In Print

The following women are published poets who used their work to further the feminist message and portray a feminine self outside of the dominant patriarchal ideology. 

Elizabeth Bishop

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Elizabeth Bishop, a prominent American poet, was born in Massachusetts in 1911. An avid world traveler, her poetry has received multiple awards, including the Pulitzer Prize. Bishop often focuses on the concept of the self in her work, and this can be seen in her poem, “In the Waiting Room.” This “autobiographical” poem chronicles the speaker’s (who is an almost seven-year-old version of Bishop) experience with her aunt at a dentist’s office. The speaker is looking through an issue of National Geographic in the waiting room, and the lines of the poem tell of Bishop’s surprise and confusion at seeing different people and cultures portrayed in the magazine, which causes her to consider “the separations and the bonds among human beings… [and] the forces that shape individual identity through the interreleated recognitions of community and isolation” (Edelman 182-183). The poem continually refers to the speaker’s dual identity and her struggle to determine her true self amidst the new information she has been provided by the magazine; various people groups that she was previously unaware of actually exist, including the “dead man slung on a pole,” “babies with pointed heads,” and “black, naked women with necks / wound round and round with wire” (Bishop 179). She feels a strong sense of isolation and also a new sense of how big the world really is, “plunging [her] into the abyss that constitutes identity, [disorienting] not by any lack of specification, but by the undecidable doubleness with which it is specified” (Edelman 186). While she once thought her identity was hers alone, she now faces the difficulty of imagining her identity as part of a larger group identity, one that every person is a part of and that she must find her place in.

           

Bishop’s understanding of the duality of her identity as an individual and as part of a community is a great and beneficial realization, especially for someone as young as (almost) seven. She is able to see herself as existing beyond the constraints of her gender. Rather than just accepting her future as wife and mother, young Bishop sees herself as a member of a larger community, one worthy of being explored and understood. Bishop’s world in 1918 is dominated by war, an always-looming reminder of chaos; however, no matter how terrifying at the moment, the realization that more exists beyond the expectations of her as a youth and as a woman and as a person living through the disorder of war allows her the distinct ability to expand her understanding of the self. Young children are often isolated, understanding only what they experience and see through their family unit or at school. Bishop’s “In the Waiting Room” takes place in a time when media was not readily available in the way it is today, so she would not have been exposed to a constant stream of television shows and newscasts portraying various cultures and people groups. Therefore, it’s understandable that she would be surprised by the contents of the magazine, and that it would work toward refiguring her entire identity as an individual, as a woman, and as a child living in Massachusetts in 1918.

A broader understanding of the self as part of a community helps individuals to consider how they can help the collective group, what experiences and talents they can contribute, and how they can create a more positive living experience for everyone. In 1918, the patriarchal society Bishop was living in would have given her little opportunity to move beyond the expectations of wifehood and motherhood. Without an understanding of herself outside of this ideology, she may not have been able to see the greater world and the other people and cultures that exist. The poem shows the curiosity of a woman with a desire to live beyond tradition, constraints, and convention. Bishop’s realization helps her to develop an appreciation for diversity, which can work toward creating peace and understanding in a world consumed by chaos and war. Reading and analyzing this poem can help a person to understand their own standing as an individual that is part of a collective community and can help them to reflect on what contributions they can make to the world. 

Anne Sexton

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Anne Sexton was a pioneer in writing feminist poetry. Her personal life was tumultuous, and Sexton is known for her confessional, honest poetry which chronicled many sensitive issues in her life such as her divorce or her struggle with depression, which ultimately culminated in her suicide at the age of 46. Sexton “made the experience of being a woman a central issue in her poetry, and though she endured criticism for bringing subjects such as menstruation, abortion, and drug addiction into her work, her skill as a poet transcended the controversy over her subject matter” (Anne Sexton). Sexton’s discussion of the woman’s experience was more important than eliminating content that could be viewed as controversial and, as a result, many of her poems work toward establishing a feminine self that is tired of the traditional gender expectations she was subjected to as a woman. Sexton’s poem “Her Kind” is a poem that discusses the self in reference to the speaker’s past roles, responsibilities, and identities and works to surpass the expectations of a woman to be inferior and a victim.

