西尔维娅·普拉斯自白诗中的创伤英语书写分析

本文是一篇英语论文，本文在创伤理论的框架下，研究普拉斯自白诗中的创伤书写，包括家庭创伤、女性创伤和政治恐惧创伤。诗人通过创伤书写抒发其个人压抑的情感以达到自我疗伤的目的，同时体现出诗人对于女性弱势群体和政治问题的关注。

I．Writing Familial Trauma to Attain Spiritual Freedom

A. Therapy for Loss and Pain over the Early Dead Father
Losing  father  during  childhood  left  a  great  scar  on  her,  which  can  be  seen  as  the root cause of Sylvia Plath’s trauma. The image of her father haunted her ever since for the  rest  of  her  life  and  greatly  influenced  her  later  works.  She  is  obsessed  with  her father’s death and shows her infinite loss and pain in her confessional poetry. However, resorting  to  confessional  poetry  has  become  a  kind  of  therapy,  which  is  a  healing method for Plath to work through her trauma.
It is evident that Otto Plath’s early death was one of the biggest and cruelest blows to  young  Sylvia  Plath,  which  has  become  a  trauma  she  could  never  heal  in  her  life. When Plath was eight years old, her father, Otto Plath died from gangrene infections of leg  amputation  caused  by  late-stage  diabetes.  Her  father  was  a  professor  who  taught both  German  and  biology  at  Boston  University.  When  Otto’s  health  condition deteriorated, he thought it was incurable cancer, and refused to seek medical treatment, but  later  he  was  diagnosed  with  diabetes  instead  of  cancer.  Having  missed  the  best treatment time, Otto died in November 1940. 
After  little  Sylvia  heard  her  father’s  death  from  her  mother,  she  said  she  “will never  speak  to  god again”  (Simpson  11)  as  her  world  was torn apart by her father’s departure.  Perhaps  it  was  at  this  point  that  Plath’s  character  changed  dramatically. Before Otto’s death, Plath was a young girl who knew how to express herself in order to gain  others’  admiration.  But  with  the  death  of  her  father,  Plath’s  need  for self-affirmation  was  fueled  by  a  deep  sense  of  insecurity.  Since  then,  she  became grumpy and a bit of a loner. Then she used the external self to face the world, eager to confirm  her  existence,  and  the  inner  self  was  always  in  the  shadow,  until  she  found  a way to express her inner world through confessional poetry.
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B. Outlet for Hidden Resentment over the Possessive Mother
Sylvia Plath’s emotion towards her mother is ambivalent for she is both attached to her  mother  and  also  wants  to  gain  independence  from  her.  It can be said that Plath’s mother takes a very important position in her short life and has a profound influence on her  poetic  creation.  Her  mother,  in  Sylvia  Plath’s  eyes,  is  not  only  the  beloved  family member  she  can  seek  comfort  from,  but  also  the  primary  cause  of  her  pain.  On  the surface,  Plath  has  to  love  this  “selfless”  mother,  but  she  secretly  hates  her.  Therefore, the resentment towards the mother is hidden somewhere in Plath’s inner mind, only to be occasionally vented through her confessional poetry, which functions as an outlet for the poet to utter her hidden hatred.
Plath’s mother, Aurelia, was a former student of Otto Plath at Boston University. After graduation, she taught at a local school and dreamed of becoming a poet. Plath’s father  was  attracted  by  her,  which  was  not  expressed  because  of  the  teacher-student relationship until Aurelia graduated. Aurelia also admired Otto’s talent for a long time and  agreed  to  marry  him.  After  marriage,  Aurelia  quit  her  job  and  worked  as  a housewife at home. Meanwhile, she also assisted Otto  with his academic career. Their marriage  life  has  been  a  quite  happy  one  until  the  year  1935  when  Otto’s  physical condition  went  from  bad  to  worse.  After  the  death  of  Plath’s  father,  with  the  family burden falling on Aurelia, she worked hard to support Plath and her brother, which has invisibly brought a lot of pressure on the smart and sensitive Plath and is also part of the reason why Plath has to hide her unpleasant feeling towards her mother even though she thinks her mother is controlling and possessive. 
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II. Writing Female Trauma to Regain Female Subjectivity

