge could enjoy wishing o n his baby i n Frost at Midnight. She sees that this impulse is like the g r o w t h o f lilies, fulfilling themselves as lilies, arum or tiger, f u l ­ filling their nature f r o m energies w i t h i n themselves: Their flesh bears no relation. C o l d folds o f ego, the calla, A n d the tiger, embellishing itself— Spots, and a spread o f hot petals. The comets Have such a space to cross, Such coldness, forgetfulness. So your gestures flake off-— The baby is present: she can smell h i m i n his cot, and his sleeps and his excretions (that make the baby-smell). She recognises these as gifts for her. They are her lilies: yet lilies, while symbols o f purity and innocence, are also associated w i t h death. Here w e may recall the terrifying Edge where she speaks o f the 'sweet deep throats o f

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the night flower'. I n this poem is a subdued imagery o f a lily o f death, white and stiff, b y contrast w i t h the roses o f the children's cheeks, which, like a m o u t h , i t is consuming. 'Their flesh bears no relation' here means that 'the g r o w i n g flesh o f the lily is quite different from the g r o w i n g self o f the baby'. Also, 'the g r o w i n g flesh o f the lily has to bear no problem o f relationship', b y ambiguity. The lily, she says, does not have the problems y o u have i n fulfilling itself as a being. The lily's g r o w t h is cold and egoistic. I t simply becomes itself. B y contrast, the baby's self-realisation depends upon the mother's capacity for 'relation', and the brave signals the child sends across the void, like comets. This is quite different, and dreadful, because i t depends upon the capacity to receive—and so this dependency may not 'work'.* The calla is one kind o f lily, and the tiger l i l y another: both are impersonal stuff, molecular structures and energies determining whether the thing shall become one k i n d o f flower or another, w i t h spots, or merely 'a spread o f hot petals'. Y e t i n the image there is something o f a terror o f the mysterious energies o f life, b y w h i c h a baby grows as lilies g r o w : o f life itself spreading and u n ­ folding. The lilies 'spread' and the child's movements speak b o t h o f ever-going-out dynamics o f functional cycles and the 'drive to freedom'. For the baby's self-realisation is something w h i c h belongs not o n l y to the g r o w t h o f tissue, but also to the realm o f personality. Yet this can never be more than the flaking off o f gestures i n space, like the distant signals made b y a comet's fire. The human identity forms on the verge o f non-existence. I n normal processes, accord­ ing to W i n n i c o t t , there is a development: ' W h e n I look, I am seen, so I e x i s t . . . ' Sylvia Plath cannot hope for such confidences i n her baby, because she does not have such confidence herself. The gestures that should establish that he is seen become snowflakes dissolving and melting into nowhere: Six-sided, white O n m y eyes, m y lips, m y hair * Marion Milner (1969), in discussing her patient Susan's symbolism in draw­ ings, sees one, of an imp walking down the stalk of a lily as 'herself being born out of a state of fusion with me, represented by the dark-centred lily, a real lily, because she was once really fused with her mother's body' (pp. 326 ff.).

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Touching and melting. Nowhere. ' W e all go into the dark', as T . S. Eliot said: but here the recognisably human and w a r m baby seems to dissolve into the vacant interstellar spaces, before he has begun to be. The meaning she begins to utter dissolve like 'forgetful snow' into the 'black amnesias' o f heaven before there is anyone to receive them. T w o comments from a student discussion o f this poem seem relevant here: first, an exasperated remark f r o m a girl that the mother should have received what was offered. There is something disastrously w r o n g when a w o m a n cannot, and w e feel angry about i t . The other was a perceptive remark f r o m a man—that there is no suggestion here o f backing f r o m a husband or anyone else. M o t h e r and infant are terribly alone i n their enigma.

8 Be(e)ing

'The sting o f bees took away m y father.' As we have seen, at the age o f eight or thereabouts, Sylvia Plath felt that her source o f being had been taken away. I n one series o f poems she makes a poignant, positive search for being: the 'bee' poems. These poems were written during the period when she was l i v i n g i n a Devon village and was trying to enter into a normal relationship w i t h the community and the natural w o r l d . Yet that w o r l d is coloured intensely b y her strange subjective life, so that, for instance, i n The Bee Meeting, a procedure for manipulating bees, a quite commonplace event i n rural life, seems to her like a nightmare ritual, an atrocity. The symbols belong to her private w o r l d which w e have already examined: the queen bee is 'female element being', while the swarm represents her k i n d o f identity— composed o f fragments of'male doing', w h i c h is 'the m i n d o f the h i v e , can be manipulated, and threatens to implode. I t is an eminendy schizoid-paranoid image. Straw hives are breasts or mausoleums; wooden ones, or bee-boxes, are unopened gifts or coffins. Her bee-hives excite her because they seem to contain the secrets o f maleness and femaleness, o f love, hate (stings) and substance (honey): but, since they come from Daddy, w h o is dead, they are also very threatening. The 'bee' poems i n Ariel and elsewhere are among her most successful. They are records o f a sensitive perception o f the w o r l d in terror, apprehension, strange j o y , and hope, and in them she encounters ambivalence—the mixture o f love and hate w h i c h is humanness. I n The Beekeeper's Daughter (The Colossus, p. 75), the child investigates a bumblebee's solitary burrow:

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. . . Kneeling d o w n I set m y eye to a hole-mouth and meet an eye Round, green, disconsolate as a tear. The hole she is looking i n is not the entrance to the hive, but to a 'solitary' bee's house. Here the child is looking for reflection. B u t she does not look i n the eye o f the hive w h i c h is a breast (and so the mother's body). She peers i n instead at a solitary 'house' i n the grass: a bumblebee's (mouth-) hole. Daddy, the expert on bumblebees, the maestro w i t h his baton, has perhaps hidden the secret i n the ground? Her eye meets an eye—actually the 'Easter egg' i n w h i c h the queen bee is going to winter. B u t , i n that she finds her eye reflected, i t is also her femininity. The image expresses the child's intense desire to mate w i t h her father and to find herself i n h i m : Father, bridegroom, i n this Easter egg Under the coronal o f sugar roses The queen bee marries the winter o f your year. The bumblebee's tunnel is an 'Easter egg' because the possi­ bility o f resurrection lies for Sylvia Plath i n her union w i t h the father. The Easter egg is perhaps a m e m o r y o f the continental k i n d made o f a h o l l o w sugar shell, containing a panorama into w h i c h y o u can look f r o m one end. The child is looking into the bumble­ bee's tunnel, w h i c h she feels is like that k i n d o f sugar egg. The sugar egg is decorated w i t h sugar roses, which are a bride's garland to her hopes. The father is associated w i t h winter because he is dead. The roses i n the garden, the roses on the sugar peepshow and the roses on Daddy's grave are lying on the ground over his bumblebee's tunnel, i n w h i c h her hopes are buried. This seasonal element gives the bee poems what A n d r e w B r i n k calls 'the pull o f nature's regenerative cycle'. A n d yet even her experience o f natural living patterns is full o f dread. I n the first bee poem i n Ariel, The Bee Meeting (p. 60), a group o f individuals are coming to meet her. They are coming to ensure the cohesion o f a swarm b y removing all the queens except one. This is a quite normal rural event, i n N o r t h T a w t o n , but to Sylvia Plath i t is an exhausting trial o f the identity, involving deep threats o f death: Whose is that long white box i n the grove . . .

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She can survive the incident only b y magic and by being brave enough to stand petrified, and w i t h d r a w n enough, to be untouched b y the knives she feels to be flying: ' I am the magician's g i r l w h o does not flinch . . . ' The bees represent sweetness, the honey she cannot feel to be in herself, but deeply desires: ' I am no source o f honey . . . ' The queen bee holds the swarm together: she is the queen p i n to the identity. Bees delight i n freedom, and i n con­ tinuity : 'The bees are flying. They taste the spring.' They compose an identity (the swarm) w h i c h is composed o f a seeming infinity o f individual impersonal creatures. B u t bees can also be malignant, and can penetrate in an uncanny way, like a cloud or emanation. I n a host they are black and obey strange laws o f instinct as a group: they seem to have a 'mind'—and so they could be a cloud o f invading thought, to threaten her thoughts. Bees fascinate Sylvia Plath, therefore, because they symbolise dissociation o f identity and yet a vitality and unity o f being she desires b u t deeply fears. They may be the verb 'to be' but are dispersed as a swarm o f doing. So, from the beginning, the 'agent for bees' brings both a hope and a threat. The poem opens w i t h an ordinary rustic scene: W h o are these people at the bridge to meet me? They are the villagers— The rector, the midwife, the sexton, the agent for bees. Is 'the agent for bees' i n apposition to the sexton? Is 'the sexton, the agent for bees'? I f so, perhaps be(e)ing is i n death where Daddy is? Those coming to meet her—over the bridge, as i f f r o m one w o r l d to another—are the rector (who is concerned w i t h the soul, the inner life), the midwife (concerned w i t h birth), the sexton and the 'agent' w h o m i g h t also be the sexton: In m y sleeveless summery dress I have no protection, A n d they are all gloved and covered, w h y d i d nobody tell me? They are smiling and taking out veils tacked to ancient hats. B y contrast w i t h normal people she feels exposed to dangers against w h i c h they are 'gloved' and 'covered' by the normal armour o f identity. Their smiling seems to her to show an enviable familiarity, or perhaps a conspiracy against her—there is a paranoid note in her panics: ' w h y did nobody tell me?'. . . 'does

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nobody love me?' The hats are 'ancient', showing that the others are experienced i n dealing w i t h this vital force that threatens her, a g i r l i n her sleeveless summer dress—'summery' as i f she expects j o y and relaxation (honey)—but yet fears i t : I am nude as a chicken neck, does nobody love me? W h y a chicken neck? She does not say 'a chicken's neck'. The neck is not attached to the chicken—it is a depersonalised object w i t h w h i c h she identifies herself, goosepimpled like the neck o f a plucked chicken. The 'chicken neck' has been chopped off. That w h i c h most resembles a 'chicken neck' is thus a penis, w h i c h has the same goosepimpled skin. Standing there i n fear at her exposed state she feels like a castrated penis, exposed. ( W h e n Esther is first confronted w i t h a man's genitals i n The Bell jar, she 'can think o f nothing but turkey neck'.) Here the fear o f implosion (the bees emerging f r o m a b o x threatening to enter into the inside o f her identity) makes her feel i n her 'sleeveless' dress that, while the others are covered up, her internalised penis (which she has stolen) makes her especially vulnerable. Since she identifies herself w i t h the father's penis, she feels that i f this is attacked (castrated), her whole identity w i l l suffer. The castration fear is related to her Electral feelings o f excitement, directed sexually at father's bees: at a deeper level castration is feared at the hands o f the mother (the queen bee seeking talion revenge). Interestingly, the phrase 'does nobody love me?' suggests that whoever d i d love her w o u l d protect her, rather than invade her (which is what she most fears). So, when the 'secretary o f bees' protects her, she feels this is love: the w o m a n buttons 'the slit from m y neck to m y knees'. Even i n such a simple phrase there is a schizoid element, evoking the feeling i n a schizoid person that the smock she enters is, like her identity, 'slit' from top to b o t t o m , 'slit' being a w o r d here w i t h a violent undercurrent (Cf. the cant w o r d for the female genital, 'gash'). I t is a female identity which is very vulnerable (a w o m a n has a 'slit' rather than a penis). N o w I am milkweed silk, the bees w i l l not notice. They w i l l not smell m y fear, m y fear, m y fear. She n o w looks like a silky weed: the real w o m a n ( w i t h breasts)

