Womens stories of the looking glass: Autobiographical reflections and self-representations in the poetry of Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, and Audre Lorde (American studies)

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Birkle, Carmen Women's stories of the looking glass autobiographical reflections and self­ representations in the poetry of Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, and Audre Lorde Munchen 1996 Diss. 96.4325 urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb00040744-2

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>040744

Carmen Birkle

Women’s Stories of the Looking Glass Autobiographical Reflections and Self-Representations in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, and Audre Lorde

Wilhelm Fink Verlag • Miinchen

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Die Deutschc Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme Birkle, C arm en: Women's stories of the looking glass : autobiographical reflections and self-representations in the poetry of Sylvia Plaih, Adrienne Rich, and Audre Lorde / Carmen Birkle. MUnchen: Fink, 1996 (American studies ; Vol. 72) Zugl.: Diss. ISBN 3-7705-3083-7

NE: GT Alle Rechte, auch die des auszugsweisen Nachdrucks, der fotomechanischcn Wiedergabe und der Ubersetzung, vorbehalten. Dies betrifft auch die Vervielfaltigung und Obertrag’ung einzelner Textabschnitte, Zeichnungen oder Bilder durch alle Verfahren wie Speicherung und Obertragung auf Papier, T ransparente, Filme, Bander, Platten und andere Medien, soweit es nicht § § 5 3 und 54 URG ausdrucklich gestatten. ISBN 3-7705-3083-7 © 1996 Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munchen Herstellung: Ferdinand Schtfningh GmbH, Paderbom

Table of Contents P reface......................................................................................................................vii I. In trod u ction ......................................................................................................... 1 II. Autobiographical Reflections and Self-Representations 1. W om en's Lives in Twentieth-Century American Society........................ 13 2. Integration o f W om en’s Lives and W om en's T e x ts ..................................22 3. Representation in W om en's P o e t r y ............................................................... 33

III. Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, and Audre Lorde

1. Sylvia Plath; or, The Branches o f the Green Fig T r e e ...................... 46

1.1. Sylvia Plath: An All-Am erican L ife...........................................................52 1.1.1. The Dutiful D a u g h te r.................................................................................52 1.1.2. The Sexual M o n ste r....................................................................................66 1.1.3. The Perfect M other..................................................................................... 73

1.2. Sylvia Plath and Poetry: W riting Genres and H e rs e lf.......................... 80

1.3. Shattered and Sheeted Looking Glasses: Representation in Sylvia P lath's P o e try .......................................................................................... 86 1.3.1. "M irror, M irror on the Wall" ................................................................. 87 1.3.2. Her Body, H e rse lf....................................................................................... 98

1.4. Sylvia P lath 's Posthumous Double: Censorship - Fact vs. F ic tio n ..............................................................................107

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Adrienne Rich: "Ungrateful, insatiable, perhaps a monster" ..........117

2.1. Adrienne Rich: Liberation into F ragm entation..................................... 123 2.1.1. Heterosexuality, Androgyny, Lesbianism: The Search for a Sexual Identity........................................................................ 123 2.1.2. O f Motherhood.......................................................................................... 137 2.1.3. A Jewish Poet's Education: Her Father's D au g h ter.........................143

2.2. Poetry - "Carrier of the S p ark s"............................................................... 151

2.3. Smoky Mirrors: Representation in Adrienne Rich's P o e tr y .............. 170

3. Audre Lorde: "Black Lesbian Feminist W arrior Poet M other" .... 178

3.1. Audre Lorde and the Textures of L if e .................................................... 181 3.1.1. "Black Mother W o m an"..........................................................................181 3.1.2. Present, Past, and Future: The Search for an African American Identity...................................................................................187 3.1.3. The Power o f the E ro tic ..........................................................................199

3.2. "Poetry Is Not a L uxury"........................................................................... 212 3.3. Individual or Communal Specula : Representation in Audre Lorde's P o e try .......................................................................................... 229

IV. C onclusion .....................................................................................................239

B ibliography

247

Preface Looking at the poetry o f women writers and their comments on the status of poetry in society and for themselves, I noticed an intimate connection between these w om en's lives and their poetry. Of course, all literature is based on the w riter's own experiences, but it is more so with contemporary women poets who see their lives as women socially predetermined and their vocation as poets questioned and obstructed by the rules and norms o f a patriarchal society. Once I had clearly established this idea o f the close link between wom en's lives and their poetry, it was not surprising to find out that many female poets metapoetically comment on the autobiographical quality o f their work and discuss the suitability of poetry for the expression o f personal experiences, emotions, and thoughts. Furthermore, a closer look at their means o f representation revealed to me that one of their structuring devices is the concept of reflection in the forms of mirrors and doubles. The poets chosen for this dissertation - Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, and Audre Lorde - and their respective poems are paradigmatic o f the intricate relationship between poetry, autobiography, and gender and cover issues o f gender, race, and class over a period of five decades. This dissertation has its origins in a seminar on twentieth-century American poetry and novels conducted by Professor Dr. Marilyn Reizbaum at Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME. In the sessions and in numerous conversations I had with Professor Reizbaum, she was able to instill in me the desire for further occupation with the poetry of Sylvia Plath. Both the thesis for my state exam (1988), written under the supervision of Professor Dr. Hans Helmcke at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universitat at Mainz, and this dissertation are greatly indebted to her support. I got to know the poetry of Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde in detail in a seminar on American poetry conducted by Professor Dr. Alfred Hornung at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universitat at Mainz. I would like to thank Professors Dr. Robert Ferguson and Dr. Carole Slade at Columbia University in New York City for their fruitful comments on and suggestions for my work. Yet, this dissertation would not have been written without Professor Dr. Alfred Hornung's autobiography research and his continuing help and support. He arranged my stay at Columbia University and went through several versions of the manuscript and patiently discussed its subject, aim, and method with me.

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Preface

M y most sincere thanks go to the late D r. K arl-W ilhelm Dietz who shared with me his love and enthusiasm for the U SA and was instrumental in prom oting my stay at Bowdoin College. I would also like to thank the Johannes G utenberg-U niversitat M ainz and the Fachbereich 14 for the "Preis der Johannes G utenberg-Universitat" that m ade this publication possible.

M ainz, July 1995

C arm en Birkle

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I. Introduction "W om en's Stories o f the Looking Glass" attempts to reveal the com plex m echanism s o f the creation o f w om en poets' identities by looking at the intricate link between their lives and their work. I will first give a short introduction to the main theories and terms used for the discussion o f P lath 's, R ich ’s, and L orde's poetry, and to the status of these poets as paradigm s o f w om en's poetry from the 1950s until today. The first chapter on "Autobiographical Reflections and Self-Representations" discusses the historical, social, and psychological conditions for w om en in particular in the 1950s and 60s, their attempts at integrating life and text, and the theoretical concepts o f poetry, autobiography, gender, race, and representation. The following chapters on Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, and A udre Lorde adhere to this three-fold pattern o f life, art, and representation. Each focuses first on the respective p o et's life experiences as made public either by themselves or by other critics. In these respective first parts, all available material (e.g. autobiographical novels, journals, letters, autobiographical essays, autobiographical poetry, and secondary m aterial) is treated as equally reliable sources for the discussion o f these poets' m any-layered subjective and objective conditions o f life. I am aware that this m ethod seems to suggest that autobiographical poetry functions as one am ong several autobiographical genres. Parts two and three modify this assum ption by using the three poets' metapoetical comments and their stylistic device o f reflection to prove the exem plary suitability o f poetry for autobiographical self-representation. In the case o f Sylvia Plath, a fourth part had to be added to discuss the posthum ous struggle over P la th 's life and w ork, subject to a patriarchal discourse which tries to cover up the autobiographical implications o f her poetry, and thus, ironically, adm its to the existence o f autobiographical elem ents and their social relevance. In short, in m y opinion, the poetry o f Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, and Audre L orde can be taken as representative o f w o m en's poetry after W orld W ar II until today.

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Introduction

1. Women's Life in Twentieth-Century American Society The idea of "self" or "identity" in the twentieth century has undergone a crucial development parallel to the cultural, social, and psychological changes in the transition from a modern to a postm odern tim e. In m odernism, the idea of "self" was a formal category based on aesthetic norms, mostly detached from actual life experiences. W hereas in postmodernism, many male writers exclude the "self” from their texts, women writers have inscribed the subject into their texts. The discussion o f w om en's life in twentieth-century American society will serve as a m eans to show how women poets have firmly established the integration o f their lives and their texts and have, through means o f reflection, proven the significance o f w om en's autobiographical poetry. In modernism, the aesthetic, literary, and social concern with self and identity was mostly a male-dominated practice from which women were generally excluded. Because of this exclusion from any public discourse despite the previous political fights o f the suffragettes for w om en's rights to vote women felt an increasing need for self-affirmation and social acceptance. Like in World War I, the necessity and shortage o f labor in World W ar II increased the importance o f women because their work was needed in the American war industry. However, when the war was over, women found themselves again in a situation similar to that o f the time after W orld W ar I. After World W ar II, women found themselves in the position o f an inferior social group, as the "second se x ."1 Postwar American women faced the emergence o f an ideology about femininity which marginalized their social position and reduced them to the roles of housewife, wife, and mother. This ideology o f femininity was for the first time clearly and publically stated by Betty Friedan in her influential book The Feminine Mystique2 with which she provoked consciousness raising among many women and brought about the beginning of a change in reflection on w om en's social position. This ideology of femininity consisted above all of three m ajor aspects: 1. The limitation o f the "w om en's sphere" to the spheres o f the house and housework. "Some women marry houses," as Anne Sexton said in her poem "Housewife"3; 2. the subordination of the wife to her husband, which implied that women were seen as a kind of

1 Simone de Beauvoir, Le deuxieme sexe (Paris: Gallimard, 1949). 2 Betty Friedan. The Feminine Mystique (1963; New York: Laurel Book, 1984). 3 Anne Sexton, The Complete Poems (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Comp., 1981) 77.

Introduction

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embroidery for their husbands, as objects o f possession used for social presentation and private comfort. This led to a definition o f women dependent on who and what their husbands were and to problems women had with "individuation"4; 3. the woman as the one and only mothering person in a fam ily.5 The mother alone was responsible for raising and educating children, whereas the father worked outside o f the family to provide the financial and social basis for their education. If this exclusive mothering by wom en is presented as part o f an accepted role distribution, it can lead to different relationships between mother and daughter, mother and son, but also between daughter and father and son and father.6 Because o f their experience of marginalization in society, women felt the need for self-affirmation. Self-affirmation found the least resistance in writing and was attempted by some women in the field of poetry-writing. The position o f wom en poets, however, was in no way different from w om en's general social roles. If politically interested women could relate back to the suffragette movement, m odem w om en’s poetry also had a token woman and could trace its origins back to the nineteenth-century poet Emily Dickinson. Dickinson, during her life and in literary criticism, has always been considered an oddity because she did not adhere to the social norms o f wife- and motherhood for women and she preferred the seclusion and the com fort o f her own room in which she could write her poetry. W riting poetry was a task which during the American Renaissance and the British Victorianism o f the nineteenth century, was not something a woman was easily allowed to attempt, even though there are prominent examples such as M argaret Fuller, Jane Austen, George Eliot, and others. In her poetry, Dickinson was often critical o f the Puritan religion as it was passed on and still practiced in the community o f Amherst (e.g. "Safe in their Alabaster Cham bers"), o f the roles traditionally attributed to women (e.g. "I’m wife - I ’ve finished that-"), and o f the culturally unacceptable role o f a woman poet (e.g. "They shut me up in Prose"). Even though she seemingly affirmed the existing culture in many o f her poems, she was subversive and expressed her potential power in at least as many other poems:

4 Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1982) 8.

Women's

5 Cf. Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction o f Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology o f Gender (Berkeley: The U o f California P. 1978).

6 Jane Flax, "Mother-Daughter Relationships: Psychodynamics, Politics, and Philosophy," The Future o f Difference, ed. Hester Eisenstein and Alice Jardine (1980; New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1987) 20-40.

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Himself [the bird] has but to will And easy as a Star Abolish his Captivity And laugh - No more have 1 "They shut me up in Prose" (No. 613)7 But Dickinson - in contrast to Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, and Audre Lorde - could not successfully publish her poems without having to subject them to major revisions done by the publishers (cf. "Publication - is the Auction / o f the Mind o f Man It is, therefore, not surprising that during her life-time only seven of her poems were published and that her Complete Poems did not appear before 1955 as a three-volume variorum edition edited by Thomas H. Johnson. Modernism did not do much to improve the situation of women poets. Even poets who are well-known and accepted today, such as H .D ., Marianne Moore, Amy Lowell, and later also Elizabeth Bishop, had no chance o f competing with the gods of poetry such as T .S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. If poetry written by women was accepted at all, it was because it was imitative o f the aestheticized style o f Eliot and Pound whose imagist poetry did not reflect any personal experience. Yet, women continued to feel the urge to find their own voice, in particular because o f their particular personal and social experiences. This necessity tor self-affirmation was only gradually recognized and realized in the 1950s and 1960s. The three female poets under discussion in this dissertation reflect very well this growing awareness and its transformation into poetry. They will serve as paradigms for the writing by women poets from the 1950s to the present. In her early poetry (up until the year 1962), Sylvia Plath imitated the modernist and formalist poetry, e .g ., o f Yeats, and was heavily influenced by her poet-husband Ted Hughes. In her later poetry, written after the separation from her husband (1962-63), she rejected the modernist models, a rejection within which she found her own voice. However, she was not yet able to substitute a new and self-affirming concept for what she had rejected. If she had continued to live and to see feminism rise in the 1960s, she would have been able to label this rejection a destruction of the aesthetics of a patriarchy which silenced w om en's voices and she would have known that she was in the

7 Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems, ed. Thomas H. Johnson (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1960) 302.

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process o f looking for alternative identity patterns in which she could affirm her womanhood. Adrienne Rich, because she aspired to be accepted in the male world o f poetry, also started out writing poems in a traditional form but unconsciously revealed her discontent in subversive formulations or a specific choice o f topics. Once the point was reached where women poets could openly voice their unease with the male-female relationship, then this malaise could be made public and transformed into action, both political and fictional. At the same time, African Americans were fighting for equal rights and public recognition. Except for very few black women activists (e.g. Rosa Parks, the Congresswomen Barbara Jordan o f Texas and Shirley Chisholm o f Brooklyn), the Civil Rights Movement was dominated by black m en on both political and literary levels. Only gradually did black wom en writers become aware that their situation was different from their black male counterparts but also from that of white women. Audre Lorde was one of the first black women poets to express this double marginalization o f being female and black. Both Rich and Lorde used the consciousness-raising period of the 1960s and the early 1970s to expose in their political poetry the treatment of women - in social, historical, and literary perspectives - and had their share in the discovery o f long-forgotten important women o f the past. Equally, R ich's and L orde's personal experiences made them look for alternative and new ways o f living. In the 1970s and 1980s they both discarded their roles as wives and heterosexual partners and explored androgynous and lesbian/homosexual concepts of life. They proclaimed feminism as a means for the destruction of the patriarchal hierarchy and domination in society. However, in order to really break down the hierarchy and the power distribution in contemporary American society, it is now necessary to give equal importance to the categories of gender, race, and class and their respective discourses. With the rejection of cultural constructs o f gender and race, an idea o f difference can be developed in which theoretical discourse is personalized and alternative concepts o f life for women are investigated, such as the acceptance o f woman-to-woman/lesbian relationships and relationships between black and white people or between all people (of color). Because of these open relationships, new conceptual reflections on identity have led Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde to define identity by breaking down the vague notion of identity into equally significant fragments. These fragments are never seen as fixed entities, w hich, once determined, always remain the same. They are subject to developm ent, and identity is therefore produced and constructed through

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social processes; it is an "effect"* and dynamic and can no longer be "foundational" and "fixed."9

2. Integration of Women's Lives and Women's Texts If identity is "produced or generated," it is necessarily subject to historical, social, and personal factors. Poets translate these changing contextual forces into text. Following the premise that a stable and fixed identity does not exist and that all experience is gendered, the poet represents but also develops a gendered and fragmented image o f a self. Because o f w om en's particular life experiences, the ideas o f "woman" and "woman poet" are integrated and become an inseparable entity in their texts. The woman poet inscribes this newly gained subjectivity and identity into the text by denying the postmodern idea o f the "death o f the author," publicized after Roland Barthes' essay on this issue.10 In poststructuralist terms, this subjectivity is "precarious, contradictory and in process, constantly being reconstituted in discourse each time we think or sp e a k ."11 This close connection between personal experience and writing/text, the inscription of female subjectivity into the text, and the profession of a woman writer necessarily lead to a form o f autobiographical writing in which life and text become one and in which self-affirmation as a woman and as a woman poet is equally sought for. In the following, I will briefly present some of the terms alternatively used for "autobiographical," such as "autogynographical" and "confessional." "Autobiographical," however, seems to be the only adequate and useful term for the purposes o f this dissertation. Since every kind of autobiographical writing seems to be gendered, one term used for w om en's autobiographical writing is

8 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion o f Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990) 147. 9 Butler, Gender Trouble 147. "Foundational” is used in the sense of a universalized and clearly defined identity category upon which discussions of identity politics can be based. This idea is rejected by Butler in favor o f a dynamic understanding of identity. 10 Cf. Roland Barthes, "La mort de l'auteur" (1968), Essais critiques IV: Le bruissement de la langue (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1984) 61-67; "The Death of the Author," Image-Music-Text, trans. Stephen Heath (Glasgow: Fontana, 1977) 142-48. 11 Chris Weedon, Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987) 33.

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"autogynography."12 Since the purpose of this dissertation is to show in what way autobiographical writing by women reflects gender constructions derived from the actual life experience, the term "autogynography" seems to be too limited for my purposes. According to Domna Stanton, "autogynography . . . dramatized the fundamental alterity and non-presence o f the subject , even as it asserts itself discursively and strives toward an always impossible self-possession" [my italics],13 but I argue that female subjectivity is present in the text. A specific form o f w om en's autobiographical writing is poetry. Poetry is the ideal genre for autobiographical writing because it is by definition much closer to the very personal and private life o f a poet. A poem does not necessarily need a narrative structure or a story but can be expressive o f em otions and associative ideas. Whereas Robert Penn W arren labeled poetry as a kind o f "unconscious autobiography,"14 I would argue that contem porary w om en's poetry is very consciously and deliberately autobiographical and that poetry is the ideal means for a quest for identity because each poem is a fragment in a whole series of poems and each can express ideas that can be different, to say the least, or even completely contradictory. Thus poetry reflects the search for and the constant change o f an identity and is a perfect means for expressing difference, difference on the levels o f a female poet vs. a male poet, and of non-white vs. white middle-class issues and forms. I will continue to use the term autobiographical poetry when referring to the poetry o f Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, and Audre Lorde and will not adopt the conventional term "confessional poetry." "Autobiographical" and "confessional" are often used interchangeably with reference to Theodore Roethke, Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, and others without making gender distinctions. The term "confessional" is used to "suggest! ] that the poet writes poems to unburden his or her conscience. Confession is an act o f admitting guilt or disclosing other things formerly known to oneself but hidden from others out o f sham e."15 A confession is also m ade to someone in the hope of receiving absolution. Diane Wood

12 Domna C. Stanton, "Autogynography: Is the Subject Different?" The Female Autograph, ed. Domna C. Stanton (Chicago: The U of Chicago P, 1987) 3-20; 5. Cf. also Germaine Bree, "Autogynographies," Southern Review 22 (Spring 1986): 223-30. 13 Stanton, "Autogynography: Is the Subject Different?" 15. 14 Robert Penn Warren, "Poetry is a Kind of Unconscious Autobiography," New York Times Book Review 12 May 1985: 9-10. 15 Diane Wood Middlebrook, "Three Mirrors Reflecting Women: Poetry of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Adrienne Rich," Worlds into Words: Understanding Modern Poems (Stanford, CA: Stanford Alumni Ass., 1978) 65-95; 68.

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M iddlebrook argues that "[c]onfessional poetry, . . is an act of creation, performed not for the poet's sake alone (in the sense that confession is good for the soul) but for the sake of art itself: to make poetry more inclusive."16 Yet, in my opinion, the term "confessional poetry" with these meanings cannot be applied to the poetry o f Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, and Audre Lorde because 1. the idea o f guilt and shame does not apply, 2. absolution through someone else is not sought, whereas a therapeutic value can be ascribed to the very act o f writing, 3. their aim is not poetry for the sake o f art, 4. the religious undertone in "confession" is in no way applicable to these three poets, and 5. autobiographical poetry is deeply rooted in all life experience and goes far beyond the restricted admittance of guilt. Therefore, I would argue that confessional poetry is only a subgenre of autobiographical poetry. In autobiographical poetry, the woman poet questions in form and content the "grands recits," as Jean-Fran?ois Lyotard calls them ,17 of W estern civilization such as the Bible, religion, dem ocracy, etc. These master narratives also include fixed forms of writing, genres, which are now called into question. Women poets introduce new topics formerly excluded from poetry and "decolonize"18 themselves from prescribed forms of writing. They infiltrate poems and poetic writing into other fictional genres. They thus create new variations o f existing genres or "out-law" genres19 of autobiographical and political writing, e .g ., Sylvia Plath's autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, Adrienne R ich's autobiographical essays, and Audre L orde's biomythography Zami: A New Spelling o f My

Name. Because of w om en's increasing self-consciousness and awareness o f their gendered position in society the need for self-affirmation in a particular social, historical, and personal context has grown, and wom en's autobiographical poetry has generated an atmosphere open for difference:

16 Middlebrook, “Three Mirrors" 68. 17 Jean-Frangois Lyotard, La condition postmoderne (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1979) 7. 18 Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, "Introduction," De/Colonizing the Subject: The Politics o f Gender in Women's Autobiography , ed. Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1992) xiii-xxxi. 19 Caren Kaplan, "Resisting Autobiography: Out-Law Genres and Transnational Feminist Subjects," De/Colonizing the Subject 115-38. For a discussion of the links between experience, text, and subjectivity in women's poetry cf. Liz Yorke, Impertinent Voices: Subversive Strategies in Contemporary Women's Poetry (London: Routledge, 1991). Impertinent Voices, however, does not see women's poetry in the context of autobiography criticism and therefore does not evaluate women's autobiographical poetry as a genre transcending the traditional boundaries of autobiography and poetry.

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insight into and acceptance o f difference. W om en’s autobiographical poetry has paved the way for a possible revision o f the canon of American literature, which cannot deny the increasing importance/presence of wom en, particularly ethnic women in the field of literature.

3. Representation in Women's Poetry If autobiographical poetry is gendered writing because it questions patriarchically imposed master narratives, then it is crucial to its understanding to look at the way in which the relationship between gender and genre/text is represented. Because of the intimate relationship between actual experience and w om en's autobiographical poems, the poem can be considered a mirror/looking glass in which the poet can see herself reflected. The poem as a looking glass becomes a means for knowledge about the self, about the identity of the poet and produces myriad reflections and reflexions. M irroring then takes place on two levels: 1. The poet uses a poem in order to reflect about the genre of poetry and the act of poetry writing. The medium of mirroring is under analysis and questioned in terms o f how it can be instrumental in creating an identity or an identityfinding process for the observer/writer. This metapoetry and reflection on poetry tells the story of the m irror/poem as a medium. 2. These selfreferential and self-reflexive poems find a counterpart in the further elaboration o f actual reflexion. In addition to the looking glass as a medium, now the stories narrated by and reflected in the m irror need further investigation. What kind of stories do the mirror-poems tell? Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, and Audre Lorde use popular, mythic, and psychological aspects connected to the m irror through which they convey and question cultural images o f women and of w om en's roles in society. They create m irror images o f their personae and therefore also of themselves through a symbolic and metaphoric use of the actual "mirror" and through various other forms of doubling. They also question the adequacy o f male language to express themselves as women. The French psycho-linguist and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan investigated and stated the importance o f the m irror for the development of a person's identity. His theory of the "mirror stage" sheds light "on the formation o f the /" at a time when the child "recognize[s] as such his own

10

Introduction

image in a m irro r."20 It is crucial for the discussion of the poetry of Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, and Audre Lorde that Lacan "regardfs] the function o f the mirror-stage as a particular case o f the function of the imago, which is to establish a relation between the organism and its reality - or . . . between the Innenwelt and the Umwelt," 21 because these women poets constantly experience a tension particular to their situation as women between inner and outer worlds and attempt to harmonize these two worlds. W hereas the outer world is constituted by cultural images of w om en, the inner world is to a great extent structured by the unconscious. A harmonization between the unconscious and the conscious is difficult because, according to Lacan, repression is at work during what he calls the Imaginary or "pre-oedipal" period, a period before and during the m irror stage but before the latter’s accomplishment, which means before the final acquisition o f an identity and o f language. This final acquisition marks the beginning o f the Symbolic order. For Lacan, the unconscious is structured like a language, like a "discourse"22 which "governs these psychoanalytic effects that are decisive for the subject: such as foreclosure ( Verwerfung), repression ( Verdrangung), denial ( Verneinung) itself . . . ,"23 and which is repressed when the individual enters the Symbolic order. Since women have not had a share in the development o f the language o f the Symbolic order, they experience a further linguistic oppression when acquiring a male-dominated language. The language of the femaledominated Imaginary order, or the Semiotic - as the Bulgarian-born French semiotician and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva calls it in La Revolution du langage poetique 24 - and that of the Symbolic order are constantly at war; the Semiotic can be used to subvert the Symbolic. Kristeva "sees language as potentially revolutionary" in the sense that ”[o]nly listening to what is unspoken, . . . , by attending to what is repressed, new, eccentric.

20 "The Mirror Stage as Formative o f the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience," Ecrits: A Selection, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Norton, 1977) 1-7; 1. 21 Lacan, "The Mirror Stage" 4. 22 Jacques Lacan, "Seminar on 'The Purloined Letter,'" trans. Jeffrey Mehlman, The Purloined Poe: Lacan, Derrida, and Psychoanalytic Reading, ed. John P. Muller and William J. Richardson (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1988) 28-54; 32. 23 Lacan, "Seminar" 29. 24 Julia Kristeva, La Revolution du langage poetique (Paris: Tel Quel, 1974); cf. also Julia Kristeva, Des Chinoises (Paris: Editions des femmes, 1974); Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980); Julia Kristeva, "Women's Time," The Feminist Reader: Essays in Gender and the Politics o f Literary Criticism, ed. Catherine Belsey and Jane Moore (Houndmills: Macmillan Education, 1989) 197-217.

Introduction

11

incom prehensible and therefore threatening to the paternal code, can w om en hope to disrupt its order and acquire our own voice."25 Poetic language is particularly qualified because it "incorporates the unconscious and body-rhythm s in a way other form s of language do not............"26 The three wom en poets under discussion are paradigmatic examples of the change that has taken place in the twentieth century from modernism to postm odernism with its socio-historical, psychological, poetic, and linguistic relevance for women. Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, and Audre Lorde are particularly sensitive to their difficult position as women poets in a m ale-dom inated society and therefore experience, to a great extent, the need for self-affirmation as women. They translate these personal experiences o f the search for identity into their texts, mostly into their poetry and thereby also thematize the problematics of being woman and poet. Male w riters, e.g. H enry Jam es, wrote fiction about women from an imagined fictive w om an's perspective. For them, however, this perspective was a construction, an attempt at putting themselves into a w om an's position, whereas Plath, Rich, and Lorde, and many other women writers, have to confront and not to invent particular life circumstances that translate into their texts. With the inscription o f these aspects into literary texts and the blurring o f the boundaries between life and texts, they open up the literary canon and their social environm ent for a concept o f (gender and race) difference. With their autobiographical works, they write themselves into the canon and represent and deconstruct cultural images and linguistic codes o f "woman" and suggest alternative modes of self and identity. The first part of this dissertation is concerned with a theoretical elaboration on the aspects o f women in the American society o f the 1950s and 1960s, o f the integration o f w om en's lives and w om en's texts, and of representation in w om en's poetry. The discussion o f the poetry o f Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, and Audre Lorde is based on their respective life circum stances, with particular emphasis on their relationships with their parents, husbands and/or lesbian partners, and children, because these relationships expose most clearly the imposed definition of femininity, with which all three poets struggled throughout their lives, and o f race, with which Audre Lorde had to com e to terms. The analysis will then turn to their metapoetical statements and the functions they attribute to poetry in their lives. Each main chapter will close with a discussion of these poets' means for reflection, such as m irrors and doubles. Their different and

25 Susan Sellers, Language and Sexual Difference: Feminist Writing in France (New York: St. M artin's Press, 1991) 15. 26 Sellers, Language and Sexual Difference 51.

12

Introduction

similar life experiences and their methods o f translating them into their autobiographical poetry reveal patterns that can be applied to m ost w o m en 's poetry from the 1950s to the 1990s.

The acceptance of the self, whatever that self is, is the base upon which the woman poet must work, the source of her greatest authority and strength. But for her to arrive at this self­ acceptance, she must possess a definition of her womanhood that is broad enough, flexible enough, to encompass all that she actually is.1

II. Autobiographical Reflections and Self-Representations

1. Women's Lives in Twentieth-Century American Society A closer look at the social and historical situation after World W ar II and in particular in the 1950s and 1960s shows how the clash between w om en's personal - and partly unconscious - perceptions o f themselves were at odds with m e n 's views o f what women were supposed to be like and how the raising o f their consciousness helped the women to attempt a definition o f their identity. Because of their active participation in the war industry of W orld W ar II and their subsequent limitation to the roles of housewives and m others, many American women felt that tension and mystification about their positions and functions in the changing society. The emphasis was increasingly put on the idea of the recreation o f the Am erican society, and w om en's role in this recreational process was to support their husbands to pursue a career and to produce the offspring necessary for such a future-oriented new beginning. Young women in the 1950s did get college degrees but often in order to be a better match for their well-educated husbands. A new term was coined for these women: '" P h .T .' (Putting Husband T hrough)."2 The suburban housewife became "the dream image o f the young American women . . . ," 3 This ideology o f femininity, supported by the emphasis on the values of family and home, was supposed to lead to prosperity through hard work (by men) and children (by wom en). This exclusive mothering by women leads to

1 Paula Bennett, My Life a Loaded Gun: Female Creativity and Feminist Poetics (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986) 5. 2 Friedan, The Feminine Mystique 16. 3 Friedan, The Feminine Mystique 18.

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different psychological and social relationships between parents and children along gender lines.4 According to Lacan, these different developments originate at the moment of the Oedipal crisis, i.e., at the transition point between the Imaginary or the "pre-oedipal period" and the Symbolic order. In this preoedipal period, "the child believes itself to be a part o f the mother, and perceives no separation between itself and the world. In the Imaginary there is no difference and no absence, only identity and presence."5 As soon as the child enters the Symbolic order, it perceives the separation o f human beings into males and females and sees itself as a separate entity. The boy keeps experiencing a desire for the mother but is also afraid of becoming like her (fear of castration). He joins the "Law of the Father" and thus reaches power. His desire for the mother is then translated into the desire for another woman. Thus, in an indirect way, he remains on the winning side of the power system and approaches a satisfaction of his desire. For the girl, a turn back to the mother implies participation in a powerless realm. Therefore, she attempts to be part of the realm of the father but can never completely succeed because of her biological difference. In Lacan's concept then, the desire for a reunification with the mother and the desire for a return to the Imaginary, to the pre-oedipal period,

4 For a discussion of the terms "gender” and "sex" cf. Butler, Gender Trouble ; Jane Flax, "Postmodernism and Gender Relations in Feminist Theory," Feminism/Postmodernism, ed. Linda J. Nicholson (New York: Routledge, 1990) 39-62; Teresa de Lauretis, Technologies o f Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987); Moira Gatens, "A Critique of the Sex/Gender Distinction." A Reader in Feminist Knowledge , ed. S. Gunew (London: Routledge, 1991) 139-57; Donna Haraway, "Geschlecht, Gender, Genre: Sexualpolitik eines Wortes," Viele Orte uberall? Feminismus in Bewegung: Festschrift fu r Frigga Haug , ed. Komelia Hauser (Berlin: Argument, 1987) 22-41; Susan J. Hekman, Gender and Knowledge: Elements o f a Postmodern Feminism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990); Renate Hof, "Gender and Difference: Paradoxieprobleme des Unterscheidens," Amerikastudien / American Studies 37.3 (1992): 437-49; Alison M. Jaggar and Susan R. Bordo, eds.. Gender / Body / Knowledge: Feminist Reconstructions o f Being and Knowing (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1989); Linda Kauffman, ed.. Gender and Theory: Dialogues on Feminist Criticism (New York: Blackwell, 1989); Nancy K. Miller, ed., The Poetics o f Gender (New York: Columbia UP, 1986); Elaine Showalter, Speaking o f Gender (New York: Routledge, 1989); Naomi Schor, "Feminist and Gender Studies," Introduction to Scholarship in Modern Languages and Literatures , ed. Joseph Gibaldi (New York: M odem Languages Association of America, 2 1992) 262-87; Joan W. Scott, "Gender: A Useful Category of Gender Analysis," Gender and the Politics o f History (New York: Columbia UP, 1988) 28-50. 5 Toril Moi, Sexual /Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory (London: Routledge, 1985)99.

