Redefining Femininity: The Unique Voice of Sylvia Plath

Abstract

This paper would like to focus on a reinterpretation of Sylvia Plath’s poetry from the feminist perspective. As a woman, she was unique-seeking approval of the menfolk yet at the same time subtly striving to prove her superiority and excellence. Insecure she might have been in her personal domain but she did not put up a façade for the world at large. Though her poems reflect her inner turmoils yet she was a trendsetter who cannot be confined to a particular age. Somewhere in the innermost recesses of her heart, however, she was lonely – still, the small girl betrayed and hurt by her father’s untimely death. Her unique brand of feminism presents a novel way of looking at her and her works – virulent yet seeking completion in her works and her children. Both her children and her poems are expressions of the Woman and Wit combined in her persona. It is often the social and cultural constructions of masculinities and femininities that restrict Women, not the state of being male or female in its entirety.