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has become 'milkweed silk': so the bees w h i c h seem to be hunting out her vulnerable human femininity w i l l be deceived. She has become depersonalised, and so, safe. Her fear (so insis­ tently repeated, as though w i t h the throbbing o f her heart) is that o f 'being found', and imploded. Whenever she becomes excited by the intense sexuality that surrounds bees and flowers, she withdraws into petrified depersonalisation—as i n Tulips, and The Beekeeper. Here she is fasci­ nated b y the fact that everyone is becoming depersonalised: becoming protected not only from the bees, but from recognition (to her, f r o m dangerous 'meeting'). They lose their identities ('their smiles and their voices are changing'): W h i c h is the rector n o w , is i t that man i n black? W h i c h is the midwife, is that her blue coat? Everybody is nodding a square black head, they are knights in visors, Breastplates o f cheesecloth knotted under the armpits. Their smiles and their voices are changing. I am led through a beanfield. H o w secure is one i n this armour? She is led as though blind. The breastplates are only cheesecloth. Everyone is becoming an auto­ maton. Her observation is uncanny, excited as her perception is b y a horrible expectancy: the tinfoil strips to scare the birds seem like people w i n k i n g ; the flowers have black eyes; the leaves are like 'bored hearts' (that is, identities pierced by implosion). The tendrils seem to be dragging blood clots—inner contents drawn out o f the bored heart—up strings. The ordinary rural allotment becomes a place o f sacrificial horror. This fear o f violation seems to belong to an intense fantasy o f having been ravished b y the father, such as Freud found i n many patients. (Later analysts came to believe this to be a fantasy o f talion retribution for incestuous urges.) Her identity becomes one w i t h the villagers—who have, however, lost their identities i n the process. Her veil moulds to her face—like a death-mask. The villagers are being k i n d to her: they give her a hat fit for a pretty girl. B u t the black veil is like a w i d o w ' s veil, and she is terrified b y its effect o f blurring the boundaries between me and not me. M a k i n g her one o f them i n

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their kindness seems a threat to her existence rather than a confirmation o f identity b y social contact. N o w they are giving me a fashionable white straw Italian hat A n d a black veil that moulds to m y face, they are making me one o f them. Inclusion in the group fills her w i t h deeper terror: the grove is 'shorn', the circle o f hives makes her feel that her sacrifice is imminent. Behind the poem there seems to be the k i n d o f fear found i n children b y Melanie Klein's analysis o f their fantasies, o f parental retribution, and symbolised i n myths such as that o f Abraham and Isaac: are they to sacrifice her as the 'shorn' lamb? They are leading me to the shorn grove, the circle o f hives. Is i t the hawthorn that smells so sick? The barren body o f hawthorn, etherising its children. H a w t h o r n has a sickly smell. I t bears haws so i t is not strictly 'barren': but to her i t seems as i f the 'sick' smell is an anaesthetic w h i c h the tree is employing on the insects w h i c h come to its blossoms (breasts).* For a long time I could not see w h y she should call the hawthorn's a 'barren body'. Then a teacher i n Australia pointed out that hawthorn is called 'mother-die' b y children and according to superstition must not be taken home as this could bring the death o f a member o f the family. I t is avoided by bees and butterflies, perhaps because o f its 'decayed fish' smell, and is pollinated b y flies. So, the barren hawthorn 'etherising' its children is yet another symbol o f the blank-faced mother. The smell i n her anxiety ('smell m y fear') perhaps evoked memories o f being given shock treatment i n hospital, w h i c h felt like a parental punishment. In the next stanzas her fears deepen, because o f the disguised impersonal figures, the blankness (white suit, white hive), and the loss o f distinguishing characteristics. ('Is i t . . . someone I know?') Her terror makes her want to run. The gorse has 'yellow purses' (containing golden inner contents, like honey) and 'spiky armoury' (reflecting her o w n urgent need to defend her identity): so, i t 'hurts her' b y its intensity o f impingement on her n o n ­ existence. She feels paralysed, as i n a nightmare: * Cf. 'the death-stench of a hawthorn', Whitsun (Crossing the Water, p. 6b).

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I cannot run, I am rooted, and the gorse hurts me W i t h its yellow purses, its spiky armoury. I could not run w i t h o u t having to r u n forever. I f she tried to escape i t could only be to such a freedom as was utter dissipation (like a dissipated swarm o f bees): an ultimate loss o f existence. The image has beneath i t the 'vacuum' w h i c h implosion threatens. Yet, i n striking contrast w i t h the vacuum at the heart o f the self, is the composite swarm identity. A n d some­ where w i t h i n the hive (which is herself) is the Queen Bee w i t h w h i c h she yearns to identify. The white hive is snug as a virgin, Sealing off her brood cells, her honey, and quietly h u m m i n g . This hive identity is 'snug' only as long as i t is undisturbed: the virgin is one w h o has been able to keep her inner contents 'snug'.* W h e n the smoke rolls i t seems the end o f everything: the situation parallels her fear o f implosion i n reverse: Smoke rolls and scarves i n the grove. The m i n d o f the hive thinks this is the end o f everything. Here they come, the outriders, on their hysterical elastics. I f I stand very still, they w i l l think I am cow parsley, A gullible head untouched b y their animosity . . . She is fascinated by the way the swarm can behave like a m i n d , sending out single outrider bees like tentacles (on 'hysterical elastics'). W h i l e she can o u t w i t these b y being unresponsive (and w i t t y ) , the devotees are hunting for the queen. W e have three problems o f identity symbolised: the collective bee-identity, w h i c h fears annihilation by smoke; the poet w h o opposes gullibility to animosity; the queen w h o is hiding, eating honey, is 'very clever', and 'old, old, old'. Sylvia Plath identifies w i t h this queen (who is perhaps her true self, w h o 'must live another year'). She feels threatened by the new virgins, w h o w o u l d ( i f not removed) destroy the o l d queen or take off sections o f the swarm w i t h them. A n d she puts this i n a characteristically ironic w a y : 'The upflight o f the murderess into a heaven that loves her.' * As Brink points out, in Stings she writes of having 'a self to recover, a queen./ Is she dead, is she sleeping?'—when the whole weight of the poem is against making any such recovery.

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W h e n a new queen soars into the air i n the bride flight she is pursued b y drones seeking to mate w i t h her. The bee w h i c h succeeds is torn to pieces—castrated and annihilated. T o a schizoid individual this murder-love w o u l d obviously be fascinating, and w o u l d symbolise deep feelings about relationship—and thus also elements w i t h i n the self. W h a t fascinates Sylvia Plath here is the symbolism o f her search for the female element, the 'false male doing' o f the swarm, and the threats o f break up o f the collective identity b y the bride-flights w h i c h the villagers seek to prevent. Yet their very desire to avoid chaos and preserve unity seems a threat. The o l d queen seems almost u n w i l l i n g to live another year: the o l d queen (the weary true self?) is ungrateful and does not show herself. There seems no escape f r o m her dilemmas. A t the centre o f the experience, undergoing fears o f a change o f identity, she finds a drama o f death and rebirth, o f the re­ straint o f murderous impulses, o f reparation, o f the necessity for gratitude. B u t gratitude does not come, and there is neither death, nor birth. As often i n Sylvia Plath we have an approach to a realisation o f the capacity o f love, and a w a y o f escape f r o m her death-circuit. O n l y a 'curtain o f wax' (a wall o f glass, a bell jar) seems to divide her f r o m the 'bride flight', and the discovery o f gratitude and touch w i t h reality. Yet i f she d i d find freedom i t w o u l d mean murder—as i t does to the bees w h o w o u l d mate i n the air and then be killed b y the queens. The o l d queen is merely being coerced into accepting her role for another year—yet she is unfound. So, even i n such a poem, one o f her best, Sylvia Plath fails to accom­ plish what Dostoevsky (another manifestly schizoid writer) managed to accomplish, a reaching out to find reality, going w i t h an inward discovery o f love and truth. Sylvia Plath can only record the perplexity o f her exhaustion and the feeling o f having merely survived, o f merely having endured b y an intellectual holding together, and o f not running away: I am exhausted, I am exhausted— Pillar o f white in a blackout o f knives. I am the magician's girl w h o does not flinch, The villagers are untying their disguises, they are shaking hands.

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Whose is that long white box i n the grove, what have they accomplished, w h y am I cold. She has only maintained her purity, as a 'pillar o f white', threat­ ened b y the surrounding black threatening forms o f the devotees. She has been the conjurer's v i c t i m , w h o survives the knives t h r o w n at her only b y not flinching, not giving way to the horror o f implosion. (Had she panicked the bees m i g h t have killed her.) The villagers change back their identities and shake hands, a gesture o f accomplishment w h i c h is alien to her. A l l she feels is the presence o f death (perhaps o f the 'new virgins' w h o could have replaced the o l d ungrateful self?). She finds no hope i n the act o f care, only the schizoid sense o f futility, and a feeling o f coldness, o f exposure o f soul. The o l d queen—the mother—on w h o m a sense o f be(e)ing could have been built, 'does not show herself, and there is no source o f new being, o f honey, i n the hive. W e can say o f The Bee Meeting that i t is a superb and sensitive portrayal o f h o w , to a schizoid individual, a normal social event can seem like a nightmare o f menace. The ritual also reminds her o f being dealt w i t h as a depersonalised object i n the operating theatre (or ECT treatment r o o m ) . So, i t illuminates any experience i n w h i c h we become a victim, a 'piece o f machinery i n a repair shop', or objectified i n some other way. The 'long white box i n the grove' —is i t hers, or Daddy's? The pillar o f white is the petrified w o m a n : the long w h i t e b o x is the purity o f death. B u t 'ye are like unto whited sepulchres, w h i c h indeed appear beautiful, outwardly, but are w i t h i n full o f dead men's bones, and o f all uncleanness' (Matthew, 23, 27). As Sylvia Plath says, . . . A body o f whiteness Rots and smells o f rot under its headstone T h o u g h the body walk out i n clean linen. (Moonrise, The Colossus, p. 66) So, the coffin is hers, Daddy's and Christ's. In the next poem, The Arrival of the Bee Box (Ariel, p. 63), the bee box is a coffin: I ordered this, this clean w o o d box Square as a chair and almost too heavy to lift.

