Revising Life: Sylvia Plath's Ariel Poems (Gender and American Culture)

'Provides a compelling argument for Plath's revision of the painful parts of her life--the failed marriage, her anxiety for success, and her ambivalence towards her mother.... The reader will feel the tension in the poetry and the life. 'Choice' [Examines] Plath's twin goals of becoming a famous poet and a perfect mother.... This book's main points are clearly and forcefully argued: that both poems and babies require 'struggle, pain, endless labor, and... fears of monstrous offspring' and that, in the end, Plath ran out of the resources necessary to produce both. Often maligned as a self-indulgent confessional poet, Plath is here retrieved as a passionate theorist.'--Library Journal. Susan Van Dyne's reading of twenty-five of Sylvia Plath's Ariel poems considers three contexts: Plath's journal entries from 1957 to 1959 (especially as they reveal her conflicts over what it meant to be a middle-class wife and mother and an aspiring writer in 1950s America); the interpretive strategies of feminist theory; and Plath's multiple revisions of the poems

Susan Van Dyne's reading of twenty-five of Sylvia Plath's Ariel poems considers three contexts: Plath's journal entries from 1957 to 1959 (especially as they reveal her conflicts over what it meant to be a middle-class wife and mother and an aspiring writer in 1950s America); the interpretive strategies of feminist theory; and Plath's multiple revisions of the poems.

Library Journal

To examine Plath's twin goals of becoming a famous poet and a perfect mother, Van Dyne (English and women's studies, Smith) juxtaposes three kinds of texts here: Plath's private writings, feminist theoretical strategies, and, for the first time, the manuscripts of the ``Ariel'' poems themselves. More might have been made of a fourth type of text, i.e., the ``cultural myths and family scripts'' of her time that required women to emphasize the maternal role over others (an example of which is a condescending address given by Adlai Stevenson to the poet's graduating class at Smith). But this book's main points are clearly and forcefully argued: that both poems and babies require ``struggle, pain, endless labor, and . . . fears of monstrous offspring'' and that, in the end, Plath ran out of the resources necessary to produce both. Often maligned as a self-indulgent confessional poet, Plath is here retrieved as a passionate theorist. Recommended for academic libraries and public libraries with strong literary collections.-- David Kirby, Florida State Univ., Tallahassee

'Provides a compelling argument for Plath's revision of the painful parts of her life--the failed marriage, her anxiety for success, and her ambivalence towards her mother. . . . The reader will feel the tension in the poetry and the life.' Choice '[Examines] Plath's twin goals of becoming a famous poet and a perfect mother. . . . This book's main points are clearly and forcefully that both poems and babies require 'struggle, pain, endless labor, and . . . fears of monstrous offspring' and that, in the end, Plath ran out of the resources necessary to produce both. Often maligned as a self-indulgent confessional poet, Plath is here retrieved as a passionate theorist.'-- Library Journal Susan Van Dyne's reading of twenty-five of Sylvia Plath's Ariel poems considers three Plath's journal entries from 1957 to 1959 (especially as they reveal her conflicts over what it meant to be a middle-class wife and mother and an aspiring writer in 1950s America); the interpretive strategies of feminist theory; and Plath's multiple revisions of the poems. 'Providing a compelling argument for Plath's revision of the painful parts of her life-the failed marriage, her anxiety for success and her ambivalence towards her mother. The reader will feel tension in the poetry and life.' -Choice Plath's Ariel poems of rage against an act of silencing that is startlingly prefigured in the journals of 1957-59.