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mean a return to the original situation of unity between m other and child; this return gives the mother power and can restore the position o f women in a patriarchal society to that o f a matriarchy. This pre-oedipal relationship with the mother is wanted by men and women alike, and both see the advantages and dangers in such a return. For both, the advantage lies in an em pow ering and comforting/supporting union, a union that betrays the need for a protective m other in both sexes alike. Both, however, also see that this union brings about the dissolution o f an identity independent from the m other's; and here, I think, lies the difference for men and women. For a wom an, the continued union with the mother can mean the effacement o f an individuality, o f an independent and separate human being. The mother, in this concept, is not a passive entity but is active, as described by Chodorow and others, in considering "her daughter as an extension o f her own identity . . . ," 6 Consequently, the "ego boundaries between daughter and mother are often m erged,"7 and Jane Flax sees "the very continuity o f identity with the mother" as "a central problematic in female development The m other can see in her child an extension o f herself. On the one hand, she sees the child as a part of herself, on the other, she knows that it is a separate human being. She can see herself reflected in her child in the same way that a child can find itself in the m other's face. ’’The daughter is in part a genetic replication of the mother, a biological mirroring that can be signified by the image in the glass . . . ,"9 "Not all women become m others, but all, obviously, are daughters, and daughters have mothers. Even daughters who never become mothers must confront the issues of m otherhood, because the possibility and even the probability of motherhood rem ain s."10 New theories have been presented and discussed.11 More and

6 Roberta Rubenstein, Boundaries o f the Self: Gender, Culture, Fiction (Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1987)6. 7 Rubenstein, Boundaries o f the Self 235. 8 Flax, "Mother-Daughter Relationships" 23. 9 Jenijoy La Belle, Herself Beheld: The Literature o f the Looking Glass (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP. 1988) 80. 10 Signe Hammer, Daughters and Mothers: Mothers and Daughters (New York: Quadrangle, 1975) xi. 11 Cf. Luce Irigaray, Speculum o f the Other Woman, trans. Gillian C. Gill (1974; Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1985); Kristeva, La Revolution du langage poetique-, Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction o f Mothering-, Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics o f Radical Feminism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978); Cathy N. Davidson, The Lost Tradition: Mothers and Daughters in Literature (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1980); Jane Gallop, Feminism and Psychoanalysis: The Daughter's Seduction (Ithaca, NY: Cornel UP, 1982); Mickey Pcaflman, ed. Mother Puzzles: Daughters and Mothers in Contemporary American

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more women reflect on their personal experiences with their ow n mothers and analyze their relationships. They use their insights for a reconsideration of their present situation, be it a present relationship with the m other or, on a more subtle level, the consequences o f this relationship for their lives, both private and public. "W omen tend to feel guilty that they are somehow betraying their mother in the attempt to resolve and terminate the symbolic tie ," 12 which, however, is necessary because, according to Julia Kristeva, w om an's "pre-Oedipal dependence on her m other . . . keeps her from discovering her own body as other, different . . . , " 13 If however, positively speaking, a union can be achieved between m other and daughter or between two women with no kin relationship, then this dyad can turn into a threat to the patriarchal system because these wom en cannot be controlled by a male counterpart. Therefore, a system has come into existence in which lesbian relationships are feared and not accepted. For a man, this return to the mother implies a loss o f identity and the questioning of his gender and the power connected to it. M en would have to face the dissolution of individuality and male group identity. The desire fo r and the fear o f the destruction through the mother is reflected here. This, however, is the point where the male/patriarchal idea o f dominance and the need for hierarchy is projected onto the primary/pre-Oedipal relationship o f child and mother. This primary relationship em powers the mother, but why should this empowering immediately imply the destruction o f the other? Power, in patriarchal understanding, is always seen as power over someone, as a concept of hierarchy with superiority and inferiority. Instead o f focusing on the m other's power over , it should be possible to see it as her power with others, thus changing the pattern of hierarchy to a net o f horizontal relationships that recognize the values that lie in the acceptance (instead o f the destruction) o f difference. The acceptance of difference on an equal level means the acknowledgment o f biological difference without the given social conclusions. Such a concept of difference and the logically following free choice of life possibilities by every individual according to his/her abilities can be applied not only to the discussion about gender but equally to race and class. This free choice, however, is problematic because the pre-Oedipal unity between mother and child creates social role identities. Because of a m other's physical and emotional closeness to the new-born, the conclusion Literature (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989); Marianne Hirsch, The Mother/Daughter Plot: Narrative. Psychoanalysis. Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1989). 12 Flax, "Mother-Daughter Relationships" 35. 13 Julia Kristeva, "About Chinese Women," trans. Sean Hand, The Kristeva Reader, ed. Toril Moi (New York: Columbia UP, 1986) 139-59; 149.

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17

is that the mother also has to take care o f the child and has to be responsible for raising and educating the child. Social patterns are derived from biological facts; the biological female determines the social feminine. These social patterns determine that women be confined to the private sphere because that is where child-raising takes place. The question, o f course, is why women continue to accept their mothering roles. The reasons lie in the different social expectations for men and women. A w om an is seen as a potential mother, whether she has children, is going to have children or will never have them. A woman is generally expected to be a m other, and if she does not fulfill these expectations she has to face social sanctions such as being labeled "unnormal," "egoistic," or "infertile." Her child-bearing capacities are often responsible for getting or not getting a job, for being or not being able and allowed to pursue an education. Even today, with many women having to work for financial reasons, w om en's primary roles are those of wife, housewife, and mother. Efforts have been made in the past decade to distribute the roles equally to both sexes, but the facts o f biological differences cannot and should not be denied; yet, it is a major task to prevent automatic social associations o f a biological femaleness with a socially defined femininity. The mothering role is passed on from mother to daughter: "Because w om en are themselves mothered by women, they grow up with the relational capacities and needs, and psychological definition o f self-inrelationship, which commits them to m othering."14 For Chodorow, therefore, the reproduction of mothering is "neither a product o f biology nor o f intentional role-training" but due to the fact that [w]omen, as mothers, produce daughters with mothering capacities and the desire to mother. These capacities and needs are built into and grow out of the mother-daughter relationship itself. By contrast, women as mothers (and men as not-mothers) produce sons whose nurturant capacities and needs have been systematically curtailed and repressed.15 One o f the consequences for a definition of o n e's identity is summarized by Carol Gilligan: Since masculinity is defined through separation while femininity is defined through attachment, male gender identity is threatened by intimacy while female gender identity is threatened by separation. Thus males tend to have difficulty

14 Chodorow, The Reproduction o f Mothering 209. 15 Chodorow, The Reproduction o f Mothering 7.

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with relationships, while females tend to have problems with individuation.16 Because o f the confinement to the sphere of the house, the reduction to their husbands’ decorations and servants, and the limitation only to mothering, women were increasingly dissatisfied with their lives as housewives, wives, and mothers. Yet, before they were able to relate their dissatisfaction to their social phenomena, they believed that their individual marriage had failed and that they, therefore, had failed as women. White middle-class women started to consult psychologists and psychoanalysts or tried to ignore their own rising discontent. Only gradually did they come "to realize that the problem that has no name [namely their desire to resist predetermined definitions o f womanhood] was shared by countless women in A m erica"17 and to expose the "feminine mystique" that says "that the highest value and the only commitment for women is the fulfillment o f their own femininity" and that w om en's nature "can find fulfillment only in sexual passivity, male domination, and nurturing maternal lo v e ."18 It became necessary to build up a new private image of what an American woman was or could be to counteract the powerful image presented in the magazines and T.V . commercials. The private image, however, was strongly shaped by the mothers of these young women, and even if their mothers expressed their dissatisfaction with their lives, the young women were even more determined to succeed in fulfilling the image o f the feminine mystique. Fulfilling the image of the feminine mystique meant marriage, and marriage meant not having to make any decisions about what one would want to become. At no time in their lives were women supposed to go through an identity crisis which would lead to a final decision about their future: "In terms o f the old conventions and the new femigine mystique women are not expected to grow up to find out who they are, to choose their human identity. Anatomy is w om an’s destiny, say the theorists o f femininity; the identity of woman is determined by her b io logy."19 Yet, a decision made by herself and "creative work o f her own"20 was what a woman considered necessary for herself, in addition to her own public space, the possibility to have the job she wanted to have, to earn her own money, in short, personal, social, and economic independence.

16 Gilligan, In a Different Voice 8. 17 Friedan, The Feminine Mystique 20. 18 Friedan, The Feminine Mystique 43. 19 Friedan, The Feminine Mystique 79. 20 Friedan, The Feminine Mystique 344.

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The conclusions drawn from these statements can be dangerous in various ways. First, if "attachment" is what characterizes a w om an's idea o f relationship, this idea can then lead, and has led, to the results o f women or mothers as the exclusive and "natural" care-takers. Here, "culture" determ ines the "nature" of women. Second, a relationship based on attachment on one side and on separation on the other side is bound to become highly problematic because the woman will do everything to keep her partner, but the more efforts she makes, the more she will be either exploited or left by him because he has lost interest in her. The reaction of many wom en is the search for alternative relationships such as woman-towom an relationships. Ideally, such a relationship should be on equal terms. W riters such as Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich are examples o f this feminine mystique of the 1950s and i960s. Plath felt the full blow of wanting to fulfill the requirements of this mystique by marriage (with Ted Hughes) on the one hand, and o f wanting to do something that could give her her ow n personality on the other, of pursuing a career that could fulfill her intellectual needs. In addition, she had to make decisions for herself about her future while all the years before, everything had been decided for her. She tried to find the solution in the fulfillment of the mystique and in having a career. Plath finally found her own voice after a period of imitation o f the modernist and formalist poetry and of submission to Ted H ughes's influence in her earlier poetry, when she rejected these male models in her later poetry. In contrast to Plath, who never clearly found a self-affirming concept, Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde exposed the treatment o f women in their political poetry of the 1960s and 1970s. At the same time. R ich's experiences as a Jewish lesbian woman and Lorde's experiences as a black lesbian woman made them look for alternative and new ways o f living. In the 1970s and 1980s they both explored androgynous and lesbian/homosexual concepts o f life. They proclaimed feminism as a means for the destruction of the patriarchal hierarchy and dom ination in society. "Jedes Geschlecht ist der Ort einer autonomen Subjektivitat, die das andere Geschlecht weder von sich aus mifit noch definiert, sondern ihm als ein Verschiedenes begegnet, dessen konstitutives Anderssein sie zur Kenntnis nimmt und akzeptiert."21 This idea o f difference is taken up by Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde who, in their writing, attempt a revision o f the terms "m other” and "woman" and who try to restore the mother-daughter dyad, to em power 21 Adriana Cavarero, "Die Perspektive der Geschlechterdifferenz," Differenz und Gleichheit: Menschenrechte haben (k)ein Geschlecht, ed. Ute Gerhard, Mechtild Jansen, Andrea Maihofer, Pia Schmid, and Irmgard Schultz (Frankfurt/Main: Ulrike Helmer Verlag, 1990)95-111; 102.

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women, and to upgrade woman-to-woman relationships. All three poets, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, and Audre Lorde, made "mothering" with all its connotations one of the central issues in their lives and writing. Equal importance has to be given to the categories o f gender and race and their respective discourses through the cultural constructs of gender and race and through the acceptance o f difference. Because o f these open relationships, new conceptual reflections on identity have led, e .g ., in the case o f Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde, to define identity by breaking down the vague notion o f identity into equal fragments, even though they do not seem to be willing to give up completely the male-female dichotomy. "On this view, essentialist formulations of womanhood, even when made by feminists, 'tie' the individual to her identity as a woman and thus cannot represent a solution to sexism ."22 These fragments are never seen as fixed entities, which, once determined, always remain the same. They are subject to development, and identity is therefore produced and constructed through social processes.23 The quest for identity implies a search and a need for understanding oneself, for being able to name (in language) who one believes to be; it is an attempt at reaching a concept about oneself and making the concept identical with one's respective characteristics. It is a means of defining oneself with reference to one's fellow human beings but, at the same time, with a clear emphasis on one's difference from anyone else. To define one's identity always implies the demarcation o f one's individuality, one's distinctiveness, on e’s uniqueness. This affirmation o f sameness and difference is projected from one's personal perception o f identity to the social level o f how others perceive this identity. Personal perspectives and those o f the "others" often do not overlap, but identity, from a sociological perspective, is derived from the "interaction between the individual and

22 Linda Alcoff, "Cultural Feminism Versus Poststructuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory," Signs 13.3 (1988): 405-36; 415. 23 In contrast, Sidonie Smith warns of the dangers o f endless fragmentation: 'Any autobiographical practice that promotes endless fragmentation and a reified multiplicity might be counterproductive since the autobiographical subject would have to split itself beyond usefulness to be truly nonexclusionary. It is hard to coalesce a call to political action around a constantly deferred point of departure." Smith claims that "the revolutionary (subject) can insist on identity in service to an emancipatory politics," and calls the texts in which this claim of identity takes place "autobiographical manifestos." Sidonie Smith, "The Autobiographical Manifesto: Identities, Temporalities, Politics," Autobiography and Questions o f Gender, ed. Shirley Neuman (London: Frank Cass, 1991) 186-212; 188-89.

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society . . . ." 24 Sameness and difference on several levels necessarily lead to tension and can create various manifestations o f self, such as the "true" and "false" or "private" and "public" selves. The most crucial point, however, lies in the attempts at naming, at putting into words, at making personality and the medium one. Yet, since identity is an "effect"25 and dynamic and can no longer be "foundational" and "fixed,"26 one has to discard L aing's definition: 'Identity' is that whereby one feels one is the same, in this place, this time as at that time and at that place, past or future; it is that by which one is identified. . . . It is difficult to establish a consistent identity for oneself - that is, to see oneself consistently in the same way - if definitions of oneself by others are inconsistent or mutually exclusive. . . . Hence mystification, confusion, and conflict.27 Thus, the criterion for identity is not so much a final result or "a normative ideal"28 (to which one is nailed and always referred to) but an ongoing process, "a descriptive feature o f experience,"29 relativizing in a postm odern sense every "foundational"30 or absolute definition: Gender ought not to be construed as a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts follow; rather, gender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and styles of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self.31

24 Philip Gleason, Speaking o f Diversity: Language and Ethnicity in Twentieth-Century America (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1992) 131. 25 Butler, Gender Trouble 147. 26 Butler, Gender Trouble 147. 27 Ronald D. Laing, Self and Others (1961; Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1978) 86-87. 28 Butler, Gender Trouble 16. 29 Butler, Gender Trouble 16. 30 Butler, Gender Trouble 147. 31 Butler, Gender Trouble 140. Recent autobiography criticism also describes the terms self and identity as processual without, however, applying them to the gender issue. Cf. "I approach the 'self' not as an entity but as an activity, a continual process that gives rise to concepts by which an individual both distinguishes herself from others o f her species and situates herself in relation to these other 'selves.'" La Belle, Herself Beheld 3. Cf. also "Furthermore, by its very nature, the self is (like the autobiography that records and creates it) open-ended and incomplete: it is always in process or, more precisely, is itself a process." James Olney, "Autobiography and the Cultural Moment: A Thematic Historical,

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My discussion o f the particular life circumstances o f Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, and Audre Lorde exposes the impact o f these fixed identity patterns on their lives and works and their struggle with society's understanding of femininity and their attempt to integrate life and text. In their most recent poetry, Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde express the idea that "[i]dentity must be continually assumed and immediately called into question."32

2. Integration of Women's Lives and Women's Texts The fixed identity norms/definitions of "woman" and "poet" that seem to exclude each other cast the "woman poet" of the 1950s and 1960s in a particularly awkward position. This position, however, has become the motivating factor for w om en's writing, for the integration o f life experience and text. By writing about the fact that women were actually not supposed to be writing at all, they have tried to overcome this opposing dichotomy, have thus questioned existing identity patterns, and have opened up the barriers between life and text. This newly gained subjectivity and identity o f "woman w riter” and, I would argue, even m ore so o f "woman poet," finds a particular outlet in the denial o f the above-mentioned postmodern idea o f the "death of the author." Women critics and women writers were not interested in this death o f the subject, because they needed to write the female subject into their texts in order to affirm wom anhood. W om en's poetry has, therefore, become clearly autobiographical.

and Bibliographical Introduction," Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, ed. James Olney (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1980) 3-27; 25. Cf. also: "The book's basic assumption is that the concept of selfhood, far from being linear, consistent and continuous throughout the ages, is historically and culturally determined, and as such is given to a discursive analysis to account for its vicissitudes over the ages." Robert Elbaz, The Changing Nature o f the Self: A Critical Study o f the Autobiographic Discourse (London: Croom Helm, 1988) vii.

32 Gallop, Feminism and Psychoanalysis xii. Cf. also: "Therefore, the concept o positionality includes two points: first, as already stated, that the concept of woman is a relational term identifiable only within a (constantly moving) context; but, second, that the position that women find themselves in can be actively utilized (rather than transcended) as a location for the construction of meaning, a place from where meaning is constructed, rather than simply the place where a meaning can be discovered (the meaning of femaleness)." Alcoff. "Cultural Feminism Versus Poststructuralism" 434.

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"What does it mean to read and write as a woman within the institution that authorizes and regulates most reading and writing?"33 Although such writers as John Barth, Raymond Federman, Ronald Sukenick, and others play with the inscription o f the writing subject into the text, other proponents of postmodernism reject this inscription, deny the mutual relationship between author and text, and emphasize the arbitrary relation between signifier and signified, between text and m eaning.34 This concept o f arbitrariness was first established in Ferdinand de Saussure's structural linguistics which sees language as a sign system in which signifier and signified have no intrinsic connection but are linked according to conventions agreed upon by a particular language group: "C 'est a la fois un produit social de la faculte du langage et un ensemble de conventions necessaires, adoptees par le corps social pour permettre l'exercice de cette faculte chez les individus."35 While most modernists played with the possibilities contained in the tension between a denotative and connotative m eaning, many postm odern (male) writers purposefully reject and break up these conventions and take the arbitrariness even further. The emphasis in the relation between signifier and signified is no longer on the signified but on the signifier, and meaning is achieved through textual self-referentiality. In the extreme, "[w]hat remains is the post mortal text without any reference to reality, without any psychological, sociological, or historical dimension, and without origin, author, and authority; what remains is ecriture . ”36 If in this dimension the text is devoid of its writing subject, then the text cannot serve in any way as a means for the (male) author to find his identity. The text has lost importance for the writer and is reduced to a corpus of signs, arbitrarily put together, to a toy that can be played with at will. Charles Caramello uses the term "silverless mirrors" to describe postmodern fiction:

33 Nancy Miller, "Changing the Subject: Authorship, Writing, and the Reader," Feminist Studies / Critical Studies, ed. Teresa de Lauretis (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1986) 102-20; 112. 34 Cf. Michel Foucault, "Qu'est-ce q u ’un auteur?,” Bulletin de la Societe fran(aise de Philosophie 63.3 (1969): 73-104; "What is an Author" (1969), Language, CounterMemory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews by Michel Foucault, trans. and ed. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1977) 113-38; rpt. in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984) 101-20. 35 Ferdinand de Saussure, Cours de linguistique generate, publiee par Charles Bally et Albert Sechehaye avec la collaboration de Albert Riedlinger (1916; Paris: Payot, 1983) 25. 36 Alfred Homung, "Postmodern - post mortem: Death and the Death of the Novel," Neo-Realism in Contemporary American Fiction, ed. Kristiaan Versluys, Postmodern Studies 5 (Amsterdam: Rodopi; Antwerpen: Restant, 1992) 87-109; 94.

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Postmodern fiction, that is, may claim to be neither an expressive mirror of the soul nor a mimetic mirror of reality; the silver that it lacks, as I have suggested, is that which reflects authorship and its authority and that which reflects world beyond discourse.37 In the wake of this postmodern playfulness and the endless "plurality o f meanings in texts,"38 the literary text itself becomes redundant and can be considered "dead.” The "death of the author" and the "death of the novel"39 become the focus of attention. A body of meta-texts develops that is selfreferential, intratextual and intertextual. However, a new branch of literature in the 1980s by men and women, "enhanced by the postmodern - post mortem practices, shows signs of the reemergence of the author, the recovery o f the subject, and neo-realistic tendencies."40 Hornung explains this phenomenon with reference to an obvious shift in the practice and perception of contem porary literature. In the course of the 1980s, the center of mainstream literature, formerly occupied by mostly white male authors, loses its dominant, hegemonic position and leaves room for formerly marginalized female and ethnic authors. On the whole, society comes to appear as a multicultural one, in which the recognition of "difference" replaces opposition as a means for gaining identity.41 In the following, I would like to argue that many women writers have not participated in the same developments posited by some critics for male authors from postmodernism to neo-realism. Rather, women writers were instrumental in situating a female subject in the text, thus giving birth to it. This life-giving process is described in a poem by Adrienne Rich: "[YJour two hands grasping your head / drawing it down against the blade of life / your nerves the nerves o f a midwife / learning her trade."42 This labor for a 37 Charles Caramello, Silverless Mirrors: Book, Self and Postmodern American Fiction (Tallahassee: UPes o f Florida, 1983) 52. 38 Sellers, Language and Sexual Difference 6. 39 Cf. Alfred Homung, "Postmodern - post mortem: Death and the Death o f the Novel"; Ronald Sukenick, The Death o f the Novel and Other Stories (New York: The Dial Press, Inc., 1969); Leslie Fiedler, What Was Literature (New York: Schuster & Schuster, 1984); Alvin Keman, The Death o f Literature (New Haven: Yale UP, 1990); John Barth, "The Literature of Exhaustion," The Friday Book: Essays and Other Nonfiction (1967; New York: Putnam's Sons, 1984) 62-76. 40 Homung, "Postmodern - post mortem" 97. 41 Homung, "Postmodern - post mortem" 97. 42 Adrienne Rich, "The Mirror in Which Two Are Seen As One," Diving Into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972 (New York: Norton, 1973) 14-16; 16.

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female form o f life defies the male notion o f the "death o f the author." In this sense, Nancy M iller argues, women have not had the same historical relation of identity to origin, institution, production, that men have had, women have not, I think, (collectively) felt burdened by too much Self, Ego, Cogito, etc. Because the female subject has juridically been excluded from the polis, and hence decentered, "disoriginated," deinstitutionalized, etc., her relation to integrity and textuality, desire and authority, is structurally different.43 That male writers have often felt "burdened by too much Self, Ego, Cogito" can be seen in the development of the genre o f "autobiography" (a term most often used with men) or life writing (mostly used with women), the emphasis o f which has, for men, shifted from an emphasis on bios (life) via autos (self) to graphein (w riting).44 The absence o f the author in recent autobiographical texts by men enhances their playfulness and the selfreferentiality and often turns into mere linguistic constructs. The ideas o f the creation or re-creation o f a self in the text by looking at one's past from which the writer could draw strength for the present moment have been lost. The w riter's desire to bring his fragmented life together in one piece, a whole, used to be achieved through introspection and retrospection and through the attempt to put a pattern or a "grid" on one's life: a formal plan that imposes a strict pattern on events, thoughts, spaces, or materials. . . . The grid presupposes that an unruly mind can be tamed by adhering to principles of objective order, a comforting structure that welds together material that might otherwise scatter like bombarded molecules. Sequences linking large blocks of experience - childhood, youth, adulthood, middle age, old age - are commonplace in autobiographies: the sovereign convention.45 Even though a complete identity o f the writing subject and the written subject has never existed, these two subjects have increasingly moved away from each other, until the creation denies any relationship with its creator and vice versa. In the male autobiographical paradigm, autos, bios, and graphein are deconstructed and become three totally separate instances. In addition, postmodern male and - sometimes - female writers consciously add a fictional dimension to their life writing and often deliberately tell

43 Miller, “Changing the Subject” 106. 44 Cf. Janies Olney, "Autobiography and the Cultural Moment” 19. 45 Herbert Leibowitz, Fabricating Lives: Exploration in American Autobiography (New York: Knopf, 1989) 14.

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lies.46 This fictionalization o f autobiographical writing is partly a result of the postmodern crisis o f the medium o f traditional autobiography which is not adequate any more to give its author a sense of identity. Consequently, it is not surprising that new forms have been developed. In contrast to male autobiographers, women writers have traditionally not often chosen the genre of autobiography, because writing o n e's life presupposes the importance of this life and the interest o f potential readers. If they write at all, they often feel that they have to disguise their lives in fiction. Because o f the w om en's movement, this interest by women in their own social and psychological condition has found one of its outlets in life writing since the early 1960s. W om en's political and psychological need to write themselves into texts has been widely recognized. Their texts manifest none of the interests in the self-effacement that characterizes the abovementioned (male) autobiography. On the contrary, autobiographical writing without self-effacement has become the perfect medium for women: [A]utobiography would appear to be a preferred medium for all individuals whose status in life and society is precarious, questioned or as yet undefined. . . . , it is specifically applicable to all people considered marginal figures of society, such as ethnic minorities and women excluded from the androcentric discourse.47 This need to inscribe themselves into the text, to give voice to their own experiences and to the tensions within a male-dominated world on the one hand, and the danger of too much public exposure on the other hand, compelled many women to imagine new possibilities to represent their lives. This innovative shift in the forms o f self-representation is obvious in the change o f terms used to describe the genre of autobiography. Since every kind of autobiographical writing reflects gender constructions, one term used for w om en's autobiographical writing is "autogynography."48 As stated before, Domna Stanton’s definition o f "autogynography," however.

46 Cf. Timothy Dow Adams, Telling Lies in Modern American Autobiography (Chapel Hill: The U of North Carolina P, 1990); Alfred Homung and Emstpeter Ruhe, eds. Autobiographie & Avant-Garde (Tubingen: Narr, 1992); Darrel Mansell, "Unsettling the Colonel's Hash: 'Fact' in Autobiography," The American Autobiography: A Collection o f Critical Essays, ed. Albert E. Stone (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Spectrum, 1981) 61-79. 47 Alfred Homung, "Social Work and Modem Art: The Autobiographies of Jane Addams and Gertrude Stein," Anglistentag 1989 Wurzburg: Proceedings, ed. Rudiger Ahrens (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1990) 207-18; 209. 48 Stanton, "Autogynography: " Autogynographies."

Is the

Subject

Different?"

5.

Cf.

also

Bree,

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is too limited proclamation understanding, absence : " . . .

for my purposes, because she seems to go along with the o f the "death o f the author" by claiming, in my that the absence of the subject in a text is a gendered autogynography . . . dramatized the fundamental alterity and non-presence o f the subject, even as it asserts itself discursively and strives toward an always impossible self-possession. ”49 Critics now prefer the more general terms o f "autobiographical writing" or writing in the "autobiographical mode." The latter term refers to "those contemporary texts which explore some aspects o f the w riter's self in a factual o r fictional way and use narration as a form of recollection and presentation of earlier stages in life."50 W om en's writing in the autobiographical mode without self-effacement is simultaneously a "presentation of earlier stages in life" and a utopian vision o f the present and the future. Confined to a restrictive environment (physical, social, psychological), women writers can thematize the limitations of their reality by writing them into the text. On this fictional level, they can then reject the restrictions and explore new possibilities for their characters, e .g ., in social relations or in intellectual activities, and thus create a new space first o f all for their female characters in their texts and then, based on this textual experience, open up new space for themselves in their own reality without having to expose their own identity. These "disguise autobiographies [are] not only entertaining but also inspiring"51 and allow women writers to explore their female subjectivity. Imagination and creativity help women connect life, writing, and utopian projections and make it possible for them to continue living both as the written subject and as the writing subject even though some critics claim that "the hand that writes seeks to efface itself in the interest o f re-presenting the past as an immediate reality."52 In that sense, women writers avoid postmodern selfeffacement, recover the subject, and show neo-realistic tendencies. According to Andreas Huyssen, "the subject has reemerged with a

49 Stanton, "Autogynography: Is the Subject Different? 15. My emphasis. 50 Alfred H om ung, "The Autobiographical Mode in Contemporary American Fiction," Prose Studies 8.3 (1985): 69-83; 72. My emphasis. 51 Estelle C. Jelinek, "Disguise Autobiographies," Women's Studies International Forum 10.1 (1987): 53-62; 61. Cf. also the treatment of critical texts as autobiographical texts: Nicole Jouve Ward, White Woman Speaks with Forked Tongue: Criticism as Autobiography (London: Routledge, 1990) and Diane Freedman, Olivia Frey, and Frances Murphy Zanhar, eds., The Intimate Critique: Autobiographical Literary Criticism (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1993). 52 Sean Burke, The Death and Return o f the Author: Criticism and Subjectivity in Barthes, Foucault and Derrida (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1992) 57.

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vengeance in gender and minority studies, but always as socially and historically inscribed . . . ,"53 The fictionalization o f w om en’s experiences in autobiographical texts and the inscription of the female writing subject into the text are even m ore enforced in the genre of poetry,54 which is, by definition, much closer to the very personal and private life of a poet. W hereas T.S. Eliot proclaimed that "[p]oetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression o f personality, but an escape from personality,"55 I would argue that a poem can be expressive o f emotions and associative ideas. In seventeenth-century Puritanism, apart from letters, very few women had the chance to write poetry. The few women who did, such as Anne Bradstreet, however, mostly chose very personal subjects such as their husbands, their children, love, etc. Apart from the expression of personal concerns, only religion was a potential and often required issue also for w om en's poetry.56 Whereas Robert Penn W arren labeled poetry a "kind o f unconscious autobiography,"57 I would argue that contemporary w om en’s poetry is very consciously and deliberately autobiographical. For Carolyn Heilbrun, contemporary American women poets "found a frankly autobiographical, 'confessional' mode for their poetry and discovered a form for their uninhibited autobiographical impulses."58 Autobiographical poetry strives for the affirmation of an identity; it aims at stabilizing instability. However, the poets striving for this affirmation of a fixed identity have begun to express in their poems the ever-changing contextual life forces in the process of finding an identity. I would, therefore, argue that poetry is the ideal means for a quest for identity because each poem is a fragment in a whole series of poems and each can express ideas that can be different, to say the least, or even completely contradictory. Thus poetry reflects the search for and the constant change o f an identity.

53 Andreas Huyssen, "The Fate of Difference: Pluralism, Politics, Postmodern," Amerikastudien / American Studies 38.2 (1993): 303-11; 308.

and

the

54 Cf. Celeste Schenck, "All of a Piece: W omen's Poetry and Autobiography," Life/Lines: Theorizing Women's Autobiography, ed. Bella Brodzki and Celeste Schenck (Ithaca. NY: Cornell UP, 1988) 281-305. 55 T.S. Eliot, Selected Essays (London: Faber and Faber, 1934) 21. 56 Yet, some women poets, e.g. Anne Bradstreet, carefully and very modestly wrote about historical events, and, in the case of Bradstreet, her poetry was published during her lifetime, even though against her own will. In general, however, the publication of women's poetry was considered unhealthy, not normal, not adequate for a woman. It was often associated with witchcraft and therefore rejected on religious grounds. 57 Warren, "Poetry Is a Kind of Unconscious Autobiography" 9. 58 Heilbrun. Writing a Woman's Life (New York: Ballantine, 1988) 63.

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The female poets are constantly confronted with themselves; they create or re-create them selves in their poems. "Poetry as autobiography constitutes a potential space in which a subject may be repeatedly and repea lably present to herself during the act o f utterance, . . . . ”59 Since w om en writers tend to write serial autobiographies60 (e.g. Maya Angelou, Lillian Heilman, May Sarton), one could argue that "[t]he serial effort at sketching a self in time and over time" in an autobiography "is the poetic equivalent o f snapshots recording a process of personal becoming during a period of historical change."61 Even though a final definition o f the self or the solution to a crisis is not necessarily found, autobiographical poetry is a m eans o f dealing with oneself and expressing a m om ent's being. It is thus authentic to its creator and reveals hitherto unknown aspects o f the female self at that moment: The act of autobiography and the act of poetry, both as creation and as recreation, constitute a bringing to consciousness of the nature of one's own existence, transforming the mere fact of existence into a realized quality and a possible meaning. In a certain sense, autobiography and poetry are both definitions of the self at a moment and in a place: and I do not mean, for autobiography, that it is a definition of the writer's self in the past, at the time of action, but in the present, at the time of writing.62 Consequently, today w om en's writing is often much more openly autobiographical writing. "Die Grenze zwischen autobiographischer und fiktionaler Schreibweise ist bei Frauen besonders schwierig auszumachen. W enn Frauen zu schreiben beginnen, steht ihnen oft kein anderer Stoff zur Verfugung als der der eigenen Lebensgeschichte,"63 because women are often excluded from the public domain. Celeste Schenck comes to the conclusion that the contemporary autobiographical genre may be paradigm atic o f all w om en's writing. Autobiographical poetry by women is also a result o f a movement away from what Jean-Frangois Lyotard calls the "grand recit,"64 or the

59 Schenck, "All o f a Piece" 292. 60 Cf. Hornung, "Social Work and M odem Art: The Autobiographies of Jane Addams and Gertrude Stein" 211. 61 Schenck. "AH o f a Piece" 290. 62 James Olney, Metaphors o f Self: The Meaning o f Autobiography (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1972)44. 63 Sigrid Weigel, Die Stimme der Medusa: Schreibweisen in der Gegenwartsliteratur von Frauen (Reinbek bei Hamburg: RoRoRo, 1989) 154. 64 Lyotard, La condition postmoderne 7.

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"master narrative." These "master narratives," such as the Bible, religion, language, or democracy in W estern civilization, to name but a few, were agreed upon at a certain point in time and have from then on set the rules and norms. They are read as prescriptive texts and concepts that are applied to every subject o f the same civilization and additionally to that o f others. Deviations from the norms are condemned, punished, or simply ignored as non-existent as long as they do not claim access to the dominant discourse. "M aster narratives," as the term indicates, operate from a superior position in a hierarchy or, in different terms, from the center o f civilization. Since these "master narratives," when transposed to sociological and psychological fields, can not only determine concepts of fixed identity agreed upon by those who dom inate society, but also concepts o f clearly defined genres, and since there is an inextricable relationship between life experience and writing, the questioning by women poets o f these "master narratives" automatically leads to a reconsideration o f the writing subject and its narratological expression. In the same way that w om en try to liberate themselves from social and psychological domination by men, they also reject the "master genres" presented to them by a male tradition and try to "decolonize" themselves. Smith and Watson use the term "decolonization" that "refers literally to the actual political processes set in motion in various geographical locations before and during this century"65 as a result o f "colonization." "Colonization," according to Smith and Watson, is a word that "now seems to signify a universalized descriptor of subjectivity."66 Thus, the term "decolonization" can be used - in a general sense and not limited to Third-W orld phenomena - as referring to the agency o f the subject to provoke changes, to question the colonizers' rights for domination, to claim equal rights and positions, and to subvert the system o f colonization and substitute it with a multicultural system that accepts the so-called "plurality o f voices" on an equal level. If colonization is a term used to describe historical domination, then it can be transferred from the political sphere to the realm o f gender relationships. Although Smith and Watson state that "decolonization remains a utopian dream" because "no one can escape the realm o f the 'su b jected ,'"67 I would argue that poets such as Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, and Audre Lorde are aware o f their respective colonization by a patriarchal society and attempt to question the imposed "master narratives" in their quest for an identity

65 Smith and Watson, "Introduction" xiii. 66 Smith and Watson, "Introduction" xiv. 67 Smith and Watson, "Introduction" xiv.

