"Daddy"

Paper Summary:

This paper examines Sylvia Plath's poem "Daddy," a poetic tirade directed at a father who is the source of considerable pain. It looks at how the narrator in "Daddy" is actually a 30-year-old woman and presumably the voice of Sylvia Plath and how this poem, like much of Plath's poetry, is autobiographical. It shows how in "Daddy" she attempts to connect the intensely personal suffering of a woman (Plath) who never recovered from the death of her father to a more universal suffering, whether it's between father and daughter, husband and wife or tyrant and captive.

From the Paper:

"In Plath's Incarnation: Woman And The Creative Process, Bundtzen describes Plath's metaphor of men as fascist as a larger feminine issue. "Plath is not concerned primarily with personal afflictions, except as they represent a wider feminine condition. As she puts it in "Daddy," "Every woman adores a fascist (30)." Or, every woman adores God-like men who represent power.
To post-feminist women, such a statement might seems incredibly dated or exagerrated. "Daddy" was published in 1961, and this type of relationship was very real to Plath. In fact, she focused extensively on the oppressive relationships in her life in her autobiographical novel The Bell Jar."

More papers on "Daddy":

• Analytical Essay # 139145 : "Jerusha Abbott in "Daddy-Long-Legs"
• Poem Review # 121103 : "Sylvia Plath's "Daddy"
• Poem Review # 86697 : "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath"

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