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I w o u l d say i t was the coffin o f a midget O r a square baby W e r e there not such a d i n i n i t . The box is locked, i t is dangerous. I have to live w i t h i t overnight A n d I can't keep away from i t . There are no windows, so I can't see what is in there. There is only a little grid, no exit. Here, i t is the underlying fear o f implosion that makes for vividness i n the imagery. The box o f bees seems to contain a swarm o f vital elements w h i c h threaten to invade her ( ' I wonder h o w hungry they are?'). She is fascinated b y her o w n desire to be invaded b y them ( ' I can't keep away from i t ' ) . As we have seen, to the schizoid individual w h o feels impelled to withdraw, 'the ultimate unconscious infantile weak ego is very clearly experi­ enced consciously as a fear of dying' (Guntrip). There is an anxiety permanently present i n such an individual, about 'feeling unable to cope', a struggle to ' m a s t e r . . . an . . . internal breakdown threat', sometimes 'experienced as a wish to die'. Her o w n pre­ occupation w i t h her potential internal breakdown draws her to this box o f menace. The box looks like the 'coffin o f a midget/Or a square baby'. Does i t contain her regressed libidinal ego? W e may remember Guntrip's patients' dreams o f babies i n steel drawers, or puppies i n boxes. She is fascinated by the buzzing vitality—and the promise o f richness. B y contrast, ' I am no source o f honey'. A 'square baby' w o u l d be an inhuman one, w h i c h is w h y the phrase is comic and w r y — b u t i t is also horrible as an image o f a dead self-made regressed ego, cubic, w i t h o u t live limbs and form. She does not k n o w what shape her unborn self is (a puppy? a horse?). Her way o f possibly escaping the enmity o f the swarm is to be confused w i t h seemingly feminine non-human objects, fragments of herself: There is the laburnum, its blond colonnades, A n d the petticoats o f the cherry. She is as depersonalised as she can be ' I n m y m o o n suit and funeral veil'. The bees in the b o x seem like black hands, from the

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Congo. They are part-objects o f 'male doing', clambering as i f seeking to grasp her, and sting her: so, they are raping penises. They are 'Minute and shrunk for export',—just as 'the o l d man shrank to a d o l l ' . I n ancient Rome the m o b demanded public rape and execution. She discusses her capacity to cope w i t h the threat o f being raped and annihilated. She cannot cope b y swaying the mob: ' I am not a Caesar'. B u t she has power over the bees as their owner: I have simply ordered a box o f maniacs. They can be sent back. They can die, I need feed them nothing, I am the owner. She has the bees i n her power, but she has i n her power neither the implosive forces she feels to be i n her environment, nor the wish to die i n herself that makes her so fascinated b y possible implosion. She strives towards overcoming her paranoia b y merging w i t h natural objects and becoming ignored, and b y gratitude: ' T o ­ m o r r o w I w i l l be sweet God, I w i l l set them free.' B y reparation she makes their imprisonment 'only temporary'. Because o f this reparative urge we have one o f the most 'normal' o f Sylvia Plath's poems: she achieves here a significantly developed sense o f distinction between herself and the bees—she discovers resources in herself by w h i c h to deal w i t h reality, to care for the bees, as for children. The poem's images are o f a rebirth, beginning w i t h a dead baby, ending w i t h free bees, and the escape f r o m death. B y her recognition o f the bees not merely as aspects o f her identity, but as creatures i n themselves, she, as 'sweet God', can release them to be themselves (as i n the end she released her children). I n this we have something like the moment i n The Ancient Mariner i n w h i c h the Mariner blesses the watersnakes unawares i n the tropical sea w h i c h previously seemed to be merely an aspect o f the threatening sea o f hate and are suddenly seen as manifestations o f created life, and loved. B y clarity and care about meaning—not a w o r d is wasted— Sylvia Plath here discovers something o f her true self, records the perplexities o f schizoid problems o f identity, and explores the reparative urges that belong to the 'stage o f concern'. Her irony here belongs to sanity, not to hebephrenic disdain nor to an abandonment to delicious hate.

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In Stings (Ariel, p. 65), again about the quest for the self, the pull o f her strange inner compulsions is less successfully countered:

. . .1 Have a self to recover, a queen. Is she dead, is she sleeping? I n this poem she is not threatened by a box o f vital creatures, or a swarm, but she is extracting the honey deposited during the time the bees have been i n the hive. Symbolically, she is searching for her o w n sweetness: she has painted the hive lovingly, i n a gesture she places as 'excessive'. . . . the hive itself a teacup, W h i t e w i t h pink flowers on i t , W i t h excessive love I enamelled i t T h i n k i n g 'Sweetness, sweetness'. The act o f extraction 'to scour the creaming crests' is a sweet and pure activity: the man helping her is 'white', their gauntlets are 'neat and sweet'. Here w e have the good D a d d y : 'The throats o f our wrists brave lilies.' There is a hope o f flowering, o f birth, o f purity,—even i f 'lilies' suggest death. Once again rebirth and the discovery o f the self are linked w i t h death. As well as seeking honey, they are exploring cells where there are grubs and queens. Something b y w a y o f 'inner contents' may emerge but i t might be deathly: B r o o d cells grey as the fossils o f shells Terrify me, they seem so o l d . These grey cells resemble those i n the grey paper self she is making i n Poem for a Birthday. W h a t she is looking for (she fears) may have died i n the cell. O r perhaps i t belongs to death and is fossilised? Is there any queen at all i n it? There seems too little hope: I f there is, she is old, Her wings torn shawls, her long body Rubbed o f its plush—

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Poor and bare and unqueenly and even shameful. I stand i n a column O f winged, unmiraculous w o m e n , Honey-drudgers. I am no drudge T h o u g h for years I have eaten dust A n d dried plates w i t h m y dense hair. In seeking for her female element, she is full o f distrust: W h a t am I buying, w o r m y mahogany? I f there is a 'queen' inside her, i t w i l l be an 'antique'—'Her wings torn shawls' (in Nick and the Candlestick w e remember she ex­ presses a fear o f being wrapped i n 'raggy shawls, cold homicides'). Her femaleness is male (T stand i n a column'): she identifies w i t h w o m e n w h o have eaten dust and dried plates, seeking to be feminine. I n this, she has . . . seen m y strangeness evaporate, Blue dew f r o m dangerous skin. W i l l they hate me, These w o m e n w h o only scurry, Whose news is the open cherry, the open clover? The female bees are alive to the open flowers o f cherry and clover: they scurry at the w o r k o f fulfilling their role, o f enjoying and fertilising, as she has never been able to. Her o w n quest is not satisfied b y pursuing the generosity o f blossom. She is different: she hopes her 'blue dew f r o m dangerous skin' (her animus quality) w i l l evaporate, and leave her purer. The be(e)ing seems a threat to one w h o does not k n o w h o w to be. The problem o f reparation is n o t her problem. The blossom satisfies the manicdepressive : the schizoid has first to begin, by losing her 'strange­ ness' (without losing her identity). W i l l they hate her for this? B y disciplined effort she manages to overcome her fear, identifying w i t h the hive as a 'honey-machine' that works w i t h ­ out thinking, so there is no conflict o f w i l l : It is almost over. I am i n control.

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Here is m y honey-machine, It w i l l w o r k w i t h o u t thinking, Opening, in spring, like an industrious virgin T o scour the creaming crests As the moon, for its ivory powders, scours the sea. A third person is watching. He has nothing to do w i t h the bee-seller or w i t h me. The swarm w i l l scour the crests o f blossom as the m o o n scours the sea. The image is characteristically arid: the moon-mother, w h o draws the sea after her should be like the bees gathering honey f r o m flowers: but she is not, she only scours, for her ' i v o r y powders' are a sterile, i f beautiful, pure valuable dust—but not honey. T h e poet's honey-machine is like her o w n striving to make an identity ( ' I am no source o f honey'), b y an automatic k i n d o f male activity used to exert control. W h o is the 'third person'? The answer is suggested b y Eliot's line, ' W h o is the third w h o always walks beside you?' I t is Christ, the 'great scapegoat'. . . . here the square o f white linen He w o r e instead o f a hat. This square is that found b y Simon Peter i n the sepulchre: ' A n d the napkin, that was about his head, not l y i n g w i t h the linen clothes, but wrapped together i n a place b y itself (John, 20, 6). This napkin is perhaps also the Veronica, b y tradition used to wipe away Christ's sweat. B u t the w o r d 'sweet' ('He was sweet'), b y many associations i n her poetry, links Sylvia Plath's Christ w i t h D a d d y : he is her source o f honey and being. He must be resur­ rected: his sweetness is i n his sweat, which springs f r o m his creative effort. The rain here is a reiteration o f the golden rain o f The Beekeeper's Daughter, his semen, i n w h i c h she is to find her­ self. The 'bees found h i m out' because they savoured the sweat generated by his w o r k . B u t they also found h i m out, as she hopes to do, making what they could by way o f honey out o f his sweat, as she hopes to. She works to reconstruct his features, as Veronica captured the face o f Christ on her napkin. (At the same time, leaving his slippers behind, he is a little like Cinderella):

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N o w he is gone In eight great bounds, a great scapegoat Here is his slipper, here is another, A n d here the square o f white linen He wore instead o f a hat. He was sweet, The sweat o f his efforts a rain T u g g i n g the w o r l d to fruit, The bees found h i m out, M o u l d i n g onto his Hps like lies, Complicating his features. As on an actual man, the bees die because they sting: so on the father the w o r k o f taking i n his sweetness is deathly (because i t is plunging into the grave). As hanging on Christ's lips is thinking 'death' is ' w o r t h i t ' , so the bees are glad to take the honey. I t is as i f they want h i m to 'speak' them. They died. A t this moment, she is seeking life: They thought death was w o r t h i t , but I Have a self to recover, a queen. Is she dead, is she sleeping? Where has she been, W i t h her lion-red body, her wings o f glass? T h e Queen is a queen o f hate: her body is red like a (male) heraldic lion, her wings are transparent and brittle. Is she dead? Is she sleeping? She is evasive and terrible—a red scar i n the sky (a wounded identity), a red comet—not an aspect o f the normal structure o f the firmament, but rather a threatening portent—a menacing sign instead o f a confirming gesture as i n The Night Dances (though even there 'The c o m e t s . . . have such a space to cross'—they are i n dreadful isolation). The final lines are a contradiction: the 'wax house', the cells, 'killed her', but she is flying. The place o f storing honey, and o f generation, is also a 'mausoleum'. Death is a rebirth: being i n touch w i t h being is a death, because 'Daddy' is dead. The search for the true identity is also to be faced w i t h its deadness: pene­ trating to the heart o f reality, for the schizoid individual, is to

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discover the empty feeling o f being unreal. Is there any female element o f being i n me at all? I f I find i t , w o n ' t i t k i l l me? N o wonder she is baffled. Is there any queen i n i t at all? The answer is equivocal, a m b i ­ valent: there is only a queen o f hate 'more terrible than she ever was'. In the next poem, Wintering (Ariel, p. 68), there is a re-enactment o f the despair i n w h i c h Esther Greenwood enters the cellar before her suicide attempt i n The Bell Jar. The honey is i n the dark cellar next to empty gin bottles, empty glitters. I n the winter, i n the cellar, at a time o f m i n i m u m activity, she contemplates the stored honey—obtained b y the midwife's extractor, as i f i t was a child f r o m a w o m b , squeezed out b y a machine: This is the easy time, there is nothing doing. I have whirled the midwife's extractor, I have m y honey, Six jars o f it, Six cat's eyes i n the wine cellar, W i n t e r i n g in. a dark w i t h o u t w i n d o w A t the heart o f the house N e x t to the last tenant's rancid j a m A n d the bottles o f empty glitters Sir So-and-So's gin It is at the heart o f the house, where inner goodness should be. The jars shine like 'cats' eyes' w h i c h can see i n the dark: w i l l the honey reflect her? The last tenant's j a m is rancid: the new honey has b y contrast the promise o f sweetness. B u t w i l l the honey reflect substantially in her? O r w i l l i t only be an empty glitter, like the bottles w h i c h once held Sir So-andSo's gin, a manic stimulant, but w h i c h are n o w not even any good for honey? Because her hopefulness evaporates, the cellar becomes a place o f darkness, o f menace, and a horror possesses her. Despite her intention to fill i t w i t h honey, and so w i t h reflecting light (from the golden rain) there is only the partial light o f her d i m torch, that throws no meaning over the things there. They simply threaten to impose their stupidity on her.