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reflected in their writing. From their marginal position, they have come to realize that just as there are various colonialisms or systems of domination operative historically, there are various patriarchies operative historically, not one universal ’patriarchy.' There are various positions of men to patriarchy, not just an equivalence among them.68 Plath, Rich, and Lorde have analyzed the effects of these colonialisms or patriarchies on their personal lives and represented them in their texts. They have resisted a preimposed definition o f self and of genre as well and have created "out-law genres"69 (cf. Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar , Adrienne R ich's autobiographical essays, Audre L orde's biomythography Zami: A New Spelling o f My Name), and have deliberately tried not to write like a man: "She writes like a man" does not mean she writes with all her energies. It means she can think, organize, judge, even argue, but will not embarras us with messy female emotions. Whoever "writes like a man" but is not a man is pretending not to have a body, or passions, unlike the men who write like men. 70 All three poets found their own voice and have produced an atmosphere open for difference : insight into and acceptance o f difference. The term "difference" or "differance" originates with Jacques D errida's linguistic concept: To describe this view of meaning, Derrida coined the term differance, taken from the French verb differer meaning 'to 68 Smith and Watson, "Introduction" xv. 69 Kaplan, "Resisting Autobiography: Out-Law Genres and Transnational Feminist Subjects." To write at all and not to accept the "master narratives" has led to a change of topics and styles and ultimately o f genres: "Genres change when new topics are added to their repertoires." Alastair Fowler, Kinds o f Literature: An Introduction to the Theory o f Genres and Modes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1982) 170. Cf. "The formulation that female identity is a process stresses the fluid and flexible aspects of women's primary identities. One reflection of this fluidity is that women's writing often does not conform to the generic prescriptions of the male canon. Recent scholars conclude that autobiographies by women tend to be less linear, unified, and chronological than men s autobiographies. W om en’s novels are often called autobiographical, women's autobiographies, novelistic like Mary McCarthy’s Memories o f a Catholic Girlhood or Maxine Hong Kingston's Memoirs o f a Woman Warrior. Because o f the continual crossing of self and other, wom en’s writing may blur the public and private and defy completion." Judith Kegan Gardiner, "On Female Identity and Writing By Women," Writing and Sexual Difference , ed. Elizabeth Abel (1980; Chicago: The U o f Chicago P, 1982) 177-91; 185. 70 Alicia Suskin Ostriker, Writing Like a Woman (Ann Arbor: The U of Michigan P, 1983) 146; cf. Stealing the Language: The Emergence o f Women's Poetry in America (Boston: Bcacon Press, 1986).

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differ' as well as 'to defer’, but also marking a differance from both these meanings by changing the usual -ence ending to ance. For Derrida meaning is the effect of a ceaseless process of present and absent differences that can never be halted and pinpointed to equal 'this' or 'this'. It is always differant, always referring back to other meanings or suggesting the possibility of new ones, always endlessly deferred.71 Thus, in my understanding, D errida does not only refer to the idea of "being different," which is a basic idea in the creation of meaning in language - one sign has to be different from the other to constitute meaning -, but also to the deferral o f meaning, to the possibility o f a constant substitution o f one signified by another, to the impossibility of ever exactly representing meaning in language. His concept seems to be linked to language, but I would agree with Andreas Huyssen that "differance is no longer just read as textual difference and deferral in the unlimited play of signifiers, the diaspora of traces, inscriptions, m arkings."72 Difference has been introduced into "new forms o f cultural studies,"73 asking for the recognition and acceptance o f gender, social, historical, ethnic, and psychological differences.74 The acceptance o f difference, however, can only be a first step towards the deconstruction o f what this difference consists of. In that sense, individuals and their belonging to particular groups can be acknowledged, but do not remain fixed once and forever. An individual can incorporate different differences and not feel different because everyone else is also different, and everyone has something in com m on with everyone else. I agree with Huyssen that [a) politics of difference, . . ., has to begin by facing the difficulties that lived difference and heterogeneity throw up in the social world which can never escape inscriptions of hierarchy and domination. We must also recognize that difference can only be together with sameness, otherwise it

71 Sellers, Language and Sexual Difference 21. 72 Huyssen, "The Fate of Difference" 306. 73 Huyssen, "The Fate o f Difference" 309. 74 In addition to D errida's linguistic concept, the term difference also has its origin in Horace M. Kallen’s concept o f "cultural pluralism" which he presented for the first time in his article "Democracy Versus the Melting-Pot: A Study of American Nationality,” Pan I: The Nation 100.2590 Febr. 18, 1915: 190-94; Part II: The Nation 100.2591 Febr. 25, 1915: 217-20. A later version appeared in Cultural Pluralism and the American Idea (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1956).

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33

becomes solipsism and narcissism, ethnocentrism and, in the worst case, aggressive nationalism...........75 Sylvia Plath was not able to name the tension she experienced as her desire for difference; she strove for sameness and acceptance, within which, however, she wanted to excel. Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde were finally able to declare their respective differences openly in their poetry, reject narrowly categorizing labels that focus on one aspect only (e.g. woman or black or lesbian or Jewish, etc.). They view difference as an all-embracing concept (based on the actual life experiences) that discards hierarchy and domination and attributes equal value to each aspect. Thus, the terms "woman" and "poet" do not exclude each other any m ore. W om en's most recent openly autobiographical poetry, com bining lived and written difference, has paved the way to a possible revision o f the canon o f American literature, which cannot deny the increasing im portance/presence o f women, and ethnic women in particular, in the field o f literature.

3. Representation in Women's Poetry The transformation o f "the mere fact o f existence into a realized quality and a possible m eaning"76 calls for a reconsideration o f the relationship between experience that is always gendered and the medium through which a possible meaning of this experience is com m unicated. The m edium consists o f images and language. The basic assumption is that in autobiographical poetry by women, representation (of experience) takes place through "reflection." The integration o f life experience and text is best represented in the fact that the poem can be considered a m irror/looking glass in which the poet can see herself reflected.77 The 75 Huyssen, "The Fate of Difference" 311. 76 Olney, Metaphors o f Self 44. 77 The idea o f the reflection of the poet in poetry goes back to the Romantic definition of poetry. For Wordsworth and his contemporaries ''[p)oetry is the expression or overflow o f feeling, or emerges from a process of imagination in which feelings play the crucial part. . . . It is essential to poetry that its language be the spontaneous and genuine, not the contrived and simulated, expression of the emotional state o f the poet" (101-02). "But once the theory emerged that poetry is primarily the expression o f feeling and a state o f mind and even, in its extreme form, that poetry is the fictional gratification o f desire - a natural corollary was to approach a poem as a revelation o f what Carlyle called the 'individual specialties' of the author himself." M.H. Abrams. The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (London: Oxford UP, 1953) 226-27. In a more general sense o f autobiography, Robert Folkenfiik argues that "one can think o f autobiography

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poem as looking glass becomes a means for knowledge about the self. M irroring then takes place on the levels o f metapoetry, discussing p oetry’s potential for representation, and its psychological and social functions, and o f poetical means, i.e. of the symbolic and metaphoric use o f m irror imagery and various other forms of "doubling." In addition to their discussion o f the genre o f poetry and to their mirroring imagery, Plath, Rich, and Lorde also question the adequacy o f male language to express themselves as women. The most obvious form of "reflection" in poetry is that o f self­ reflection. In their poems, poets make statements about poetry and poetry writing: "The self-reflexive text, . . . , is one that explicitly concerns itself with the process o f narration, with writing, with com position."78 Self­ reflexive or "meta"poetry "investigates, analyzes, or describes" poetry • itself.79 The prefix meta- means '"beyond, above, o f a higher logical ty p e '." 80 M etapoetry's "major concern" is "the nature o f [poetry] itself or the process by which [poetry] makes its statements."81 Self-reflexivity of texts reaches a climax in the postmodernism of the 1960s and 70s. The proclamation of the death o f the author, as discussed before, leads to a selfreferentiality o f the work o f art and to the consideration o f the text as authorless. The self-reflexive postmodern (male) texts came into being to create "a rupture in order to revive an 'exhausted' genre - a genre that could no longer accommodate and express the extravagant notions o f time and space o f modern reality."82 W om en writers, in particular women poets, who started to write in the 1950s and 60s, were aware of the discussion about the crisis o f the medium, about the "exhausted genre” for postmodern male writers. The metapoetical statements by Plath, Rich, and Lorde, however, do not emphasize writing as a means in itself, but focus on poetry’s potential for representation and its psychological and social functions. F or them, the itself as a mirror stage in life, an extended moment that enables one to reflect on oneself by presenting an image of the self for contemplation." Robert Folkenflik, "The Self as O ther,” The Culture o f Autobiography: Constructions o f Self-Representations, ed. Robert Folkenflik (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1993) 215-34; 234. In line with my above-stated thesis of "reflection," I would like to extend Folkenflik's point and argue that autobiographical poetry for women serves as endlessly repeated mirror stages. 78 Raymond Federman, "Self-Reflexive Fiction," Columbia Literary History o f the United States, ed. Emory Elliott (New York: Columbia UP, 1988) 1142-57; 1143. 79 C. Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature (Indianapolis: Educational Publishing, 4 1981) 264. 80 Holman, A Handbook to Literature 264. 81 Holman, A Handbook to Literature 264. 82 Federman 1145. Cf. John Barth, "The Literature of Exhaustion."

Bobbs-Merrill

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author could not be dead, because they were struggling to become and stay alive. For them, the question was, 'H ow can we write (at all) and inscribe ourselves into the text, make the text expressive o f ourselves?’ As women writers, they had to find a way o f combining personal life and public (published) writing. They were not willing to give up one or the other. As many writers emphasize, writing is a matter o f survival, and the women poets had to find their own ways o f writing as women to avoid being further silenced by the male concept of a "literature o f exhaustion." Their quest for a "literature of their ow n"83 was indeed exhausting. At the beginning, Plath, Rich, and Lorde went back to accepted male poets such as W .H . Auden, imitated form and style but silently inserted new topics and, gradually, female personae. Together with a growing (psychological, political, and social) self-consciousness and self-confidence, they switched from implicit metapoetical comments to explicit ones. They openly explored the meaning o f poetry for themselves during the act of writing or o f making the act of writing their subject. They had to name the act o f writing poetry and fix it on paper because they were constantly questioned by their environment in their rights and abilities to be poets. As one o f the results o f a growing political awareness through the feminist m ovem ent, they attempted (and still attempt) a reversal o f the separation o f mind and body. They try to bring mind and body, art and emotion, the Semiotic and the Symbolic together in their poetry; because, after all, bodily experiences are among the most personal ones for all individuals. By revealing, in the medium, the processes that are responsible for the birth of the m edium, they try to reveal and to heal the rupture of the Oedipal crisis: they try to break down the dichotomies of reason and emotion, o f mind and body, o f culture and nature (". . . the poet, Kristeva argues, writes on the borderline between nature and culture . . . . ”84), o f male and female, o f white and black, of "Me" and "Other," o f superiority and inferiority: In this way, Kristeva continues, poetic writing takes the individual back to the point of separation between self and m/other - the semiotic and the symbolic - providing an opportunity to re-experience these divisions and hence our status as subjects in relation to the world.85 On a vertical level, women poets realign the Semiotic and the Symbolic and question the hierarchies in contemporary society. Reversing these

83 Cf. Elaine Showalter, A Literature o f Their Own (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1977). 84 Sellers, Language and Sexual Difference 101. 85 Sellers, Language and Sexual Difference 101.

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hierarchies is a first step in bringing the hierarchy dow n to a horizontal level o f decolonized, equally accepted but different human subjects. Kristeva argues that "modem poetry has the capacity to change the symbolic structure, through its inclusion o f the (writing) body, its use o f dream-narrative, and its ability to reflect upon its own signifying operation."86 Contemporary poetry by wom en also has the capacity to change the symbolic structure imposed on gender. "In the metaphor of the m irror the concept o f being can properly appear to itself."87 To express the dichotomy of neither/nor positions for women, Plath, Rich, and Lorde often use the imagery o f mirroring in their poetry. Images o f mirroring or m irror images include symbolic and metaphorical representations of "m irrors" and reflections such as images o f the double, o f motherhood and sexuality, o f myth and history, o f race and religion. "M irrors," concrete or abstract, can be found again and again in contemporary w om en's poetry and are vividly expressive o f the abovementioned concepts o f life.88 To understand the manifold implications of m irror imagery in a literary text, I will briefly explain some mythical and psychological references. In popular belief, people attribute to the m irror the quality of omniscience. Human beings have always been aw are o f their limited knowledge and have, therefore, tried to expand their possibilities o f insight with magic objects such as the m irror. This epistemology o f the m irror gives people the illusion of learning m ore about their past, present, and future, about events that take place somewhere else in the world, about health and illness or death. This knowledge embraces both self and others.89 86 Sellers, Language and Sexual Difference 101. 87 Rodolphe Gasch6, The Tain o f the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy o f Reflection (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1986) 21. 88 Cf. among many others Louise Bogan, "Little Lobelia’s Song"; Anne Sexton; Louise Gluck, Descending Figure ; Margaret Atwood. 89 It also brings together absence and presence, as Michel Foucault shows in his discussion of the painting "Las Meninas" by Velasquez: "En sa claire profondeur, ce n'est pas le visible qu'il mire. . . . Au lieu de toum er autour des objets visibles, ce miroir traverse tout le champ de la representation, negligeant ce qu'il pourrait y capter, et restitue la visibilite a ce qui demeure hors de tout regard. Mais cette invisibilite qu'il surmonte n'est pas celle du cache: il ne contoume pas un obstacle, il ne detoume pas une perspective, il s'adresse a ce qui est invisible & la fois par la structure du tableau et par son existence comme peintre. Ce qui se reflete en lui, c'est ce que tous les personnages de la toile soni en train de fixer........... Le miroir assure une metathese de la visibilite qui entame a la fois I'espace represente dans le tableau et sa nature de representation; il fait voir, au centre de la toile, ce qui du tableau est deux fois necessairement invisible." Les Mots et les choses (Paris: Gallimard, 1966) 23-24. For further discussions o f the mythic mirror cf. E.

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Because o f its magic power, people tend to believe that the m irror always reflects the true self, that the false self cannot be kept up in front o f it. Thus, the m irror, the echo, and the shadow have become symbols o f the "true" hum an soul. The fact that body and soul seem to be physically separated has led, in primitive cultures, to the belief that "this soul being externalized might leave [a hum an being] and that would mean death."90 The externalized soul is, of course, subject to danger and intrusion from outside. The fear o f this danger is often the reason for a rejection o f being represented in pictures and paintings. The m irror thus reflects outside and inside, body and soul. When someone dies in a house, all the m irrors are sheeted to prevent the dead from looking at those still alive. Covering a mirror in a house where there is a corpse is a tradition perpetuated by women. Someone has died, male or female, and, for these women the household item most intimately associated with human self-presence is the mirror. Mirrors and eyes are of course closely connected, but the eyes are also a primary means of expression and self-discovery. We close someone’s eyes when he or she dies. The exterior companion of the eyes, the mirror, is also covered.91 In the same way that the m irror is related to death, it also means, foreshadows, or brings about misfortune, in particular when it breaks, or it reflects the face o f the devil when a wom an in love looks into the m irror at night. Because of its magic power, the m irror can also be used as an instrument against evil. These popular beliefs thus show the ambivalence of meaning o f this magic instrument. Its observers are drawn to it with fascination and fear, with attraction and repulsion, knowing that the m irror and the m irror image are intimately connected to their personal lives. In another mythic dimension, apart from some connection to the sun because o f its reflection of light, the m irror is primarily associated with the m oon because both reflect absence and presence and therefore represent different phases of reflexivity:

Hoffmann-Krayer and H. Bachtold-Staubli, eds., Handwdrterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens (Berlin, vol. 2: 1929-30, vol. 9: 1941); Karl Haberland, "Der Spiegel im Glauben und Brauch der Volker," Zeitschrift fu r Volkerpsychologie 13 (1882): 324-47; Rudolf Meringer, "Der Spiegel im Aberglauben," Worter und Sachen 8 (1923): 17-32; J. von Negelein, "Bild, Spiegel und Schatten im Volksglauben," Archiv fu r Religionswissenschaft 5 (1902): 1-37; G. Roheim, Spiegelzauber (Leipzig: Intemationaler psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1919). 90 Paula Elkisch, "The Psychological Significance of the Mirror," Journal o f the American Psychoanalytic Association 5 (1957): 235-44; 240. 91 La Belle. Herself Beheld 115.

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This fluctuation between the 'absent' mirror and the 'peopled' mirror lends it a kind of phasing, feminine in implication, and hence - like the fan - it is related to moon-symbolism. Further evidence that the mirror is lunar is afforded by its reflecting and passive characteristics, for it receives images as the moon receives the light of the sun.92 Because of this cyclic development, the moon and thus also the m irror are often associated with the monthly cycle of the woman and her ability for conception. The importance of the m irror for the development o f a person's identity was investigated into and stated by Jacques Lacan. His theory o f the "mirror stage" explains "the formation of the /" at a time when the child "recognize[s] as such his own image in a m irror."93 The "m irror stage” precedes the oedipal crisis and gives the child a unitary body image, an identity o f its own, at the age of 6 to 18 months. The child recognizes its reflection in the m irror as "me." "The m irror stage is a turning point. After it, the subject's relation to himself is always mediated through a totalizing image that has come from outside. For example, the m irror image becomes a totalizing ideal that organizes and orients the self."94 The structuring principle o f the inside thus comes or works from the outside. It is crucial for the discussion of the poetry of Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, and Audre Lorde that Lacan "regard[s] the function of the mirror-stage as a particular case o f the function o f the imago, which is to establish a relation between the organism and its reality - or . . . between the Innenwelt and the Umwelt, ”95 because these women poets constantly experience the opposition between inner and outer worlds and attempt to harmonize these two worlds. W hereas the outer world is constituted by cultural images of women, the inner world is to a great extent structured by the unconscious. Carl Gustav Jung, for whom the unconscious seems to represent the "true" self, claims that the look into the m irror at later stages in life is the attempt at recovering this "true" self: "Wer zu sich selber geht, riskiert die Begegnung mit sich selbst . . ., [denn der Spiegel] zeigt getreu, was in ihn

92 J. E. Cirlot, A Dictionary o f Symbols, trans. Jack Sage (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 2 1967). 93 "The Mirror Stage as Formative o f the Function of the 1 as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience" 1; cf. also D.W . Winnicott, "Mirror-Role of Mother and Family in Child Development," Predicament o f the Family, ed. Peter Lomas (London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1967) n.pag.; Raymond Tallis, "The Mirror Stage: A Critical Reflection," Trivium 21 (Summer 1986): 5-44. 94 Jane Gallop, Reading Lacan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1985) 79. 95 Lacan, "The Mirror Stage" 4.

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hineinschaut, namlich jenes Gesicht, das wir der Welt nie zeigen, weil wir es durch die Persona, die Maske des Schauspielers verhiillen. Der Spiegel aber liegt hinter der Maske und zeigt das wahre G esicht."96 I would agree insofar as the m irror image might indeed show aspects o f the self that are otherwise hidden, but I would argue with Leonard Shengold that "[t]he m irror does not in fact picture the world as it is. The ordinary m irror reverses images right and left (special arrangements can give a reversal o f up and down too). Only symmetrical structures remain unchanged when reflected; asymmetric objects are reversed . . . ."97 Even though one can claim that the observer can, in the mind, rearrange the symmetrical structures, the m irror image is subject to social/cultural influences directly imposed from the outside or indirectly expressed via the unconscious o f the observer.98 A harmonization between the unconscious and the conscious is difficult because, according to Lacan, repression is at work during the "Imaginary" or "pre-Oedipal" period, a period before and during the m irror stage but before its accomplishment, which means before the final acquisition o f an identity and of language. This final acquisition marks the beginning o f the Symbolic order. The acquired language, logically then, is characterized by a subtext o f loss and repression. In that sense, the look into the m irror can thus mean the attempt at recovering what is lost and at liberating oneself from the experienced repression. For Lacan, the unconscious is structured like a language, like a "discourse"99 which is repressed when the individual enters the Symbolic order. Even though the unconscious (discourse) is repressed, it still exists and participates in the conscious discourse in ways the individual subject is not aware of, but might recover through psychoanalysis or, also, mirroring: The unconscious is that part of the concrete discourse, in so far as it is transindividual, that is not at the disposal of the subject in re-establishing the continuity of his conscious discourse. . . . The unconscious is that chapter of my history that is marked by

96 Carl Gustav Jung, Archetyp und Unbewufites, vol. 2 (Olten: Walter-Verlag, 1984) 93. 97 Leonard Shengold, "The Metaphor of the M irror," Journal o f the American Psychoanalytic Association 22 (1974): 97-115; 100. 98 Cf. Roberta Rubenstein: "In several of the narratives, mirrors figure importantly as metaphors for the importance o f reflection by others as a condition of the characters' verification of their own reality or as tropes for the parallels or discrepancies between inner and outer worlds. The violated or distorted boundaries of the self body forth, as it were, the characters' difficulties or failures in achieving identities defined according to white male cultural norms." Boundaries o f the Self 233. 99 Lacan, "Seminar" 32.

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a blank or occupied by a falsehood: it is the censored chapter. But the truth can be rediscovered; . . . , 100 In addition to mirroring, one way of recovering the unconscious is "doubling": "The double alleviation of tension, which frees the victim from responsibility for his repressed desires and yet satisfies those desires, is countered by a new fear of attack from the outside."101 The function o f the double, in Sylvia Plath's case, can become the definition of herself (Sylvia Plath) through others and the final suffering of "what he [R.D. Laing] calls ontological insecurity, and what many women poets call nonexistence, invisibility and muteness: unable to feel their existence confirm ed by others, they cannot affirm it for them selves."102 The relationship between self and double can also be transferred to the level o f mother-child relationships. The look into the m irror at a later stage in life evokes reflections about the w om an's relationship to her mother. The manifestations o f this connection between the m irror image and the image of the m other are myriad. They range from the recognition of sameness or difference with the mother and its subsequent rejection or acceptance via fear and hatred for the mother and thus for herself, to the inclusion o f her own children in this reflecting process. R. D. Laing describes one possible result o f self-analysis for the mother-daugher relationship: She was much addicted to scrutinizing her face in the mirror. One day it came to her mind how hateful she looked. It had been in the back of her mind for years that she had her mother's face. The word ’hateful' was pregnant with ambiguous meanings. She hated the face she saw in the mirror (her mother's). She saw, too, how full of hate for her was the face that looked back at her from the mirror; she, who was looking at the mirror, was identified with her mother. She was in this respect her mother seeing the hate in her daughter's face: that is, with her mother's eyes, she saw her hate for her

100 Jacques Lacan, "The Function Psychoanalysis," Ecrits 30-113; 49-50.

and

Field

of

Speech

and

Language

in

101 Jeremy Hawthorn, Multiple Personality and the Disintegration o f Literary Character: From Oliver Goldsmith to Sylvia Plath (New York: St. M artin's Press, 1983) 51. For further references to the double, cf. Otto Rank, Der Doppelgdnger: Eine psychoanalytische Studie (Leipzig: Intemationaler psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1925; Natalie Reber, Studien zum Motiv des Doppelgangers bei Dostoevskij und E.T.A. Hoffmann (Gieflen: Kommissionsverlag W. Schmitz, 1964); Robert Rogers, A Psychoanalytic Study o f the Double in Literature (Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1970). 102 Alicia Suskin Ostriker, "In Mind: The Divided Self and W omen's Poetry," The Midwest Quarterly 24.4 (Summer 1983): 351-65; 359.

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mother in the face in the mirror, and looked, with hatred, at her mother’s hatred of herself.103 The confrontation of the observer with her m irror image can also be interpreted as an act o f reading signs. Similar to language, the m irror image has a semiotic meaning because its signifiers point to signifieds.104 Even though in an article "Uber S piegel,"105 Umberto Eco argues for the "nonsemiotic character of m irrorin g,"106 I would agree that the m irror image is a semiotic surface available to and to be read by the individual only; nevertheless, it is a subjective semiotic system: Das Spiegelbild ist . . . anwesend, und zwar in Prdsenz eines Referenten, der nicht abwesend sein kann. . . . Das Spiegelbild ist nicht mil einem allgemeinen Inhalt korrelierbar . Darum etabliert das Spiegelbild niemals ein Verhaltnis zwischen Typen, sondern immer nur zwischen Einzelfallen, 107 It is always understood as a sign by the individual, from a "psychological perspective."108 The individual m irror image, however, exposes a "nonarbitrary, or 'm otivated,' relationship between the signifier (the m irror image in itself) and the signified (the human form presented in the mirror) which is established through detailed visual m im esis."109 In short, w om en’s goal is "to incorporate the signifier and the signified within a totalizing phenomenology o f self-consciousness."110 Even though Eco sees language as a concept that can be correlated with a general content whereas the m irror image cannot, I would agree with Julia Kristeva that women have not had a share in the development of the language o f the Symbolic order and that they, therefore, experience a further linguistic oppression when acquiring a male-dominated language. Therefore, the m irror image with its linguistic manifestation (in language) is the ideal means for women to express their individuality. Kristeva focuses in her work on writing and subjectivity and on the importance of

103 R.D . Laing, The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1959) 103. 104 The term "semiotic" is here used in the sense of "meaning of signs" and should not be confused with Kristeva's Semiotic or Lacan’s Imaginary order. 105 Umberto Eco, “Uber Spiegel," Uber Spiegel und andere Phanomene (1985), trans. Burkhart Kroeber (Miinchen: dtv, 1991) 26-61. 106 La Belle, Herself Beheld 153. 107 Eco, "Uber Spiegel" 46. 108 La Belle. Herself Beheld 153. 109 La Belle, Herself Beheld 163. 110 La Belle, Herself Beheld 180.

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the unconscious for the creation o f language. In La revolution du langage poetique (1974), she explains that the signifying process (proces de significance) is characterized by the interaction between the Semiotic (Imaginary order in Lacan) and the Symbolic. The Semiotic constitutes the pre-Oedipal phase, is pre-linguistic, instinctual, and linked to basic pulsions, whereas the Symbolic is conscious and socialized. By symbolic function we mean a system of signs (first, rhythmic and intonational difference, then signifier/signified) which are organized into logico-syntactic structures whose aim is to accredit social communication as exchange purified of pleasure. From the beginning, then, we are dealing with a training process...........111 Even though the Symbolic and Semiotic exist for all subjects, the Symbolic seems to be male-dominated, whereas the Semiotic seems to be female-dominated in Kristeva's theory.112 However, Kristeva does not equate the female and the Semiotic, but she emphasizes that the Symbolic is certainly dominated by men and that, therefore, a woman remains on the margin o f the Symbolic. Thus, for Kristeva, the term 'w om an' can be explained to some extent by positionality, namely by w om en's position of marginality within the Symbolic system. According to Toril Moi, Kristeva delineates two processes through which women achieve a position either of marginality or of illusionary centrality in the Symbolic: mother-identification, which will intensify the pre-Oedipal components of the woman's psyche and render her marginal to the symbolic order, or father-identification, which will create a woman who will derive her identity from the same symbolic order.113 Since in the pre-Oedipal phase in most cases the dominant link a child has is the mother, the Semiotic is thus indirectly linked to the female. So mother-identification, the female, and the Semiotic are closely connected, and father-identification, the male, and the Symbolic are hardly separable. Therefore, any attempt of the Semiotic to intrude into the Symbolic will be

111 Kristeva, "About Chinese Women" 150. 112 Toril Moi disagrees with this interpretation of the symbolic as male and the semiotic as female. Cf. the argument between Calvin Bedient and Toril Moi: Calvin Bedient, "Kristeva and Poetry as Shattered Signification," Critical Inquiry 16.4 (Summer 1990): 807-29; Toril Moi, "Reading Kristeva: A Response to Calvin Bedient," Critical Inquiry 17.3 (Spring 1991): 639-43; Calvin Bedient, "How I Slugged It out with Toril Moi and Stayed Awake," Critical Inquiry 17.3 (Spring 1991): 644-49. 113 Moi, "Marginality and Subversion: Julia Kristeva," Sexual/Textual Politics 150-73; 165.

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a subversion o f the patriarchal system. If a woman then decides to speak from her marginal position, she can approach the center and interrupt the regular order. The only means to express oneself in the Symbolic order is language, and language is given in this order and is thus male-dominated, too. Therefore, to express it in an extreme way, a woman can either adopt the given language and thus speak from a position o f marginality in the language o f the center and thereby put herself into a compromised situation that prevents her from clearly defining herself, or she can choose to remain in her position without any compromise, which implies that she will remain silent. H er alternatives are either symbolic (male) language or no language at all. . . art, and particularly poetry, becomes the scene o f the confrontation between semiotic jouissance and the thetic . . . , " 114 Therefore, Kristeva "sees language as potentially revolutionary" in the sense that "[o]nly by listening to what is unspoken, . . . , by attending to what is repressed, new, eccentric, incomprehensible and therefore threatening to the paternal code, can women hope to disrupt its order and acquire our own voice."115 Poetic language is particularly qualified because it "incorporates the unconscious and body-rhythms in a way other forms of language do not, . . . , " 116 and ”[p]oetry is the chord's guerrilla war against c u ltu re ." 117 Kristeva suggests that any attempt to deviate from conventional syntax disrupts the signifying order, but argues that it is in modern poetry that this disruption is most extreme. Here semiotic activity is expressed not only in linguistic or semantic deviations, but in the rhythm, tone, and even the graphic layout of the page. Modern poetry, she writes, is neither an 'imaginary discourse of the self, nor a 'discourse of a transcendental knowledge', but a 'pulsation' of 'sign and rhythm', 'consciousness and instinctual drive'. It destroys accepted beliefs and traditional modes of signification, preparing the way for revolutionary change.118 [P]oetic language, as [Kristeva] claims, is the linguistic occasion on which drives break apart the usual, uni vocal terms 114 Hekman, Gender and Knowledge 89. 115 Sellers, Language and Sexual Difference 15.

116 Sellers, Language and Sexual Difference 51 .

117 Bedient, ''Kristeva and Poetry as Shattered Signification" 809. Chora ("from the Greek word for enclosed space, womb," Moi, "Introduction," The Kristeva Reader 1-22; 12) is a term used by Kristeva to describe a part of the unconscious formed by drives. After the individual's moving from the Semiotic to the Symbolic, this chora will be repressed. However, it does not cease to exist and influence the Symbolic.

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of language and reveal an irrepressible heterogeneity of multiple sounds and meanings.119 T herefore, Kristeva can identify "a close connection between the revolution in language that she is describing and political revolution . . . . " 120 Poetic language com es from where the m other dominates, "as the rules and conventions o f the family and society are transmitted to the child through m odulations in the m other's body and v o ic e ."121 Absent from the Symbolic order is also the concept o f jouissance, a term used to describe the total enjoyment - sexual, spiritual, physical, and conceptual. According to Kristeva, jouissance exists outside the linguistic realm in the Semiotic order, in the realm o f the poetic. Thus, jouissance is automatically part o f poetry, and if jouissance or poetry intrude into the Sym bolic, it becomes disruptive and revolutionary, which Kristeva sum m arizes in the term dissidence : "The revolutionary subject, whether m asculine or feminine, is a subject that is able to allow the jouissance o f semiotic mobility to disrupt the strict symbolic o rd e r." 122 Thus, the revolutionary subject can be feminine or masculine, but wom en poets today seem to em ploy the disruptive quality o f poetry more often than their male colleagues. Yet, for Kristeva taking the part o f the revolutionary subject means playing a role, which she rejects: "But let us not take the role of Revolutionary either, whether male or female: let us on the contrary refuse all roles . . . . " 123 But how can we come to the "'tru th' situated outside tim e, a truth that is neither true nor false . . . . ”124 Kristeva proposes to bring everything that is "other" to the foreground: "By listening; by recognizing the unspoken in all discourse, however Revolutionary, by em phasizing at each point whatever remains unsatisfied, repressed, new, eccentric, incomprehensible, that which disturbs the mutual understanding o f the established p o w ers."125 Her suggestion is that "women must neither refuse to insert themselves into the symbolic order, nor embrace the m asculine model for femininity . . . which is offered her th ere."126 She has

118 Sellers, Language and Sexual Difference 99. 119 Butler, Gender Trouble 81. 12® Hekman, Gender and Knowledge 89. 121 Sellers, Language and Sexual Difference 51. 122 Moi, "Marginality and Subversion" 170. 123 Kristeva, "About Chinese Women" 156. 124 Kristeva, "About Chinese Women" 156. 125 Kristeva, "About Chinese Women" 156. 126 Moi, ed. The Krisieva Reader 139.

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thus found a viable way between the extreme positions for wom en o f either inclusion in or destruction of the male-dominated center by positing a position o f marginality which can subvert the system from within without destroying it. With their poetry, written from a marginalized position, Plath unconsciously and Rich and Lorde finally consciously try to subvert a static and male-dominated social system. M irrors and doubles become a means o f illuminating and maybe even repeating the critical thetic phase in a hum an being's life .127 This repetition opens up the possibility for change, for a revision o f positionality (of women and men) within the Symbolic. M any American women poets, definitely Plath, Rich, and Lorde, use their poetry as the location in and from which they can deal with their search for identity. They use their poems as reflections o f and for themselves and explore the potentials of "mirroring" in their imagery and their language. Consequently, the poem and the m irror serve similar psychological purposes: Texts and mirrors can perform similar psychological functions for women, particularly during periods in their lives when objectification and consciousness of self become necessary .128 Both looking into mirrors and reading / writing are attempts to create the self without another person literally present. In the reflection or in the book, there is another presence. Once you objectify yourself into a mirror or onto a page, then that image has a separate reality.129 The following chapters on Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, and Audre Lorde expose the social forces that repress each poet's chora. The individual chora seems to manifest itself in the constant tension experienced by all three poets between inside and outside forces. Plath, Rich, and Lorde metapoetically and metaphorically reflect upon this war between the Semiotic/Imaginary and the Symbolic even though they do not use the vocabulary o f psychoanalysis. They admit to the existence o f the Semiotic/Imaginary and try to give expression to it in their autobiographical poetry. For them, autobiography and poetry are inextricably linked to become the ideal means for the reflection o f themselves and society.

127 Kristeva calls the phase moving from the Semiotic to the Symbolic the thetic phase in which signification is fixed and posited. 128 La Belle, Herself Beheld 160-61. 129 La Belle, Herself Beheld 155.

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III. Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, and Audre Lorde

1. Sylvia Plath; or, The Branches of the Green Fig Tree To see yourself trapped between sets of mutually exclusive alternatives, neither of which fits no matter how many reconciling images you generate, is to live in a circus hall of mirrors, where the self is distorted, disguised, or shattered into slivers of reflection. But it is the struggle to be whole that engages the poet and empowers the poems.1 I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.2 The m etaphor of the fig tree, reflected upon by Esther Greenwood in The Bell Jar , has become the metaphor o f the life and work o f Sylvia Plath. Her desire for perfection and her fear o f loss of love and acceptance forced her to reach for every branch presented to her. H er fear, however, o f ending in nothing stimulated her to an incredible energy but oftentimes also 1 Pamela J. Annas, A Disturbance in Mirrors: The Poetry o f Sylvia Plath (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988) 161. 2 Sylvia Plath, The Bell J a r ( \9 1 \\ New York: Bantam Books, 1981) 62-63. All further references are to this edition and will be given parenthetically in the text preceded by BJ.

