One, Two, Three: Sylvia Plath’s Verse Dramas

Abstract

Most readers of Sylvia Plath, if asked to identify the most obviously ‘autobiographical’ area of her writing, would probably first point to her poetry, alongside (although perhaps with more qualifications) prose works such as The Bell Jar and Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams. Whilst a number of critics have made determined efforts in recent years to disentangle the literary effects of Plath’s poetry from the biographical facts and myths that continue to circulate around her work (see Rose, 1991), many readers and critics persist not only in hearing in it the raw, immediate and compelling voice of its author, but also consider this ‘confessional’ element to count as an index of spontaneous authenticity. But for Plath herself, the relationship between personal experience and writing was both more considered and more complex:

I think my poems immediately come out of the sensuous and emotional experiences that I have … I believe that one should be able to control and manipulate experiences… with an informed and an intelligent mind. I think that personal experience is very important, but certainly it shouldn’t be a kind of shut-box and mirror-looking, narcissistic experience. (Orr, 1966: 169)