“Her Kind” is a poem that strongly relies on the use of first-person where the speaker consistently refers to herself as “I.” While the speaker is talking about herself, she develops multiple personas throughout the entirety of the poem, including that of a witch, cook, woman, and survivor (Sexton 15-16). While some of the personas she discusses seem to fall within the “boundaries” of gender expectations, others try to break the barrier between woman as inferior and woman as independent. These personas work toward developing and portraying the identity of a woman not held back by the patriarchal constraints of society, but is rather defined by “the terms on which she wishes to be understood: not victim, but witness and witch” (Middlebrook). Sexton returns to the “I” at the end of each stanza of her poem by reiterating “I have been her kind,” suggesting that she has associated herself with the identity she presents in the stanza at one point or another. The speaker holds power and is a woman who isn’t afraid to express her sexuality or be mysterious, all characteristics that contribute to the speaker’s identity as a non-traditional woman. In this way, “Her Kind” works to break through the barriers and limitations set in place by patriarchy and the female speaker is defining herself outside of male domination through her identity as a new creation; while her identity as a housewife once dealt with “skillets, carvings, shelves, / closets, silks, [and] innumerable goods” and was “misunderstood,” her identity seems to take on a different persona earlier on in the poem (Sexton 16).

However, Sexton’s discussion of this version of the self seems to be overshadowed by the last stanza and last lines of “Her Kind”: “Learning the last bright routes, survivor / where your flames still bite my thigh / and my ribs crack where your wheels wind. / A woman like that is not ashamed to die. / I have been her kind” (16). Perhaps the identity outside of the confines of gender expectations is just barely out of reach; Sexton begins the poem with the persona of the witch, which seems to slowly deteriorate as the poem discusses the persona of the housewife in the second stanza and then finally the persona of a woman “not ashamed to die.” While the self takes on many roles in “Her Kind,” Sexton isn’t quite able to get the speaker to break away from the role as a weak, oppressed woman. However, her poem shows that a woman’s identity has the potential to break through the barriers set in place by society and that the definition of the feminine self isn’t fully-realized when it is seen through a patriarchal lens. Interviews with Anne Sexton suggest that her identity possessed a certain duality that comes through in her poetry. In an interview she once stated the following: “All I wanted was a little piece of life, to be married, to have children…I was trying my damnedest to lead a conventional life, for that was how I was brought up, and it was what my husband wanted of me. But one can’t build little white picket fences to keep the nightmares out” (McCabe). While she seemed to express a desire to fit into the conventional roles of submissive wife and mother, these roles weren’t the only aspects of her identity to define her. She was a writer, a poet, and a feminist who shows that “many of her experiences and feelings are the product of a society that oppresses women. The anger and excess that run through so much of her poetry are uniquely hers, but there are echoes of the same kind of rage in the poetry of many of her more explicitly feminist contemporaries” (McCabe). Her feelings of oppression come through in her poetry and display a woman with a desire to have an identity outside that of traditional womanhood, but these feelings also show a woman stricken with chronic mental illness and thoughts of death so that this new identity could not be fully realized. Unfortunately, Sexton's life ended in suicide at the age of 46.