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to what John Barth called "cosm opsis,"3 a paralysis that, in the case of Barth's character Jacob Horner, can only be treated by a doctor whose specialty is "physical immobility."4 This physical immobility was caused by what Betty Friedan calls "the feminine m ystique," thereby describing the social construction o f "femininity" and its consequences for white middle-class w om en in the 1950s and the early 1960s. The poet Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) can be considered an example o f the American woman confronted with the feminine mystique. Throughout her life, her definition o f herself and her identity was always dependent on recognition by others. In her childhood, she longed for the acceptance by her father but suppressed her grief for the loss at his death, a loss that she transferred into her writing when her m arriage with Ted Hughes broke up because he left her for another woman. M other, teachers, and readers could only partially fill the gaps but could, at least for some time, serve as substitutes. Therefore, every rejection was m ore than just a rejection, e .g ., of a poem or a short story; it was a rejection o f her as a person. She was psychologically dependent on acceptance by people in her environm ent. In her opinion, social recognition was only possible by adhering to the norms posited by society and its definition o f femininity. By means o f grades, smiles, dressing, sunbathing, dating, marriage, husband, children, etc., she constantly worked for social acceptance and for the achievement o f the ideal image of an American woman. H ow ever, she felt a conflict within herself, as expressed by the fig tree metaphor, because the socially imposed behavior patterns and expectations seemed to contradict something inside her, something that she could not name and was hardly aware of, unless she called it her own failure. Though she wanted to be the all-American woman, she also wanted to be extraordinary.5 This tension, the feeling that she was not doing what others expected o f her, and that her social and psychological - or her conscious and unconscious - forces could not be united, led to a paralysis that she described in The Bell Jar. 1 was supposed to be having the time of my life. I was supposed to be the envy of thousands of other college girls just 3 John Barth, The End o f the Road (1958; Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1967) 69. 4 Barth. The End o f the Road 70. 5 Cf. "Plath's life was complicated even more by the fact that she was bom into a highly educated family - but a family that tried, for various reasons, to copy the allAmerican structure." Linda Wagner-Martin, ”The Bell Jar": A Novel o f the Fifties. Tw ayne's Masterwork Studies (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1993) 4.

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like me all over America . . . . everybody would think I must be having a real whirl. . . . Only I wasn’t steering anything, not even myself. . . . 1 couldn’t get myself to react. I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo. (BJ 2) The tension she experienced between the socially prescribed femininity - which she wanted to accept for herself and which she wore as a mask to present to her environm ent - and her own ambitious self are clearly reflected in her Letters Home on the one hand and her Journals6 on the other. H er poetry, however, confronts both issues by focusing on the question o f identity, "Who am I?", and by thematizing the constructs of femininity such as outward appearance, parental relationships, marriage, m otherhood, and sexuality and then opposing them to the socially almost "irreconcilable antagonism "7 o f writing, poetry writing in particular, as a woman. The life o f Sylvia Plath was dominated by a constant and often desperate search for acceptance, connection, and reflection by and through others. She defined herself through the response o f her environment and needed continual feedback, which she hoped to get by adhering to modernist and formalist poetry and by subjecting herself to Ted H ughes's influence throughout their marriage. This social looking glass told her to excel in every respect and to write poetry for social merit. She transferred her desire for ceaseless approval and reflection to the characters and the personae o f her autobiographical prose and poetry who try to find help in actual looking glasses and mirrors. The metaphor o f the m irror becomes the structural force in Sylvia Plath's poetry in which the poems themselves become m irrors o f their author, autobiographical writing in the sense that Plath invested the female subject with qualities o f herself but left enough space for additional experimentation. Whereas she consciously and 6 Sylvia Plath, Letters Home , ed. Aurelia Schober Plath (1975; Toronto: A Bantam Book, 1977); Ted Hughes and Frances McCullough, eds., The Journals o f Sylvia Plath (1982; New York: Ballantine Books, 1990). All further references are to these editions and will be given parenthetically in the text preceded by L and J respectively. Both letters and journals as non-fictional prose helped Plath to express her experiences, but it was the diary in particular which served as the basis for her poetry because "[t]he diary's valorization of the detail, its perspective of immersion, its mixing of genres, its principle o f inclusiveness, and its expression o f intimacy and mutuality all seem to qualify it as a form very congenial to women life/writers." Rebecca Hogan, "Engendered Autobiographies: The Diary as a Feminine F o rm ,” Autobiography and Questions o f Gender, ed. Shirley Neuman 95-107; 105. 7 Cf. Deborah Ashford, "Sylvia Plath's Poetry: A Complex o f Irreconcilable Antagonisms," Concerning P o e try!A (1974): 62-69.

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artificially crafted her early poetry, she increasingly gave way to spontaneity and emotional expression of the unconscious in her later work. She rejected the authorities (or "masters") of poets, father, m other, and husband and started to define her own femininity, knowing, however, that she could only fulfill and keep it in death - like Edna Pontellier in Kate C hopin's The Awakening. Like Edna Pontellier she was not willing to give up herself, her newly found identity. At the end o f her life, she had found the solution for the fig tree metaphor: she chose perfection in poetry, but ”[p]erfection is terrible, it cannot have children" ("The M unich M annequins," CP 262-63, Jan. 28, 1963).8 In the following chapter on Sylvia Plath, I will discuss, in a first step, Sylvia P lath's perception of society as it is revealed both in her autobiographical prose (The Bell Jar, her journals and letters) and in her autobiographical poetry. Her autobiographical prose and poetry as well as biographers' statements will be used as sources so that the tension Plath experienced between inside and outside forces can be considered from P lath 's personal perspective and from a more social one. All genres, however, only serve as a means to emphasize the importance Plath herself as well as Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde attributed to an experiencebased poetry. The ideology o f femininity of her society, passed on to Plath to a high degree by her parents and characterizing her relationship with her parents, was marked by the particular focus on the issues o f sexuality, m arrriage, and motherhood. In a second step, her understanding o f society will be correlated to her statements about writing, and poetry writing in particular, to reveal how on the one hand, Plath's development as a social being is reflected in her poetics and how, on the other hand, she uses poetry as a psychological means for self-affirmation. In a third step, I will then look at how this integration of life and text works on the level of language and imagery by focusing on two o f the m ajor representational phenomena in Plath's poetry, namely on m irror imagery and doubles. Both images are particularly adequate to express Plath's feelings o f tension about being a woman and a poet in the American society o f the 1950s and 1960s and both exemplify the "combat between a true and false, socialized self as a central tension . . . . Yet," Susan Van Dyne continues and I would agree with her and postmodernist critics that "the plausibility o f such a 'tru e ' self,

8 Sylvia Plath, Collected Poems, ed. Ted Hughes (London: Faber and Faber, 1981). All further references are to this edition and will be given parenthetically in the text preceded by CP.

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who would exist outside or be somehow immune to ideology, is seriously questioned . . . ,"9 O f course, quite a num ber o f Plath's poems could be included in several parts of the chapter at once. Yet, for clarity's sake, each poem is attributed to one part only according to its dominant aspect. A few poems appear in two parts because more than one issue in these particular poems seems to be important for the purposes of this dissertation. Within each part, the poems are discussed in chronological order because Plath’s poems develop in content and form parallel to the time before, with, and after Ted Hughes. The discussion o f "Sylvia Plath: An All-American Life" is also arranged chronologically from childhood, marriage, and motherhood to death, but each part contains poems from different periods o f her life. Therefore, they have to be seen as treating parallel and equally important issues and events in Plath's life. The poems in "Sylvia Plath and Poetry: Writing Genres and Herself" and "Shattered and Sheeted Looking Glasses: Representation in Sylvia Plath's Poetry" are examined in chronological order as well. A closer look at the posthumous image of Sylvia Plath reveals that she was obviously very successful at integrating life and text because her texts are considered to be subversive and dangerous to society even in the 1980s and 1990s. Ted and Olwyn Hughes have tried to keep up the image of the socially acceptable feminine wife, mother, daughter, and housewife. Paradoxically, however, by hiding or destroying material, by denying its existence or by explaining her not so socially acceptable behavior and writing with her pathological madness, they allude to the autobiographical quality o f her poems which seems to be potentially destructive to (maybe) Plath herself but most certainly to those who censor: "Plath: a poet mourned by bongo d r u m s ." 10 By now, innumerous booklength studies, articles, biographies, and bibliographies have been published on Sylvia Plath, the woman and her work. Critics from all over the world have focused either on her life/biography or on the analysis o f her work. After her suicide in 1963, much criticism has consciously or unconsciously given up the strict separation into life and work and has used both sides to explain each other. This intermingling o f fact and fiction, the equation o f the personae of P lath's poetry and prose with the author Sylvia Plath has led to an extraordinary debate between critics adhering to the mode o f a new critical 9 Susan R. Van Dyne, Revising Life: Sylvia Plaih's Ariel Poems (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1993) 25. 10 Ronald Hayman, "Plath: a poet mourned by bongo drums," The Independent 10 Nov. 1989.

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interpretation of fiction and critics who, e .g ., call her poetry "confessional" and who use biographical or feminist approaches to her work. Feminists, in particular in the 1970s, have dealt with her fiction as a conscious criticism o f a patriarchal society in which a woman does not really have a choice o f what to become in life, whereas anti-feminists completely reject the possibilities o f Plath's criticism o f a male society. To the contrary, they see her striving for acceptance by her environment and take this as a form o f cultural affirmation. Her unease with her life can then, o f course, be traced back to pathological/psychological disturbances. What critics too often tend to forget is that Sylvia Plath underwent a development and that this development cannot simply be seen in the light o f a deteriorating health and psychology, but has to be considered in social, psychological, cultural, and textual/aesthetic terms. None of these categories alone can explain Sylvia Plath and her work. It is necessary to look at her work from an intrinsic/formalist point of view and sketch a development/change, e .g ., in imagery, poetic devices, etc., but it is equally, or even more so, essential to refer these results back to her public and private life. The autobiographical approach o f this dissertation considers poetry a m irror for the poet. The aim is to show that Plath's formation of, or better, search for identity was heavily dependent on her writing, even took place in it, and that the key­ word for her identity was "femininity," a concept o f femininity that never changed in society but that slowly broke apart for Plath. Plath's concept o f identity was an either/or one, in the same way that society presented the possibilities to her. However, in a developing postmodern time, one has to allow for multiple and changing layers o f identity. Whereas most studies focus on one o f these layers and try to fix it in time and space, it is my intention to discover/look at as many layers o f actual experience as possible and show how they all merge in the term "femininity" and how they are then translated into the text, in form and content. The issue is not so much to find out how much actual biography is hidden in P lath's poetry, but to what extent her femaleness and her (and society's) concept o f femininity influenced her life and her writing, how this influence connected life and writing (or tried to disconnect it), and how it motivated her choice o f the genre o f autobiographical poetry and o f the stylistic devices o f mirror imagery and doubles. I will also include a discussion o f the posthumous Sylvia Plath because, in my point o f view, the discussion about who Sylvia Plath really was and what rights the literary estate has, follows the same pattern o f appropriating one layer, proclaiming this as the only true one, and forgetting about the rest. The discussion about Sylvia P lath 's grave and the literary estate's (Ted and Olwyn Hughes's) restrictions on the availability and publication o f material has evidently led to a boom in life-

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writing. Each biographer claims to have more and truer information about Sylvia Plath. Only Jacqueline Rose clearly states that ownership o f Plath and her life and work should not be the issue because "there can be no simple ownership of the facts,"11 but that at stake in this discussion are "sexual difference and sexual politics" and the recognition that even Plath herself "censors, transforms and endlessly rewrites herself."12 Why should they [women] be relegated to the position of custodian of emotions, watcher of the infants, fedder of soul, body and pride of man? Being bom a woman is my awful tragedy. From the moment I was conceived I was doomed to sprout breasts and ovaries rather than penis and scrotum; to have my whole circle of action, thought and feeling rigidly circumscribed by my inescapable femininity. (J 29-30)

1.1. Sylvia Plath: An All-American Life

1.1.1. The Dutiful Daughter

Daughter and Mother The mother-daughter relationship has been extensively discussed in feminist (psychoanalytical) discourse/criticism over the last twenty years. Feminists have come to recognize that the relationship between mother and daughter is fundamentally different from that between mother and son or daughter and father. As mentioned before,13 the mother often sees her daughter as an extension o f herself, and the daughter also feels closer to her than to her father. But at the same time both mother and daughter know about and have the need for separation so that the daughter is able to develop her own identity. This development o f an identity is always a power game.

11 Jacqueline Rose, The Haunting o f Sylvia Plath (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1992) 67. 12 Rose, The Haunting o f Sylvia Plath 104. 13 Cf. II. 1. W omen's Lives in Twentieth-Century American Society.

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The bonds between mother and daughter are very strong because o f their experience of sameness; they experience "(e]go boundary confusion between mother and daughter," as Jane Flax calls it.14 The daughter after all learns that she can never really be part of the "Law o f the Father" because she is female. This bond between mother and daughter is often considered as the bond between the powerless and thus can also produce hate in the daughter for the mother, because the daughter does not want to be like her mother but knows that she is very similar. In my opinion, Sylvia Plath's relationship to her mother can very well be discussed in these psychoanalytic terms of mother-daughter relationships, but also in terms of the one-dimensional concept o f identity that Plath herself adhered to. This concept o f identity implies that her mother was for Plath the person who passed on and embodied very fixed social understandings o f "woman," of "femininity," and o f gender relationships. Her mother had very similar illusions about becoming a writer, but had to give them up because of her marriage to Otto Plath. In Plath's eyes, her mother was the perfect mother, wife, and housewife, and after the loss o f her husband, was able to support herself and her children. She did what was expected o f her, but Plath felt a lack o f satisfaction in her m other's behavior. Nevertheless, the same kind of sacrificing, accepted, and loved mother figure appealed to her; yet, at the same time she wanted to be someone else, someone different from her mother. This tension, this constant attraction to one or the other side caused Plath to write wonderfully loving letters home to her mother. Aurelia Schober Plath considers these letters the only true statements about their relationship. On the other extreme side, Plath wrote her poems and her autobiographical novel The Bell Jar in which Esther heavily criticizes her mother's behavior after the suicide attempt and concludes: "'I hate her"' (BJ 166). The Bell Jar and the poems discussed in this part share an aggressive and enraged attitude of the personae toward the mother figure. Plath seems to have disguised these feelings in her letters to her mother but let them flow freely into her autobiographical writing. In fiction (novel and poems), it seems, she felt at ease with experimenting with and outliving such extreme emotions. In The Bell Jar , she had to stick to a real mother figure and had to remain within the frame o f a believable reality, whereas in her poetry, she was able to go from a simple critical view of a mother figure to an exorcism-like fight with the overpowering figure in her life. In her last poems, she finally removed all social, psychological, structural, and formal limitations. In that sense, even though the historical Sylvia Plath and her

14 Flax, "Mother-Daughter Relationships" 35.

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persona in her poems are not identical, Plath used her lyrical alter ego as a mirror image of herself and let the written subject and the writing subject become confluent. The following analysis o f the poems "The Disquieting Muses" and "Medusa" should reveal Plath's fictionalizing strategies o f dealing with her mother, o f going through some kind of exorcism towards a catharsis, liberating herself from this one-sided definition of identity and thus femininity, so that she can finally overcome this alienating determination in and through her poetry in the last two months before her suicide. In the poem "The Disquieting Muses" (CP 74, 1957), Plath's persona reproaches her mother for being responsible for the presence o f three ladies in her life since her baptism, "[w]ith heads like darning-eggs, . . . Mouthless, eyeless, with stitched bald head," the disquieting muses. This description, which evokes Giorgio de Chirico's painting "The Disquieting Muses," reveals Plath's ambivalent feelings about an oppressive and frightening female presence.15 In addition to the witchlike quality o f the three muses, she compares her situation to the fairy tale o f "Sleeping Beauty." However, the persona is not saved by a man, which is a hint at Plath's growing dissatisfaction with the patriarchal world. Interestingly, Plath chose the magic number three and has the three ladies positioned "at foot and head / And at the left side o f my crib," whereas the fourth side remains for her mother, thus associating her with the three ladies. For the mother, there is a clear separation between story­ telling and reality: "Mother, who made to order stories / O f Mixie Blackshort the heroic bear, / Mother, whose witches always, always / Got baked into gingerbread, . . . ," whereas the child transgresses the boundaries between fiction and reality and dissolves them in her imagination. The mother's fairy tales always have a happy end in which evil is punished and good is rewarded. The allusion to a traditional fairy tale is used by Plath to expose society's simple categorization which for Plath does not seem to work. She also exposes a child's belief in the power of its mother as non-existent or at least questionable. The mother is held responsible for the overpowering presence o f "those ladies" because even though she is able to protect the children during a hurricane (a real event in Plath's childhood), "those ladies broke the panes." Her mother makes every effort to teach her what society expects of her, e.g ., piano lessons,16 but 15 Plath explained this reference to de Chirico on a radio broadcast in 1961. Cf. Anne Stevenson, Biller Fame: A Life o f Sylvia Plath (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989) 124-25. 16 "Like much of Sylvia's work, the poem mixes autobiography with fiction and myth. In Winthrop Sylvia took half-hour piano lessons from a friend of Aurelia's. These stopped when they moved to Wellesley, but a year or so later Sylvia asked whether she could take

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her daughter's ear is ”[t]one-deaf and yes, unteachable." She, however, does learn "[flrom muses unhired by you, dear mother." The mother's fault was not the deliberate hiring o f these muses but the neglect at birth, and now it is too late to send these ladies away. The disquieting muses can be considered a metaphor for the inner forces that lead Plath to her suicide. They represent the strong inner mechanisms that tear her away from her m other's and society's expectations. Her m other's face is always reproachful, telling her what she did wrong. The mother is an image, an idealization that she can never reach even if she wanted to reach it. She ends on an ironic reference to the fairy tale: "And this is the kingdom you bore me to, / Mother, mother." Her very last sentence, however, deserves particular attention: "But no frown o f mine / will betray the company I keep." It not only makes the mother responsible again, but it also reproaches her for not knowing, for not understanding what she has done to her daughter.17 The daughter, in turn, is not willing to communicate her bad feelings to her mother. She does not give a single sign - as Plath never did in her letters either - to help her mother understand her daughter. By wearing a mask on the outside, she hides her inner eventful life to her mother and to her surroundings. Paradoxically, however, by writing down this very sentence and this poem, she opens herself up to interpretation. She takes her mask off in her poetry and reveals the psychological mechanisms going on in her, personified by the three disquieting muses - and in that sense they might also represent her inspiration for poetry writing. She makes them and her mother responsible for the fact that she cannot adhere to the social definition imposed on her. Therefore, she hates this part o f her and hides it. After all, it is what makes her different. The mother-daughter relationship here is very complex and reflects Plath's uncertainty about her feelings for her mother. On the one hand, the mother is responsible for the distortion and idealization of reality. On the other hand, since there is no ideal reality, she is also responsible for the presence o f evil forces in her child's life. The child's realization of the m other's failure and intentional misrepresentation of life leads to an emotional distance between mother and daughter. The mother develops from "an inadequate maternal figure" to a "monstrous mother-love, hungry for reflected glory, pushing her daughter into every field o f culture with or

one of the afternoon courses at the New England Conservatory of Music, where she did well enough to be offered a half scholarship. She went on with the course for two years.” Ronald Hayman. The Death and Life o f Sylvia Plath (New York: A Birch Press Lane Book. 1991)43-44. 17 Cf. Plath's poem T h e Moon and the Yew Tree" (CP 172, Oct. 22, 1961).

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without talent, forcing her to become an overachiever. Resentment bums beneath every lin e ." 18 In contrast to "The Disquieting Muses," in which Plath expresses her hidden feelings towards her mother, "Medusa" (CP 224-26, Oct. 16, 1962) is an open attempt at liberating herself from her m other's stifling influence and power. Plath chooses the mythic conceit o f the Medusa in order to express all her hate for the mother and her desire to get rid of her. In a first draft the poem was called '"M um : M e d u s a .'" 19 Whereas "The Disquieting Muses" is based on a fairy tale, the discussion o f "Medusa" reveals how Plath uses a traditional myth, a traditional image for women as a means for a kind o f exorcism through which she is finally able to reject her mother completely and to clearly define her ego boundaries. In the Greek myth, Medusa is a female monster Gorgon who is able to turn everyone into stone who looks at her. Originally, priest-women wore masks in order "to scare off men, and demons, from the religious rituals conducted by w om en in honour o f the great Triple Goddess, matriarch of the upper air, earth and underworld in her moon-like phases o f maiden, nymph and cro ne."20 When Greece was then invaded by the Hellenes, they tore off the masks and replaced the priest-women with gods and heroes. Ovid later on added to the story by saying that "Medusa was once a beautiful maiden, put into her horrifying form as punishment - punishment for her having been raped by Neptune - . . . ,"21 P lath's poem recreates the horrifying aspects o f the Medusa in her outward appearance and in her attempts at reuniting with the persona of the poem , her daughter. She uses the myth of the Medusa for her mother, thereby perpetuating the gender stereotypes originally created by men. In that sense, she does not participate in the general (feminist) "revisionist myth-making, whereby women attempt to correct the gender stereotypes embodied in the old stories,”22 but does what Helene Cixous laments: "Men have committed the greatest crime against women. Insidiously, violently, they have led them to hate women, to be their own enemies, to mobilize their immense strength against themselves, to be the executants of their

18 Jean Gould, "Sylvia Plath," Modern American Women Poets (New York: Dodd. Mead, and Company, 1984) 124-50; 128. 19 Linda W. Wagner-Martin, Sylvia Plath: A Biography (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988) 219. 20 Joan Coldwell, "The Beauty of the Medusa: Twentieth Century," English Studies in Canada 11.4 (Dec. 1985): 422-37; 423. 21 Coldwell, "The Beauty of the Medusa" 423. 22 Coldwell, "The Beauty o f the Medusa" 422.

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virile needs."23 However, Plath uses the Medusa myth as a liberating force for her own (female) identity (as a daughter and independent woman). Plath describes her Medusa figure with "stooges," comparable to the various heads of the Medusa and the serpent-like arms, "[pjlying their wild cells in my keel's shadow, / Pushing by like hearts,/ Red stigmata at the very center, / Riding the rip tide to the nearest point o f departure, / Dragging their Jesus h a ir.” The image is that o f a pursuit, the persona in a boat followed by the Medusa, who, in this poem , becomes a figure o f the sea, a fish-like appearance, "the Medusa jellyfish (named after the Gorgon), the sea-nettle whose poison can be paralyzing."24 In latin the jellyfish is called aurela,25 which might or might not be an allusion to her m other's first name Aurelia. In addition to a reference to the M edusa's many arms, Jesus hair is also an allusion to the original priest-women who protected the goddesses but who then lost their power and became martyrs o f their belief. Additionally, it also implies the idea o f a religious authority trying to impose itself, an authority that is willing to die for you but then, o f course, demands gratefulness. Thus, the comparison with Jesus here evokes the persona's feelings of guilt towards her mother who has - as in Plath's life as well - given all she possibly could to her daughter and now claims her share in her daughter's life. This pursuit was part o f her past, but the persona is still closely connected to her mother: "In any case, you are always there," as represented in various images o f "lines" such as the "old barnacled umbilicus, Atlantic cable, I . . . I Tremulous breath at the end o f my line............" The biological unity before birth, which is then symbolically cut off with the umbilical cord, is here belatedly broken. The difficulty o f separation is evident in the continuation o f the umbilical cord in the transatlantic telephone line, even time and geographical distance do not easily give the daughter the independence she longs for. In the activities o f the Medusa o f ”[t]ouching and sucking" the roles o f mother and daughter seem to be reversed; it is the mother now who needs the daughter and no longer the daughter who needs the mother. Despite the fact that the persona has not called her, her mother comes towards her. "Nevertheless, nevertheless / You steamed to me over the sea,26. . . . " The physical reunification between mother and daughter, and thus the re-establishment o f 23 Helene Cixous, "The Laugh of the Medusa," trans. Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen, Signs 1.4 (1976): 875-93; 878. 24 Judith Kroll, Chapters in a Mythology: The Poetry o f Sylvia Plath (New York: Harper and Row, 1976) 127. 25 Hayman, The Death and Life o f Sylvia Plath 181. 26 Perhaps also a reference to the visit that Aurelia Schober Plath made in England.

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an embryo-like state, namely that o f the child in the m other's womb, is evoked in the religious image o f the communion wafer, which is a pars pro toto, evoking the religious idea of unity, o f oneness of God and human beings. Yet, "I shall take no bite of your body," - because her mother after all is not Jesus - a body that is compared to the "Bottle in which I live, / Ghastly Vatican." Through the rejection of the religious unity, Plath rejects the mother-daughter reunification. The mother makes her feel guilty and makes her aware o f her so-called sins: "Green as eunuchs, your wishes / Hiss at my sins," but she also makes the daughter experience a moment o f power because the daughter has something she could give her mother (something her mother wants and without which she feels "castrated"), but which she is not willing to give. Another interesting idea, however, is added through the aspect of "rape” introduced to the myth by Ovid. If the mother/Medusa has turned into a monster because o f her rape and the consequent punishment, then first o f all it is men who make women into monsters, and second, by rejecting the Medusa as her mother, Plath also rejects her fate, namely that of being abused by men. She tries to leave the powerless realm o f the mother to perhaps lead a more powerful life. She clearly sees how her mother has developed into what she is, into a mother who cannot let go o f her daughter, who has given up herself for her because that was expected of her as prescribed by the existing definition of womanhood. Plath, on the contrary, when writing the poem "Medusa," is at a point in her life when she has learned that her wish for acceptance by society and thus for adhering to the concept o f femininity is illusionary and does not bring the happiness and satisfaction that she has hoped for. "Plath's poem attempts an exorcism o f that figure [the mother figure] in order for her true self to be born."27 Thus, with her mother she rejects at the same time authorities that try to impose fixed definitions of identity/femininity on her: "Off, off, eely tentacle! / There is nothing between us." The important step in any revolution is always the destruction of the dominant structures and authorities, but the second, and perhaps at least as important step is to establish a set of alternatives. Plath's alternatives are her children and her poetry, but the former would have turned herself into a Medusa, and the latter is best in the liberating phase after the separation from her husband. Plath, however, is on her way to reach the step that Cixous proclaims in her essay:

27 Coldwell, "The Beauty of the Medusa" 429.

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Cixous urges us to laugh at the entire concept [of the Medusa] as who can fail to do? Woman is not defined by lack of male qualities but by abundance of female ones; we should, she says, not strive to emulate the male world, in writing, scholarship, or any other field, but should rather develop what is distinctively female.28 Cixous's plea for a redefinition o f the Medusa myth implies the necessity to see through the social conventions and masks imposed on women and asks for a search for a community o f women, including the community between mothers and daughters: "You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she's not deadly. She's beautiful and she's laughing."29

Daughter and Father During the time o f separation from the mother, during the mirror stage and then the Oedipal crisis, the girl learns to look for acceptance by the father and thus starts to compete with her mother. In contrast to motherdaughter relationships, not much has been written about father-daughter relationships by feminist critics. However, in the case o f Sylvia Plath biographers o f her life and critics o f her poetry have focused on this issue and have tried to explain and understand it by comparing it to the motherdaughter relationship. Sylvia Plath was eight years old when her father died after a long illness during which the children were not allowed to play in the house or even to have friends come over. He was a force in the house dominating his family through his psychological presence in their minds despite his physical absence from everyday life. Sylvia Plath loved and admired him and was constantly striving for his acceptance and love. His absence seemed to be a sign for her that he did not love her. Therefore, for her, his death wasn't so much a shock as the irreversible conclusion to a series of rejections. She and her brother, Warren, were free to make more noise, but all her chances of winning back Daddy's love had vanished. Either she was at fault for not trying hard enough, or her mother was for allowing her only such brief opportunities.30 Thus, after her father's illness and his death Plath ascribed the responsibility for the lack of love and relationship between herself and her 28 Coldwell, "The Beauty of the Medusa" 432. 29 Cixous, "The Laugh of the Medusa" 885. 30 Hayman, The Death and Life o f Sylvia Plath 20-21.

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father to her own inability to gain his approval on the one hand and to her m other's activities on the other. Thus, the guilt she equally distributed between herself and her mother gradually grew into hate for the mother but also into a loss o f self-confidence. Approval by her father had meant acceptance o f her identity, and as long as she acted in the prescribed way a nice and successful little girl - there was approval; there was no need to look for anything else. But the absence of the father threw her back onto herself for a definition o f her own. Consequently, she refused to deal with her father's death and simply burried him in her mind. It was not until "March 1959, when Sylvia was twenty-six, that she paid her first visit to his grave."31 In the meantime, Plath had been able to find a substitute for her father in her husband Ted Hughes, which made it possible for her to face her loss. Plath felt the need for a translation of her experience into a poetical text. She had to be able to see herself reflected in poetry and thus from a certain distance. For her, autobiographical poetry was therapeutical and epistemological. After this first visit, Plath wrote the poem "Electra on Azalea Path"32 in which the persona tries to answer her questions about her father and about what he meant to her. In the later poems such as "D addy,"33 she goes through the exorcism described before in "Medusa," this time, however, coming to terms with her father and finally liberating herself from his psychological influence. In the poem "Electra on Azalea Path" (C P 116-17, 1959), written shortly after the visit of her father's grave, Plath, through the image of wintering bees, voices for the first time how she tried to shut out the memory of his death. Yet, the image of wintering bees connects her closely to her father's activity as an expert on bees and can thus give her the illusion of his continued presence. This image also reflects an illusion going on in her mind only; on the outside, it seems "[a]s if you had never existed, as if I came / God-fathered into the world from my m other's belly: / Her wide bed wore the stain of divinity. / I had nothing to do with guilt or anything / When I wormed back under my m other’s heart." She clearly represses any thought about the loss of her father and her responsibility and instead makes him into a God. Yet, this elevation into a God-figure makes her turn back to the human being, her mother, which constitutes a movement from admiration and love for the father to necessity. It is a return to the mother’s body, a yearning to substitute the loss of the father with the maternal, the oneness of mother and child before birth. It is an

31 Hay man. The Death and Life o f Sylvia Plath 21. 32 Cf. also "The Colossus" (CP 129-30, 1959). 33 Cf. also "Stings" (C P 214-15, Oct. 6, 1962)

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attempt to start life again, to go back to the Semiotic/Imaginary order, to be born again, to go through the mirror phase again, to separate from the mother in the hope o f finding a new father. The return to the mother is the attempt to make her father's death undone because she can start as a child again at a time when her father is still alive. In that state o f innocence, she is also able to make her father into an "epic, image by image. / Nobody died or withered on that stage. Everything took place in a durable whiteness." Plath knows about the power o f imagination, o f fiction. She dramatizes and manipulates the events in her life and puts them on an imagined stage on which the theater of life continues forever. The visit to her father's grave was a psychological necessity on her way towards coming to terms with both her parents and their relationship and with her own self who was longing for an understanding of what was going on with her. The grave o f her father is surrounded by artificial red flowers: "The artificial red sage does not stir I . . . I the rains dissolve a bloody dye: / The ersatz petals drip, and they drip red." A scene o f torture, o f bloodshed, but also o f possible purification and catharsis is suggested here, which is not yet specified but at least alludes to a tragedy that has been covered up so far. The idea o f a hidden tragedy is brought up in the next stanza: "Another kind of redness bothers me: / The day your slack sail drank my sister's breath / The flat sea purpled like that evil cloth / My mother unrolled at your last homecoming. / I borrow the stilts o f an old tragedy." In this last sentence, Plath metapoetically comments on her allusion to the Greek tragedy o f Electra and Agamemnon. . . , she writes herself into a drama" in which the "daughter (Electra) reproaches her father (Agamemnon) for having been willing to sacrifice her sister (Iphigenia). Death brings back the accusation of history instead of bringing it to a close."34 If Plath writes herself into drama and history, she also writes herself into psychology. The sister Iphigenia is Electra's counterpart and maybe double: whereas Electra loves her father (and together with her brother Orestes kills Klytemnestra, her mother, and Egisthes, her m other's lover), Iphigenia becomes her father's victim. The persona o f the mourning daughter splits up into two and allows her, I think for the first time, critical ideas about her father. After all, he was not the God-like figure she created earlier. In recapitulating the moment o f her father's death, Plath transforms the event into a scene of a play. Even though her mother explains his death in physical terms o f illness and describes him as a human being, the persona is not satisfied with this explanation: "My mother said; you died

34 Rose, The Haunting o f Sylvia Plath 112.

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like any man. / How shall I age into that state of mind?" She believes that "[i]t was [her] love that did [them] both to death." The fact that "Azalea Path" is a pun on her m other's name, Aurelia Plath, interposes the mother between father and daughter and reenacts the drama o f competition, from the daughter's perspective, between mother and daughter. The mother is in control of the information the daughter can get about her father’s death. The mother demystifies him and makes him into a human being. The daughter, however, is in love with the God-father. Even though the poem contains moments of criticism o f her father, it finally reinstitutes his position as an admirable man and reaffirms the daughter's guilt for his death. She gave him too much love which he had to reject, and the final rejection had to be his death. In this poem, Plath comes to the one and only conclusion that she is guilty. "In the earlier elegies, Plath blames her father's death on her excessive love for him, articulating an incestuous desire unlike the decorous affection customary in the genre."35 As little as she is able to accept different forces in her own life defining her identity, is she able to confront the fact that maybe her father was not this ideal man, that maybe it was partly his fault, too, that he had to die and that his daughter felt guilty. As much as she wants to impose this God-like mask on him, in the poem she expresses her unconscious questioning o f her father's qualities. Yet, she can only do it in the guise o f a Greek tragedy, an analogy which she admits is "borrowed." She needs her father to be the one-dimensional stable and fixed person who gives her the illusion o f achieving, one day, an identity free o f tension for herself. Even though Plath describes the visit of her father's grave in both the novel The Bell Jar and the poem "Electra on Azalea Path," her fictionalization of reality in her poem is much more theatrical, extreme, metaphorical, and thereby impressive and telling. The final and famous deconstruction of her father’s image then occurs in her poem "Daddy" (C P 222-24, Oct. 12, 1962). In "Daddy," Plath destroys the colossal figure of her father (and her husband) and constructs the new image o f a tyrant, o f an oppressor, a vampire that could only rest in the grave with a "stake in [his] fat black heart." As in "Medusa" and "Lady Lazarus" (C P 244-47, Oct. 23-29, 1962), the daughter goes through a ritual o f exorcism to her final liberation. Plath recognizes her love for her father as something confining and limiting, making her live like "a foot" in a "black shoe" "[b]arely daring to breathe or Achoo." She connects to the image o f the monumentary

35 Jahan Ramazani, " Daddy, I Have Had to Kill You': Plath, Rage, and the Modem Elegy," PMLA 108.5 (1993): 1142-56; 1144.