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This is the r o o m I have never been i n . This is the r o o m I could never breathe i n . The black bunched i n there like a bat, N o light B u t the torch and its faint Chinese y e l l o w on appalling objects— Black asininity. Decay. Possession. It is they w h o o w n me. Neither cruel nor indifferent. O n l y ignorant. The r o o m is like one that can recur i n dreams—the r o o m o f the self that one fears is empty, decayed, deathly—the r o o m w h i c h symbolises the fear o f internal breakdown. A patient o f Guntrip's 'awoke one night i n a state o f terror, feeling that she was l o o k i n g into a black abyss yawning at her feet and could not escape falling into i t ' . Sylvia Plath has never been i n the r o o m because to enter it m i g h t mean never being able to escape again. T o breathe i n i t w o u l d be possibly to let one's breath (identified w i t h one's soul) escape into its maw, or to experience i t rushing into one's empty self b y implosion. W e have feelings expressed like these o f being stifled, or being i n the 'black bag o f the s e l f : and o f a meaningless w o r l d thrusting itself on her. A black bunch o f nothing gathers there like a bat, threatening to rush at her, the regressed ego—the 'cry' that 'flaps out'. There is paranoia i n the w o r d asininity, and i t is as i f she fears an animal predator i n the dark, w h i c h she projects f r o m her inner world—as Mahler does when he sees (and hears) the h o w l i n g ape o f existential nothingness i n Das Lied von der Erde. The black malignant dark things i n the cellar are appalling and 'asinine' because they are ignorant: yet they o w n her and are 'neither cruel nor indifferent'. They belong to a primitive stage before reparation could (as i n The Ancient Mariner) redeem the w o r l d : belonging to the era before concern has developed, and before the w o r l d is found as benign. They are pure, ruthless incorporative savagery: hate. Here, i n this moment o f collapse, we glimpse the 'unthinkable

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anxieties' that can threaten the schizoid individual—for w h i c h her desperate paranoia endeavours to compensate. The bees keep going throughout the winter i n this cellar, like a hoarded activity o f thought hidden w i t h i n oneself: i t is a question o f surviving, till the true self can be found: This is the time o f hanging o n for the bees—the bees So slow I hardly k n o w them, Filing like soldiers T o the syrup t i n T o make up for the honey I've taken. Tate and Lyle keeps them going, The refined show. She has taken their honey for herself, for her o w n vitality. They keep going, slowly, on the purified snowlike sugar she has given them w h i c h is inert and refined. I t is pure like hate, while honey and the flowers are like love. I t is Tate and Lyle they live on, instead o f flowers. They take i t . The cold sets i n . 'Tate and Lyle' is n o t sugar, honey, or flowers, b u t a limited company—a corporate organisation. The bees too are a 'limited company'. Underlying the symbolism here is the advertising slogan on the golden syrup t i n , ' O u t o f the strong came forth sweetness'. Daddy ('he was sweet') is the lion, and the inside o f his corpse breeds the source o f new life. The bees are l i v i n g i n the cellar, where Sylvia Plath has stored her honey. The cellar is a w o m b w h i c h gives a 'second chance to be reborn', into w h i c h she wants to regress. The honey she stores there is the hopeful unborn true self, to be made f r o m female element being. But this has had to be made out o f doing—and so out o f the male element. Here there are many subtle ambiguities. The swarm consists o f worker bees, and they 'taste the spring' by doing— storing their being i n the breast-like hive. Again she is trying to achieve femaleness b y desperate male doing methods, w h i c h are all she knows. B u t w i l l i t do? ' W i l l the hive survive?' ' I t is Tate and Lyle they live on, instead o f flowers'—that is, ' m y

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swarm-identity is made up o f such sweetness as I can gather f r o m the swarm o f doing that flies forth f r o m m y father's dead image'—it lives on this k i n d o f honey, instead o f o n true self being.* A t the same time, the mass o f wintering bees is like the pseudomale compulsive thinking-as-doing o f a schizoid individual, w h o hoards her dissociated conglomeration o f fragments as a self'system'. Outside, the snow-covered landscape resembles a porce­ lain pastoral, denatured and ceramic; the swarm identity is exerted against the pure seductive death and forgetfulness o f the snow: N o w they ball i n a mass, Black M i n d against all that white. The smile o f the snow is white It spreads itself out, a mile-long body o f Meissen, Into which, on w a r m days, They can only carry their dead. The bees survive o n the basis o f their femininity, hibernating at the cradle side, like Patient Griselda: T h e bees are all w o m e n , Maids and the long royal lady They have got r i d o f the men, The blunt, clumsy stumblers, the boors. W i n t e r is for w o m e n — The w o m a n , still at her knitting, A t the cradle o f Spanish walnut, Her body a bulb i n the cold and too dumb to think. There w i l l be a return to doing, i n the spring. B u t can they survive? W i l l there be blossoms to w a r m them? Can they survive on the Christmas promise? W i l l the hive survive, w i l l the gladiolas Succeed i n banking their fires T o enter another year? * D i d Sylvia Plath know that an ordinary worker bee larva can develop into a queen i f reared under special conditions?

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W h a t w i l l they taste of, the Christmas roses? The bees are flying. They taste the spring. The imagery o f seasonal renewal, o f Christ's rebirth (Christmas roses, sugar roses at Easter), o f sweetness, honey, effort and love, give these Bee poems a creative impulse and an 'intentionality' widely lacking i n Sylvia Plath's w o r k . A n d r e w B r i n k says "The renewal o f life remains a possibility' i n Wintering, though he does not find the other bee poems reassuring. B u t surely, taken as a whole, they belong to the positive direction i n her life, towards the discovery o f the rich potentialities o f being human? Moreover, the bee poems lead to one o f the most successful o f all her poems, which extends the bee theme to problems o f collective psychic infection, i n The Swarm (Winter Trees, p. 37).* For the schizoid individual the problem o f inward ego-weakness is exacerbated b y external events that are manifestations o f hate. Since such manifestations are false solutions o f moral inversion they make the identity problem more difficult to solve for each o f us. O u r problem, however, is to see that false (hate) solutions are false. Sylvia Plath here is able to see the dreadful ambiguity o f this problem. Hearing shooting, she has fantasies o f some menacing warlike hate: Somebody is shooting at something i n our t o w n A dull p o m , p o m i n the Sunday street. For some reason the next w o r d is jealousy': w h y ? Such violence seems to her like hate-envy, an urge to get inside another ('open the blood') or to extract 'inner contents' as flowers bursting forth (which w o u l d be flowers o f bad stuff, o f hate—'black roses'). I t is the shrike. Jealousy can open the blood, It can make black roses. W h o are they shooting at? It is as i f someone were asleep, and is wakened by this hostile noise. They stumble to the w i n d o w , dreaming o f the Napoleonic wars, and see a man shooting at a swarm o f bees, to get i t d o w n from a tree. Jealousy is the envy o f the man shooting at the bees: it is the envy o f the bees, which is like the envy o f Napoleon, w h o * Published in Encounter, October 1963, but not included in Ariel.

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caused so many wounds to flow. A t the same time the bees i n their swarm on the tree are like a black flower. One source o f hate is directed against another, as so often i n her w o r k . As soon as she forms images o f hate she forms the image o f a colossus, a man i n some depersonalising rig-out. Here i t is the man dealing w i t h the swarm. The other identity involved is dissipated into a swarm that menaces. So we have 'the man w i t h grey hands' whose hands turn out to be asbestos gloves: i t is he w h o is shooting. He is the practical man, and he is dealing w i t h a collective infection—the black m i n d o f the hive. The swarm does not respond at first to the shooting, thinking it is thunder. The bees think that the hate directed at them confirms, b y the voice o f God, their o w n impulse to attack, to implode, to tear out the insides o f things, to invade, to k i l l . B o t h the shooting and the swarm stand for that confrontation w h i c h threatens annihilation, because such hunger (jealousy) w i l l 'empty'. The bees feel they are confirmed i n their sadism b y the hate-noise o f the gunshots: the attack o n them hardens their paranoid response, condoning the beak, the claw, the grin o f the dog. Yellow-haunched, a pack-dog Grinning over its bone o f i v o r y Like the pack, the pack, like everybody. The grin o f the dog is sadism. I t grins over the bone f r o m w h i c h all the flesh has been gnawed leaving only bony ivory*—a w h i t e pure sterile value, already referred to i n another poem, as an image o f the characteristics o f herself (the moon's ' i v o r y powders'). I n animal existence there is a sadistic hate-urge to prey, and i n t r u t h like all l i v i n g creatures we exist at the expense o f others. This becomes most frightening in a pack—or swarm. Everyone belongs to this pack, because everyone has a hate-problem, o f a hunger that threatens others. This pack, i n its collective identity, echoing as threatening object the petrified (asbestos-gloved) man w h o is shooting at i t , seems to her like the colossus. I n The Colossus Daddy is 'pithy and * I n the background of her mind, I believe, is the phrase 'Boney was a warrior* and also the objects (some of them chessmen) carved from bone by prisoners of the Napoleonic wars, on show in Peterborough Museum and elsewhere, as at Buckland Abbey.

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historical', and elsewhere he is like a ruin from history, a tumulus. Here he is Napoleon: It is y o u the knives are out for A t Waterloo, Waterloo, Napoleon The h u m p o f Elba on your short back, A n d the snow, marshalling its brilliant cutlery Mass after mass, saying Shh! She has been awoken out o f a dream b y the shooting and before her half-awake vision spreads an image o f war, 'Shh!' is the noise o f the snow and its crystals are knives that are capable o f cutting up the Napoleonic armies.* She is horrified both by the way the Father o f Hate plays w i t h people as i f they were (petrified) chessmen, and by the vision o f the real human throats trampled b y the collective psychopathology o f the Napoleonic wars: Shh! These are chess people y o u play w i t h , Still figures o f ivory. The m u d squirms w i t h throats, Stepping stones for French bootsoles. People in the mass have been used in history as stepping stones, for ambitions that arise from envy, the voraciousness o f jealousy', in the schizoid fanatic. I n such mass manifestations Sylvia Plath saw h o w the individual's hungry need w o u l d bring about the 'loss o f all objects'. Napoleon is chasing the gold and pink breasts o f the phantom mother: The gilt and pink domes o f Russia melt and float o f f In the furnace o f greed. Hate threatens to melt the substantial w o r l d like ice or gold melting i n a furnace. Napoleon sees the domes in the clouds, yet dissipating like clouds ('Clouds, clouds'): by such evanescent delusions o f hate a w o r l d can be wrecked. W h a t is amazing about this poem is the confidence w i t h w h i c h the distorted surrealistic images are set d o w n , and the mastery b y * Cf. in the early version of All the Dead Dears, the 'footless woman* who 'flies against the wind when the snow h i s s e s . . . to vamp in the guise of my sister'. This death-witch is the Mother-imago who, like the North W i n d , in George M a c donald's fairy-story, brings oblivion.

