Daddy and Diving into the Wreck: A Feminist Analysis - Essay Example

 “Daddy” and “Diving into the Wreck”: A Feminist Analysis Feminism has existed in the recent decades to uplift the conditions of women in the society. They fight against the oppression and equality that women experience in their lives as they also deserve equal and humane treatment. With feminism, it is the effort to end sexist biases. It does not limit the fight for particular females as it encompasses all groups of females with no specific category and status of women. Though it fights for the rights of women, it does not aim to make females superior over males. It tends to transform the lives of many women and change the views of men toward the counterpart in various ways. Through such kind of movement, the attention of the society goes deep into the prevailing systems that cater domination and connections of gender, race and social status biases. The efforts then showed the overall conditions of women in the society as it serves as the starting point for further studies and analysis (Adams 240). The fight for equality and issues on the female sex are then explored in literature as poets and writers make their literary pieces about those matters. Two poems that reflect feminism will be analyzed in the paper and those are entitled “Daddy” and “Diving into the Wreck.” The poem “Daddy” was written by Sylvia Plath while “Diving into the Wreck” was made by Adrienne Rich. Both female poets had the concept of feminism in their works though they differ in the way they tackle the issue. Sylvia Plath tackled feminism through her controversial life that made her to be considered as the most controversial modern female poet. She received massive criticisms for her relationship, life and works. Her works created new perspectives on literature as she combined the feminist issues that linked formation and disorganization. Her works influenced the people regarding the masks and feelings that women project in the 1960s. Her works reflected her personal insights and experiences that showed how women like her dealt with her life. Many wandered what would have happened if she had not died early on her career as she made unique literature like the poems filled with anger as she directed her emotions toward her separation with her husband and fellow poet, Ted Hughes (Mishra 202). The same theme was reflected on her poem “Daddy.” On the other hand, Adrienne Rich wrote her poems and other literary works with feminist theme that showed female vulnerability and cultural distortion on experiences of females and even made use of idiomatic expressions upon topics on women (Stringer 569). Rich is a feminist not only through her works as she also taught about feminism in Stanford University (Head 937). By going deeper to the contents for the two poems, the main perspectives of the authors can be analyzed. “Daddy” was the poem rich in anger as the author Plath released her emotions against her experiences with her father who was Otto Plath, an entomologist. In the poem, she killed her father in her psyche and tried to do so by making a first attempt of suicide. It seemed that she had an inner guilt for the death of her father that she desired to fulfill by contemplating on suicide. She was in ruins when her father died before she was able to get over with her Electra complex. The result was an extreme father image that haunts her psyche which became the concept of Daddy in her poem. He was infallible and difficult to overcome in the mind of the author (Gill 40). Despite of the death of her father, she was still haunted by his omnipotence and “resurrected” through the man whom the speaker married. He resembled her father very much from his appearance to his behavior. She also showed how patriarchal society oppressed women as she made use of Nazi, Facist, and Jews in the picture of Holocaust and how women suffered (Yingling and Wiegman 155). Sylvia Path then showed that the poem reflected her life wherein the speaker in the poem had Jewish mother and Nazi father that showed oppression and discrimination. She experienced the difficulty of the marriage between “enemies” (Martin 196). The poem “Diving into the Wreck” differs from “Daddy” as the former maintained its romantic style. Basically, it followed the tone of a lyrical poem with a twist of feminism. Rich was able to include that theme in the poem and explore various details on women issues. She went into the issues of incompatible creative life and motherhood, nonworking marriage, and disappearance of community of women. That poem challenged the traditional form of lyric poetry using feminism. It showed how the conventional form was not enough to fully express the color of the theme and the culture that the poem wanted to convey to the readers. It became the breakthrough into feminism for Rich as her earlier works were not as significant and actively tackling the feminist issues directly. “Diving into the Wreck” gave way to the interpretation of human beings based on the female gender and not the other way around as she had proven the political side of feminism through that particular poem. It tended to cater the growing needs of women for independent decision and thinking while maintaining commitments and connections to the society (Templeton 33). It also allowed the wreck to be a metaphor for depicting the concerns of Rich regarding the women conditions in the society. The poem described the scene politely but passionate enough to bring out the concerns from underneath. The metaphor of the wreck symbolized the whole society that encountered various challenges and problems that the poet would like to remove. The words so powerful in the poem “Diving into the Wreck” showcased the directions pointing onto the disasters that traditional patriarch society brings. The use of the camera, knife and book of myths in the poem became symbols to uncover the details of the societal situation. She indulged into the history of the root cause of biases to women (Saksena 38). Return also became an issue in the poem as humans tend to recreate the experience and knowledge after abandoning it. That kind of return encompasses various fields of endeavor in human life. Rich had shown the opposites in life as she portrayed those through aesthetics while giving out the deeper sense of politics. She showed in the poem how play can coexist with purpose and providing the feminist issues with an open-ended poem for the readers to fill-in the gaps (Radhakrishnan 70). Both poems catered the traditional women as timid, emotional and passive as the speakers there had shown those qualities. In “Daddy”, the speaker was emotional as she expressed her hatred towards her father. She was not able to remove his influence on her head despite