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colossus. But she has come to the point where she sees her psychological condition not as her own fault but as her father's: "You died before I had time and that is why "I have had to kill y o u .” He left her before she even had the chance o f recognizing how little power he actually had. The deconstruction of her father's image continues in the impossibility to communicate with him because he was of German-speaking origin: "I never could talk to you. / The tongue stuck in my jaw. / It stuck in a barb wire snare."36 The German language, which is foreign to her, is metaphorized into an "engine" turning her into a Jew carried off to "Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen." Thus, her father is responsible for her torture like the Nazis were responsible for the suffering o f the Jews, and she eventually turns him into a Nazi. The speaker more and more identifies with the fate o f the Jews: "I began to talk like a Jew. / I think I may well be a Jew. I . . . I I may be a bit o f a Jew." This "crisis o f language and identity"37 does not mean that Plath goes as far as saying that she suffered in the same way as the Jews.38 She uses the analogy o f the Jews' extermination by the Nazis to show how extremely she suffers but she avoids complete identification.39 Finally, she turns her father into a devil and a vampire, "[a] cleft in your chin instead o f your foot / But no less a devil for that, no not / Any less the black man who / Bit my pretty red heart in two." She revives her father through the images of Nazi, devil, and vampire in her poem, and makes him a model, "[a] man in black with a Meinkampf look,” only in order to then kill him. She cuts off the telephone - any means of communication with him - and can now kill the vampire(s), an image which subtly conflates father and husband: "If I've killed one man, I've killed two - I . . . I Seven years,40 if you want to know. / Daddy, you can lie back now. / T here's a stake in your fat black heart / And the villagers never

36 Cf. Elizabeth Butler Cullingford, "A Father's Prayer, A Daughter's Anger: W.B. Yeats and Sylvia Plath," Daughters and Fathers, ed. Lynda E. Boose and Betty S. Flowers (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1989) 233-55: "Although Plath herself kept returning to the idea of mastering German, it constantly defeated her, and in the poem her ability to speak it suggests the impenetrable barriers between father and daughter" (251). 37 Rose, The Haunting o f Sylvia Plath 228. 38 Cf. Carol Helmstetter Cantrell's opinion that Sylvia Plath "is writing out of the tradition of long-suffering minorities............." “Self and Tradition in Recent Poetry," The Midwest Quarterly 18.4 (1977): 343-60; 354. 39 Cf. Rose, The Haunting o f Sylvia Plath 206. For a further discussion of the Holocaust in literature cf. Rose pp. 207-22. 40 The length of her marriage to Ted Hughes.

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liked you. / They are dancing and stamping on you. / They always knew it was you. / Daddy, daddy, you bastard. I'm through."41 The separation from father and mother then finds its logical climax in a turn towards herself, towards the resurrection o f herself as a powerful woman, towards an affirmation o f her womanhood, as described in "Lady Lazarus." Here, autobiographical poetry turns into a utopian vision o f the future in which the persona, and thereby Plath, assumes the powerful position o f a female heroine. However, [h]ow can women assert themselves against social oppression ('destined to be classified and qualified') without propelling themselves beyond the bounds of identity, without abolishing identity itself? For there is no such thing as an ego on its own, since the ego exists, comes into being, only as difference from itself.42 In 1949, Plath still felt the wonderful unity of herself with the world around her: "I am I - I am powerful - but to what extent? I am I. Sometimes I try to put myself in another’s place, and I am frightened when I find I am almost succeeding. How awful to be anyone but."43 On January 10, 1953, she still defined herself almost exclusively with reference to others when she wrote in her journal: ". . . 'there has always furthermore in addition and inescapably and forever got to be a Thou. Otherwise there is no i because i am what other people interpret me as being and am nothing if there were no people.'"44 In 1962, however, she made a new transition from the Semiotic to the Symbolic world; this time, this entrance into the Symbolic resulted in an awareness of herself as an individual woman not able and not willing to go along with the "Law o f the Father": "As from a star I saw, coldly and soberly, the separateness o f everything. I felt the wall o f my skin: I am I. That stone is a stone. My beautiful fusion with the things o f this world was over. . . . this awful birthday o f otherness . . . . ”45 I agree with Rose that identity can only be achieved through a definition of what it is that makes people different. Socialization has taken place in the mirror phase and in the consequent step into the Symbolic order. However,

41 Cf. Plath's comment on "Daddy” as quoted in Kroll, Chapters in a Mythology 116. 42 Rose, The Haunting o f Sylvia Plath 145-46. 43 Quoted in "Introduction" to the Letters Home 3-38; 37-38. 44 Nov. 13, 1949 (diary supplement); quoted in Rose, The Haunting o f Sylvia Plath 146. Not printed in the edition of the Journals used for this dissertation. 45 Sylvia Plath, "Ocean 1212-W" (1962), Johnny Panic and the Bible o f Dreams: Short Stories, Prose and Diary Excerpts (New York: Harper and Row, 1986) 20-26; 23.

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the purpose o f an identity search is not to have an "ego o f one's own," but to establish identity boundaries between two egos that would allow crossing but not complete appropriation of the one by the other.46 In September/October 1962, Plath went through the oedipal crisis again. What kind of identity was she going to develop if she did not want to turn to the "Law of the Father" again. This was a question she could not answer. Through the interaction of "metaphor, fantasy and identification,"47 Plath had finally liberated herself from the restrictions imposed on her by society and through society by herself as dutiful daughter (and faithful wife). She had cut the lines o f communication between herself and her mother and father. She had recognized the family and social structures as imprisoning for women, restricting them to imposed social roles against their own personal wishes which, however, often are not clear to themselves, as Plath's case apparently shows, and frequently are only experienced as unconscious dissatisfactions and as forces working against socially accepted fixed identities. Whereas she used her poems to find a way o f separating from her mother, she had to re-evoke and create an image o f her father, she had to revive him first before she could come to terms with her own feelings for him. These poems express "Plath's melancholic ambivalence, . . . her desire to revive yet revile the dead man, to reach yet relinquish him ."48 Plath finally had the courage to write and publish poems about her father which did in no way conform to what was socially acceptable for a woman. The often-quoted last line o f the poem, "Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I ’m through," has frequently been read as a foreshadowing o f Plath's final suicide; it may very well be, but first of all, I think it is the conclusion, the endpoint of a life of dependence on male authority and of a submissive and destructive love. She rejected and ejected this influence from her life. It was the death o f her imprisoned self and the birth o f a new self. However, the new self’s possibilities remain unknown in this poem and probably unknown to Sylvia Plath at this stage in her life. On December 12, 1962, Plath wrote to her mother: "It is over .............My life can begin" (L 550).

46 Cf. II.3. Representation in Women's Poetry. 47 Rose, The Haunting o f Sylvia Plath 207. 48 Ramazani, " D a d d y , I Have Had to Kill You'" 1153.

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1.1.2. The Sexual Monster "My life can begin" could also have been a statement after her first encounter with Ted Hughes. In her teenage and college years, Sylvia Plath was known to put great emphasis on relationships with boyfriends. Not that she particularly liked these friendships, but for her they belonged to the life o f a successful American girl. She thus followed the behavior patterns of her time, and since she wanted perfection in all she did, she fulfilled the social norms - that is what they were for her - to a very high degree, motivated significantly by her fear of loss, loss o f social and familial acceptance and admiration. Consequently, she needed boyfriends - like mirrors - to give her the identity she wanted, an identity constructed by social norms and personal desires to belong, to be an outstanding part of society. It was hard enough to be in the middle of an accepted social life and to excel within, but for quite some time - with the exception o f her father's death -, she seemed to receive what she was fervently, almost feverishly, longing for, something that Paula Bennett calls "[t]he fragile foundation on which Sylvia Plath was encouraged to build her sense of identity and self-worth (I have a husband, therefore I am; I have a superior husband, therefore, I am superior too) . . . ."49 During her teenage years she needed boyfriends to affirm her womanhood and femininity, but the ultimate goal had to be marriage, which would however threaten her ambition on professional levels, as explained in her fig tree metaphor. The encounter with the British poet Ted Hughes and their subsequent marriage seemed to give Plath the chance to combine two branches of the fig tree: marriage (husband, children) and a career as a poet, because Hughes, after all, was a poet, too, and no-one suggested that because o f their marriage he would not be able to pursue a career. I shall be one of the few women poets in the world who is fully a rejoicing woman, not a bitter or frustrated or warped manimitator, which ruins most of them in the end. I am a woman and glad of it, and my songs will be of fertility of the earth and the people in it through waste, sorrow and death. I shall be a woman singer, and Ted and I shall make a fine life together. (L 291, May 26, 1956) Hughes became a magnifying looking glass for Plath, so essential for her notion o f herself that she had to assure herself every day that nothing could happen to it. She worked for him as a secretary, wife, housewife, and later

49 Bennett, My Life a Loaded Gun 117.

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mother of their children to such an extent that the image itself was all that counted. She did not give up writing poetry, but until 1962 her poems were mostly inspired by Hughes or thematized exactly the tension between some kind o f sense o f herself and what she felt was expected o f her. When her first doubts o f Hughes's adultery arose, the mirror began to crack and finally shattered totally when he left her. I will use the journal entries and letters to compare Plath’s curiously ambiguous presentations o f her relationship with Hughes. The poems "Pursuit" and "The Jailor" exemplify the development in the relationship between Plath and Hughes in a fictionalized and metaphorical way freeing her from the restrictions of verisimilitude and bienseance ,50 Plath's description of their first encounter at a party is full o f passion: . . . and I was stamping and he was stamping on the floor, and then he kissed me bang smash on the mouth [omission]....And when he kissed my neck 1 bit him long and hard on the cheek, and when we came out of the room, blood was running down his face. [Omission] And I screamed in myself, thinking: oh, to give myself crashing, fighting, to you. The one man since I’ve lived who could blast Richard. (J 113, February 26, 1956) However, as the [omissions] indicate, a censored passion is presented that is meant to reflect on Plath's violence and to cover Hughes's participation: "The cut removed Hughes's snatching Plath's earrings and hairband, but left in her biting of him - left, therefore, a violence for which she appears as the sole and self-generating source."51 In Anne Stevenson's biography we can now read the omitted words: " . . . and ripped my hair band off, my lovely red hairband scarf which had weathered the sun and much love, and whose like I shall never again find, and my favorite silver earrings: hah, I shall keep, he barked.’’52 It is also interesting to note that no reaction to their first night together is mentioned either in her journals or in her letters. What remains, however, are either calm descriptions o f Hughes or complete admiration: 1 feel a growing strength. I do not merely idolize, I see right into the core of him...I know myself [my emphasis], in vigor and prime and growing, and know I am strong enough to keep myself whole, no matter what .... 50 A term used in French to describe the adherence of a writer, usually a playwright, in his/her work to a given moral understanding and to social norms and expectations. Writers, e .g ., o f tragedy in seventeenth-century France were not expected to shock their readers. To my knowledge, there is no absolute equivalent for this term in English. 51 Rose, The Haunting o f Sylvia Plath 88. 52 Stevenson, Bitter Fame 75-76.

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...I accept these days and these livings, for I am growing and shall be a woman beyond women for my strength. I have never been so exultant, the joy of using all my wit and womanly wisdom [my emphasis] is a joy beyond words. (L 264, April 19, 1956) Several conclusions can be drawn from Plath's presentation o f Hughes in her letters and in her journals and from the censorship practiced by Ted Hughes and Aurelia Schober Plath. Plath defined herself in relation to Hughes: she knew herself because she could see through him, and she was able to use her "womanly wisdom" in order to charm him. She functioned as a woman only because he was there. Plath's description o f the physicality o f Hughes's appearance and their beginning relationship revealed her strong - so far latent but now emerging - sexuality, a sexuality aligned to the capacity for great passion and emotions and for an extreme admiration that resulted in an almost complete identification with Hughes. H er admiration for strength and hugeness also revealed her desire for protection by a strong male figure, a substitute for the early loss of her father. She was aware of the danger that marriage for her could be a means to fulfill her desire for the father: "I must beware, beware of marrying for that. Perhaps a young man with a brilliant father. I could wed both" (J 129, March 8, 1956). For the first time, she felt totally affirmed in her womanhood. She saw into him and knew herself. If such a strong man loved her, she simply had to be a strong woman, too. " . . . I am looking for a soul. . . . I am making a self, in great pain, as for a birth, . . ." (L 249, March 9, 1956). Only two days after the party (Febr. 27, 1956), Plath "wrote a fullpage poem about the dark forces o f lust: 'Pursuit.' It is not bad. It is dedicated to Ted Hughes" (J 115-16). She later on quite rationally explained her poem: "The Pursuit" is more in my old style, but larger, influenced a bit by Blake, I think (tiger, tiger), and more powerful than any of my other "metaphysical" poems; read aloud also. It is, of course, a symbol of the terrible beauty of death, and the paradox that the more intensely one lives, the more one burns and consumes oneself; death, here, includes the concept of love, and is larger and richer than mere love, which is part of it. The quotation is from Racine's Ph&dre, where passion as destiny is magnificently expressed. I am hypnotized by this poem and wonder if the simple, seductive beauty of the words will come across to you if you read it slowly and deliberately aloud. Another epigraph could have been from my beloved Yeats: "Whatever flames upon the night, Man's own resinous

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heart has fed.” The painter's brush consumes his dreams, and all that. (L 249, March 9, 1956) The poem "Pursuit" (CP 22-23) presents the male panther in pursuit o f the female persona: "There is a panther stalks me down. . . . The hunt is on, and sprung the trap." Already in the second line the panther becomes the harbinger o f death: "One day I'll have my death o f him." The pursuit is motivated by "his greed," by "fires" running through his veins, and by "craving." The panther is the wild animal in search o f blood and meat, but sexuality seems to be the underlying drive: "His kisses parch, each paw 's a briar, / . . . / In the wake o f this fierce cat, / kindled like torches for his jo y, / Charred and ravened women lie, / Become his starving body's bait." No matter what the persona tries to satisfy his hunger and thirst, the panther "[c]ompels a total sacrifice." Even though the speaker presents the male panther's lust and desire and even though she feels attacked and threatened, she admits to herself and to the reader that she in some way wants to give herself to this powerful force, but she is still too much afraid o f her own emerging desires: "Appalled by secret want, I rush / From such assault of radiance. / Entering the tower o f my fears, / 1 shut my doors on that dark guilt, / I bolt the door, each door I bolt." But "[t]he panther's tread is on the stairs, / Coming up and up the stairs." Even though this poem starts out as a metaphor set in the animal world o f a panther pursuing his prey in nature, the transfer to the world o f manwoman relationships is achieved through terms such as "love," "tower," "door," and "stairs." What attracts the woman are the panther's fire in the veins, his mouth and teeth, his fur, his claws, his thighs, and finally his voice. It does reveal aspects o f Plath's perception o f herself: What it invoked, in fact, was not so much lust as her own libidinous double, the deep self full of violence and fury she was suppressing under her poised and capable appearance. As with a volcano, pressure from within had for some time been pushing for an explosion. Ted Hughes had unwittingly provided its occasion.53 This comment is in so far correct as the poem does indeed bring out longsuppressed violent sexuality which Plath can admit only with difficulty in the poem and does not do in the letter to her mother. Yet, the panther - or Ted Hughes - is more than "unwittingly provid[ing] its occasion." First of all, he is the agent o f the poem, the active part pursuing the woman, who, even if she is projecting her fears and desires onto him, is the victim o f this hunt; for her it is a "trap," and even if she bolts the door, no escape is 53 Stevenson, Biller Fame 78.

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possible. She does bolt the door because her emerging sexuality would not be accepted by society, but this sexuality is also part o f the other, a male other for whom it is perfectly acceptable. She sees him and finds herself, but her newly found self is socially non-permissible. Total sacrifice to him and to her self is what she wants, but it is also what she fears because her place in society would no longer be available to her. I would like to refer to Adrienne Rich's poem "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers," which I will discuss in more detail in a later chapter. Rich has her character, Aunt Jennifer, imagine strong tigers as a way out o f her everyday life in which she is only the weak woman. She uses her imagination as a means for escape. Plath also uses her imagination to create a male figure the way she sees him; the difference, however, is that she has a model for her panther in real life and that she is the victim of this strong animal. Sylvia Plath wrote more and more poems about Ted Hughes and for him, such as "Ode for Ted" (CP 29, 1956). H er poetry kept the formal rules and restrictions and often turned into linguistic exercises at the inspiration o f Hughes. The expression o f her emotions was guided by Hughes and by the norms o f society around her that prevented her from finding her own voice. Many of her poems did express the overwhelming and dominating presence o f a male partner, but not before 1962 did she clearly state it. This was the year when she finally learned about Hughes's affair with Assia Wevill, a woman who, together with her husband at the time, took over Plath's and Hughes's apartment in London and who also came to visit in Devon. Several poems o f that time express Plath's rage and disappointment, such as "Words heard, by accident, over the phone" (CP 202, July 11, 1962), "Burning the Letters" (CP 204, August 13, 1962), but "The Rabbit Catcher" (CP 193-94, May 21, 1962) expresses in very metaphorical, concise, and yet direct form the inescapability and the disillusionment of her situation by comparing the fate o f rabbits to the fate o f a woman in a failed marriage. These poems prove Kristeva's statement that "poetic language, . . ., by its very economy borders on psychosis •

•

•

•

"54

"The Jailor" (CP 226-27, Oct. 17, 1962), in which Plath describes the inevitability of marriage and subsequent confinement, is almost a direct continuation o f "The Rabbit Catcher." Whereas "The Rabbit Catcher" foreshadows this imprisonment, "The Jailor" presents its execution. The strong images o f drugs and rape suggest the physical violation of the persona’s femaleness and emphasizes her victimization as a woman. Plath's

54 Julia Kristeva, "From One Identity to An Other," Julia Kristeva: Desire i Language. A Semiolic Approach, ed. Leon S. Roudiez, trans. Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine, and Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia UP, 1980) 124-47; 125.

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growing recognition o f a complete affirmation of her womanhood through a husband to a complete abuse o f this womanhood through this very husband is to her a shocking experience. It is clear that from her point o f view she has not been able to live up to his expectations and that her wish to be herself has also brought about their estrangement: "I am myself. That is not enough." An independent and self-sufficient wife is not what is wanted. Yet, the poem takes an interesting turn in the last two stanzas in which the persona attempts to overcome the manifold deaths and imagines her torturer ”[i]mpotent as distant thunder"; she tries to "wish him dead or away." In her imagination, she is able to imagine a different state o f being. She is able to think about a life without him, a life that could be better without him. But she does not yet come to the point where it actually becomes a possibility, as it does in poems that she writes later in the year. Nevertheless, the m an's power over the woman all o f a sudden becomes relativized and open to destruction. The woman begins to experience her potential for freedom: When one defines the exercise of power as a mode of action upon the actions of others, when one charcterizes these actions by the government of men by other men . . . one includes an important element: freedom. Power is exercised only over free subjects, and only insofar as they are free. By this we mean individual or collective subjects who are faced with a field of possibilities in which several ways of behaving, several reactions and diverse comportments may be realized. Where the determining factors saturate the whole there is no relationship of power; slavery is not a power relationship when man is in chains. (In this case it is a question of a physical relationship of constraint.)55 Plath's intention is not so much to take revenge on her husband but to give her life meaning in poetry, to create herself again, to give herself substance and subjectivity. When Plath met Hughes she glorified him and believed to see herself reflected in him. She defined herself through him, as reflected in the poem "Pursuit." On the one hand, Ted Hughes brought about experiences that Plath had not known before and that were not acceptable for women in society, such as her openly emerging sexuality. He did not want her to conform, but as soon as she started fulfilling her non-conformist wishes of becoming a poet (for which she needed his support in the arrangement of

55 Michel Foucault, "Afterword: The Subject and Power," Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics , Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow (Brighton, Sussex, England: The Harvester Press, 1982) 208-31; 221.

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everyday life because they were in constant need o f money and had to take care o f their children), he backed away from her. He broke the (for him hardly existing) norms without sanctions and then sanctioned her for doing the same. P lath's admiration for Hughes's physicality and hugeness, the enlargement o f his personality turned into feelings o f domination and restriction as soon as doubts about their relationship came up in her. She felt like the rabbit caught inevitably in "The Rabbit C a t c h e r 's trap. "The Jailor" presents the actual state of imprisonment but also shows possibilities o f escape. She recognizes that "control is identified with the position o f the father and symbolically represented by the phallus,”56 and realized that her ideas o f herself and of her femininity were constructed by discourses around her, discourses that were called social norms. By trying to adhere to these discourses and to accept them as definitions o f her identity, Plath forced herself into a definite image which did not exist and which did neglect other discourses within herself. She experienced - in poststructuralist terms - "a subjectivity which is precarious, contradictory and in process, constantly being reconstituted in discourse each time we think o r speak."57 Plath was able to liberate herself from one discourse through the creation o f her own autobiographical discourse in poetry; whether she would ever have been able to accept the concept of multi­ discourses shaping her identity is a question that can hardly be answered today. As individuals we are not the mere objects of language but the sites of discursive struggle, a struggle which takes place in the consciousness of the individual. In the battle for subjectivity and the supremacy of particular versions of meaning of which it is part, the individual is not merely the passive site of discursive struggle. The individual who has a memory and an already discursively constituted sense of identity may resist particular interpellations or produce new versions of meaning from the conflicts and contradictions between existing discourses. Knowledge of more than one discourse and the recognition that meaning is plural allows for a measure of choice on the part of the individual and even where choice is not available, resistance is still possible.58

56 Weedon, Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory 53. 57 Weedon, Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory 33. 58 Weedon, Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory 106.

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1.1.3. The Perfect Mother

That women have the extensive and nearly exclusive mothering role they have is a product of a social and cultural translation of their childbearing and lactation capacities. It is not guaranteed or entailed by these capacities themselves.59 By accepting the dominant discourses o f motherhood and marriage for a long time, Sylvia Plath was still very much a part o f the 1950s, o f the postwar syndrome o f family with children as the value o f American society. The feminine mystique was only gradually questioned towards the end o f the 1960s. "A 1966 poll showed that 35 percent o f Americans still believed the ideal family had four or more children, just as they had in 1945 and 1957. Not until a 1971 poll did this drop to 2 3 ." 60 The cult o f motherhood was perpetuated in the media. "The birth rate, far higher than in other modern nations, peaked in 1955-58 at 25.3 per thousand people; in 1960, even college-educated women had similar fertility statistics."61 Sylvia Plath was extraordinary for her time in the sense that she aspired to become a successful poet, but she was the a//-Am erican wom an as well because she accepted the postwar ideal o f motherhood for herself. In addition to her roots in the American society o f the late 1940s and 1950s, her psychological condition was shaped by the early death o f her father and the subsequent financial problems o f the family. She saw how much her mother had to work to support her children. H er father left a gap which she desperately sought to fill. Plath herself contrasts the ideal public image o f motherhood in The Bell Jar. Her protagonist Esther witnesses a birth in the hospital where her boyfriend Buddy Willard works. It turns into a torture scene during which the woman "never stopped making this unhuman whooing noise" (BJ 53). She is very much aware o f how much women at this particular moment are subject to the power and control o f men when Buddy explains to her that afterwards the woman will not remember the pain she felt: I thought it sounded just like the sort of drug a man would invent. Here was a woman in terrible pain, obviously feeling every bit of it or she wouldn't groan like that, and she would go straight home and start another baby, because the drug

59 Chodorow, The Reproduction o f Mothering 30. 60 Blanche Linden-Ward and Carol Hurd Green, Changing the Future: American Women in the 1960s (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992) 368. 61 Linden Ward and Green, Changing the Future 396.

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would make her forget how bad the pain had been, when all the time, in some secret part of her, that long, blind, doorless and windowless corridor of pain was waiting to open up and shut her in again. (BJ 53) Esther contrasts the bloody scene with an imagined scene in which she herself gives birth. However, her imagination constructs an image determined by public discourse covering up the pain. The language she uses is almost like that o f public advertising for motherhood, telling everyone how this woman has fulfilled her wonderful task which then makes her happy and a valuable part of American society: I had always imagined myself hitching up on to my elbows on the delivery table after it was all over - dead white, of course, with no makeup and from the awful ordeal, but smiling and radiant, with my hair down to my waist, and reaching out for my first little squirmy child and saying its name, whatever it was. (BJ 54) Sylvia Plath's preoccupation with the mother role and thus also with children increased, o f course, after the birth o f her first child. She wrote more and more poems about children and about the relationship between mothers and their children. My purpose is to show the social conditions o f motherhood for Plath. It is, however, almost impossible to separate a discussion of motherhood from the analysis o f mirror imagery because Plath most frequently equates her children with mirrors. For clarity's sake, therefore, in "The Perfect Mother" I will focus on poems on motherhood that do not contain mirror imagery, except for "Morning Song," which is essential for an exemplification of the tension between her wish for social norm-fulfillment and fear of motherhood. In Plath's final poem "Edge," only death seems to offer a solution to the question of motherhood. In "Morning Song" (CP 156, Febr. 19, 1961), Plath describes the time shortly after the birth of a child. She reexperiences the birth as a very mechanical event, "like a fat gold watch." The parents react with ambivalent and mixed feelings to the child: on the one hand, they admire the child like a "statue" in a "drafty museum"; on the other hand, they fear it because "your nakedness / Shadows our safety." Even though Sylvia Plath writes in the plural form "we," she knows that the baby will threaten in particular her own situation as a woman and poet. Earning money and writing poetry at the same time has been a difficult endeavor for her so far, but with the child the troubles would necessarily increase. The child is a being that the parents do not understand and to whom they cannot develop a sense o f connection: "We stand round blankly as walls." The mother somehow rejects the imposed mother role: "I'm no more your mother /

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Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow / Effacement at the wind's hand."

I is to mother as cloud is to mirror that reflects the cloud's own slow effacement. The concept of mother and clouded mirror are brought together to convey the woman's fear that she may disappear under the influence of the child's wearing demands. . . . The term / brought together with cloud conveys the newly delivered woman's sense of being suddenly formless, indefinite until bounded by a mirror such as the term 'mother.' But the cloud distills its image in a mirror only to find itself in a process of effacement. The I rejects this distillation into mother. , . . Plath emphasizes the child's total otherness, •

•

•

•

62

The relationship between mother and child is compared to the one between cloud and mirror. The mother gives birth to a child, and the cloud distills the mirror. These are two parallel actions whose common denominator is that the agent effaces herself through the action. This parallelism expresses the m other's fear that her own identity has passed over to the child, that she herself has lost her own identity and thus has fulfilled her task and has to give up herself: The speaker refuses to regard her child as the reflection of herself, which might seem negative upon initial consideration, but can also be regarded as an exceptionally mature way of looking on bearing and rearing.63 This ’’exceptionally mature way” is negated, however, by the relatively negative and distancing terms used at the beginning of the poem. The mother, however, despite her fear, is able to develop a sense of responsibility for her child, which means that she learns to deal with her own m irror image, her own self which now is externalized in the child. "The poet encompasses the whole spectrum o f maternal feelings”64 and reverses the following statement: "Ironically, the symbiotic relationship of mother and infant is the beginning o f separation and individuation and is almost entirely based upon the percept o f the face, particularly the eyes."65 In "Morning S o n g ,” the child as the mother's image is a danger for the 62 Middlebrook, "Three Mirrors Reflecting Women" 71. 63 Sylvia Lehrer, The Dialectics o f Art and Life: A Portrait o f Sylvia Plath as Woman and Poet (Salzburg: Institut fiir Anglistik und Amerikanistik Univ. Salzburg, 1985) 174. 64 M .D . Uroff. "Sylvia Plath on Motherhood." Midwest Quarterly 15 (Oct. 1973): 7090; 79. 65 Robert Kloss, "Further Reflections on Plath's Studies in Literature 14.1 (1982): 11-22; 13.

M irror,” University o f Hartford

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m other's identity despite the normalization that takes place at the end of the poem. Sylvia Plath wrote this poem shortly after a miscarriage which she described in a letter to her mother (Febr. 6, 1961): I feel awful to write you now after I must have set you to changing your plans and probably telling Warren and your friends about our expecting another baby, because 1 lost the little baby this morning and feel really terrible about it. (L 476) Towards the end o f the same month she had to go to hospital again to have her appendix taken out. Thus, it was a time First o f happiness about another baby but then also o f constant fear and sickness. The letters present a Sylvia Plath who acted "normally" according to society's expectations. O f course, it is normal to be sad about the premature loss o f a little baby. It is less normal, however, to be afraid o f the birth and the potential loss o f identity for herself. Interestingly enough, there are no journal entries published from this period o f her miscarriage. The first entries o f that time deal with her appendectomy and her negative feelings towards the hospital and the nurses, something she hides in her letters to her mother. The question, of course, arises why the loss o f a baby does not show in her journal. It does not seem to be logical in any way that Plath did not write about this crucial experience. The poem "Morning Song" could, o f course, be a kind of journal entry avoiding the direct dealing with the loss, or a way of imagining what would have happened if the baby had been born. But then it is a fearful poem that implies that Plath might actually have been relieved after the miscarriage. That, however, means that she did not fulfill the expectations of a society for whom motherhood is the essential definition of what it means to be a woman. If we take for granted that poetry reveals deep and even unconscious feelings, that poetry for Plath was extremely autobiographical, and that, in contrast, letter writing is often a social act in which social norms have to be adhered to, the poem expresses the honest and serious Plath and her fear o f a social femininity, whereas the letters to her mother express exactly this social femininity. But can it be true that Sylvia Plath, who always had the longing to express herself immediately after an event either in poems or in journal entries, did not even once mention the miscarriage in her journal? Or did perhaps again some act of social feminization take place on the part o f her literary estate?66

66 Only two days later, Sylvia Plath wrote her next poem on motherhood. In "Barre Woman" (CP 157, Febr. 21, 1961), she acknowledges the fact of her miscarriage and presents a depressing picture of a woman without children (cf. also "The Munich Mannequins" |C P 262-63, Jan. 28, 1963]). Whereas "Morning Song" reveals Plath's personal feelings of doubt and anxiety about motherhood. "Barren Woman" presents the

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In her very last poem, "Edge" (C P 272-73, Febr. 5, 1963), Plath finally presents the now inevitable perfection. "The woman is perfected." Her tone no longer is that o f the rage o f the September and October poems but a quiet almost sarcastic voice that looks back on this dead woman and, in terms o f biography o f course, also looks into the future of the poet Sylvia Plath. Does Plath really think that only a dead woman can achieve perfection? It seems to me that she assumes a different voice, not her own, in this poem: "Her dead / Body wears the smile o f accomplishment, / The illusion of a Greek necessity / Flows in the scrolls of her toga, / Her bare / Feet seem to be saying: / We have come so far, it is over." Even in death she has not lost the smile, the mask she always had to put on for society's sake. "Greek necessity" refers to "the belief that suicide is an honorable way out o f dishonor."67 But it is only an "illusion," so that she is actually saying that there was no dishonor which caused her suicide even though that could be how society might interpret her suicide. Plath did not leave her husband, but was left by him. Dishonor would be his part, and he would, therefore, have to commit suicide. If she did not commit suicide because o f dishonor, what then was the reason? Perfection in life is terrible, as Plath says in "The Munich Mannequins," and it cannot have children. Yet, in death perfection can have children: "Each dead child coiled, a white serpent, / One at each little / Pitcher o f milk, now em pty.” She can finally be the perfect mother taking care o f her children’s physical well-being. Ironically, however, the "pitcher o f milk," or her breasts, are now empty. But she fulfills society's expectations of a mother; yet, she can only do so in death. The persona-mother is reunited with her children as expressed in the image o f a garden: "She has folded / Them back into her body as petals / O f a rose close when the garden / Stiffens and odors bleed / From the sweet, deep throats o f the night flower." The moon, another mother image, "has nothing to be sad about, / Staring from her hood o f bone. / She is used to this sort of thing. / Her blacks crackle and drag." "The Moon-muse has reclaimed her daughter just as the daughter has reclaimed and reabsorbed her own children."68 Whereas "The Munich Mannequins" focuses on the perfection o f a poet, which seems to exclude motherhood, Plath here focuses on the ideal of perfection imposed on women by society.

issue from what Plath believes is the perspective of society. Society's norm for a woman is to have children. Motherhood and womanhood cannot exist one without the other. Therefore, barrenness, for Plath and her society, questioned womanhood. But motherhood demanded responsibility from the mother for the children. Plath did not feel able to give her children happiness and optimism (cf. "Child" [CP 265, Jan. 28, 1963]). 67 Wagner-Mart in, Sylvia Plath 239. 68 Kroll, Chapters in a Mythology 145.

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Ironically, a woman can only be perfect in death: "Death is equivalent to stasis, and stasis, a stopping of process with its continual imperfections and need for rebirth, is perfection of a sort."69 The image of the mother who folds her children back into her body like a rose does with its petals suggests death but also rebirth. The rose folds the petals only to unfold them again the next morning. In this image, Plath shows that the children belong to her and her body, and she might have contemplated killing "the children when she killed herself."70 The rebirth Plath was hoping for could have been like the lifting o f the bell jar. Ironically, however, it ended in actual death. If that was actually intended by her, it would refer to a hope for rebirth in a life after death even though no indications can be found anywhere that she believed in a life after death. Rebirth, however, definitely occurred to her poetry and her two children who were allowed to develop their own identities. For Sylvia Plath, motherhood was for a long time, until September/October 1962, a social function which she had to strive for because it meant an affirmation of womanhood. A woman in her society was only accepted as a full participant if she was a mother, too. A w om an's expected major contribution to the American reconstruction after World W ar II was giving birth to children. She thus accepted motherhood as a necessary part o f a definition of female identity, of her own identity. Everything that in some way threatened to interfere with motherhood was a threat to Plath herself. O f course, motherhood was inevitably connected to partnership and marriage. Motherhood and marriage became the structuring principles o f Plath's life. Yet, both interfered with her other ideals in life, such as success as a poet, as a public figure. Thus, her attitude towards these two categories in her life were never unified and one-sided but always full o f tension and contradictions. She felt pushed into ways o f living which she would have rejected if she had not had the powerful desire to please. Not having children meant social rejection, isolation, and condemnation. Yet, it also implied the possibility o f choosing another branch o f the fig tree. This other branch was finally possible to her after the separation from Hughes. She got rid of the social inhibitions, o f her dependence on society and on a husband and thus experienced a kind o f liberation and perfection, which then, o f course, turned out to be terrible, too, because for her it also implied separation from any kind o f love. Her attitude towards children then changed completely from one o f children as a means for her own gratification and social acceptance to her own responsibility towards her

69 Annas, A Disturbance in Mirrors 122. 70 Hayman, The Death and Life o f Sylvia Plath 193.

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children. She, however, was no longer able to fulfill this responsibility and still be the successful poet - because her success was based on the extreme poems o f the year before, and therefore her only logical consequence was suicide and maybe a hope for rebirth, for being saved and brought back to life by someone so that the bell ja r would be lifted once more. Plath seemed to have found her own voice by the end o f her life, but still was not able to accept the various discourses that shaped her life. She had been able to rid herself o f the social necessity o f marriage and the belief in it and to concentrate on herself. However, the social and psychological discourses o f responsibility for one's children, and not only responsibility in general but responsibility to give the children a positive outlook on life took over. She knew she had shifted her focus from marriage to motherhood. Her liberation from the discourse o f marriage also implied the experience o f loss (of a fig tree branch) and pain. How many further losses would she be able to bear? The discursive field o f being a poet continued, and she again strove for one meaning in her life, but this was not possible. "Conflict comes from the attempt to take up a single, unified position in competing or incoherent discourses."71 She did not see that ”[k]nowledge o f more than one discourse and the recognition that meaning is plural allows for a measure o f choice on the part of the individual and even where choice is not available, resistance is still possible."72 Poetry and society's resistance against a woman poet was the one fig tree branch that seemed to have caused the tension in Plath's life. Not only was writing poems and becoming a published and well-known poet one o f her most intense desires, but poetry was also the space in which she represented and lived out this desire and the tension connected to it. The next part on "Sylvia Plath and Poetry: Writing Genres and Herself" shows how poetry is intimately connected to Plath's life and how her understanding of poetry develops parallel to her idea o f her own position in society (which relied heavily on male presences and absences, first of her father and then of Ted Hughes). Her metapoetical poetry - like her poems on marriage and motherhood - come to a point where continuation is only possible in death - either real or figurative.