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w h i c h they are united. W h a t unites them is not a historical perspective, so much as an anguish o f identity to w h i c h every image is grist, i n the quest for insight. So Sylvia Plath here created a profound vision o f the consequences o f schizoid hate i n the w o r l d at large. She sees w i t h vision into the worst possibilities i n our w o r l d o f 'collective infection'—a phrase from Jung w h o also associated this w i t h the destructive animus (see Man and his Symbols, p. 185). The dream o f the collective m i n d o f the bees is like the group psychopathology o f Napoleonic France: So the swarm balls and deserts Seventy feet up, i n a black pine tree. It must be shot d o w n . P o m ! P o m ! So dumb i t thinks bullets are thunder. Its collective infection is also 'like everybody'. W e all share the capacity to enter into such modes o f hate behaviour, w h i c h Sylvia Plath sees w i t h uncanny insight as manifestations o f the urge to discover and exert a false (colossus) identity. She sees their ambitions w i t h irony, as false solutions. Just as Napoleon and his forces felt B i g (to no purpose) by invading Europe, so the bees feel B i g at being seventy feet up! F r o m this height the surrounding territory seems puny and easily conquered, The bees have gone so far, Seventy feet h i g h ! Russia, Poland and Germany! The m i l d hills, the same o l d magenta Fields shrunk to a penny Spun into a river, the river crossed. The bees argue about their territorial gains, spiky w i t h the manifestations o f hate (which is also a self-defence, as w i t h a hedgehog). The man w i t h a gun i n his self-defensive asbestos hands stands below, threatening their dreams o f Empire. I n their dreams they build a vision o f hives like railway stations (PWaterloo) to and from w h i c h bees fly like trains on their faithful orientations, into a countryside to be exploited for honey, w i t h no end. The bees argue, in their black hall, A flying hedgehog, all prickles.

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The man w i t h grey hands stands under the honeycomb O f their dream, the hived station Where trains, faithful to their steel arcs, Leave and arrive, and there is no end to the country. The man shoots them d o w n : P o m ! P o m ! They fall Dismembered, to a tod o f i v y . So much for the chariots, the outsiders, the Grand A r m y ! A red tatter, Napoleon! History is reduced to the collective insanity o f schizoid dreams: it is reduced to men shooting into the bodies o f dreamers. Identi­ ties become tattered rags o f flesh and once the delusion is shattered they become mere conformist selves again: The last badge o f victory. The swarm is knocked into a cocked straw hat. Elba, Elba, bleb on the sea! The white knots o f marshals, admirals, generals W o r m i n g themselves into niches. The swarm is 'knocked into a cocked hat'—knocked into a straw hive w h i c h looks like a hat. The cap o f office is as much a thing o f straw. Victory, aspirations, and defeat become group identities reduced to their components: after defeat the military leaders be­ come mere petrified busts w h i c h move into place like white grubs in the hive, petrified remnants o f the live incidents o f history. They ' w o r m ' themselves into their niches i n order to seem to have an identity w h i c h rklatne celebrates: their living identity, which was but a schizoid dream o f territory and o f the satisfaction o f greed ('no end to the country'), is confirmed by the dead w h i t e bust. H o w instructive this is! The dumb, banded bodies W a l k i n g the plank draped w i t h Mother France's upholstery Into a new mausoleum, A n i v o r y palace, a crotch pine. The bees enter their new hive docilely. I t is also a mausoleum,

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where the hibernating grubs are sealed as i f in death (but actually for rebirth). The living identity o f the Napoleonic swarm, based on hate, is trapped i n a mausoleum, w h i c h is also a palace o f petrifaction and i t is made o f pine. Compared w i t h their seventy foot pine i n the open air i t is like the coffin that haunts us all through the bee poems. The schizoid pseudo-revolution provokes a pragmatic reaction: T h e man w i t h grey hands smiles The smile o f a man o f business, intensely practical. They are not hands at all B u t asbestos receptacles. P o m ! P o m ! 'They w o u l d have killed me!' He is those defence forces w h i c h are obliged to become petrified themselves i n order to resist the Napoleonic invasion. Hate and moral inversion oblige a morally inverted hate-reaction on those w h o deal w i t h i t : the Blitz begets Dresden. Once hate has become immanent, i t is 'intractable' : Stings b i g as drawing pins! It seems bees have a notion o f honour, A black intractable m i n d . . . W h e n bees sting, they die. Their hate is noble, black and fixed— a self-sacrifice. B u t having been defeated, they are pleased to be i n Elba, pleased to be insignificant, i n the 'bleb on the sea' ('Able was I ere I saw Elba': 'bleb' anagrams as 'bble' or 'elbb' and i n the word-play at the back o f Sylvia Plath's m i n d lapses into blabber­ ing noises o f inarticulate impracticability). Napoleon is pleased, he is pleased w i t h everything. O Europe! O ton o f honey! The hive see their lot is satisfactory, though i t is a sad come-down f r o m the dreams i n the pine-tree, 'knocked into a cocked hat'. The collective identity makes the 'crotch-pine'-hive Europe. W h a t Napoleon dreamed o f is equated w i t h the bees' dream: a ton o f honey. I n the 'bleb' o f Elba Napoleon was glad to be a mere bleb o f flesh. The depersonalised bee-man is pleased w i t h his w o r k . Great ambitions come in the end to this—a deflated docility—

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after all the madness o f collective envy and its human consequences in pursuit o f the gilt and pink domes o f pleasure. W h a t is instructive is Sylvia Plath's insight into the selfdeceptive processes o f schizoid false solutions. F r o m her o w n deep need to feel real, to be human, she can see the Napoleonic impulse to be Great through Hate w i t h irony. Yet the deluded vision seems magnificent, too, except that i t is also the puffed-up vision o f self-deluded bees 'seventy feet high'. She sees the bees' easy satisfaction w i t h the hive ironically too, no less a self-delusion however much less dangerous to the w o r l d . They become 'falsely socialised', b y being shot d o w n and ushered into a captive hive. In the bee poems Sylvia Plath turns her 'existence anxiety' into an exploration o f the universal predicament—of our potentiality for solving our i n w a r d sense o f vacancy and weakness, like Napoleon, at the expense o f others. The Swarm is a profound and remarkable w o r k o f art. There is no r o o m to explore i t here, but Sylvia Plath's bee symbolism echoes remarkably some bee symbolism i n George Macdonald's At the Back of the North Wind. See the dream story Chapter X X . W e came to a small b o x against the wall o f a tiny r o o m . The little man told me to put m y ear against it. I did so and heard a noise something like the purring o f a cat, only not so loud, and much sweeter. ' W h a t is i t like?' I asked. ' D o n ' t y o u k n o w the sound?' returned the little man. ' N o , ' I answered. ' D o n ' t y o u k n o w the sound o f bees?' he said. I had never heard bees, and could not k n o w the sound o f them. 'Those are m y lady's bees,' he went on. I had heard that bees gather honey from the flowers. ' B u t where are the flowers for them?' I asked. ' M y lady's bees gather their honey f r o m the sun and the stars,' said the little man. ' D o let me see them,' I said. ' N o , I daren't do that,' he answered. ' I have no business w i t h them. I don't under­ stand them. Besides, they are so bright that i f one were to fly into your eye, i t w o u l d blind y o u altogether.' 'Then y o u have seen them?' ' O h , yes, once or twice, I think. B u t I don't quite k n o w ; they are so very bright—like buttons o f lightning . . . Sometimes i n Sylvia Plath bees are associated w i t h lightning and thunder.

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Lightning licked i n a yellow lather B u t missed the mark w i t h snaking fangs: The sting o f bees took away m y father. (Lament, Poems submitted for the Cambridge English Tripos, p. 52) A man used to clench Bees i n his fist A n d outrant the thundercrack . . . (All the Dead Dears, ibid., p. 57) In Macdonald's story the bees are 'buttons o f lightning' and when they are released they fill the r o o m w i t h l i g h t : to reach them, the protagonist must climb to the top o f the m o o n : The little box had a door like a closet. I opened it—the tiniest crack—when out came the light w i t h such a sting that I closed it again i n terror—not, however, before three bees had shot out into the r o o m , where they darted about like flashes o f lightning. They dash into the lady's hair, and she catches them in her hand, as Sylvia Plath's father caught bees i n his hand. One wonders whether she had read Macdonald's strange fantasy about the ice-mother.

9 Psychotic Poetry

The 'bee' poems represent the sanest o f Sylvia Plath's poems: indeed, i n some o f her insights, as i n The Swarm, she transcends mere sanity. There are, however, certain poems i n her oeuvre— some o f them highly praised at large—which distort reality and follow such a sick logic that they must be declared pathological. M y task must be to t r y to demonstrate that these are psychotic and w h y : and to t r y to demonstrate h o w and w h y the poet fell v i c t i m to these tendencies. There are 'maenad' elements i n some early poems. Sylvia Plath persuades us b y the purity and clarity o f her verse, to take the 'donnes' o f her m y t h o l o g y . B u t i t is a very private and personal world—many o f whose aspects are esoteric, and can only be understood b y a laborious decoding, such as I have attempted here. A glimpse into this private w o r l d is given i n the nightmarish poem The Disquieting Muses (The Colossus, p. 58). The mother failed to invite some 'disfigured and unsightly cousin' to her christening, so, like the princess in The Sleeping Beauty, the p r o ­ tagonist is cursed. This disfigured cousin appears as the three ladies in The Disquieting Muses w h o have always haunted her " W i t h heads like d a r n i n g - e g g s . . . ' These 'nod and nod and n o d ' at the left (sinister) side o f her crib. These 'muses' have not only brought disaster: their wooden, non-reflecting faces burst the windows i n a hurricane. They are preventing her from becoming a w o m a n . Furthermore, they have killed her creativity. W h i l e other children danced she 'could not lift a foot'—and her mother 'cried and cried'. ' A n d the shadow stretched, the lights went o u t . . . ' . T h e mother sent her to piano lessons but the 'muses' made her tone

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deaf. One day she w o k e to a vision o f faery—in her efforts to create a beautiful, ideal mother: I woke one day to see y o u , mother, Floating above me i n bluest air O n a green balloon bright w i t h a m i l l i o n Flowers and bluebirds that never were Never, never found anywhere. B u t the litde planet bobbed away Like a soap-bubble as y o u called: Come here! As I faced m y travelling companions.— They stand their v i g i l i n gowns o f stone, Faces blank as the day I was born, A n d this is the k i n g d o m y o u bore me to, Mother, m o t h e r . . . It is not the image o f the blank faces that stand around that make the poem paranoid—but the way i n w h i c h the nightmare fantasy is presented as a t r u t h o f her world—and there is a sense i n w h i c h she literally means i t . The stone, club-like, petrified, malignant sister-witches do haunt her w o r l d , and deaden i t . W e take her to belong to life, but there is a sense i n w h i c h like one o f the sisters i n Two Sisters of Persephone (The Colossus, p. 63), Sylvia Plath re­ mains, psychically, 'Worm-husbanded,* yet no woman'—wedded to death. M a n y o f the w o m e n i n her poems are menacing deathwomen, and nightmare predators, as i n the early All the Dead Dears (The Colossus, p. 27). A note to the poem says: I n the Archeological Museum i n Cambridge is a stone coffin o f the fourth century A.D. containing the skeletons o f a w o m a n , a mouse and a shrew. The ankle-bone o f the w o m a n has been slightly gnawn. This dead woman, like the moon, becomes a symbol o f the mother, w h o has proved psychically sterile, and has thus con­ demned the poet to a l i v i n g death, and 'funeral veil', a ' m o o n suit' as she calls her garments i n The Arrival of the Bee Box. * This phrase gives us the clue to the sexuality in Daddy 'The voices just can't w o r m through'.