A. Way of Giving Voice to the Vulnerable Female Body
Plath  believes  that  being  a  woman  is  a  tragedy  for  she  constantly  loses  the  most precious  things  in  life:  during  menstruation,  they  lose  blood;  when  experiencing miscarriage,  they  lose  blood  and  also  the  ability  to  nurture  lives;  childless  women  are considered  not  to  be  integral  women,  but  nurturing  children  makes  them  lose  their vitality. Sylvia Plath is dissatisfied and frustrated with the female body, be it the body of the fertility of infertility, productivity or barrenness. Plath details out the privacy such as menstruation, pregnancy and giving birth in her poems, through which she conveys her dissatisfaction and frustration with this restricted body. She resorts to her confessional poetry and gives her voice to the vulnerable female body.
In America the 1950s and 1960s, the war just ended and patriarchy returned. The government  propagandized  women  to  leave  their  works  and  return  to  families.  The images of the holy housewife and mother repeatedly appeared on television. The media encouraged women to seek their happiness through getting married and having children. Sylvia Plath grew up in such social environment. Men were the only social subjects, in order to become which,  she had to follow the manly idol because her subjectivity and creativity  were  all  inherited  from  the  male  tradition.  Plath  fell  into  the  paradox  that almost all feminists would: being a woman, she advocated women’s equality as men, as well  as  worshipped  male  power  and  avoided  female  nature.  Contradicted  by  her  male mentality  and  her  female  body,  Plath  often  struggled  with  her  perception  of  female body.
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B. Means of Protesting against the Repressive Wifely Duties
Plath  is  a  sensitive  woman  full  of  emotions  and  contradictions.  Unlike  the feminists in the 1960s, Plath is deeply influenced by tradition. Plath has always tries to be a perfect wife that conforms to social norms of that time. However, the obligations endowed  by  this  socially  required  role  and  her  thoughts  form  a  sharp  conflict.  She frankly publicizes her inner trauma and disorder through her confessional poetry, which is a tool to relieve her pain, to release her depression and frustration as well as protest against these repressive wifely duties.
  Plath complains about the bitterness of a wife’s traditional duties: married women are not only doing the household chores, but also men’s sexual partner, and eventually will become breeding machines. One of Sylvia Plath’s strongest and feminist poems that focuses  on  male-female  relationship  in  marriage is  “The Applicant.”  Introducing  this poem for a BBC radio reading in 1962, Plath describes the I-speaker as “an executive, a sort  of  exacting  super  salesman,”  who  wants  to  be  sure  that  “the  applicant  for  his marvelous  product  really  needs  it  and  will  treat  it  right”  (Note to  ‘The  Applicant’ in Collected Poems, 293). The structure of this poem is based on an eight-verse interview. As  the  salesman  questions  the  applicant,  the  reader  gradually  discovers  what  they  are being offered is actually a “wife.”
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III. Writing Political Trauma to Appeal for Social Stability .................................. 42
A. Release of the World WarⅡ  Holocaust Horror .............................................. 42
B. Relief of the Postwar Anxiety over Nuclear and Cold War ............................. 47
C. Denouncement of the Ecological Damage under Political Influence .............. 51

III. Writing Political Trauma to Appeal for Social Stability

A. Release of the World WarⅡ Holocaust Horror
From Sylvia Plath’s confessional poems, especially in Ariel, which is completed in the months before her death, it can be seen that Plath’s strong poetic mentality and her repeated  fascination  with  the  connection  between  poetry  and  death  have  surpassed beyond  the  catharsis  and  release  of  her  familial  or  female  trauma.  These  poems  relate her personal terror and fear with the suffering of the Holocaust in a way of intensifying her grief. However, she cites the Holocaust less as a means of expressing her personal trauma than as a method of reliving the political anxiety and terror shared by the poet and the people of her age. 
In her confessional poem collection Ariel, Plath takes on an intense familiarity with the Holocaust, which aims to reveal the persecution of the Jews, the cruelty of the Nazis and  also  the  brutality  of  the  war.  The  Holocaust  is  not  only  about  her  personal experience,  but  also  elevated  to  a  historical  and  social  level.  In  confessional  poems, Plath  gives  vent  to  her  hatred  and  revenge.  The  lingering  shadow  of  the  war  is  still hovering  in  her  mind;  she  feels  that  the  time  she  lives  in  is  filled  with  the  evil destructive power that has disintegrated the fragile Plath.
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Conclusion
Sylvia Plath is one of the most important representatives of American confessional poetry in the 20th century. She is considered to be one of the greatest poets of the 20th century and the most legendary poet in the history of female poetry. Plath associates her personal  pain  and  trauma  with  collective  suffering,  which  has  achieved  a  marvelous artistic effect.  It is her unique life experience that has contributed to her unique poetic style,  especially  the  painful  personal  experience,  which  brings  her  passion  and inspiration,  as  well  as  accomplishes  a  perfect  self-salvation  on  the  edge  of  life  and death.
In  general,  trauma  refers  to  the  serious  injury  caused  by  serious  events  to  the human mind, which makes patients feel threatened and insecure. Chronic post-traumatic stress  disorder  can  persist  for  years  or  decades.  Suicide,  sustained  self-denial,  and  a strong sense of revenge are significant signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. Plath was undergone  multiple  traumas  which  led  to  her  grief,  depression,  madness  and  suicide attempts.  Death  has  become  an  obsession  for  her  so  she  tried  several  suicide  attempts throughout  her  life,  and  expressed  her  sense  of  self-denial  and  morbid  madness  by writing poetry. The loss of parental love, the breakdown of marriage, and the turbulence of  the  times  and  the  society  have  all  together  contributed  to  Plath’s  traumatic experiences. 
Plath’s confessional poetry is the inevitable result of suffering the repressive life. Her confessional poetry featuring autobiographical contents and abundant emotions can be seen as a way of trauma writing, which is an effective way to face with trauma and get out of trauma. Those poems that are full of suicidal pain and despair have become the embodiment of confessing her extreme pain after suffering the trauma. The pain and trauma make Plath’s poetry achieve a high level of thought and perception of life, the traumatized  experience  of  Plath  has  become  an  important  part  of  her  poetry,  and  to speak out these painful experience works as a therapy for reducing her pain. 
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