71 Weedon, Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory 151. 72 Weedon, Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory 106.

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1.2. Sylvia Plath and Poetry: Writing Genres and Herself Sylvia Plath was the poet in the 1950s and early 1960s who finally overcame the separation of art and life, as it had been propagated by the New Critics and T.S. Eliot. She used her life for her writing and needed her writing for survival. She was not interested in deferring her own subjectivity from her writing. She underwent a liberation process throughout her artistic and personal life. The more she was able to give up the mostly male influences in her life and writing, the more she forgot whom she was writing for, the more her writing became spontaneous and personal and not an exercise in creative writing. As a child, she wrote stories and poems mainly in order to be accepted by her father by whom she felt left behind and betrayed when he died. However, she saw her father's death also as her own failure of not having been able to secure the love she wanted from him. Her husband, Ted Hughes, became the next (male) influence because he not only determined every day of their common life but also, at the beginning, every line of her writing. He suggested topics for her poetry, gave her words to do exercises with, and told her to consult a dictionary. During the early years of marriage with him, Plath was very happy and saw this happiness as the precondition for her writing. Yet, throughout her life, she was constantly aware o f the existence of something in her that did not match the person everyone, even her family and Ted Hughes, knew. The men in her life gave her security and self-esteem and answered her extreme love, but the consequent loss of them shattered her completely. She defined herself and her writing in male terms and had nothing to set against these dependent definitions. The women she admired, she admired because they were accepted in society, in a male-dominated world o f literature. When she had lost both men, father and husband, she came to the conclusion that it was her ow n fault and responsibility and a result o f the love that she had shown for both of them. The resultant state of despair freed her and led her to the insight that she did not need to be happy in order to be able to write; on the contrary, by rejecting the imposed "master narratives,” she experienced the most essential and existential crisis in her life which made her write spontaneously, which made her discover the intimate relationship between writing poetry and the unconscious. She realized that her poetry finally became successful and knew that it was due to its autobiographical quality and to her unconstrained freedom which originated in her crisis. She came to the conclusion that if that was her condition for producing acceptable poetry, she would have to live in a constant crisis, which meant that

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because o f her love to, e.g ., her children, she would probably lose everyone she loved at the expense of writing good poetry. She knew she wanted to be the poet she was at the end of her life, but she didn't want to pay the price for it for the rest o f her life. In her suicide, she was finally able to be perfect. She knew she would not be able to improve her poetry beyond what she had written so far and believed that her children had a better future without her. Throughout her own writing, Sylvia Plath often thematized the urge to write and the meaning o f writing for herself as well as for the protagonist Esther in The Bell Jar. Nevertheless, in "On the Difficulty o f Conjuring Up a Dryad" and "Words" Plath thematizes respectively a poet’s concern with inspiration, and the failure of words to produce any lasting effect. In contrast to Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde, Plath did not write many metapoetical poems because she wrote in the late 1950s and early 1960s at a time when w om en's consciousness raising had barely begun. Therefore, Plath unfortunately did not have time enough to find and develop her own metapoetical voice.

The Bell Jar is an autobiographical text which Plath decided to write and publish under a pseudonym because if the real identity o f the author were disclosed, it would hurt too many people in her environment and fam ily.73 Plath herself did indeed see her novel as "an autobiographical apprentice work which [she] had to write in order to free [herjself from the past."74 She used the text as an image for herself, to explain and explore her past and understand it, and invested Esther Greenwood with experiences she herself had had. Esther lived as long as Plath decided she would live. The control she had over her character made her believe that she could also have the same control over and distance from herself; control and distance were what she needed most. P lath ’s metafictional urge is reflected in Esther Greenwood’s idea in The Bell Jar that writing would "fix a lot o f people" (BJ 98); it would prove to her environment that she is worth something; of course, the fact that she puts herself under so much pressure yields the opposite effect and makes her fail completely. In the same way that Esther Greenwood wants to choose "Elaine" as her alter ego because it has the same number of letters, Sylvia Plath's is "Esther." Esther attributes the fact that she is not able to write anything to her lack o f originality and experience, conditions, in her mind, necessary for a successful writer; a condition requiring the

73 Cf. Stevenson, Bitter Fame 221. 74 Quoted in Lois Ames, "Sylvia Plath: A Biographical Note," Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jcr 201-16; 213.

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close connection between life and art that Plath, as we have seen, fufilled to an extreme at the e n d . The very close connection between life and art is expressed in the explicit image o f a w riter's block from which Esther suffers. For her, writing is an expression o f the soul, and her psychological problems are reflected in her inability to write: "But when I took up my pen, my hand made big, jerky letters like those o f a child, and the lines sloped down the page from left to right almost diagonally, as if they were loops of string lying on the paper, and someone had come along and blown them askew" (BJ 106). This w riter's block is a moment in Esther's life when she feels imprisoned in the bell jar. The writing o f the novel, therefore, for Plath, was also a way o f coming out from under the bell jar, a metaphor which she used to convey the ideas o f imprisonment, limitations, and control exerted over her by others. In the same way that Esther could not decide which way to go when looking at the Fig tree, she was frequently stuck under the bell jar, a metaphor for her own psychological prison. After the electrotherapy, Esther feels the bell ja r suspended for the first time. Yet, there is always the danger o f the descending bell jar: ". . .1 w asn't sure. I w asn't sure at all. How did I know that someday - at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere - the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn't descend again?" (BJ 197). The metaphor o f the bell ja r serves two main functions. On the one hand, it is the perfect image for the psychological constraints Sylvia Plath experienced and which she let the character Esther go through. Society allowed her to live only in the same way that embryos live in a bell jar; it gave her just enough air to survive but took any control away from her. It separated her from the outside world and enclosed her within herself. She was caught in a circle in which everything she did was self-reflexive. On the other hand. The Bell Jar ends on a positive note, at a time when the bell ja r does not imprison her. The novel, therefore, for Sylvia Plath was a means of keeping the bell ja r suspended. As long as she wrote about the moments of depair and the following relief, she was in control o f her own emotions and experiences; she decided when the bell ja r would come down on her again. She created terrible moments in her writing and relived events she had undergone in her life only in order to then experience the moments o f relief, or as she often called it, the moments o f being born again as a baby. As much as The Bell Jar is the attempt at control over her life, Plath's metafictional comments also try to dissolve tensions in her life such as the dualities between right and wrong, true and false, male and female,

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masculine and feminine that are reflected in her perception of her inner and the outer world. Poems became Plath's mediators between inside and outside. Already in her Juvenilia, she metaphorically rejected and criticized imposed methods o f writing even though she still practiced them .75 Whereas The Bell Jar concentrates on the single and individual story o f Esther Greenwood and thus, o f course, also on Plath's own specific experience with writing at a certain point in time, her metapoetical poems "On the Difficulty o f Conjuring Up a Dryad" and "Words" comment on her dangerous principles o f writing. In "On the Difficulty o f Conjuring Up a Dryad" (CP 65, 1957), Plath describes the failed attempt o f a poet/writer to find inspiration in her environm ent.76 The explanation for this failure lies in the poet's attitude towards nature from which inspiration is expected. "The vaunting mind," "the importunate head" o f the writer "snubs impromptu spiels o f wind / And wrestles to impose / Its own order on what is." The failure to impose an order on nature is seen as an illness which then needs the treatment o f a doctor: "'M y trouble, doctor, is: I see a tree, / And that damn scrupulous tree w on't practice wiles / To beguile sight: / E .g ., by cant o f light / Concoct a Daphne; / My tree stays tree." This last statement is the crucial issue in this poem. It reflects the poet's trouble, which is enlarged into an illness, with the transformation o f concrete objects, such as the tree, into poetic language. Success, however, is present in the last stanza in which the female poet contrasts herself with "some moon-eyed, / Star-lucky sleightof-hand man . . . ." The object that guarantees success can only be the tree, the tree of knowledge and poetics. This poem is structured by dichotomies and tensions that cannot be resolved: the poet's fantasy vs. nature/environment, fantasy’s order vs. nature’s order, subject (poet) vs. object (nature), illness vs. health, failure vs. success. The climax is the final opposition between the success o f a male poet and the failure o f the female poet. It is a poem about "the problem o f poetic representation in explicitly sexual, gendered term s."77 Gradually however, Plath's understanding o f the function o f poetry changes. Poems are alive as soon as they reflect their author. In the same way that the face o f a child78 reflects the m other's face, a poem reflects its 75 Cf. my discussion of "A Sorcerer Bids Farewell to Seem" in 1.3.1. "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall" 76 Cf. Monika Steinert, Mythos in den Gedichten Sylvia Plaths (Frankfurt/Main: Lang, 1995) 75-77. 77 Rose, The Haunting o f Sylvia Plath 114. Cf. "Stillborn" (CP 142, 1960) in which Plath compares her poems with stillborn children. 78 Cf. my discussion of "For a Fatherless Son" in 1.3.1. "M irror, Mirror on the Wall"

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poet. Poems need to carry her personal marks, if they do not, then they are not her poems; they are dead poems. In the same way that trees remain trees, poems remain dead if the very personal experience and muse do not infiltrate the writing. Language alone is not sufficient to produce the desired effect unless the close connection with the unconscious, the unnamable is established. For her, autobiography and poetry had to be one and were inextricably linked to her positive and negative life experiences, even though this was contrary to the modernist idea o f poetry and even though Plath herself did not have the appropriate terms at her disposition to express these complex links between poetry, autobiography, and life in language. She continued to search for the possibility of acting out her experience in language, in her poems, thus giving words to pre- or non-linguistic events and trying to make the poems live. At the same time, however, writing for her was also a means to make meaning out of her experience. Writing was a first step to prevent insanity because she could give her emotions and passions a structure, and all of her poems are highly and carefully structured. Therefore, "[l]anguage is the place where . . . our sense o f ourselves, our subjectivity, is constructed. The assumption that subjectivity is constructed implies that it is not innate, not genetically determined, but socially produced."79 I would argue, however, that it can be neither the pre- or non-linguistic experience nor language alone that constructs a subjectivity, but the interchange between the two. For the reader today, the subjectivity in these poems is o f course revealed in language only, in language from different people such as Plath herself or critics, or in different discourses such as feminist or poststructuralist, because we lack the concrete confrontation with Plath's experiences, but for Plath, who had these experiences, language and experience were inextricably linked. However, she had to fight for the right to write poetry in a society that would not allow her to do so.80 At the end o f her life, Plath came to the conclusion that even though she had written her best poetry by then, even these best poems had come to a standstill and that she could no longer go through these exorcism-like states o f being and writing. The poem "Words" (CP 270, Febr. 1, 1963) consists o f a conceit which compares words/language to axes. H er poems o f the September-October period of 1962 were like axes. The imagined comparison is inherent in the title and the first line when words are taken 79 Wcedon, Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory 21. 80 Cf. Lydia K. Bundtzen's discussion of "Lady Lazarus" as "an allegory about the woman artist's struggle for autonomy." Lydia K. Bundtzen, Plath's Incarnations: Woman and the Creative Process (Ann Arbor: The U of Michigan P, 1983) 33.

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up in the term "axes." The axes interrupt the normal condition o f nature; rules are broken. Echo is responsible for the distribution o f words, here presented in the image o f horses that are directly compared to echoes, and echo refers to the act o f publication and public reception. At the same time, the tendency goes towards re-establishing the natural order - "Water striving / To re-establish its mirror / Over the rock." This re-establishment is necessary - at least for the public - because the origin o f the words is painful and has resulted in tears. F(?r Plath, the origin of her poetry writing lies in crisis situations, which at that point, is not surprising at all because this poem was written shortly before her suicide and several months after her separation from Ted Hughes. At a later point, the persona of the poem meets the words/echoes again, but they are now "dry and riderless" and "[f]rom the bottom o f the pool, fixed stars / Govern a life." The words have lost their sharp and cutting meaning without having changed anything; nature went its way and re-established a calm water surface by triumphing over the "drops and turns." This "calm surface of water as a mirror" presents a "state of normality and safety"81 which, however, does not seem to be desirable in this poem because it means being influenced from below - "[f]rom the bottom o f the pool" - and from above - "fixed stars." Even though '"W ords' . . . ties m irror imagery to creativity,"82 the poet expresses resignation about not being able to change anything with poetry and thus with language and words. In "Words," Sylvia Plath went further than in "The Difficulty of Conjuring Up a Dryad." Even though she also presented failure vs. success in the earlier poem, she still saw the possibility for her to change her writing, to learn how to write good poetry. In "Words," she showed how even the illusion of having written good poetry is shattered when looking at the effects and results at a later time. She saw herself and her poetry subject to exterior forces which she could not move in any way. After having undergone a time o f de-authorization during September/October 1962, in February 1963 Plath had to look back on her poetry and realized that despite all these efforts, she was still in some way governed by exterior forces, by society and psychology, that only in the constant high-strung moments of extreme emotions and rage was she able to produce effective and good poetry, poetry that after a while would lose its power and re­ establish the old order. It would be integrated into the social system. Her

81 Eileen M. Aird, Sylvia Plath (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1973) 107. 82 Steven Gould Axelrod, "The Mirror and the Shadow: Plath's Poetics of SelfDoubt," Contemporary Literature 26.3 (Fall 1985): 286-301; 293.

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only chance lay in lifting the bell jar, in doing away with the "master narratives" in her life, and in striving for a rebirth. She saw the necessity for a new beginning but had no concept and no words for it. She had tried and managed to destroy the social looking glasses but was frustrated to learn that she had not been powerful enough to achieve permanent change and that she would have to do it over and over again. Yet, Plath would not repeat the myth o f Sisyphus.

1.3. Shattered and Sheeted Looking Glasses: Representation in Sylvia Plath's Poetry The basic assumption of this dissertation is that in autobiographical poetry by women representation (of experience) takes place through "reflection." In the 1950s and 1960s, women poets frequently considered their poems mirrors in which they could see themselves reflected.83 Having presented Sylvi? Plath's struggle with her position and her experience as a woman (cf. 1.1.) and a woman poet (cf. 1.2.) in society and having discussed the influences of social role distribution on her perception of poetry writing (cf. 1.2.), I will now show in a first step (1.3.1. "Mirror, M irror on the Wall") how each one o f these experiences is at one time or another represented in mirror imagery. Therefore, the poems in this section will be discussed in the order o f the relationships between daughter-mother ("M irro r”),84 mother-child ("Brasilia"), and wife-husband ("Purdah"), and finally of metapoetical statements ("A Sorcerer Bids Farewell to Seem"). In a second step (1.3.2. Her Body, Herself), I will discuss how reflection is a means to deal with the idea o f a "split personality.” The poems used for this second part ("Tale o f a Tub," "Two Sisters o f Persephone," "Face

83 I am aware of the fact that some male writers such as Robert Lowell and John Ashbery (cf. "Self-Portrait in a Convex M irror") also tried to reflect themselves in their poetry. However, in most cases it was more a play with the genre and with its potentials for reflection than a serious confrontation with the self motivated by experiences that questioned a poet's identity. 84 In one of her earlier poems, "Lorelei" (CP 94-95, 1958), based on a legend by Clemens Brentano, "Die Lore Lay" (1801), Plath expresses her notion of possible dangers for others and for herself if she insists on being a female artist. It is also an attempt to reunite with the mother through the mirrory surface of the river. Cf. also Plath's essay "Ocean 1212-W" 20-22 and Steinert, Mythos in den Gedichten Sylvia Plaths 89-106. Except for the poem "All the Dead Dears" (CP 70, 1957), in which the image o f the father appears on the surface of a fish pond, sea imagery in Plath's poetry is almost exclusively connected with the mother.

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Lift," and "Last Words") only indirectly touch the before-mentioned role distributions but thematize the general experience o f "difference" that is not accepted in a social context. These reflections, of course, work on different levels and manifest themselves in different ways, such as in concrete symbolic mirrors, in faces/bodies and water surfaces as metaphorical mirrors, and doubles (of the personae). In all cases, these images shed light on Sylvia Plath's attempts at coming to terms with her social image, which she feels inadequate. Looking into mirrors and at doubles reflects her constant search for identity and independence. H er failure to find a clear definition for herself is best expressed in shattered and sheeted mirrors. She could not know, however, that her failure was actually a revolutionary triumph because she unknowingly defied contemporary beliefs o f fixed identity by breaking apart the norms that determined it and thus paved the way for future generations o f women poets. Her only "failure" was that she had to be the one to open up these possibilities for others and that she did not know about it.

1.3.1. "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall"85 "Mirror" (CP 173-74, Oct. 23, 1961) is one of her earlier poems, written more than a year before the final crisis in her life; yet, it shows her on the way towards this female identity by trying to come to terms with her relationship to her mother. It is the only poem by Plath that contains the word "mirror" in the title. Plath was familiar with the mythical and psychological implications o f mirror imagery. She encountered the "m irror” when she read Robert Graves' The White Goddess (1948) and Freud, while writing her honor's thesis on the double in Dostoevski, and was herself interested in the networking o f "m irrors” and "identity."86 The persona of the poem "Mirror" introduces herself in the very first word and line with a definition o f herself. If the poem literally is about a mirror, then, of course, the mirror itself - the mirror as object - speaks. Thus, the viewer is viewed by the object that makes viewing possible. "The m irror is both herself (her definition o f what she is) and also the other (the audience). This paradoxical doubleness o f the mirror is essential to its power. "87 85 A.S. Byati, "Mirror, Mirror on the W all," The New Statesman 91 23 April 1976: 541-42. 86 Cf. J 247, July 12, 1958 and J 259-60, September 15, 1958. 87 La Belle, Herself Beheld 62.

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The form o f the poem reflects this double relatedness of observer and observed. The first line consists of two parallel and paratactical sentences with seven syllables each. Both start with the personal pronoun I, describe a character trait ("silver and exact") and negate another ("no preconceptions"). This simple sentence structure combined with clear statements is the matrix o f the whole poem. No sentence is longer than two lines; in most cases sentences are only half a line long. If they are connected by a comma, they also have the conjunction "and" that correlates two aspects on the same level without relating them logically. At the same time, the sentences very much concentrate on the "I"; "I" is the subject in nine out o f 18 sentences and the object in four additional sentences ("me/us"). The poem 's subdivision into two equal stanzas o f nine lines each (18 lines and 18 sentences) continues their simple structure. In the first nine lines the speaker/persona gives several definitions o f herself and her relationship with the wall. In lines 10 to 18, the woman who looks into the mirror is in the position of the other. It is interesting to notice how again on this level the positions o f the observer and the observed are reversed. The woman as well as the mirror are at some point in both positions. While the woman looks into the mirror, she receives information about herself; at the same time she is observed by the mirror which receives information about itself through the woman's reaction. Both thus become essential sources for each other, and the boundaries between both start to dissolve. The underlying structure of dichotomy shows that reflection is the focus in this poem. How does the mirror define itself? The adjectives "silver" and "exact" introduce the phenomenon of dichotomy (compare "love-dislike," "crueltruthful"). Descriptions like "exact," "no preconceptions," "just as it is, unm isted," "only truthful," "faithfully" support the idea o f the mirror as a reflector o f reality without any distortions even if reality is not very pleasant. This idea o f a mirror reflecting reality as it really is stems from the popular belief that the false self cannot resist against the power o f the reflecting instrument and that, therefore, the true self will be revealed: The mirror claims for itself a voice, a separate identity, and a power over the woman who looks into it. That power comes from an irreducible honesty, the truthfulness of outline, which the mirror itself contrasts to those chiaroscurist liars, the candles and the moon. The mirror has the ability to show the woman what she cannot otherwise see - her face, her back - and perhaps even more hidden prospects of her being.88

88 La Belle, Herself Beheld 1.

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In fact, the mirror is such a powerful tool of self-perception that even if a mirror is distorted and the woman rationally knows that it is distorted, there is still a tendency to accept the image in the glass as the true self.89 The m irro r's power, as also inherent in the metaphor o f the "eye of a little god," not only reveals the true self but goes even further to expose aspects that are deeply hidden. In lines 6 to 9, the persona describes its relationship with the facing wall (cf. Plath’s journal entry) - something which is always there and supposedly stable. Yet, by going beyond the mere description of what can be seen, the speaker renders the wall animate; "it flickers" and becomes part of the speaker's heart, because the mirror image of the wall can be seen in the m irror itself and thus creates the situation of something being at once in two different places.90 The unity o f mirror and wall is, however, constantly broken by "faces" and "darkness." So far, the poem builds up the illusion that mirror and the "other" are or can be identical, but this illusion is broken through the constantly changing "other." If we assume that the mirror is trying to construct some identity o f its own through internalizing something "other" and that this attempt constantly fails, then we can draw the preliminary conclusion that defining oneself through the "other" - whatever it is - is doomed to fail. This fallacy o f self-definition through "others" is continued in the transformation o f the mirror into another reflecting surface, a "lake." The statement "[a] woman bends over me, / Searching my reaches for what she really is," brings up the connections o f "sea/water" with intro- and retrospection, but sea often also stands for a place of refuge where the observer can turn to, either to drown or to immerse into a new life, into rebirth. The com m on denominator in this parallelism is "womanhood" in contrast to the other sex. "The importance o f the mirror is demonstrated by the w om an's anguished response.''91 But what exactly does she see in the mirror or how does she read the image in the poem? The "other" (here mirror) becomes for the woman the source o f something she does not like because she ”[t]hen turns to those liars, the candles or the m o o n .” "The presence in the mirror has become utterly inhuman, an otherness that shakes our faith in the similitude o f the

89 La Belle, Herself Beheld 36. 90 The term "speckles" could refer to its latin origin "speculum," which means "mirror," which would justify the interpretation of mirror and wall as being one. Cf. Paola Russo, "Sylvia Plath: Lo specchio, metafora del farsi poetico," Nuova Corrente: Rivista di Litteratura 28.86 (Sept.-Dec. 1981): 549-79; 556. 91 La Belle, Herself Beheld 1.

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body and its reflection."92 She sees something that is not identical with the image she has of her own self, whether this is the "true" self or the one determined by her surroundings.93 Candles and m oon,94 however, do not reflect reality as the mirror supposedly does. Therefore, the woman according to Lydia Caroline Gordon95 - risks again the confrontation with her unconscious as may be revealed in the lake. So the woman believes in the surface reality of the mirror. "She rewards me with tears and an agitation o f hands." It is difficult for her to be confronted with the mirror image, but it is an inner strife, an urge for her to face this confrontation. "The discovery of a new or even slightly altered reflection in the m irror can be particularly traumatic for the woman who completely accepts the mirror image as her true self."96 The woman comes back each morning ("over and over," "comes and goes," "day after day") and, for the mirror, serves as a substitute for darkness, a fact that makes it very clear that the mirror can never be seen separate from an observer. Without the original there is no mirror image. The confrontation between the two selves of the woman, between the one she believes she has or wants to have and the one she sees in the mirror, is not temporary but ever-lasting. Although the woman, by coming every day, expects some kind of solution, she realizes that there is none. The last two lines of the poem explain what she actually sees: "In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman / Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish." She is suddenly conscious o f herself and realizes that she is afraid o f getting old: . . ..th e unsettling image of a rising fish suggests the eruption of subconscious forces into the surface consciousness. C.G. Jung employs this same symbolic pattern when he discusses the psychological presences hidden in the depths of the mirror experience: "Whoever looks into the water sees his own image, 92 La Belle, Herself Beheld 2. 93 Cf. "By fishing for the truth in a superficial place, . . . she made herself into a very live 'terrible fish,' creating an image that literally would not be there if she stopped looking for it there. She is facing neither what she really could be, nor what she must be, but what she has allowed an inhuman version of truth to make her." Donna Richardson. "Plath's 'M irro r,” Explicator 49.3 (1991): 193-95; 195. 94 Both are sources o f light but also distortion. The moon as a symbol of femininity is also rejected. 95 Lydia Caroline Gordon, "'From Slone to Cloud': A Critical Study of Sylvia Plath," Diss. University o f Pennsylvania, 1975; 136-38. 96 La Belle, Herself Beheld 109. Cf. also Roland Barthes: "Topologiquemeni, 1'homme occidental est repute double, compose d'un 'exterieur', social, factice, faux, et d'un

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but behind it living creatures soon loom up; fishes, presumably, harmless dwellers of the deep - harmless, if only the lake were not haunted."97 Consequently, it is not so much the actual process of getting old that is reflected, but more the psychological realization o f change. "For some women, the mirror is not just the recorder of the degradations of time, but is almost the cause o f the aging process, or at least the place where it occurs.”98 It is not so much the desire to go back to Lacan's "Mirror Stage" because "[t]here can be no final satisfaction of our desire since there is no final signifier or object that can be that which has been lost forever (the imaginary harmony with the mother and the world),"99 but the fea r o f a unity with the mother (imposed by society). Regression at the same time would imply a rejection o f society's "Law o f the F ath er."100 The woman realizes that she is too close to her mother, that she has never really separated from her. The only way o f becoming one with or like her mother would be to go through the crisis o f separation, the time o f the chora , the transition period from the Imaginary to the Symbolic, the oedipal crisis, over and over again. In that sense, the poem represents the w om an's recognition of the necessity for a final termination of the mirror stage, for a separation from the mother and thus for an entrance into the Symbolic order. The transition from girlhood to womanhood is often a transition to motherhood. In this prognostic or prophetic mirror, the fish represents the w om an's own mother, showing her an image of what she will be like. "For women, the mirror need not be supernatural to be prophetic. Every mirror can indicate a future."101 For the woman who is looking into the mirror, motherhood is obviously not a desirable goal; yet, she knows it is an unavoidable destiny if she wants acceptance by her environment. "The inherent otherness of the mirror image has emerged into a powerful threat to the identity first established by means of the same phenom enon."102 "What Sylvia feared most was the loss o f self."103 However, Sylvia Plath 'intSrieur', personnel, authentique (lieu de la communication divine)." L'Empire des signes (Geneve: Les Sentiers de la Creation; Paris: Flammarion, 1970) 83. 97 La Belle, Herself Beheld 95. 98 La Belle. Herself Beheld 99. 99 Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics 101. 100 Cf. Patricia Waugh, Feminine Fictions: Revisiting the Postmodern (London: Routledge, 1989). 101 La Belle, Herself Beheld 76. 102 La Belle, Herself Beheld 99. 103 Wagner-Martin, Sylvia Plath 112.

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not only connected the loss o f a self with the identification with her mother, but also with her m other's personal experiences of loss o f a personal life because o f the demands o f a husband and two children and then the loss o f the husband. Similarities with her m other's life threatened Plath: they were both academic achievers; they both married a man for whom they were willing to give up (Aurelia Plath) or at least stand back (Sylvia Plath) in their caieers; they both had two children, a girl and a boy, and both were finally left by their husbands - one by death, one by separation - when the children were still very young. Plath saw the pattern repeating itself and very much tried to work against the inevitable: This realization means that even as we search for the mother lost or damaged through her appropriation by the dominant ideology, our search is inscribed by the 'Master Mother Discourse,' especially in our desire for and fear of maternal omnipotence and our feelings of betrayal at maternal powerlessness.104 On a metapoetical level, the poem is itself a mirror and thus makes statements about the relationship between the creator/poet and its creatio n /p o em .105 Assuming that the poem is a mirror of the poet leads us to the poem as the speaker - a personification o f the literary genre and thus a metapoetical attempt to reflect on the possibilities of poetry as reflector of reality: "The self that is mirrored here is this poem, perhaps all poetry, and the language o f which it is m a d e ." 106 Consequently, reading a poem is like reading the body o f the poet: Both looking into mirrors and reading/writing are attempts to create the self without another person literally present. In the reflection or in the book, there is another presence. Once you objectify yourself into a mirror or onto a page, then that image has a separate reality.107 For a woman, to write, to create a persona, can be a substitution for looking in a mirror.108

104 Van Dyne, Revising Life 139. 105 Eddie Cohen, in fact, reproaches Sylvia Plath of looking at her own letters as if they were a mirror: "What you are asking, in effect, is the act of a woman who gets a great deal o f pleasure from looking into a mirror. A very flattering mirror at that." Stevenson, Bitter Fame 51-52. 106 William Freedman, "Sylvia Plath's M irror' of M irrors," Papers on Language and Literature 23.1 (W inter 1987): 56-69; 58. 107 La Belle. H erself Beheld 155. 108 La Belle, H erself Beheld 159.

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The combination o f the m irror image or subconscious as a mother figure with the poem as an image o f the female poet opens up a whole new range of interpretations o f this poem. It shows how gender not only influences the contents o f a poem but also its form, its language and, in particular, its imagery. The poem reflects the body o f the woman. It presents the desire but also the impossibility for a woman to break out o f this predetermined role. Sylvia Plath had two children, and they were what was left to her after the separation from H ughes.109 Since she could not find herself any more in her husband, Plath had to turn to her children for identity. "Brasilia" (CP 258-59, Dec. 1, 1962) reflects the incorporation o f a child through its mother. The mother finds herself in a situation full o f fear and tension because she has to protect her baby against the m odern world, against technologies, against a super-people. The scene for this fight is Brasilia, a city founded in 1960. The baby, like Jesus, becomes the m artyr in this environment: "And my baby a nail / Driven in, driven in." The m other's scream shows that she does not want her baby to suffer: "O You who eat / People like light rays, leave / This one / M irror safe, unredeemed / By the dove's annihilation, / The glory / The power, the glory." She compares the child to a m irror that is not supposed to act like Jesus: "God must not let the Holy Spirit ( ’the dove’) annihilate her son, because Jesus is the m irror image of G o d ." 110 In this comparison one can find three metaphoric concepts of mirroring: the child becomes an image o f Jesus who is the image of God; the human being is the image o f the creator, o f God; the child is the image of the mother. The first two emphasize the danger in which the child is; like Maria, the mother in this poem also has to be afraid for her son. The mother's task is to protect him. She sees herself in him; he is an extension o f herself, her externalized soul exposed to the dangers from outside. He is the innocent part in her that needs to be protected from the evils o f the world around them. The m other’s m irror image is endangered and protective at the same time. One can notice how Plath gradually stopped dealing with motherhood as a social must for her affirmation o f womanhood. She became a conscious

109 In "For a Fatherless Son” (CP 205, Sept. 26, 1962), a poem written after Ted Hughes had left her, the mother tells her son about the separation from his father. The son's face becomes the mirror image of his innocence and ignorance; his eyes are still closed off from reality. "But right now you are dumb. / And I love your stupidity, / The blind mirror of it." The blind mirror here reflects the innocence o f a child who does not yet have its own identity. The mirror stage has not yet taken hold of the boy so that the mother sees "no face but [her] own." 110 Lori Walburg, "Plath's Brasilia,’" The Explicalor 44.3 (Spring 1986): 61.

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mother who then saw the dangers for children (without fathers) in the world. As the distance from her husband grew, she drew closer to her children and attempted to keep up at least this one last illusion o f m othering.111 Since having children was no longer possible for her, Sylvia Plath was finally able to envision a future in which she could overcome the tension of duality and find an outlet for her own femininity in "Purdah" (C P 242, Oct. 29, 1962), one of her last poems. The speaker's growing awareness o f her own need for self-determination and freedom and o f the confinement and the limitations imposed on her by a bridegroom is reflected in the image of the mirror, representing the persona's face: "I gleam like a m irror," and developing to "[scattering / The chandelier / O f air that all day flies." At the beginning of the poem the female persona compares herself to the precious "jade stone" that is a necessary decoration for the "agonized / Side o f green Adam." She refers to the story o f the creation o f human beings by God in Genesis, in which Eve is made from A dam 's rib, and is, therefore, a small part of man, a part that belongs to man and depends on him. The only task of the "so valuable" woman is to smile. Because o f the moon rays, the mirror starts to gleam and shine and attracts the bridegroom who dominates over the woman: " . . . the bridegroom arrives / Lord o f the mirrors!" Thus, the mirror image establishes the relationship between husband-wife, man-woman, domination-submission, oppressor-oppressed. The superiority o f the man can only exist together with the so-called inferiority o f the woman: Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size. . . . mirrors are essential to all violent and heroic action. That is why Napoleon and Mussolini both insist so emphatically upon the inferiority of

111 She did not want the child become a martyr, as in "Mary’s Song" (CP 257, Nov 19, 1962): "It is a heart, / This holocaust I walk in, / O golden child the world will kill and eat." The child was her mirror, her only proof that she still existed. If the child died, she would die as well. The search for escape into mothering is also expressed in "Childless Woman" (CP 259, 1962), in which a woman desperately and unsuccessfully tries to have a baby: "Spiderlike, I spin mirrors, / Loyal to my image, / Uttering nothing but blood-." In the same way that God created human beings in his mirror image, the woman wants to create children in her image. But "she herself is the burial ground for the 'm irrors’ of her self, that is, the ova, which she vainly produces." Jon Rosenblatt, Sylvia Plath: The Poetry o f Initiation (Chapel Hill: The U of North Carolina P. 1979) 104. She is powerless: "For her there is no relief: the moon, ivory, mirrors, are the images of her existence that cannot be escaped." Barry Wallenstein and Andrea Geffner, Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and Ariel, The Colossus, and Other Works: A Critical Commentary (New York: Monarch, 1975) 69.