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L o o k i n g at the skeleton, Sylvia Plath sees h o w the generations drop away into the past and become skeletons. B u t she also looks back into her o w n psychic prehistory. She needed to eat the mother: all she managed to do was to nibble a d r y fragment, like the mouse i n the coffin. She is like the dead little animal (Littlesoul) w h o gnawed at a dead w o m a n . The great hunger i n her, as symbolised b y the black shadows o f doors and tombs, yearns to pass again through the w o m b , as Esther yearned to pass through caves and tombs. The continual death o f generations is seen as 'the gross eating game'. L o o k i n g i n the coffin she sees this 'game' unmasked. She confronts our existential 'nothingness', w h i c h w e ignore i n the passage o f normal everyday life. W e could not live confronted b y our mortality every minute o f the day. B u t however much w e laugh at death, clownishly and f r o m a blind eye, w e cannot ever really escape the problem o f our mortality. It's a game W e ' d w i n k at i f w e didn't hear Stars grinding, crumb b y crumb, O u r o w n grist d o w n to its bony face. B u t the gross eating game is not merely T i m e wearing us away. The schizoid horror o f voracious envy, and the paranoid fear o f being 'emptied' b y the castrating mother o f primitive fantasy, u n humanised, makes the skeleton more predatory: she menaces. . . . yet k i n she is: she'll suck B l o o d and whistle m y m a r r o w clean T o prove i t . The poet tries to clothe the skull w i t h flesh and a face, so she can be seen. As she tries to reflect creatively the kin-woman, so the glass over the exhibit seems to be a mirror, or the surface o f a pool into w h i c h mother and stepmother seek to draw her.* I n the version o f this poem w h i c h appears i n the collection handed i n for the English Tripos at Cambridge (Two Lovers and a Beachcomber, p. 58), she recalls a childish fantasy o f her father's death: A n d an image looms under the fishpond surface Where the daft father went d o w n W i t h orange duck-feet w i n n o w i n g his hair . . . * T h e analogy with the paintings of Francis Bacon is striking here.

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W h a t follows is so personal that i t is as i f she is talking to her­ self, i n a psychotic w a y : That one: not k n o w n enough: death's trench Digs h i m into m y quick: A t each move I confront his ready g h o s t . . . T o make her psyche alive ('quick') she has had to dig h i m into her, and death's trench enabled her to do it. B u t she doesn't k n o w h i m enough: she can't hold h i m together. B u t she cries out like Lady Macbeth at Banquo's ghost, that she sees h i m among his hives, blackberrying Glaring sun-flower-eyed From the glade o f hives, Andered b y a bramble-hat, Berry-juice purpling his thumbs: O I ' d Run time aground before I met His match . . . The blackberries appear here again, as an image o f a male doing w h i c h she loved and i n which she feels there is a clue to love. Daddy's 'thumbs' picking and eating the blackberry 'eyes' is a symbol o f Daddy 'masturbating a glitter': i.e. i t is imagery o f parental sex i n w h i c h she feels there may be a clue to the 'seeing' love that could bring her alive. B u t the stanza (omitted f r o m the published f o r m o f the poem in The Colossus) is personal and esoteric and belongs to the element o f madness i n her utterance, that grows as time goes on. The desperateness o f her situation, she realises, brings many dangers, for one's identity is thus built on ghosts that bring death w i t h them whenever they are evoked: Luck's hard which falls to love Such long gone darlings: they Get back, though, soon, Soon: be i t b y wakes, weddings, Childbirths or a family barbecue: A n y touch, taste, tangs Fit for those outlaws to ride home on,

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A n d to sanctuary: . . . Still they'll swarm i n . . . until we go Riddled w i t h ghosts, to lie Deadlocked w i t h them, taking root as cradles rock. T o her, the newborn child is the soil i n w h i c h the ghosts o f the dead take r o o t : one's identity is composed o f death, 'deadlocked'. This is a characteristic schizoid feeling—like that expressed b y Sartre's image o f the self in the family being a baby 'sewn up i n a dead man's skin'. T o her i t is 'hard luck' to love a 'long-gone darling' like the father so m u c h : the intense emotions that seem to lie beneath this poem, j u d g i n g b y its r h y t h m , suggest powerful unconscious feel­ ings to do w i t h the 'other w o r l d ' where the dead are, and the need to be always searching for h i m ( ' O , I ' d r u n time aground before I met/His match'). A t the same time 'death's trench/Digs h i m into m y quick'—the father is 'inside' her as a split-off male element w h i c h she cannot include i n her personality. Her self being so divided and disintegrated, Sylvia Plath found it difficult to hold her w o r l d together: i t w o u l d become invaded b y split-off projections, or perception w o u l d fail altogether. O u t o f her confusion, she could at times w r i t e poems like The EyeMote, Sheep in Fog, Child, and Balloons, w h i c h resulted f r o m her capacity to go beyond the limits o f normal perception. I n these poems there is also a penetrating conscious awareness that our per­ ception o f reality is deeply subjective i n origin. B u t i n other pas­ sages the dissolution o f perception becomes menacing, and she lapses into a w i l d rapture o f dissolution. One remembers h o w Esther Greenwood faced the ordeal o f having her photograph taken: ' I fixed m y eyes on the largest cloud, as if, when i t passed out o f sight, I m i g h t have the good luck to pass w i t h i t ' (The Bell Jar, pp. 106-7). W h a t seems to be penetrating insight may suddenly get out o f hand and invest the w o r l d w i t h a paranoia projected from her inner w o r l d . Thus i n the poem The Thin People (The Colossus, p. 30), there is an exploration o f the fact that, i n our w o r l d , so

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deeply have we been shocked by the images o f the victims o f concentration-camp brutality, such as we have seen on film, that grey figures are present all the time in our perception o f the w o r l d . W e cannot see the w o r l d w i t h o u t i t being sadder to look at be­ cause o f our having seen the wasted bodies o f Belsen. I have, h o w ­ ever, just stated what the poem says i n a sane way and I have spoken o f it as i f it were a sane poem. B u t the thin people i n Sylvia Plath's poem do not remain i n the memory, nor do they merely exist i n terms o f subjective anxieties colouring perception. They enter real experience—they are really 'there': they get out o f hand, and become psychotic delusions. O f course, most o f us w o u l d take this as hyperbole and w e all refer to ghosts or figures i n the landscape w h i c h are not really 'there'. B u t Sylvia Plath's figures are more pressing than that: they are not content to be felt or conjured b y mere hyperbole to sit i n the moonlight, threatening the meaning o f life. They actually escape and r u n about the w o r l d , and, as w e read the poetry, grapple h o w we may w i t h its logic, we find ourselves wondering whether they haven't taken on a life o f their o w n and w o n ' t dis­ appear when we say ' I t was only a poem', or shut our eyes. As w i t h the paranoid patient, w h o really sees what isn't there (and i t w o n ' t go away), so we are brought to believe magical things about the nature o f reality, as we did when we believed fairy tales: So weedy a race could not remain i n dreams, Could not remain outlandish victims In the contracted country o f the head A n y more than the o l d w o m a n i n her m u d hut could Keep from cutting fat meat O u t o f the side o f the generous m o o n when i t Set foot nightly in her yard U n t i l her knife had pared The m o o n to a rind o f little light. N o w the thin people do not obliterate Themselves as the dawn Greyness blues. . .

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The thin people, like ghosts unafraid o f the dawn light, do not disappear w h e n w e have finished dreaming. They w i l l not stay i n our heads—they are out i n the w o r l d . T h e y can't stop going o u t and engaging w i t h reality like the o l d w o m a n i n the fairy story w h o went out to cut pieces o f f the m o o n as i t set foot nightly i n her yard, so that i t became a thin crescent. Is this a dream? I t is like a dream. B u t b y placing i t alongside the reality Sylvia Plath traps us, b y making us feel that w h e n w e turn back to reality, the thin people w i l l still be 'there'. So, reality is a dream: w e live i n a nightmare. The w o r l d o f fantasy threatens to take over the w o r l d o f reality, as w i t h the psychotic w h o really sees apes where there are none and (as Sylvia Plath says i n many o f her poems) w e can­ not close our eyes to a horror that presses on us. Exactly what is the parallel between the thin people and the o l d woman? I f w e examine this question I believe w e find ourselves strangely imprisoned. The dawn light is real—but the thin people persist. The o l d w o m a n and the m o o n are imaginary, yet the words 'fat meat', and 'generous' suggest strongly that her illusory belief yielded substantial flesh. Actually the o l d w o m a n does not fit easily into the logic o f the poem, even admitting the logic to be poetic and irrational. There is no inevitable connection between the wasted forms o f the thin people and the gradual etiolation o f the m o o n as the o l d w o m a n cuts pieces off it. The image, however, confuses us as to what is real and what is not, and what seems to be a clear-headed poetic logic leads us into a strange feeling that the w o r l d contains both o l d w o m e n w h o cut fat pieces off the m o o n , and thin people w h o have got out o f our heads. F r o m an accept­ able (and seemingly rational) insight w e are led into irrationality, and into a somewhat paranoid vision—close to a psychotic state, out o f which w e have to struggle to regain our sanity. There is a connection between the old w o m a n and the thin people, at a deeper level, w h i c h w e can find by making a pheno­ menological interpretation o f the slightly mad poem. B o t h are images arising f r o m the hunger w h i c h is hate—the greedy o l d w o m a n w h o cuts pieces o f f the m o o n may be related to us w h o look at the thin people, for whose emaciation w e feel responsible and guilty. In the images o f the o l d w o m a n and the grey people, what is 'inside' us—greed, hate—is projected outside us. W h a t the old w o m a n and the thin people share is the fact that they are both

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paranoid projections o f this dark i n w a r d force o f which the poet was afraid and o f w h i c h w e are all afraid—afraid o f perhaps more than any other thing i n life. "There is no capacity for reparation i n us b i g enough ever to overcome the emptiness which the thin people, and our guilt for what happened to them, cause in our experience o f the w o r l d . ' This is what the poem says and by the comparison w i t h the o l d w o m a n it makes i t seem the most natural thing i n the w o r l d that we cannot r i d our w o r l d o f predatory creatures w h i c h are not mere hallucina­ tions but are really there, like the m o o n i n the o l d woman's yard. There is no wilderness i n w h i c h we can 'lose' them, and even the 'tree boles flatten and lose their good browns': the thin people make the w o r l d thin as a wasps' nest—and destroy thevery fabric o f our 'life w o r l d ' . W e can only despair o f ever over-coming the 'thinness'. This may be true—insofar as we take i t to mean that our guilt which we feel for the victims of human hate will always cloud our per­ ception of our world: this is a poignant and sane observation. B u t i t is not true that our world is full of actual malignant shadowy creatures which haunt and discolour it, and which we can never appease or eradicate. I f we accept this as a fact we enter into madness. O r per­ haps we should rather say, there are some people w h o can never feel normal security about what is real and what is unreal, and these are people we call mad. The problem is to determine when an abnormal v i e w can illuminate aspects o f experience, and when i t is disastrous, as i t certainly is in Edge. I n The Thin People i t is illuminating, generating an outward-going compassion prompted b y shock—it enables us to see that i t was a madness to create the camp victims, while this collective madness is something o f w h i c h w e could be capable at any time. Sylvia Plath tells us that the w o r l d is full o f hate, this may be valuable. B u t where she suggests that this hate can get out o f hand and cannot be dealt w i t h by our o w n efforts w i t h i n ourselves, she is p r o m o t i n g irrationality and paranoia. She tells us that there are chasms between us: this may deepen our awareness o f our pre­ dicament. Insofar as she suggests these chasms cannot be crossed she is denying the evident, and fundamental, truths o f human love. Where she suggests that painful efforts have to be made, to reject the conformist self urged on us by 'society', and to find our true self — w h i c h may still be waiting to be born—she is being profound.