of the death of her father as he manifested in the form of a husband who betrayed the speaker (Shmoop 22-24). The same level of anger that had been deeply rooted from the fight for gender equality was seen in “Diving into the Wreck” as the speaker showed the deep anguish against the traditional view on women and how they are oppressed by the strict patriarchal society (Cooper 238). Perhaps both poems had that kind of rebellion against the oppression on women as that theme surfaced during the time both works were made and published. In the Sixties, counterculture flourished in response to the strict traditional culture that gave birth to counterculture and several movements from civil rights movement to feminist movement (Monaco 121). In that decade, two feminist groups came out to fight for gender equality: Women’s Rights and Women’s Liberation. They shocked the world as they fought for the rights of women as they pertain to females as equals of men. They opposed the rigid patriarchal view of the society that men rule over the society and women are weaker than men. Women who fought for their rights in that decade were considered in that time as people not suitable for motherhood and were not capable of maintaining good marriages (Carden 53). The feminist movement then inspired the flourishing of literature that tackled the needs and issues on women. Both poems also catered exclusive and subjective feminine experiences. In “Daddy”, it was seen in the use of the pronouns I and You as the speaker addressed the poem to her father. She kept on thinking of him. Also the title “Daddy” made the poem more subjective as it portrays closeness. Instead of using Father to address him, “Daddy” made it more personal. It is used especially by girls who wanted to be affectionate towards their father (Shmoop 19). On the other hand, “Diving into the Wreck” depicted the subjective experience to be in a form of exploration as the speaker searched holistically through various things from the natural environment towards herself as the object of exploration. The speaker wanted to prove the myths for herself whether those are true or not (Gelpi 227). In terms of specific feminine subject matter, “Daddy” had distinctly showed that. In particular, that poem pointed out the overpowering thoughts and prevailing “superiority” of men over women as the speaker in that poem mourned and angered by the mere existence of her father and her husband. She hated both of them very much, but she seemed to be powerless to overcome the great impact of those men in her life. She dared to contemplate on how to fight for her own freedom from the chains and bondages of the overwhelming control of those men over her life. Despite of the death of her father, he remained in her psyche. That also showed how the influence of men of the traditional society was overwhelming women as the poem did not only point out that problem to occur between father-daughter relationship and husband-wife relationship but also to all kinds of relationship between men and women (Shmoop 21-24). When it comes to the “Diving into the Wreck,” the distinct issue was the coexistence between men and women as the speaker recreate a new myth wherein equality is depicted as shown in the following lines of the poem: There is the place. And I am here, this mermaid whose dark hair Streams black, the merman in his armored body We circle silently about the wreck We dive into the hold. I am she: I am he (Katz 112). That showed how the poem by Rich focused on redefining the views on women as they can be equals of men in the society. The author thinks that Rich would like to reinstate the gender views without any biases as they can coexist and must not outshine the other. The change that Rich fought for as indicated in her poem can be achieved through transformation. On line 30 of the poem, the speaker depicted herself to be a moving insect that crawls instead of walk. That was the first transformation that occurred in the poem which showed how change can be done little by little. The next transformation was on the line 51 of the poem where creatures breathe underwater. It pertains to a long continuous change that a diver must do to adapt to the life on the sea. It is the same with the changes that can be done with the patriarchal society. Finally, line 87 of the poem showed how the speaker became universal or how people unite as one. That line stressed the importance of equality among men and women (Diving into the Wreck: Shmoop Poetry Guide 20-21). Both poems had been intensively analyzed in paper and the similarities and differences had been presented specifically in terms of the way they tackled feminism. They were both important in shaping the society towards a more favorable place for women as they will not be afraid to showcase their skills and rights without any discrimination from men. Works Cited Adams, Maurianne. Readings for Diversity and Social Justice. New York:Routledge, 2000. Print. Carden, Maren. The New Feminist Movement. USA: Russell Sage Foundation, 1974. Print. Cooper, Jane. Reading Adrienne Rich: Reviews and Re-visions, 1951-81. USA: University of Michigan Press, 1984. Print. Gelpi, Albert. Denise Levertov: Selected Criticism. USA: University of Michigan, 1993. Print. Gill, Jo. The Cambridge Companion to Sylvia Plath. USA: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Print. Head, Dominic. The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English. USA: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Print. Katz, Albert. Figurative Language and Thought. USA: Oxford University Press, 1998. Print. Martin, Linda. Sylvia Plath. Great Britain: TJ Press, 1988. Print. Mishra, Binod. Critical Responses to Feminism. India: Sarup and Sons, 2006. Print. Monaco, Paul. The Sixties, 1960-1969. USA: University of California Press, 2001. Print. Radhakrishnan, R. “Revisionism and the Subject of History.” The Postcolonial and the Global. Eds. Revathi Krishnaswamy and John Charles Hawley. USA: University of Minnesota, 2008. Print. Saksena, Sanjoy. “Diving into the Wreck: A Study of the Poetry of Adrienne Rich.” Studies in Women Writers in English, Volume 3. Ed. Mohit Kumar Ray and Rama Kundu India: Atlantic Publishers, 2005. Print. Shmoop. Daddy: Shmoop Poetry Guide. USA: Shmoop University Inc., 2010. Print. ------. Diving into the Wreck: Shmoop Poetry Guide. USA: Shmoop University Inc., 2010. Print. Stringer, Jenny. The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature in English. USA: Oxford University Press, 1996. Print. Templeton, Alice. The Dream and the Dialogue: Adrienne Rich’s Feminist Poetics. USA: University of Tennessee Press, 1994. Print. Yingling, Thomas and Robyn Wiegman. AIDS and the National Body. USA: Duke University Press, 1997. Print. Read More