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women, for if they were not inferior, they would cease to enlarge.112 The bridegroom not only dominates this individual relationship but is lord o f "mirrors." The dependence o f the female persona is also sexualized: "It is himself he guides / In among these silk / Screens, these rustling appurtenances." The mirror changes its surface to silk and later to a veil, and the only sign o f life behind the veil is the breathing: "I breathe, and the mouth / veil stirs its curtain." The real face of the woman is hidden between a mouth veil and an eye veil, which is "[a] concatenation o f rainbows," which on the one hand gives the "lord" total power over her because she does not have an expression of her own so that he can imagine her the way he wants her to be. On the other hand, the veils also prevent him from recognizing her inner feelings and expressions, her developments and perhaps even her reactions towards his actions and himself. Thereby, she can develop an inner strength and courage to break out o f her prison without the danger of him noticing anything. She can keep him in a false security until the time is come for her to break out. The confined persona in the mirror is the false self, the true self is hidden behind, but self-confidently assertive. But throughout the poem the true self increasingly resists domination and announces a coming revolution, a coming self-liberation: "I shall unloose / One feather, . . . / I shall unloose / One note . . . / I shall unloose . . . / The lioness, / The shriek in the bath, / The cloak o f holes." The mirror is destroyed, the dualisms man-woman, sun-moon, false and true selves are dissolved, and the true self is reborn: "'P u rd ah ', . . ., tells o f the heroine’s rebirth, the destruction o f her male oppressor, and the corresponding recovery o f her true s e lf." 113 In her final poems, Plath is able to stage a "theatrical rage"114 which helped her assert emotions oppressed so far. As seen in "Mirror," Plath also used mirror imagery to reflect on the art o f poetry making. In one o f her earliest poems "A Sorcerer Bids Farewell to Seem" (CP 324, Juvenilia) she elaborates on the mirror image in which the "looking-glass hotel" reflects one way of writing poetry. The title is indirectly repeated in the first line: "I'm [A Sorcerer] through with [Bids Farewell] this grand looking-glass hotel ("to Seem]." The dichotomy between "being" and "seeming" is noticed and questioned, and "seeming” is rejected in favor of something more real.

112 Woolf, A Room o f One's Own 35-36. 113 Kroll, Chapters in a Mythology 156. 114 Judith Butler, April 30, 1993, Frankfurt.

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In this connection, the mirror is an object that, because of its brilliance and radiance, blinds people and presents illusions. The persona wants to retreat from these illusions to return to simpler ways o f writing: "[M]ethinks I shall absent me for a while / from rhetoric of these rococo queens. / Item: chuck out royal rigmarole of props / and auction off each rare white-rabbit verb; / send my muse Alice packing with gaudy scraps / of mushroom simile and gryphon garb." "Adjectives," "nouns," and "verb" are the linguistic means at her disposal to reach the effects of "rigmarole," "simile" and "metaphor." So far the result has been "royal” and "rare," but now the persona wants to go back to real experiences, because art can only be good if based on reality and the experience o f the poet. Thus, the distorting mirror of the "grand looking-glass hotel" has to be destroyed. Everything in this "looking-glass hotel" is side-inverted, as it is in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass.115 "Looking-glass," "play crocket," "queens," "white rabbit," "Alice,” "mushroom," "mad hatter's hat," "jabberwock," "Cheshire cat," "cabbages," and "kings" are terms referring to this novel for children. In this fictional world, things all o f a sudden are no longer what they used to be, but obey totally new and different laws. Lewis Carroll used the inversion through the mirror to show that fixed rules do not always make very much sense. This world o f new rules, however, has gone too far and cannot be understood any more: "My native sleight-of-hand is wearing out: / mad hatter's hat yields no new metaphor, / the jabberwock will not translate his songs: / it's time to vanish like the Cheshire cat / alone to that authentic island where / cabbages are cabbages; kings: kings." The persona's fear of not being understood any more leads to this rejection o f the looking glass. A certain curiosity with the persona and Alice is used to interpret and metaphorize life, but the poet recognizes the need to go back to reality. The actual result o f this thinking process is the poem "A Sorcerer Bids Farewell to Seem," and one could criticize that what she questions, namely the grand metaphorization, is practiced in this poem. She evokes a world that she wants to destroy at the same time. This poem expresses clearly the tension between the land of poetry/writing on the one hand and that of working, e .g ., in the fields, on the other hand. It thematizes the separation of body and mind, a separation that is painful but clear-cut. At certain points in her life, Plath tended towards one or the other. She leaves the land o f the mind in this poem because o f a lack o f "new metaphors," an idea that John Barth expressed

115 Cf. Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the LookingGlass (1865; 1872; Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Puffin Books, Penguin Books Ltd., 1986).

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about ten years later in his essay on the "Literature o f Exhaustion." The crisis o f the medium for Plath was nothing new. Her solution in this poem, however, is not a self-referential literature but a literature based on actual experience. The fact that she used the term "authentic island" indicates that she believed that there was something like an authentic island. At this point in her life, she still believed in these socially determined dichotomies of right and wrong and tried to reach the "right" side, because she felt herself to be constantly on the "wrong" side o f life. She lost this illusion at the end o f her life .116 Plath saw herself and her life reflected in her poems. She extended this reflection through the creation o f the persona as her alter ego whom she then constantly presented in the act of or in need for mirroring. The concrete object of the mirror ("M irror") turns into a symbol for a search for identity. At the same time, the mirror is a metaphor for a poem in which the poet is reflected with her fear of inevitable motherhood imposed on her by her own mother and by society. After this fear of motherhood, for Plath, was overcome and had resulted in two children, and after marriage as one definition o f womanhood - had failed, children in her poems became the metaphorical m irror image o f the mother ("Brasilia"). Based on the partly soothing qualities of the mirror but also on the ambiguous state o f the mirror image, the persona in "Purdah" compares her own face to a mirror and uses its smooth surface as a mask behind which she prepares for a revolution. The social implications of these various aspects are integrated into statements about poetry. In the same way that society imposed its definition o f femininity on Plath, it also imposed its perception of poetry on her. The grand "looking glass hotel" of a poem with all its fantastic artistic and formal means has to be given up in favor o f an experience-oriented poetry ("A Sorcerer Bids Farewell to Seem"). Here the mirror does not reflect anything but empty, even though nicely decorated form. P lath 's mirror imagery reflects her attempt at integrating personal experiences into her poems and her growing recognition that in order to achieve changes in society and to liberate herself, she had to use the same means that kept her under control. She had constantly tried to look through the socially imposed masks. Now she deliberately put one on herself: Pretend and then destroy from within. She continued to wear a mask in her letters to her mother; she pretended to be happy with her children and her poetry, but the poems, because they became increasingly and uninhibitedly

116 Cf. my discussion of "Words" in 1.2. Sylvia Plath and Poetry: Writing Genres and Herself. Cf. also "The Couriers" (CP 247, Nov. 4, 1962).

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autobiographical, tell a different story. Even though Plath saw the need for simulation in order to achieve her own goals, the mask she wore on the outside did not subvert society but destroyed her motivation for life, her capacity to come to terms with a, as she saw it, hostile world, not only around her but, even more so, inside her own body. Whereas the mirror always remains an instrument for the representation of reflection (for the poet as well as for the persona) and the mirror image can only exist when the observer is directly present and looking into the mirror, the creation o f a double - as we will see in the next part o f this dissertation - allows the double's independent existence. The double is the mirror turned into flesh and blood over which its creator can potentially lose control. The poetical figure of the double gave Plath the possibility of metaphorically representing and confronting the parallel and contradictory forces in her life. The double served as another means for turning life into autobiographical poetry.

1.3.2. Her Body, Herself "Double, double toil and trouble: Fire burn; and, cauldron, bubble." Shakespeare, Macbeth IV,i, 10-11. Die Verdopplung einer Einheit ist aber undenkbar ohne deren Spaltung; und so schlieBt die Ich-Verdopplung auch schon immanent eine Ich-Spaltung in sich ein - sei es als simultane BewuBtseinsentzweiung, wobei zwei verschiedene BewuBtseinsstrukturen im selben Ich gleichzeitig nebeneinander existieren sei es als sukzessive Aufeinanderfolge von zwei abgetrennten, sich vollig fremden BewuBtseinsformen im gleichen Menschen. Jedenfall wird beim Auftreten eines Doppelgangers das einheitliche, intakte PersonlichkeitsbewuBtsein des Menschen, die luckenlose Kontinuitat des Ich und seine Identitat unterbrochen, wenn nicht geradezu vernichtet.117 The result o f the socially imposed role norms and o f Sylvia Plath's search for fulfillment in a career as a poet is poetry that represents this duality in the form of a "split personality." This split personality is manifest in mirror images and doubles (both forms o f reflection) embodying two parts o f one personality. The personae o f the poems are the location o f the

117 Reber, Studien zum Motiv des Doppelgangers bei Dostoevsky und E.T.A. Hoffmann 40. Cf. also Rank, Der Doppelgdnger. Rank focuses on the important role of the double and its psychological implications in nineteenth-century Romanticism.

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voice that speaks and observes the "other." Thus, through mirroring and doubling Flath externalized and materialized her inner tension. As early as 1955, Plath showed a scholarly interest in the doppelganger motif when she wrote her honor's thesis at Smith College on two of Dostoevsky's novels: ... the appearance of the Double is an aspect of man’s eternal desire to solve the enigma of his own identity. By seeking to read the riddle of his soul in its myriad manifestations, man is brought face to face with his own mysterious mirror image, an image which he confronts with mingled curiosity and fear. This simultaneous attraction and repulsion arises from the inherently ambivalent nature of the Double, which may embody not only good, creative characteristics but also evil, destructive ones. In the most complete sense of the word, the Double is the form given to any and all personifications of man's ego in both the psychic and the physical world.118 Plath pursued this interest in the double in various forms also in her poetry in order to externalize the tension she felt between what society saw in and expected o f her and her own personal needs which often contradicted the social norms. The image she used most frequently to externalize this tension was the opposition between the social body and the personal soul or mind. The double most often embodies the social self which the personal self believes to be the perfect self. Because o f her strong desire for social acceptance, Plath's double not only incorporated the self society saw but also the self that she wanted them to see even though she herself knew that it was a mask, a role she played contrary to her inner conviction because, at the same time, she hated her double: "Der Doppelganger ist die extreme Verwirklichung dessen, was der Prototyp in sich selber haBt . . . oder aber dessen, worin er sein Ideal sieht . . . . ” 119 The double is, "in fact, a result o f his [a protagonist's] sense of the division to which the human mind in conflict with itself is susceptible."120 In the following, I will briefly look at how Plath first uses the mirror or a mirrory surface to present a persona split in two ("Tale o f a T u b " ).121 She then creates doubles without the medium of the mirror ("Two Sisters of Persephone") or needs the mirror only to affirm the absence of the

118 Sylvia Plath, "The Magic Mirror: A Study of the Double in Two of Dostoevsky's Novels" (Smith College, Northampton, MA, 1955), quoted in Kroll, Chapters in a Mythology 230. 119 Reber, Studien zum Motiv des Doppelgdngers 101. 120 Rogers, A Psychoanalytic Study o f the Double in Literature 29. 121 Cf. also "On Looking Into the Eyes of a Demon Lover" (CP 325, Juvenilia).

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persona's old self and the presence of the new self ("Face Lift"). Finally, she heals the split via the mirror which becomes one with the persona and her body ("Last Words"). A split of the self that can be noticed by an observer and is also consciously experienced by the persona is described in "Tale of a Tub" (C P 24, 1956).122 The creation of the persona's double, even though it takes place in a mirror, goes beyond a mere mirror image to an almost independent existence o f one part o f the self as a stranger to the persona. The starting point is the description of a hostile and cold bathroom with a mirror in which the persona is reflected, "the stranger in the lavatory m irror / puts on a public grin, repeats our name / but scrupulously reflects the usual terro r." Double perception is painful. Once aware of the doubleness of things, one begins a drift toward the despair and perhaps even the madness that this awareness produces. It is painful to realize that things are not what they seem, that security is not safe, that reality is an illusion.123 The person who appears in the mirror is a stranger124 even though she knows that the image is supposed to be an image of herself ("our name"). The personal and the social selves have the same name. The reflection is the image that society has created of the persona. "A public grin" is meant for society and covers the personal self. "Tale o f a Tub" clearly distinguishes between public and private selves. The split between public and private selves is enlarged by the idea that the public self is the "usual terror" and therefore rejected by the persona, but that it evokes feelings o f guilt in the persona because she knows that she shows the public only a mask whereas her environment does not pretend to be more than it actually is, "when washbowl / maintains it has no more holy calling / than physical ablution." The persona is isolated from her surroundings because she seems to be the only split object in a whole and unified environment. To dissolve this split into mask ("disguising," "mask," "pretend") and reality, the 122 "Tale of a T ub” might be an allusion to Jonathan Swift's satire Tale o f a Tub (written in 1696, published in 1704), in which the author explains in the preface that seamen on a whaling trip throw an empty tub into the sea to divert the whales from attacking the ship. If one applies this explanation to Plath’s poem, one could say that the persona's public self or the mask serves as a means (like the tub) to prevent people from paying closer attention to the private, supposedly real self (like the ship). Tub and mask are only a simulation of the actual object o f interest. 123 Lynda B. Salamon, "'Double, Double': Perception in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath," Spirit 37 (1970): 34-39; 39. 124 Cf. " . . . , catching my image in shop windows, car windows, a stranger, sharpervisaged than I knew" (J 190, Jan. 26, 1958).

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persona only has the possibility to turn towards the water, "its glittering surfaces are blank and true. / . . . / in faith / we shall board our imagined ship and wildly sail / among sacred islands of the mad till death / shatters the fabulous stars and makes us real." Consequently, her only way out is death because in death the polarities are all dissolved. Plath's persona in this poem is looking for an affirmation o f her supposedly "real" self in the mirror, which, however, only reflects the social double which she finally rejects. She tries to destroy this "false" self whose death would make life possible for her personal self; it would mean a kind o f rebirth o f the covered and hidden self. The attempt o f the hidden self to triumph is at the same time the attempt at unity and wholeness. In the poem "Two Sisters of Persephone" (CP 31-32, 1956), Sylvia Plath continues the above-mentioned structure of dichotomy, and for the first time goes beyond the mirror image to the creation of an independently moving and acting double. In formal - incomplete embracing rhymes or consonances - as well as thematical respect, she opposes two contrasting and obviously exclusive modes of being which she personifies in the "two sisters of Persephone," but which are two elements o f the Greek Persephone myth. The two sisters are not only relatives but two shades of one person. Plath applies the Persephone myth to her own existential condition in order to come to terms with the tension in her life.125 Persephone, the daughter of the goddess Demeter, is abducted by Hades, the god o f death and the underworld, while picking a narcissus. Innocence is suddenly interrupted or even destroyed by the violent act of rape and forced marriage - even agreed to by Persephone's father Jupiter who tries to strengthen his power by consenting to the marriage between Hades and Persephone. After Persephone's abduction by Hades, fertility vanishes on the earth. Demeter, desperately looking for her daughter, is

125 Sylvia Plath continues the "grotesque doppeiganger" motive in "In Plaster" (CP 158, March 18, 1961), written after having undergone an appendectomy (Febr. 28, 1961), in which she tells the story of a woman who wakes up in a hospital bed and finds herself split into two. Cf. A. R. Jones, "Necessity and Freedom: The Poetry of Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton," Critical Quarterly 7.1 (1965): 11-30; 22. Cf. also "It f i n Plaster'] is a classic Doppelganger poem in that the double is the depository of qualities the T is certain it lacks, and becomes a nemesis. Like Mr. Hyde, or the shadow-self in Dostoevsky, or Hawthorne's Chillingsworth to Reverend Dimmesdale, the double is a contrivance whereby a guilty, inadequate self accomplishes self-punishment." Ostriker, "In Mind: The Divided Self and Women's Poetry" 356. Cf. also "The woman in the bed next to Sylvia's was wrapped almost completely in a plaster cast - sealed off in such a way that suggested the sort of double self Sylvia had always found intriguing and all too applicable to her own divided consciousness. She had no difficulty in imagining herself as the woman..............." Edward Butscher, Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness (New York: A Kangaroo Book, 1976) 295.

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finally united with Persephone but only after Hades has given his victim a pomegranate to eat which condemns Persephone to spend one third o f the year with this unwanted husband and allows her to spend the rest o f the year with her mother. This world determined by male gods and structured by the two poles of underworld - or husband - and earth - or mother - is recreated and reinterpreted by Plath in her poem "Two Sisters o f Persephone." She creates a dichotomous world with two mutually exclusive modes of existence. She contrasts two girls, one within the house, one outside. They are connected through a "daylong . . . duet o f shade and light" that ”[p]lays between th e s e .” The girl inside the house sits ”[i]n her dark wainscoted room" and "works problems on / A mathematical machine. / Dry ticks mark time / As she calculates each sum." This "barren enterprise" is judged as unproductive, infertile, and death-related and turns the girl into a terrifying and decaying almost corpse-like body: "Rat-shrewd go her squint eyes, / Root-pale her meager frame." This description o f a girl working in the underworld is contrasted with the physical beauty, the colorfulness (red, green, yellow), and the closeness to nature's fertility o f the second girl: "Bronzed as earth, the second lies, / Hearing ticks blown gold / Like pollen on bright air. Lulled / Near a bed o f poppies, / She sees how their red silk flare / O f petaled blood / Burns open to sun's blade." Whereas the world inside is characterized by barrenness and darkness, the girl outside becomes "sun's bride" and "[g]rows quick with seed. / Grass-couched in her labor's pride, / She bears a king." Marriage and pregnancy are the ways to success, happiness, and power whereas their absence marks the way to death: "Turned bitter / And sallow as any lemon, / The other, wry virgin to the last, / Goes graveward with flesh laid waste, / Worm-husbanded, yet no woman." In the Greek Persephone myth the underworld is associated with a forced marriage, infertility, and unhappiness, whereas the world above represents the bond between mother and daughter, fertility, and happiness. In her poem, Plath makes two essential changes in this myth. While she still connects the world indoors (underworld) with infertility and unhappiness and the world outdoors (above) with fertility and happiness, she transfers the forced marriage to the world above (outside) and transforms it into a desirable and pleasant unity with nature. The sun, a male symbol, becomes her husband, and this relationship leads to the birth o f a king, and thus to motherhood for the second girl. Thereby, a husbandwife bond is substituted for the appealing mother-daughter relationship o f the myth.

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The second change Plath makes is the insertion o f the aspect o f writing in the guise of a "mathematical machine." This machine might refer to Plath’s everyday concern with money, but even more so to her typewriter. The fact that, at this point in her life, she associates writing with the negative sides of a life indoors (underworld) reveals, on the one hand, her dispair at that point o f ever becoming a successful poet, but on the other hand, and I think this is a more interesting aspect, her internalization o f society's norm that a woman writer is a contradictio in adjecto, that writing for a woman is a forced and unnatural activity, comparable to the rape in the Greek myth. In Plath's mind, the decision to write would automatically exclude sexual relationships, marriage, and motherhood and would consequently lead to a death-oriented life in which she would have to deny and give up her womanhood. To affirm her womanhood would result in giving up writing. Whereas the Greek myth results in an affirmation o f the mother-daughter relationship - in Luce Irigaray's words: "Pour rendre a nouveau possible une ethique de la difference sexuelle, il faut renouer le lien des genealogies fem inines."126 - Plath defines her womanhood through the male other whose absence is equal to the absence of womanhood. In that sense, Plath's rewriting o f the Greek Persephone myth in this autobiographical poem - like the fig tree metaphor - reflects her internalization of society's definition o f "woman" and femininity and the resulting conflict with her own desire for being both a woman and a poet. "Yet, of course, woman poets exist, struggling to give at least singular instances for possible syntheses. But in general, if she succeeds as a poet, she will fail as a woman, or vice v ersa."127 The split into personal and social self is continued in "Face Lift" (CP 155, Febr. 2, 1961) with the creation o f two selves, the older one o f which is rejected in favor o f the new and young one. Which of the two selves might be called the double o f the other remains open. In general, a double can only exist with reference to an original person. The process in "Face Lift" can therefore be called "doubling": two selves exist but

126 Luce Irigaray, "Le mystere oublie des genealogies feminines," Le Temps de la difference: Pour une revolution pacifique (Paris: Librairie Generale Frangaise, 1989) 10123; 120-21. 127 Eniko Bollobas, "Woman and Poet? Conflicts in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton," The Origins and Originality o f American Culture, ed. Tibor Frank (Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1984) 375-83; 375. Cf. also Rachel S. Doran, "The Tension o f Duality in Sylvia Plath," Transition Magazine (1977-78): 14-20; 17: "Three poems in particular ['In Plaster,' 'The Other,' 'Two Sisters of Persephone'] can be seen to epitomize the tension of duality between poet/artist aspiring for perfection and individual selfhood and the more socially acceptable yet stultifying role o f wife and m other.”

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chronologically exclude each other. Whereas in "Two Sisters o f Persephone" the doubles depend on each other's simultaneous existence, here the existence o f one requires the extinction o f the other. After a facial operation which has dramatically changed the exterior as well as the interior identity o f the persona, the persona needs the m irror to check and reaffirm her identity.128 The mirror reflects the appearance o f the wom an before and after the operation with all the changes: "Now she's done for, the dewlapped lady / I watched settle, line by line, in my m irror-." The new self rejects this old self: "Let her die there, or wither incessantly for the next fifty years, / Nodding and rocking and fingering her thin hair." The face of this old woman has disappeared from her mirror; she does not relate to her any more; she has successfully dissociated herself from her. The dissociation of the old from the new, the social from the personal self, which was not successful in "Tale o f a Tub," is now successfully completed. The mirror in "Face Lift" reflects "the aging and death o f an old, meretricious identity and the birth of a seemingly promising second self"129 that wakes up "swaddled in gauze, / Pink and smooth as a baby." While in "Tale o f a Tub" the two selves still exist at the same time, the chronological existence of the new self after the old self makes the rebirth as a baby possible. In addition to the exterior changes, interior developments take place, too. After the operation, an emancipation process has taken place because now the woman is "Mother to [her]self." The mother-dominated woman has turned into a self-confident and self-conscious human being. However, even though the mother figure as a separate entity trying to dominate her has disappeared, the persona herself has taken over this function and has one part of herself take care of the other. The "limits and impossibility of complete liberation"130 are indicated and only allow a moderate optim ism .131 She "dramatizes the divided self."132 128 Cf. The Bell Jar , in which Esther, after a facial operation necessary because of wounds received at her suicide attempt, also tries to look into a mirror: "I want to see a mirror. . . . Why can't I see a mirror?" (142) 129 Axelrod, "The Mirror and the Shadow" 289-90. 130 Lehrer, The Dialectics o f Art and Life 224. 131 Cf. Murray M. Schwartz and Christopher Bollas, "The Absence at the Center: Sylvia Plath and Suicide,” Sylvia Plath: New Views on the Poetry, ed. Gary Lane (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1979) 179-202; 196: "We suggest that Plath's weird mirror experiences indicate a failure in the early months o f her life to find herself consistently reflected in the human environment." She tries to make up for this failure in her poetry. 132 Greg Johnson, "A Passage to 'A riel': Sylvia Plath and the Evolution of Self," Southwest Review 65.1 (1980): 1-11; 5.

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Much of the tension which informs Sylvia Plath's poetry comes from this dilemma: while she does recognize that she is inextricably entangled in her social matrix, and entangled in her society's definition of her, she never finally accepts that definition, but continues to struggle against it in her poetry, though with a growing sense of frustration.133 In "Last Words" (CP 172, Oct. 21, 1961), the persona is finally approaching death, ”[m]y mirror is clouding over - / A few more breaths, and it will reflect nothing at all. / The flowers and the faces whiten to a sheet."134 Through the use o f the possessive pronoun "my" the mirror becomes a personal object, an image o f the individual life and death. The transitional period is indicated in the present-tense continuous form of the verb ("is clouding over") and the end point in the future-tense form ("will reflect nothing"). Life is slowly covered over; light is extinguished. "When her mirrors show an individual lacking in creative aspect, they expose a self already on the margins o f disintegration."135 The mirror reflects life as long as the human being gives impulses, as long as there is life. Without life the m irror loses its function, too. It then is also condemned to death. Like the body o f the human being, it has lost its function, but still exists as an object. The mirror, however, is indicator o f life and d eath .136 The absence o f reflection, o f course, restores the body to its wholeness, but, in Plath's poems, it also means absence of life; it means death. Only in death is the body one. The death wish and the final death, however, are the focus o f attention in her last poems written shortly before her suicide and after a long and cold winter. "It was an unspeakable winter, the worst, they said, in 150

133 Annas, A Disturbance in Mirrors 69-70. Cf. Sylvia Plath's use o f the much more sophisticated metaphor of the tulips in "Tulips" (CP 160, March 18, 1961) as agents of representation o f her double. Even though the tulips are the externalization of her own heart, they become her enemies because she is "nobody," she has "given [her] name and [her) day-clothes up to the nurses / And (her) history to the anesthetist and (her) body to surgeons." The persona exclaims: "And 1 have no face, I have wanted to efface myself. / The vivid tulips eat my oxygen." 134 Cf. also "Contusion" (CP 271, Febr. 4, 1963): "The heart shuts, / The sea slides back, / The mirrors are sheeted." Here, dying becomes a "drama o f primary images; blood, water, rock, mirror and sea confront each other." Jon Rosenblatt, "The Poetic Development o f Sylvia Plath: A Study in Theme and Image," Diss. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1975; 79. 135 Axelrod, "The Mirror and the Shadow" 292. 136 Cf. ". . ., when our lives crack, and the loveliest mirror cracks, . . . " (7 125, March 6, 1956).

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years. The snow began just after Christmas and would not let up. By New Year the whole country had ground to a h a lt."137 The struggling selves have taken various bodily shapes: the m irror image o f a stranger vs. the naked observer ("Tale o f a T ub"), the happy and fertile mother and wife vs. the unhappy and virgin poet ("Tw o Sisters o f Persephone"), and the old mother-dominated wom an vs. the new self­ mothering woman ("Face Lift"). The two selves are constantly fighting for domination and control because they live together in an either-or relationship. That which is split off is the extem alization of a terrifying image o f herself (as witch and stranger), of social roles she has trouble fulfilling (mother, wife), in short, of the destructive forces within her. In all cases, the mind watches the detached bodies and parts o f the body. Sylvia Plath's final aim was to dissolve these contrasts. She tried to find the way to this dissolution in her poetry by naming the oppositional forces. However, her double perception could hardly be dissolved because she did not even know which self she would want to give up: the social self determined by the norms o f society to which Plath so much wanted to adhere? The personal self which so much wanted to be a poet, and even an accepted and successful poet? Up until the last few months of her life, Plath saw no way o f escape from this vicious circle. The opposition between the social and the personal selves are most frequently expressed in images o f the body vs. images o f the mind. The tension within and the consequent perception o f herself as ugly are contrasted with the beautiful social self. In "Last W ords," Plath finally no longer contrasts two images of her body. Her perception is focused on her body. She now seems to find herself in a - even though negative - unity of her own body and her own mind. Body and mind are moving towards death. In most o f her earlier poems, either the social self or what she perceived as her true and personal self provoked her into life. Now , all parts in and o f herself are united in death. The poetical text, through the dissolution of duality, reflects the fading existence o f the poet's body, of her life. Plath's autobiographical poetry has reached a final point. That this "harmonious" unity of selves in death is Plath's last and most perm anent illusion and that the forces of society continue to work on her posthumous image, will be discussed in the next chapter.

137 Alfred Alvarez, The Savage God (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1972) 27.

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1.4. Sylvia Plath's Posthumous Double: Censorship - Fact vs. Fiction In addition to the w om en's movement, which has drawn attention to Plath’s struggle with male/patriarchal authorities, Sylvia Plath's posthumous public image has been very much shaped by her former husband Ted Hughes and his sister Olwyn Hughes, who both are in charge of Plath's literary estate. Even after Plath's death, her poems, because o f their autobiographical quality, are subject to the same social mechanisms and norms Plath herself had to suffer from. The reaction of Plath's literary estate to the publication and interpretation o f her work wonderfully proves one o f the main theses o f this dissertation, namely that Plath's poetry is highly autobiographical. Ted and Olwyn Hughes see Plath's life reflected in her work and therefore feel the necessity to create an image of the poet and her relationship to her husband and her family according to their ideas. In general, their aim , as they say, is to protect living family members (in particular P lath’s and H ughes's children) from public exposure and to make sure that only facts are published and no further myths can develop around Plath's life. Their very activity, however, has generated more myths. Be their aims as they may be, the first question that comes up for me is related to the term "fact," because who is the authority to decide what "facts" are? Plath obviously wrote something that the Hughes family does not want the public to see. Is it because what she wrote could be considered facts - destructive and painful - about family members and about herself? If truth is what Ted and Olwyn Hughes are interested in, then why would they want to censor these facts? If, however, her writing is not "factual," then why bother about it at all? Why not call it "fiction" and declare that there is no correlation between her life and her writing? Yet, on the one hand, the declaration o f Plath's writing as "pure fiction" would result in a (financial) loss for the estate. On the other hand, both Ted and Olwyn Hughes know that P lath's writing is "autobiographical" and that she integrated life and art inextricably. The second question that I would like to ask is concerned with the right o f the two (or even three) parties involved. Sylvia Plath - if she were still alive - could definitely claim her right to "freedom of speech," as written down in the First Amendment of the American Constitution, and even more so her right to the freedom of artistic expression. However, the right to freedom o f speech is restricted as soon as other people's rights are in some way concerned. Some o f these conflicting rights could be "the right o f individuals not to be libeled, slandered, or defamed," "the right of

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individual privacy," "the right not to be verbally abused o r to be subject to personal slurs and epithets."138 The third party involved is the reader/scholar, who certainly has the right to full information so that she/he can make up her/his mind. My third question is that of power and paradox because the person who left Sylvia Plath in 1962 for another w om an139 is left in charge o f her work together with his sister who was not necessarily favorably accepted by Plath. If "fact" is a relative term, in particular when literature is concerned, it is almost unavoidable that those who control the material will also create their version of the "truth" and will prevent any public deviation from it. The creation of Plath's posthumous identity materializes itself in the censorship activities o f the literary estate. Plath's attempts at inscribing herself in her texts, at representing her constant struggle in language must have been so successful that the draft o f her last novel, "Double Exposure," '"disappeared somewhere around 1970,' in Ted H ughes's w o rd s."140 Ted Hughes destroyed - or says he destroyed - journal entries from the last few months of her life, a period which is today known as the time in which she wrote her best poetry. Sylvia Plath's journals exist as an assortment of notebooks and bunches of loose sheets, and the selection just published contains about a third of the whole bulk. Two other notebooks survived for a while after her death. They continued from where the surviving record breaks off in late 1959 and covered the last three years of her life. The second of these two books her husband destroyed, because he did not want her children to have to read it (in those days he regarded forgetfulness as an essential part of survival). The earlier one disappeared more recently (and may, presumably, still turn up).141 Ironically, Ted Hughes does not write the article on "Sylvia Plath and Her Journals" in the first person but as if he were a detached observer, in the

138 Leon Hurwitz, Historical Dictionary o f Censorship in the United States (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985) xxxvii. 139 Assia Wevill had a child with Ted Hughes. Ironically, she killed herself and their daughter Shura in March 1969 in the same way Plath had killed herself six years before: "She switched on the gas in the oven and, as she held Shura, waited for the gas to fill the room. . . . Years later, unsubstantiated rumors about that morning would still circulate in literary circles. It was said that Assia had carried out her desperate act on - or beside - a trunk that contained the unpublished manuscripts of Sylvia Plath. ” Paul Alexander, Rough Magic: A Biography o f Sylvia Plath (New York: Viking, 1991) 346. 140 Wagner-Martin, Sylvia Plath 13. 141 Ted Hughes, "Sylvia Plath and Her Journals," Sylvia Plath, ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Chelsea House Publ., 1989) 109-19; 109.

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third person. He talks about himself as "her husband," gives facts about her life and readings o f her journals and poems but never feels the need for justification, as if he as the writer o f this article had nothing to do with Sylvia Plath. Ted Hughes published Plath's highly autobiographical poems that Plath herself had arranged for publication as Ariel in a different order, thus leading the reader's interpretation into a different direction. Even though he admits that he hopes that '"each o f us owns the facts o f her or his own lif e ," '142 and even though he claims that "[a]ll her poems are in a sense by­ products. H er real creation was that inner gestation and eventual birth o f a new self-conquering self, to which her journal bears witness, and which proved itself so overwhelmingly in the Ariel poems o f 1962,"143 he nevertheless feels justified to change the facts o f her life by rearranging the sequence o f her Ariel poems. In his article he presents the chronological order o f the writing of these poems and concedes that they are connected to biographical events: "In October, when she and her husband began to live apart, every detail o f the antagonist seemed to come into focus, and she started writing at top speed, producing twenty-six quite lengthy poems in that m o n th ." 144 Yet, he feels justified in altering her "new self-conquering self," or at least the reader's perception o f this self: "The Ariel eventually published in 1965 was a somewhat different volume from the one she had planned. . . . It omitted some of the more personally aggressive poems from 1962, and might have omitted one or two more if she had not already published them herself in magazines . . . . " 145 For Marjorie Perloff the recognition o f the changes Hughes made "turns out to be something o f a shock. For both Ariel I and Ariel 2, as I shall call them, have a plot, but the two plots are so different that we cannot help wondering what it means to reconstruct a poetic sequence after the fa c t."146 "Plath’s arrangement emphasizes, not death, but struggle and revenge, the outrage that follows the recognition that the beloved is also the betrayer, that the shrine at which one worships is also the to m b ."147 A t the time of "editing" the Ariel poems Hughes, therefore, must have been aw are that he was opposing Plath's own ideas, that he was attempting 142 Quoted in Rose, The Haunting o f Sylvia Plath 67. 143 Ted Hughes, "Sylvia Plath and Her Journals’ 119. 144 Ted Hughes, "Sylvia Plath and Her Journals" 118. 145 Ted Hughes, "Introduction," Collected Poems 15. 146 Marjorie Perloff, "The Two Ariels: The (Re)Making o f the Sylvia Plath Canon," Poetic License: Essays on Modernist and Postmodernist Lyric (Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 1990) 175-97; 178. 147 Perloff, "The Two Ariels" 197.