Sylvia Plath

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Sylvia Plath is well-known for her desire for independence and for success as a poet. Born in 1932, Plath wrote multiple collections of poetry, also winning a Pulitzer Prize. She married (and later divorced) poet Ted Hughes and was the mother of two children. Like Sexton, Plath’s life also ended in suicide (although Plath was only 30), and her angst in managing her identity as a poet, a wife, and mother often comes through in her poetry. Letters Home is a collection of letters and writings by Plath that has been compiled and edited by her mother, Aurelia Schober Plath. In this collection, the reader can clearly see Plath’s opposition to the traditional role of a woman; she did not wish to be constrained by the roles of wifehood and motherhood, evident when she writes to her mother in 1949, “I am afraid of getting older. I am afraid of getting married. Spare me from cooking three meals a day—spare me from the relentless cage of routine and rote. I want to be free—free to know people and their backgrounds—free to move to different parts of the world so I may learn that there are other morals and standards besides my own” (40).

Plath’s words show her immense feelings of oppression in living in a society where the only expectations of women were for them to become wives and mothers. Plath’s poems are “intensely autobiographical…[and] explore her own mental anguish, her troubled marriage to fellow poet Ted Hughes, her unresolved conflicts with her parents, and her own vision of herself” (Sylvia Plath). Plath’s poems frequently reference her feminist leanings and her desire to be valued as a woman and as a poet, a dual identity that she seemed to contend with until her death. “Lady Lazarus,” one of the last poems written by Plath before her death, is “almost obsessively concerned with the making of a literary alter ego—how to realize through language a new vision of the self. In ‘Lady Lazarus’ the poet worried not only about how she would define the self but how she would defend it” (Van Dyne 395). While the majority of Plath’s poems deal with the concept of the self, “Lady Lazarus” particularly focuses on Plath’s desperation in defining her true identity and defending that identity as a woman and a writer. In the time leading up to Plath writing “Lady Lazarus,” she had recently been separated from her husband, was caring for her two small children alone, and was accomplishing little writing. This poem came from a time when “her life seemed to dominate her art and paralyze the forces necessary to create poetry,” thus contributing to a description of Plath’s self in the poem as “volatile, violent, and sometimes overbearing in its egotism,” all characteristics not traditionally associated with the feminine self (Van Dyne 395).

In establishing herself as a person who is fighting to exist outside of the expectations placed on her by a society which told women that one role was acceptable (wife, mother, submissive), Plath expresses a female identity that is not often seen. In her poem, “we recognize a woman writer who struggles to conceive of her life outside of the conventional inherited stories that pretend to describe it” (Van Dyne 396). Further, “Lady Lazarus” develops and discusses Plath’s sense of self through the use of many comparisons and examples: “She borrowed the miracle of Lazarus, the myth of the phoenix, the hype of the circus, and the horror of the holocaust to prophesy for herself a blazing triumph over her feelings of tawdriness and victimization” (Van Dyne 397). Woman is often described as the victim and during the time when Plath was writing “Lady Lazarus,” she was going through a divorce. Refusing to take on the victim role of the traditional female, Plath established a new identity, one that would help her to see herself beyond the constraints of society and one that would help female readers develop a true sense of self outside the conventions of patriarchy.

Just like Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead in the Biblical story, Plath is “reborn” like a phoenix from the dust as a new person with a new sense of self and new identity as a strong, independent woman. She writes, “I am only thirty. / And like a cat I have nine times to die. / This is Number Three” (Plath 244-245). She continues the “rebirth” metaphor by comparing herself to a cat with nine lives, suggesting Plath’s self is something continually evolving and morphing into what she wants it to be. The final lines of the poem read, “Out of the ash / I rise with my red hair / And I eat men like air” (Plath 247). Not only is the female speaker opposing the oppression of women throughout the entirety of this poem, but she eliminates the idea of patriarchy in the end, establishing her dominance as a woman who has an identity beyond her role as an (ex)wife and mother. Clearly, “the persona of [Lady Lazarus] is searingly self-confident—a taunting, bitchy phoenix who appears to loathe her earlier incarnations almost as much as she does her present audience” (Van Dyne 399). She has been resurrected; Plath’s poem communicates this in a way other literary forms can’t. The language and the metaphor of “Lady Lazarus” resurrect the speaker’s identity “out of the ash.”