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B u t where she urges us, w i t h rapture, to take to the false solutions o f hate, rage and self-destruction, she is pressing her sick logic on us and contributing to the same nihilism that made the thin people. This raises wider questions, o f course, about the nature o f art. For the moment, perhaps, we can accept that creativity is con­ cerned w i t h redemption, w i t h the pursuit o f the questions ' W h a t is i t to be human?' and ' W h a t is the point o f life?' W h e n art be­ comes psychotic i t is cut off f r o m 'true redemption', and ceases to interact, i n a creative way, w i t h the self and the w o r l d . A n d r e w B r i n k (1968) writes o f Sylvia Plath, I f art is to heal i t must communicate distress to the significant others whose acts are implied i n its genesis. I t must change inter­ personal relations and improve community. For all the privacy o f his reactions the artist remains a social being, whose acute perception o f relationships is basic to ordering o f words, no matter h o w obliquely they speak about the actual distress. T i m e and again i n Ariel w e are returned to the basic fact o f broken love, complicated b y hatred and feelings o f abandonment. There is an ambivalence because the resulting isolation is deli­ cious, the condition o f art and despair, whose accompanying self-pity is an inescapable part o f the suicide syndrome, (p. 65) The failings o f her relationships, he believes, propel thinking into lethally repetitious patterns. She felt abandoned, and gave w a y to abandonment. This abandoned element provokes the w i l d defiance i n her more psychotic poems, i n w h i c h the bombastic tone is a denial o f all real needs, and o f existential realities and responsibilities, as i n Lady Lazarus (Ariel, p. 18): It's the theatrical Comeback i n broad day T o the same place, the same face, the same brute Amused shout: ' A miracle!' That knocks me out. There is a charge For the eyeing o f m y scars. . . 9

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W e may remember D r Robert Daly's remark quoted above (p. 126) about the impulse o f the schizoid w o m a n to seduce. Here she enacts a strip-tease ('eyeing') b y w h i c h she seduces us ('brutes') into believing she can c o m m i t suicide every ten years, and come back. For coming into any closer contact there is a penalty—which she wants us to pay: A n d there is a charge, a very large charge For a w o r d or a touch O r a b i t o f blood . . . This sardonic reference to the relic cults o f m a r t y r d o m reveals the element o f vengeance i n her suicide. B u t this sarcastic hostility is itself a defence against intolerable fear. I f w e listen to her reading this poem o n the British Council recording we can hear i n her voice a tremble o f fear that gradually mounts to a quiver o f rage. Thrusting her hate into us, is, o f course, a defence: i t helps her to overcome her fear that i f w e loved or comprehended her w e w o u l d engulf her. I n fever {Fever 103°, Ariel, p. 59) she escapes from corporeal existence into a dimension o f existence beyond our reach: I am too pure for y o u or anyone. . . . I am a lantern . . . O f Japanese paper, m y gold beaten skin mfinitely delicate and infinitely expensive. I n the attempt to keep us away b y alienation she seeks to preserve her o w n chaos. Y e t she makes her o w n encapsulated w o r l d so consistent that b y the cunning o f her art w e become involved i n dissociation before w e realise i t . Commentators on Sylvia Plath often speak o f her quest for an absolute reality, and for a p u r i t y o f vision that was intolerant o f shams. I t is true that she displays great integrity. B u t i n Lady Lazarus the quest for a golden purity has a desperate and often negative quality, as i f she were seeking the purity o f being no longer human—ambivalent, full o f conflict, fragments, blood and mess. A t the end o f Getting There (Ariel, p. 44) she steps ' f r o m the black car o f Lethe,/Pure as a baby'. Elsewhere she uses the image 'Pure and clear as the cry o f a b a b y . . .' I n Lady Lazarus she is Herr Doktor's

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opus I am your valuable, The pure gold baby . . . So, the pure gold baby she hopes to be is n e w l y born, but also one w h i c h is totally pure and so inhuman. In Fever 103 the state o f purity is so unearthly that i t is untouchable: T a m too pure for y o u or anyone.' Sylvia Plath's preoccupation w i t h p u r i t y can, I believe, be i l l u ­ minated b y Fairbairn's discussion o f the perplexities o f the schizoid individual. I n circumstances o f deprivation he says 'emptiness comes to assume quite special significance for the child'. N o t only does he feel empty, but he fears that his inward hunger may empty the mother—and 'involve the disappearance and destruction o f his libidinal object'. The ambivalence o f being human therefore to the schizoid individual means that he has w i t h i n h i m such a strong hunger that i t may spoil all goodness. O u t o f this arises a struggle to keep the goodness 'pure'. Sylvia Plath's use o f gold as a symbol moves between these poles. I n Freudian terms gold is a symbol o f 'inner contents'. As an export f r o m one's inner substance i t can be something w h i c h i t is good to give. B u t i t can also be something w h i c h is to be got r i d of, and w h i c h may be pure hate. The search for an unearthly purity may be studied i n Fever 103° (Ariel, p. 58). B r i n k (1968) notes h o w 0

She explained that, 'This poem is about t w o kinds o f fire—the fires o f hell, w h i c h merely antagonise, and the fires o f heaven, w h i c h purify. D u r i n g the poem, the first sort o f fire suffers itself into the second.' This shows promise o f release; such suffering should p r o m p t an affirmation o f spiritual energies and greater than human hope. (p. 60. The phrases f r o m Sylvia Plath are quoted b y A . Alvarez i n his Tri-Quarterly article.) She is trying to say that i t is possible to turn the fires o f hell into the fires o f heaven, b y schizoid inversion. The one can merge into the other, so that death becomes b i r t h : hate can be purging love, as b y 'Radiation' and 'Hiroshima ash . . . eating i n ' . I n the heat o f the sickness she turns to reject her false self: ( ' M y selves dissolving,

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old whore petticoats'). The dangers o f being alive and human are too great: i t is 'the aguey tendon', the sin o f impure flesh. B u t as . . . the l o w smokes r o l l From me like Isadora's scarves, I ' m i n a fright One scarf w i l l catch and anchor in the wheel.* She fears that the scarves o f smoke f r o m her purgation w i l l actually bring her death. I n this poem she sees that the tongues o f hell ' w i l l not rise' B u t trundle round the globe C h o k i n g the aged and the meek, The weak Hothouse baby i n its crib, The ghastly orchid Hanging its hanging garden i n the air, Devilish leopard! This 'ghastly orchid' is surely the female element itself—the sexual organ o f the negative anima, the 'devilish leopard' i n herself o f w h i c h she is terribly afraid, is associated w i t h the 'weak hothouse baby', the regressed libidinal ego. Its 'hanging garden' is surely the genital. Like the newts i n Nick and the Candlestick i t is turned w h i t e by death: Radiation turned i t w h i t e A n d killed i t i n an hour. Greasing the bodies o f adulterers Like Hiroshima ash and eating i n . The sin. The sin. The patterns i n the m i n d released by the delirium o f fever, so accurately recorded here, are not only those o f sexual guilt, but also feelings o f sin, o f a deep inner badness.f Her fears o f depen­ dence and ambivalence are exacerbated: ' Y o u r body', she cries, 'Hurts me as the w o r l d hurts God'. The purity she yearns for is the purity o f not being human any longer: ' I am too pure for y o u or anyone.' * Isadora Duncan was strangled when her scarf caught in the wheel of a car. t T h e reference is evidently to the film Hiroshima Mon Amour which merges the act of love with that of the ultimate hate.

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. . . m y gold beaten skin Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive. I A m a pure acetylene Virgin . . . The poem is ironic: a comment on the deranged feelings oneexperiences i n fever. B u t yet the poet cannot distinguish between her life-feelings and those w h i c h impel her to become something non-human—a m o o n o f paper, a lantern. I n fever she is a 'huge camellia/Glowing and coming and going, flush on flush', and tor­ mented by the beads o f hot metal, pure flaming gas. The fires o f hell may have been meant to become the fires o f heaven, i n the poem, but they are welcomed as transforming her out o f the human state—a transformation into refined purity w h i c h involves the b u r n i n g : she is only bewildered by the things w i t h which she is attended B y kisses, by cherubim, B y whatever these pink things mean. N o t y o u , nor h i m N o t h i m , nor h i m ( M y selves dissolving . . .) Again, the selves sound like males. T o return to Lady Lazarus (Ariel, p. 16), we can see that the posture i n i t belongs to a desperate quest for such new purity, as o f Lazarus raised f r o m the dead. B u t the delusion is plain enough, though she tries to delude us b y her B a r n u m and Bailey barking: I have done i t again One year i n every ten I manage i t — The absurd boast is made i n a tone o f hysterical pride, utterly remote from that o f the quiet and acutely observed self-knowledge o f (say) the bee poems, which move i n the direction o f being rather than not-being. This 'black flip' mode destroys capacities for meaning; and carries us into moral inversion o f a dehumanised kind:

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A sort o f walking miracle, m y skin B r i g h t as a Nazi lampshade . . . There is a gloating satisfaction both i n the inversion o f appropriate feeling and i n prompting disgust i n the reader. The exhibitionism becomes offensive, like much o f the schizoid destructiveness i n contemporary art: Peel o f f the napkin O m y enemy. D o I terrify? B u t such postures belong to weakness not strength. T o use a phrase f r o m Guntrip there is a 'fear o f being found', so that anyone w h o seeks genuinely to bring her back to life and contact is an enemy. There is thus a resistance to the reader w h o shares her penetrating schizoid vision elsewhere: there is a new note here o f abandonment to 'dark rationalisations': Soon, soon the flesh The grave cave ate w i l l be A t home on me . . . 'grave cave ate' is the k i n d o f 'chaos-play' on words w e meet i n Laing's patient Julie, for example her 'leally lovely lifely life' or I m a no un . A n d I a smiling w o m a n . I am o n l y thirty A n d like the cat I have nine times to die. This is N u m b e r Three . . . As Fairbairn tells us o f such schizoid modes, showing is substituted for doing, exhibitionism for relationship. She puts herself beyond relationship w i t h the reader, w h o is contemptuously rejected as one o f the —peanut-crunching c r o w d . . . She 'plays another scene w h i c h may seduce yet another audience' (to use Daly's phrase)—but despite the apparent confidence (the * I.e. no-one, a noun (a word not a person) and a (pure) nun. See The Divided Self, p. 223.

