Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath

The question is whether there is anything to be gained from a comparison of Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath, and of course there is. This does not mean that there is not good reason to consider them first as individuals and as very different poets writing at different times in history, for each writer reflects her time and her own personality to a strong degree. At the same time, it cannot be said that the two are writing on different matters, or on matters so widely separated as to make comparison futile. Indeed, their value as poets lies precisely in their ability to tap into something that is universal and that links the two as artists in spite of being separated by a century of time.

The similarities between the two women are reflected in the fact that both are held up as examples of repressed women who managed to find expression through their poetry and other writings because their respective societies did not provide an equal place for women. Both have also been portrayed as women who were at least partially destroyed by the degree to which their natures were repressed by a male-dominated society, though it is obvious that they were affected to differing degrees by this repression. One problem with this sort of assessment is that it is based on an external image and only a partial understanding of the psychological forces that made these two women choose their respective paths. Basically, the two did not fit into life as we expect people to be able to do. Emil

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t is akin to her perception of the architecture of the body. The home and the elements that make up the home project the form of the poet's mind and bring the reader closer to Dickinson's evolving sense of "place," as person and poet. Other images as well objectify her inner life, including all of her major concerns--self, family, love, loneliness, madness, renunciation, nature, God, death, immortality, eternity, and poetry itself. "In Winter in my Room" (1670) is an erotically symbolic work that is at once a graphic description of the power of sexual attraction and an analysis of the fear and revulsion that attraction may arouse. This is a poem both about hunger and love, and the poem displays the poet's ambivalent attitudes about love. Here we can also see the use of the poet's own house and room as the site of her speculations. That room is often closed and shuttered against the cold, and so it is also dark. The worm is described as being harmless and even attractive, but he is also suspect. In a poem like "Because I could not stop for Death" (712), the bride-of-Christ tradition is fused with the narrative of seduction quite openly as God's emissary, Death, becomes the suitor to carry the runaway heroine to some undefin

Category: Literature - E