Comparing Feminist Poetry by Plath and Sexton Essay

Comparing Feminist Poetry by Plath and Sexton Poetry should be a shock to the senses. It should also hurt Anne Sexton believed (Baym 2703), and evidence of this maxims implications echoes loudly through the writing of Sexton as well as through the work of her friend and contemporary Sylvia Plath. Plath and Sextons lifetimes spanned a period of remarkable change in the social role of women in America, and both are obviously feminist poets caught somewhere between the submissive pasts of their mothers and the liberated futures awaiting their daughters. With few established female poets to emulate, Plath and Sexton broke new ground with their intensely personal, confessional poetry. Their anger and frustration with female†¦show more content†¦However, Plath uses her fathers German ancestry, as well as ideas about womens relationships with their fathers and husbands, to broaden the poems significance beyond the scope of her own experience. Plath herself said that the poem related to the Electra complex, defined by The World Book Medical Encyclopedia as a Freudian theory about a young girls possessive but repressed love for her father (Electra Complex - online). The child narrating Daddy, in a youthful, Kipling-like rhythm, is haunted by her fathers monumental presence in her world, calling him marble-heavy, a bag full of God (Plath 2748). Both the poems childlike cadence and the innocent description of a father still the center of a young girls universe make it easy to re-experience a youthful yearning for parental approval. When the father in the poem dies, the young girl spends much of her life searching for a way to understand and get close to him despite his absence. She inquires about the town where he grew up, but finds that [...] the name of the town is common. / My Polack friend / Says there are a dozen or two. / So I never could tell where you / Put your foot, your root, / I never could talk to you (Plath 2748). Later, her search for herShow MoreRelatedSylvia Plath and Anne Sexton1240 Words   |  5 Pages Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) and Anne Sexton (1928-1974) both explored similar themes such as tone, structure, and symbolism. Many of their poems were cries for help, which resulted into metal illness, depression, and suicide. In 1958, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath met, and much to their surprise had a few things in common. They both were fascinated with death and suicide. Both Sexton’s and Plath’s poetry are considered as confessional poetry in which they were very honest, depressed