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w r i t i n g is skilfully controlled) she is not n o w placing her o w n destructiveness so much as revelling i n i t : she is ringmaster and promotion agent to her o w n suicide: Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do i t exceptionally well. I do i t so i t feels like hell. I do i t so i t feels real. I guess y o u could say I've a call. As Laing points out, attempts b y the schizoid individual to experience real alive feelings may be made b y subjecting oneself to intense pain or terror. However, a horror o f real ordinary living can develop, w h i c h w i l l then seem ridiculous to the true self, and so repugnant. This explains the appeal i n Sylvia Plath's psychotic poems: like a great deal o f art i n our time, she encourages us to feel that ordinary life and its satisfactions are piffling affairs— 'neutrality'. The big inversions, hostilities and forms o f destruc­ tiveness are the only w a y to live. W h a t Laing (i960) says i l l u ­ minates b o t h Sylvia Plath's more psychotic poems and our o w n increasingly psychotic culture: T h e i n d i v i d u a l ' s . . . adaptation to ordinary l i v i n g [comes] to be conceived b y his 'true' self as a more and more shameful and/or ridiculous pretence. Pari passu his 'self, i n its o w n fantasied rela­ tionship, has become more and more volatilized, free f r o m the contingencies and necessities that encumber i t as an object among others i n the w o r l d , where he knows he w o u l d be c o m ­ mitted to be o f this time and this place, subject to life and death, and embedded i n this flesh and these bones. I f the ' s e l f thus volatilized i n fantasy n o w conceives the desire to escape f r o m its shut-upness, to end the pretence, to be honest, to reveal and declare and let itself be k n o w n w i t h o u t equivocation one may be witness to the onset o f an acute psychosis. Such a person though sane outside has been becoming progressively insane inside . . . (p. 160, m y italics) Lady Lazarus is, in this sense, a psychotic poem. 'Volatilized' is a key w o r d : she 'melts to a shriek'. She has here ceased even to play

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at being sane. Laing also says: ' I t is not uncommon for deper­ sonalized patients . . . to speak o f having murdered their selves . . . Such statements are usually called delusions, they are delusions w h i c h contain existential truth' (ibid., p. 162). The patient w h o says he has 'committed suicide' may be perfectly clear about the fact that he has not cut his throat. W e find the same k i n d o f dis­ sociation i n Sylvia Plath when she (to us, cold-bloodedly) cannot see the evident dangers to her body and being o f suicide. I t is difficult for us to discuss this k i n d o f ambiguity, because we are accustomed to accept statements in terms o f logical, sane, argu­ ment. W i t h such statements, however, we have to enter into the ambiguous logic o f insanity. Laing speaks o f the 'denial o f being as a means to preserve being', and o f 'fending o f f the threat o f castration' b y pretending to be castrated already. Obviously, here we regress to early infantile procedures, to avoid intolerable threats, rather like a child calling out ' I ' m not here!' i n a game o f hide-and-seek. Lady Lazarus is a psychotic fantasy, that a person w h o has committed suicide can talk about i t . Another motive for the self-castration i n this poem is clear i n the aggression directed at the Father, i n vengeance, and, behind h i m , the castrating mother. A l l these are ways o f dealing w i t h menacing figures, w h o are threatening her w i t h talion revenge for her hatred directed against them. Daddy has merged w i t h the psychiatrist w h o tried to cure her by E C T : So, so Herr D o k t o r . So, Herr Enemy. I am your opus, I am your valuable . . . The bitterness comes from the fact (which w e can see i n Poem for a Birthday) that the psychotherapist tried to make a pure gold baby, 'good as gold', rather than bring the real baby self, Fido Litdesoul, to birth. B u t there is no longer any hope for that regressed libidinal ego: he could not be found i n this farrago o f hate. W e are i n the ultimate hate-dynamics o f the concentration camp. The Nazis were heartless enough to t h r o w babies into furnaces: her internalised Daddy is like that, too, since he has con­ demned his baby to a living death.

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So, what is the final product? I n the hands o f the doers she has become nothing, she . . . melts to a shriek. I turn and burn. D o not think I underestimate your great concern. Here she completely reverses the concept o f concern, for Herr Doktor's 'concern' is not a giving in reparation w h i c h seeks to prevent or remedy the damage or annihilation (caused by envy). It is a 'concern' that she should be entirely annihilated, the reverse o f ruth. He is only concerned to eradicate her f r o m the w o r l d i n a 'final solution'. I n the end Daddy merges w i t h God and the D e v i l w h o have 'done' to her, and given her flesh, bone, but nothing essential there—only a pseudo-morality (soap), conventional rela­ tionship (a wedding ring) and 'a gold filling'—something to stop a hole, a stop-gap, pure, p l u g : the purgation she seeks i n the fire o f death reduces her to nothing. I n revenge she threatens to reemerge as pure hate. Ash, ash— Y o u poke and stir. Flesh, bone, there is nothing there— A cake o f soap, A wedding ring, A gold filling. B u t there is something which, as W i n n i c o t t says, 'cannot be destroyed'—the true core o f the self. This self is mingled w i t h the voracious mouth-ego: we meet her i n the bee poems. She is the 'red, terrible girl' whose cries are hooks. She is the essential female self, w h o does not often show herself—and her immediate impulse is to rise like a flame from the ashes o f a false life to consume the false male imagos. Herr God, Herr Lucifer Beware Beware. O u t o f the ash I rise w i t h m y red hair A n d I eat men like air.

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She is a salamander or Phoenix: she also has the characteristics o f the chameleon w h i c h was supposed to eat air. She has also appeared 'more terrible than she ever was' i n Stings. I n Lady Lazarus, D a d d y - D o k t o r 'pokes and stirs', as i f having intercourse w i t h the mother w h o is ash and a vortex: but there is 'nothing there'. The triumphant note i n Lady Lazarus is false: there is no real triumph, but a shriek o f desperation, bewilderment and despair—a despair so schizoid, so deep, that i t is utterly w i t h ­ out hope, and this hopelessness can only find relief in recklessness. I t is the i m m o r a l motive o f the schizoid individual diagnosed by Fairbairn—'since the j o y o f loving seems hopelessly barred to h i m , he may as well deliver himself over to the j o y o f hating and obtain what satisfaction he can out o f that'. W h i l e this is a poignant tragedy for the individual, i t is also an anti-human development, and inauthentic. I f we listen acutely to Sylvia Plath w e can see that she was aware that what faced her was appalling and dreadful because, even i n the heart o f loss o f confidence, she preserved clarity o f insight and expression. B u t because she leaves out the unrecognised factor o f actual annihilation, her poetry can t u r n towards the psychotic, yet still remain clear and convincing i n its logic—though that logic is utterly false. One sees this happening, I believe, i n Elm (Ariel, p. 25). I n this poem there is a powerful expression o f a deep dread o f the regressed libidinal ego, which, i n its hunger, seems to threaten loss o f all objects, and o f the w o r l d itself: I am inhabited b y a cry. N i g h t l y i t flaps out Looking, w i t h its hooks, for something to love. I am terrified b y this dark thing That sleeps i n me; A l l day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity. The hunger is so ferocious that there can be no confidence in love. Love is a shadow H o w y o u lie and cry after i t Listen: these are its hooves: i t has gone off, like a horse.

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T h o u g h the self desperately yearns for the confirmation o f love, it always seems to gallop away, like a runaway horse, and all she hears is the echoes o f its hoof-beats. Again, w e touch on the origin o f this failure o f confirmation i n the mother, for w h o m the m o o n is a symbol: The m o o n , also, is merciless: she w o u l d drag me Cruelly, being barren. Her radiance scathes me. O r perhaps I have caught her. I let her go. I let her go Diminished and flat, as after radical surgery. The face that should reflect is felt to be one that threatens annihila­ tion b y impingement. So, perhaps, I have 'caught her' she says— that is, 'perhaps I have become a person w i t h her manner'. ' I let her go' means, ' I forfeit for ever any hope that I can find love there. B y a k i n d o f amputation I give up this possibility and see the m o o n as diminished and flat, and become diminished and flat m y s e l f ('a cut paper shadow'). Where can the reflection be found? As i n Little Fugue there seems only a 'featureless cloud' offering no human response. So, the identity i n Elm seems as evanescent: Clouds pass and disperse. Are those the faces o f love, those pale irretrievables? —one gets nothing o f oneself back. Is i t for such I agitate m y heart? Surely the r h y t h m o f this evokes a literary reference, from Tourneur, Does the silkworm expend her yellow labours For thee? For thee does she undo her self? and also f r o m Eliot, echoing Tourneur, 'Blood shaking m y h e a r t . . . ' I n Tourneur the character is looking at a skull, and the question is an existential one. I n Sylvia Plath's line w e have a characteristic image o f reflection. 'Is m y need for love, w h i c h shakes me so, and terrifies me so, a yearning for nothing more than pale passing dissipating featurelessnesses i n clouds?'

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I n her puzzlement, she realises that she has all the insights, but can do nothing for herself: I am incapable o f more knowledge. She has experienced the worst that can be experienced, and still all she knows is hate. W i t h o u t any confidence i n love, h o w can she ever feel 'ontological security'? I k n o w the bottom, she says. I k n o w i t w i t h m y great tap r o o t : It is what y o u fear. I do not fear i t : I have been there. Is i t the sea y o u hear i n me, Its dissatisfactions? O r the voice o f nothing, that was your madness? She herself is only too familiar w i t h the ' b o t t o m ' : being a schizoid individual she knows i t w i t h strange insight. B u t her dissatisfac­ tion is as immense as the sea and her voice is a voice o f non-being. F r o m her utter incapacity to find love or believe i n it, she is only amazed that the person she is addressing still cries out for i t . She doesn't k n o w what to say to someone w h o yearns for love. I n telling her that love is only the echoes o f disappearing hoofbeats, she recognises that she herself is only offering hate and despair, w h i c h may have the effect o f petrifying the 'she' she is addressing: A l l night I shall gallop thus, impetuously, T i l l y o u r head is a stone, your p i l l o w a little turf, Echoing, echoing. She has only hate to offer: O r shall I bring y o u the sound o f poisons? This is rain n o w , this b i g hush. A n d this is the fruit o f i t : tin-white, like arsenic. Some o f the images are familiar—'acetic acid i n a sealed tin', the white mushrooms g r o w i n g , perhaps. B u t for the m o m e n t the verse has gone garbled, and we have something more frightening than confusion—for the words have become psychotic. The daily experience o f sunrise and sunset—as in the 'dew that flies/Suicidal

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. . . Into the red/Eye, the cauldron o f m o r n i n g ' (Ariel) becomes an atrocious series o f sunsets: Scorched to the root M y red filaments burn and stand, a hand o f wires. W e can make gestures at meaning. There is a m e m o r y o f being 'lit up like an electric bulb' b y shock therapy. There is the feeling o f being burnt like a w i t c h , w h e n 'the devil was eating the devil out'. There is a feeling o f days being an agony, so that when the sun goes d o w n red one experiences this k i n d o f torment. B u t the images are w i l d and incoherent. The self n o w only exists as a series o f fragmentary pieces o f aggression: N o w I break up i n pieces that fly about like clubs. A w i n d o f such violence W i l l tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek. As the identity breaks up, so i t is impossible to find any focus o f confidence. Perception itself breaks d o w n and everything dis­ perses: the intentional w i l l is paralysed. The face she sees i n the branches—is i t her own? Is i t the moon? Certainly, i t is the face o f the unreflecting mother which is all one gets i f one seeks love: W h a t is this, this face So murderous i n its strangle o f branches?— Its snaky acids hiss.* It petrifies the w i l l . Instead o f reflection there is a Medusa to petrify, a murderous image o f hate. This deep fault i n the psychic tissue overcomes her (for, as she says elsewhere 'fixed stars govern a life'). . . . These are the isolate slow faults That k i l l , that k i l l , that k i l l . Berck-plage (Ariel, p. 30) shows the same inability to hold experience together, w r i t t e n under the impact o f a death, about a nightmare encounter w i t h crippled people the previous year. The topography o f the summer resort around her is coloured by a sense o f doom. The poem ends: * The word 'kiss' in Ariel, in earlier editions, is a misprint.

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