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to crack the closely-knit texture o f life and art. Yet, why did he proceed? Jacqueline Rose has a possible answer: But that the 'more aggressive poems' removed from Ariel were in large part the ones whose aggression has since been interpreted as directed at Hughes (notably 'The Rabbit Catcher,' 'The Detective,' 'The Courage of Shutting-Up,’ 'A Secret,' ’The Jailor,' 'Stopped Dead,’ 'Amnesiac,' 'Purdah') has laid him open to the charge that the whole process has been in the service of self-interest, where 'interest' means unequivocally the interest of the man. . . . Either way it is clear how feminism will interpret this - Hughes silencing Plath, the man silencing the woman, substituting his interests for her voice. . . . . therefore, Hughes not only silenced Plath's legitimate anger, he also - in an act which explains that anger and justifies its repetition - deprived feminism of a positive identity and selfhood.148 Ted H ughes has not only been active himself in altering P la th 's work, but also influenced Plath's mother, Aurelia Schober Plath, w hen she published P lath 's letters. He was the last authority to decide w hich letters could be published and "demanded a large number o f cuts o f extracts explicitly alluding to him, to which he had not at first taken exception. These cuts were finally m ad e ."149 Before H ughes's censorship could take place, Aurelia Schober Plath herself brought up the issue o f fact and fiction because she wanted to counterbalance the image produced o f her as P lath's m other in The Bell Jar. She read the novel literally, or at least feared that people would read it literally, and felt that the ghastly image o f the m other needed some corrections for which she meant to use P lath's letters. The letters, however, as I explained in the preceding chapters, contained as many facts or fictions as the novel, because Plath used the letters to her family and friends to present her social self, to expose herself as the happygo-lucky, nice all-American successful girl and woman. F or P lath's m other, however, these letters contained the truth about her d augh ter's and consequently about her own life, and therefore, she wanted them published. H ughes, however, advises Aurelia Plath to cut the original version of the letters drastically on the grounds that it was in danger of producing the opposite effect from the one desired - not the positive relationship between mother and daughter, not the positive

148 Rose, The Haunting o f Sylvia Plath 71. 149 Rose, The Haunting o f Sylvia Plath 74.

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image that the daughter offers to the mother, but a desperate attempt to reassure the mother and conceal from her a more difficult relationship and truth.150 The wheel continues to turn around the issue o f "reality" and o f who "owns" the "real truth" when Ted Hughes, as a response to the Letters Home , publishes the Journals : So the question grows: how do we find our way through this accompaniment, which has now become almost a part of the opus? Would we be helped if we had more firsthand testimony, a more intimately assured image, of what she was really [my emphasis] like? In answer to this, these papers, which contain the nearest thing to a living portrait of her, are offered in the hope of providing some ballast for our idea of the reality behind the poems. Maybe they will do more.151 So far, the publication procedure has gone from the traditionally clearly marked "fictional" genres o f the novel and of poetry to the traditionally labeled "personal" and "factual" genres o f the letters and o f the journal. Even though there still is some difference in the function and form o f these genres, my discussion o f the blurring o f the boundaries between them , o f the usage o f the terms "autobiographical prose and poetry," and o f the intimate link between art and life, shows that the attempts to present the one and only "reality" can hardly be successful: . . . Plath's carefully constructed persona, the mask she presented to her adoring mother as well as to editors, professors, and friends, governed not only her domestic life but her poetry as well: until the summer of 1962, when Aurelia Plath became an inadvertent witness to the dissolution of the Plath-Hughes marriage, Sylvia Plath - or "Sivvy" as she called herself in the letters home, never quite abandoned the carefully constructed voice that won her prizes and awards in all the right quarters, a voice her mother could and did approve o f.152 Ted Hughes himself admits in the introduction to her stories that "the themes she found engaging enough to excite her concentration all turn out to be episodes from her own life; they are all autobiography. They have the vitality of her personal participation, her subjectivity. And all are circling

150 Rose, The Haunting o f Sylvia Plath 77-78. 151 Hughes, "Sylvia Plath and Her Journals" 109-10. 152 Marjorie Perloff, "Sylvia Plath's Collected Poems: A Review Essay," Resources fo r American Literary Studies 11.2 (Autumn 1981): 304-13; 307.

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the flames which the poetry, encouraged by ’Johnny Panic' and The Bell Jar , eventually jum ped in to ."153 Ted and Olwyn Hughes have not only censored P lath 's own work but have imposed their version o f the "truth" on potential and actual biographers: Linda Wagner-Martin: Ted Hughes responded to a reading of the manuscript in draft form in 1986 with suggestions for changes that filled fifteen pages and would have meant a deletion of more than 15,000 words. . . . I did make many changes in response to these comments. However, the requests for changes continued, and I concluded that permissions would be granted only if I agreed to change the manuscript to reflect the Hugheses' points of view. When I realized that this tactic would continue indefinitely, 1 had to end my attempt to gain permission to quote at length if I was ever to publish this book. As a result of this circumstance, I have had to limit quotations. Consequently, this biography contains less of Plath's writing than I had intended. The alternative would have been to agree to suggestions that would have changed the point of view of this book appreciably.154 Paul Alexander: Historically, when an author has submitted a manuscript to the Plath estate for permission to quote, the Hugheses have asked the author for changes in substance as well as quotation in exchange for that permission. I decided early on that I would not subject myself to the constraints of the estate, and so I did not quote from unpublished sources, although much information in my biography is gleaned from such sources. 1 also determined that I would not quote so extensively from published material that I would have to seek permission from the estate.155 Ronald Hayman: The reader of the poetry is still in an uncomfortable position. The triangular perspective is unavoidable, but important biographical facts are still being withheld.156

153 Ted Hughes, "Introduction," Johnny Panic and the Bible o f Dreams 1-9; 5. 154 Wagner-Martin, Sylvia Plath 14. 155 Alexander, Rough Magic 2. 156 Hayman, The Death and Life o f Sylvia Plath xiii.

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Jacqueline Rose: In correspondence with the Hughes's, this [The Haunting of Sylvia Plath] book was called 'evil'. Its publisher was told it would not appear. At one point an attempt was made to revoke previously granted permissions to quote from Plath's work. . . . It is one of the paradoxes of my interaction with the Sylvia Plath estate that, as the demands on me have become more and more restrictive and impossible to meet, so it has become more evident how distressing the situation is for all those who were, and who become, involved in Plath’s work.157 On the points over which we have failed to agree, it appears that for Ted and Olwyn Hughes there is only one version of reality, one version - their version - of the truth.158 Even Anne Stevenson, the officially authorized biographer o f Plath, had to write an author's note: In writing this biography, I have received a great deal of help from Olwyn Hughes, literary agent to the Estate of Sylvia Plath. Ms. Hughes’s contributions to the text have made it almost a work of dual authorship. I am particularly grateful for the work she did on the last four chapters and on the Ariel poems of the autumn of 1962.159 W ith reference to Anne Stevenson's officially authorized biography a few aspects need discussion and actually have been discussed by various critics. The last sentence quoted from her introductory author's note should strike a reader - and, I would like to add, Anne Stevenson herself - like irony. From my discussion of the Ariel poems' publication history, it should have become clear that the "poems of the autumn of 1962" make crucial statements about P lath's relationship to her husband, that she finally found a voice in her poetry expressing her personal self, a self that by its very existence was damaging to the public image Hughes had created o f himself. Anne Stevenson realized that for her there was no way out o f this dilemma: "I had fallen into a trap. There was no way out. Bitter Fame' would have been an extremely good book if I had been able to follow my own bent. It was very painful to be interfered with at every turn. I really don’t know why I published the book. My husband thinks I shouldn't have." . . . Anne said quickly 157 Rose, The Haunting o f Sylvia Plath xi. 158 Rose. The Haunting o f Sylvia Plath xii. 159 Stevenson, Bitter Fame n.p.

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that she knew the conditions were unacceptable, but financial necessity had forced her to accept them. She was poor and could not pay back her advance. She could also not accept the idea of four years of work going for naught.160 For Ted and Olwyn Hughes there was something at stake, and therefore, Olwyn Hughes had to work on the 1962 poems. Whereas before, with other biographers, she could only "request that if they could not properly substantiate their error-packed, invention-laden nonsenses (some o f which were highly damaging to living people), would they please cut the offending passages,"161 now she could determine in every detail what image of Plath would be created: That a whole range of new primary material was made available for this biography is not in question here. What is at issue is its own principles of selection, its own partiality of representation, its self-presentation as singular truth against the distorted vision of Plath (Plath's own vision and the vision of those who have differently - more sympathetically - presented her).162 This "singular truth" is meant to be emphasized by the addition of three essays to Bitter Fame , written by Lucas Myers, Dido M erwin, and Richard M urphy. These essays have been criticized as "emphasizing the role of Sylvia Plath as aggressor and catalyst, and of Ted and O lw yn Hughes as victims and largely passive agents,"163 and as revealing some unattractive not to say repugnant aspect of Sylvia Plath's personality: each serves to support a view of her as jealous, success-hungry, manipulative, self-obsessed and - in Dido Merwin's venomous contribution - border-line psychotic. The message is clear: only a man of saintly temperament and of high commitment to the future of Poetry could have lived with this devil-woman for more than 24 hours. Ted Hughes lived

160 Janet Malcolm, "Annals of Biography: The Silent Woman," The New Yorker Aug. 23 & 30, 1993: 84-159; 122. Cf. also Janet Malcolm, The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes (New York: Knopf, 1994). 161 Olwyn Hughes, "The Plath Myth and the Reviewing of Bitter F am e" Poetry Review 80.3 (Autumn 1990): 61-63; 62. 162 Rose, The Haunting o f Sylvia Plath 94. 163 Anthony Thwaite, "Meltdown: Bitter Fame. A Life o f Sylvia Plath by Anne Stevenson," London Review o f Books 26 Oct. 1989: 28-29; 28.

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with her for several years but in the end even he had to get some air.164 Olwyn Hughes defends these essays as "the testimony of honourable [my emphasis] and intelligent people who have scrupulously, perceptively and (in view o f the powerful cult) courageously given their memories of S y lv ia."165 My discussion of the censorship on the part o f Plath's literary estate, in particular o f Ted and Olwyn Hughes, reveals that the issues at stake are the question o f "facts/reality" and who is to hold these facts, the legal question o f whose rights have to be protected - Plath's or her fam ily's the academic question o f literary and biographical interpretations o f Plath's work and a redefinition o f genres in the name o f scholarship. These questions reveal, on another level, that the "haunting of Sylvia Plath" has also become a struggle for power, for control over the public image of Sylvia Plath. These struggles and controversies simply suggest that there are different or even contradictory ideas of who Plath was. I would agree with Susan Van Dyne who "assumes that there is no master narrative o f her life o r her a r t." 166 For a very long time in her life Plath did not know herself up until the last several months of her life. She was contradictory in what image she presented o f herself to the public and to herself. She knew she was not the woman other people saw, but she was not the exact opposite either. She was looking for an identity for herself that she could define, that she could point to and say, "This is m e " that she would be com fortable with, and that would, most importantly, dissolve the tensions in her life to a whole person who would include all branches o f her fig tree. She was too much part o f a society that embraced the either/or paradigms of m an-wom an, poet-housewife/mother/wife, and of success/failure to understand and accept her identity as something that was never to be fixed, that was constantly changing, that was actually defined by non-stability, fluidity etc. The posthumous image of Sylvia Plath is marked by precisely the tension between the good girl and the angry poet. Plath's life and work evolved around personal and social definitions o f femininity that were mutually exclusive. Whereas her personal self overcame this crucial tension in her poetry and understood that "identity is a necessary [and, one might

164 Ian Hamilton, "Whose Sylvia: The Estate's or the Biographers?" Observer 29 Oct. 1989: n.p. 165 Olwyn Hughes, "The Plath Myth" 62. 166 Van Dyne, Revising Life 1.

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add, imposed] e rro r," 167 Plath saw no chance to survive in society. Thus, her death is at once a personal triumph and a social failure. Ted and Olwyn H ughes re-enforce this reading o f the last poems as those o f a liberated voice by hiding poems, destroying journals, and concealing letters, because "[o]ne o f the ironies that define censorship as a paradox is that it predictably creates sophisticated audiences. The reader o f a text known to be censored cannot be naive, if only because the act of interdiction renders a text p ara b o lic."168 The censorship practiced by Ted and O lw yn Hughes still tries to silence the voice she had found, a voice disagreeable and devastating for the environment, definitely a voice that is not socially acceptable. In their opinion, Plath broke the social laws o f femininity by her behavior to her husband and to their children and by the integration o f her life into her poetry. For them, her w ork reflects too m uch o f her - in their m ind - condemnable life. Therefore, the woman is labeled mad; the poet is condem ned, and the work is censored. The voice of liberation is just not acceptable because it opens up a m uch more complex understanding o f identity and demands the creation of a new vocabulary/discourse on identity with the possibilites of accepted dynamics and difference.

167 Judith Butler, April 30, 1993, Frankfurt. 168 Michael Holquist, "Corrupt Originals: The Paradox of Censorship," PMLA 109.1 (Jan. 1994): 14-25; 14.

Arrogant, I think I have written lines which qualify me to be The Poetess of America (as Ted will be The Poet of England and her dominions). Who rivals? Well, in history Sappho, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rosetti, Amy Lowell, Emily Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay - all dead. Now: Edith Sitwell and Marianne Moore, the aging giantesses, and poetic godmother Phyllis McGinley is out - light verse: she's sold herself. Rather: May Swenson, Isabella Gardner, and most close, Adrienne Cecile Rich - who will soon be eclipsed by these eight poems: I am eager, chafing, sure of my gift, wanting only to train and teach it ^

2. Adrienne Rich: "Ungrateful, insatiable, perhaps a m onster"2 In the years right after her marriage to Ted Hughes, Plath was in a state of euphoria about her successful marriage and conceived o f other wom en poets only in terms o f competition for public acceptance, am ong them Adrienne Rich. In the late 1950s, Rich (*1929 in Baltimore), only a few years her senior, was an acclaimed and published poet.3 She received 1 Sylvia Plath, Journals 211 (March 28, 1958). 2 O f Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (1976; New York: Norton, 1986) 42. Further references will be given in the text preceded by OWB. 3 Adrienne Rich has published the following collections of poetry and essays. Further references to the poetry will be given in the text with an abbreviation of the title and, if known, the year when the poem was written: A Change o f World (New Haven: Yale UP, 1951) [CWJ; The Diamond Cutters and Other Poems (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1955) [DC]; Necessities o f Life: Poems, 1962-1965 (New York: Norton, 1966) [ML]; Selected Poems (London: Chatto and Windus Hogarth Press, 1967) [SP]; Leaflets: Poems, 1965-1968 (New York: Norton, 1969) [L]; Snapshots o f a Daughter-in-Law (London: Chatto and Windus, 1970) [SDL]; The Will to Change: Poems 1968-1970 (New York: Norton, 1971) \WC\\ Diving Into the Wreck: Poems 1971-72 (New York: Norton, 1973) [DW\\ Poems: Selected and New, 1950-1974 (New York: Norton, 1974) [PSN]; The Dream o f a Common Language: Poems 1974-1977 (New York: Norton, 1978) [DCL)\ On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose, 1966-1978 (New York: Norton, 1979); A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far: Poems, 1978-1981 (New York: Norton, 1982) [WPTF]\ Sources (Woodside, CA: Heyeck Press, 1983) [S]; The Fact o f a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New, 1950-1984 (New York: Norton, 1984) [FD]; Your Native Land, Your Life: Poems (New York: Norton, 1986) [YNLYL]; Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose, 1979-1985 (New York: Norton, 1986); Time's Power: Poems 1985-1988 (New York: Norton, 1989) [7Y>]; An Atlas o f the Difficult World: Poems 1988-1991 (New York: Norton, 1991) [ADW\\ Collected Early Poems 1950-1970 (New York: Norton, 1993)

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the Yale Younger Poets Award for her first collection o f poetry, A Change o f World , in 1951 and went to Europe on a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1952-53. She married Alfred H. Conrad, professor o f economy at Harvard in 1953. Within four years they had three sons (David in 1955 [coinciding with the publication of her second book, The Diamond Cutters], Paul in 1957, Jacob Conrad in 1959). Her third collection of poetry, Snapshots o f a Daughter-in-Law (1963), in which she started dating her poems since she believed in the close relationship between personal life and art, was published with the support of another Guggenheim Fellowship (1961-62) and an Amy Lowell Traveling Fellowship (1962-63) after eight years without a single publication. Although the poems in this 1963 collection are "a portrait of the poet herself, struggling to establish and maintain her identity, not as a poet but as a woman, a person in her own right who is also a poet, with emotions and intellectual reactions equal to but different from those of a male poet,"4 throughout these years she felt dissatisfied and incompetent in all her activities. She started experiencing the duality o f her roles as mother/wife/housewife and as a poet. Her desire to be perfect turned into the belief of being a failure on both sides and produced feelings o f guilt towards her family. She later thematized this conflict in her poetry and in her essays. But in the 1960s, she did not yet have the language to express this split; Plath's fig-tree metaphor might be applied here as well. After the death of Rich's father in 1964, she and her husband moved with their children from Cambridge, MA, to New York City, a move which marked a turning point in her career as a poet towards more political topics, resulting in Necessities o f Life (1966) and Leaflets (1969). She taught writing at Columbia University (1966-68) and then joined Gwendolyn Brooks, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde at the City College o f New York as a faculty member. She separated from her husband, who only a few months after this separation committed suicide in 1970. Rich took a step towards feminism in The Will to Change (1971), a title taken from Charles O lson's poetry, but it was Diving Into the Wreck (1973) that "was hailed by the w om en's movement as a guideline in poetry to active fem inism ."5 She was chosen to receive the National Book Award for this collection, yet refused it, and accepted it only together with Audre Lorde and Alice W alker in the name of all women. In contrast to Sylvia Plath, who was

[CEP], What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (New York: Norton, 1993) | WFNPP ]. 4 Jean Gould, Modern American Women Poets (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1984) 220. 5 Gould, Modern American Women Poets 231.

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never able to express her potentially feminist ideas, Rich began to criticize openly patriarchal structures. The long-hidden and taboo relationship between women became a crucial issue in her life and in her poetry. Rich continued to be concerned with self-exploration and self-definition. She decided to emerge from her invisibility, to come out with her lesbianism.6 She became an activist in the feminist movement and openly wrote about very personal experiences that connected her to other feminists and in particular to a community of women. In contrast to Sylvia Plath, Rich tried to go beyond her personal situation and to reach out for other women. W hereas Plath underwent the development from social adherence to pregiven norms to a rejection of these norms within the rapid speed o f only seven years, Adrienne Rich had the chance to see the emergence of the w om en's movement, joined it, and became one of its leading figures. She published numerous essays dealing with the position of women in society, often drawing on her own life experiences. This autobiographical writing found a first climax in O f Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (1976), in which she criticizes the institutionalization o f an experience that all women share, whether in reality or as a possibility. In the late 70s and early 80s, she published The Dream o f a Common Language (1978), another collection of essays, and A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far (1982), and moved from New York City back to Massachusetts. She started exploring the intimate relationship between a w om an's being and life and language: Like the French feminist critics Julia Kristeva, Helene Cixous, and Luce Irigaray, Rich insists that women need to think with their bodies and, if possible, to return to the preoedipal experience before the patriarchal grid imposed the bifurcation of mind and body, self and other.7 H er autobiographical impulses made her deal openly with the issues of her Jewishness, and with her conflicts with her father and later on with her husband (Sources, 1983). Sources also "investigates the question of

6 Adrienne Rich, "It is the Lesbian in Us" (1976), On Lies, Secrets, and Silence 199202; Adrienne Rich, Twenty-One Love Poems (in The Dream o f a Common Language, 1978). 7 Wendy Martin, "Another View of 'City Upon a Hill': The Prophetic Vision of Adrienne Rich," Women Writers and the City: Essays in Feminist Literary Criticism, ed. Susan Merrill Squier (Knoxville, TN: U of Tennessee P, 1984) 249-63; 258.

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strength, both moral and poetic, and how Rich might discover such strength within her experience."8 In the 1980s, however, she turned towards the force of physical pain that increasingly marked her life {Your Native Land, Your Life, 1986). She explored it in writing for her own sake but also for the sake o f understanding - once again but this time on a slightly different level - the borderline between personal pain and public/social suffering. H er pain did not become a private issue but one that she made accessible to others by sharing. She continued to thematize the close interrelation o f private and public realms: "Only by acknowledging the blurring of edges can poetry continue to make connections between the personal and the public, between self and w orld."9 But she also looked for what remained apart from pain: "Read as a whole, the poems of Your Native Land, Your Life are about what is recoverable, what can be salvaged for an imagination that takes cognizance of the sociohistorical realities o f injustice, brutality, and te rro r." 10 From her radically feminist and lesbian years in the 1970s, Rich has turned towards a calmer way of writing, never forgetting, however, that she is a woman and continues to write as one (An Atlas o f the Difficult World, 1991). She now lives in California together with the AfricanCaribbean writer Michelle Cliff. This brief biographical summary o f Adrienne Rich shows that her life and her work cannot be separated from each other. W henever she writes, she writes about herself as an individual with a private and a public life, as a spokeswoman for w om en's issues, as a representative of (all) women. The autobiographical mode is essential for her writing but had to be concealed in her early poetry, as was the case with Sylvia Plath and other women writers of the 1950s and 60s. Rich's life and her attitude towards the social structure, however, are unconsciously present in her early poetry and become more and more consciously present in her later poetry. The more clearly she understands her own situation and that of other women, the more openly autobiographical her poems and essays become. David Kalstone calls Rich "strongly committed to autobiography, to poetry as an instrument o f personal revolve and clarification . . . . n11 The process towards this understanding, this search for a definition o f the self translates into content and form of her writing. On the one hand, she chooses poetry, 8 Joanne Feith Diehl, "'O f Woman Bom ': Adrienne Rich and the Feminist Sublime," Women Poets and the American Sublime (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1990) 142-68; 159. 9 Diehl, "'O f Woman Bom '" 167. 10 Diehl. "’O f Woman Bom '" 165. 11 David Kalstone, Five Temperaments: Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, James Merrill, Adrienne Rich. John Ashbery (New York: Oxford UP, 1977) 130.

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a genre that by definition is a personal way o f writing and by tradition has become marginalized after a climax in modernism with the poetry o f T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. From the 1950s onward, however, women have seized poetry and named its marginalization into one o f their major sources for power. On the other hand, Rich chooses essays that can deal with public or private issues in formal or informal ways. She turns, however, against accepted conventions and experiments with both genres - poetry and essays - and combines them with autobiography, so that they serve her needs: Rich, . . . , coherently crossed autobiography with biography; polemic with scholarship; political theory with literary criticism. In part, her transgressions of generic conventions are the deconstructive gestures of post-modernism. . . . In greater part, her mingling of ’subjective' and 'objective' genres, advocacy and argument, demonstrates her belief in their inseparability. Her style also emblemizes the position of contemporary, educated women. 12 Adrienne Rich’s experimentation with various forms o f personal life, with heterosexual and lesbian relationships, with the integration o f black and white w om en's lives reveals a search for identity at work that tries to deconstruct the imposed social norms, to analyze them, and to reconstruct them to an acceptable form. Whereas at one time or another she sets one form of life as ideal above others, she constantly has to revise her statements, adds new important issues to her poetry, and comes to the conclusion that openness for changes both in her life and her poetry and acceptance o f differences can translate into a viable social and poetical organization. 12 Catherine Stimpson, "Adrienne Rich and Lesbian/Feminist Poetry," Parnassus 1213 (1985): 249-68; 251. For further references to a metissage o f genres in Adrienne Rich see Maggie Humm: " . . . Rich continually fluctuates between private experience and public statement in her writing by obliterating the border between genres - between autobiography and advocacy." "Occupied Territories: Adrienne Rich," Border Traffic: Strategies o f Contemporary Women Writers (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1991) 160-84; 163; see also Marge Piercy: "The final reason Rich's book [Of Woman Born\ has disturbed reviewers is because the form is unconventional. . . . We are not used to books that are rooted in the deeply, painfully personal and move from what is learned in the examined emotional life out to scholarly overviews of prehistory and a critical discussion o f medical practice. In this instance, the form itself is a product of feminist discipline. Rich believes thought is most useful, most authentic when rooted in our body, our experiences, not alienated, and this book is a powerful instance of that blend of objective and subjective, personal and political thought that is felt and feelings intelligently analyzed." "A Rich Gift for Us," Parti-Colored Blocks fo r a Quilt (Ann Arbor: The U of Michigan P, 1982) 268-71; 271; see also James Daniel Daubs: "A privileging of autobiography inheres in and aids in the construction of the self-referential long poem." "Self-Referential Anxiety in the Romantic and Modem Long Poem," Diss. University o f Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1988; 6.

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Rich translates her own life experiences into her autobiographical prose and poetry and thus uses the text as a m irror for herself. Like Plath, she creates a textual alter ego who, in her search for identity, experim ents with the idea o f reflection. In the first part on Adrienne Rich, "Liberation into Fragm entation," I will focus on three main aspects o f R ich's life: sexuality, motherhood, and religion (which determined her life as the daughter o f a Jewish father). R ich's understanding of sexuality undergoes a developm ent from heterosexuality (which coincides with the time of her m arriage) via androgyny to lesbianism and the connected concept o f the com m unity of women. With R ich's growing awareness and changing understanding o f her sexuality, her ideas about motherhood change as well. From the birth of her first son in 1955 to the publication o f O f Woman Born in 1976, she increasingly questions the "institution" o f motherhood as imposed on women and defined by men. The relationship with her father and his Jewishness is equally marked by this growing insight into patriarchal structures o f family and religion. The second part of this chapter, "Poetry 'C arrier o f the S parks,'" will focus on how Rich evaluates poetry and writing, how her concept of poetry develops, how she considers her position as a poet, and how this position is intimately connected to her position as a woman and changes with her attitudes towards motherhood and sexuality. She integrates life and text to a very high degree; her form of writing becomes the autobiographical text, a m irror o f herself. In the third part o f this chapter, "Smoky Mirrors; Representation in Adrienne R ich’s Poetry," I will look at the representational phenomenon o f m irror imagery. As for Sylvia Plath, poems become mirrors for Adrienne Rich, and her personae also desire the look into a m irror as a source for selfknowledge. How does Rich then read the stories told by these looking glasses? A poem is a room in the house of language. A poem is a stage in the process of self-definition, a grounding and realizing of self-image and image of the world. Poetry is always political no matter who is writing it. . . . The form of the poem is an expression of everything that the poet is and is expressing.13

13 Pamela Annas, ”A Poetry of Survival: Unnaming and Renaming in the Poetry of Audre Lorde, Pat Parker, Sylvia Plath, and Adrienne Rich," Colby Library Quarterly 18.1 (March 1982): 9-25; 9-10.

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2.1. Adrienne Rich: Liberation into Fragmentation

2.1.1. Heterosexuality, Androgyny, Lesbianism: The Search for a Sexual Identity With her marriage to a socially and financially well-situated man in 1953 and her three sons, Rich fulfilled the expectations o f her environment which was shaped by the ideology o f femininity o f the 1950s and 60s. Even though she formally adhered to the cult o f marriage and motherhood, she expressed critical opinions about these institutions in her poetry as early as 1951, two years before she herself got married. In the following first part o f this chapter, I will discuss Adrienne Rich's attitude as expressed in her poetry towards marriage and heterosexual relationships as an involuntary submission to the ruling social codes o f her time ("An Unsaid W ord," "Novella"). H er growing dissatisfaction with her own marriage, which has to be seen in the context of the w om en's movement of which she was one o f the main activists, led her to look for alternative ways of living in the form of androgyny explored mainly in her poetry of the early 1970s ("Diving Into the W reck"). With the discovery o f lesbianism for herself and a re-definition o f this term. Rich is finally drawn towards woman-to-woman relationships as a real and practicable alternative to heterosexuality ("(The Floating Poem , Unnum bered)," "For Ethel Rosenberg"). Sexuality for her thus becomes m ore than just physical intimacy with a partner; it expresses her social and psychological development within American society from the 1950s to the 80s and her gradual distancing from given norms. Sexuality turns into a critical social statement, into a means for the search for identity, and into a way o f life based on lesbian love. It significantly marks her autobiographical poetry.

Heterosexuality Based on her experience of a powerful father and a submissive mother in the family, Rich outlines the position of the wife as it is seen at the time in the poem "An Unsaid W ord" (CW, 1951). She shows what is expected o f the wife and how difficult it is to fulfill these expectations. The woman in the poem always has to be there for her husband; she cannot leave or choose her ow n way in case he remembers her and comes back. She can call him to com e back to her but never on her own terms: "She who has

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power to call her man / From that estranged intensity / W here his mind forages alone" should not risk this "power" by saying anything to him about having left her alone, by reproaching him, by stating her own will. She has to keep "her peace" and leave "him free" and be always available. She "[k]nows this the hardest thing to learn," because it is contrary to her nature that wants her to either follow or leave him; it is contrary to any human being's nature, but expected o f the wife in the 1950s. The "unsaid word" here is the w om an's "I want." "Adrienne Rich understands silences that proceed from w om an's conditioning, particularly when such silences preserve a marriage. In general, Rich pays close attention to what goes 'unsaid' by lies, secrets, and silences . . . . ”14 W hat kind o f power is it, if it means to restrain one's impulses? It is the power to comply with her husband's wishes and thus secure herself a quiet life. "Since all these poem s operate upon restraint (in style, in feeling, in objectivity) and strategies o f disguise (for example, in choice of persona), they provide a clear picture of w om an's negative experience o f p o w e r."15 Rich does not use the personal pronoun I, but she does not use "the persona o f an objective seer, one without gender-consciousness"16 either: . . . . but she does say things about herself through her personas and woman narrators. The women in these early poems, generally passive, stoical, isolated, and enclosed - and sometimes angry, disillusioned, and rebellious - are tethered to conditioned notions of what a woman should be. They attempt to live in a world of dreams and illusions, often with sad or tragic results.17 Into the early 1960s, the personae o f R ich's poems continue to be disillusioned and unable to break out of imposed role distributions along gender lin es.18 A separation along gender lines despite a physical closeness

14 Claire Keyes, The Aesthetics o f Power: The Poetry o f Adrienne Rich (Athens: The U o f Georgia P, 1986) 36. 15 Keyes, The Aesthetics o f Power 28. Similarly, Rich's poem "Living in Sin" (DC, 1955) not only expresses the disillusionment of a young woman after a night with her male lover, but also the impossibility for her escape. 16 Myriam Diaz-Diocaretz, The Transforming Power o f Language: The Poetry o f Adrienne Rich (Utrecht: HES Publishers, 1984) 4. 17 Margaret Morrison, "Adrienne Rich: Poetry of ’Re-Vision,'" Washington University, 1977; 173-74.

Diss.

George

18 Cf. also "A Marriage in the ’Sixties” (SDL, 1961) in which Rich uses the images of the "fellow-particle" to express the wife’s desire to communicate with her husband. "Rich drew her conceit from particle physics. . . . She perceives her mate and herself as particles spinning in indeterminate orbits in an atom." Sherry Lutz Zivley, "Adrienne Rich's

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is em phasized in "Novella" (SDL, 1962). Husband and wife seem to have a verbal argum ent. The reaction and the space they choose differ according to sex: he gets up and goes outside for a walk; she goes to the kitchen and does the dishes. She fulfills her duty even in times of emotional stress but can hardly suppress her anger and rage. He can go outside and leave the sphere o f their quarrel, whereas she seems to be bound to the house. The parallel outline o f the poem (two lines and then one line in parentheses for the narrato r's comment on the sex o f the participants) reflects two parallel but opposing actions. She does not turn on the lights, except in the attic w here the children quarrel (a parallel to that o f their parents), and is left crying and bloodless. He is shown without emotions or even real reactions. He leaves the house and comes back. The poem consists o f 18 lines and 15 sentences with only three run-on lines. The sentences are short and matterof-fact, and in the three sentences that are two lines long the two parts o f the sentences are connected by the conjunctive "and" without betraying any dependence o f one part on the other or logical connection. This form gives the poem the status o f a summary of an action that frequently takes place. It is the plot that can be embellished into a story; it is the mere presentation o f facts without any causal relationships and thus open to interpretation. It looks like, at the end, husband and wife are reconciled, because she opens the door for him and turns on the lights in the house. But no-one has a chance to do otherwise; the poem does not offer the possibility o f a different solution, and it does not even suggest a reconciliation; it only suggests that they do not break apart. The relationship o f these two human beings is climactically reflected in the stars outside that are "separate as m inds." This human relationship is presented in geographical/spatial terms. The m an 's sphere is outside, away from home, at a certain distance - physically as well as emotionally. The w om an's sphere is the inside, the house, her household duties, and her place is next to her children who play in the attic. She could not simply leave house, children, and husband (the roles of housewife, mother, and wife) and then come back without any consequences. It is not even considered a possibility. She can only find an outlet for her anger through cracking the dishes. The dissatisfaction of the poet, Adrienne Rich, with this distribution o f roles can clearly be recognized. In short, the poem is a summary o f her perception of "m arriage" in the 1960s, a short novel, a novella focusing on types. The irony lies in one of the meanings o f "novella," which is "novelty," because

Contemporary Metaphysical Conceit," Notes on Contemporary Literature 12.3 (May 1982): 6-8; 6.

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the subject o f the poem is not new whereas the fact that it is publically stated is. The discussion o f "An Unsaid Word" and "Novella" has clearly shown that Adrienne Rich from her early poetry on has always felt uneasy with the imposed distribution o f gender roles, and she has experienced that the roles for the woman are hardly ever to her advantage, at least not when they are institutionalized and set up as a norm for every woman. There are, on the one hand, the dissatisfaction with her position as a woman and the conflicts between woman and poet, and on the other hand, the m alcom m unication or often total absence of communication with her male partner. Until the late 60s, she does not have any words yet to call it a failure o f language, but she makes the first step of experiencing the impossibility o f communicating with men. The concepts of power she presents in some of her poem s imply that a woman needs to overcome the gap between what she wants to do and what others want her to do. Rich asks for a concept where pow er is the ability for her to act according to what she wants and to what she believes is right. Rich clearly tries to keep a distance towards the subjects o f her poems. She seems to be afraid of openly inscribing herself into her text because of the connections that could be drawn between her writing and her personal life. Only with her increasing involvement in the w om en's movement does she learn not to shy away from public statements, in essays and poetry, about the intimate relationship between her writing and her life.

Androgyny After the separation from her husband in 1969/70 and after her husband's suicide in 1970, Adrienne Rich enters a transitional period in her life. She is no longer convinced that heterosexual relationships can fulfill w om en's and m en’s needs. She has been able to expose the non-working mechanisms between husband and wife but is still looking for alternative life styles. In the early 70s, the concept o f androgyny is discussed and by many considered an ideal balance of male and female in every human being so that neither one dominates: "Denn 'm annlich' und 'w eiblich' sind keine absoluten GroBen, sondern Projektionen, die sich als Mischungsverhaltnisse auch in einer einzelnen Person vereinigen k o n n en ."19 Adrienne Rich is draw n to this concept because it promises equality o f the sexes and would give her the means o f defining herself in these terms.

19 Achim Aumhammer, Androgynie: Studien zu einem Motiv in der europdischen Literalur ( K61n: Bohlau Verlag, 1986) 3.

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The concept o f androgyny in literature is not new .20 In the nineteenth century, Elizabeth Cady Stanton in The Woman's Bible (1895-98) described the Heavenly Being as androgynous, and at the beginning o f the twentieth century, Virginia W oolf discussed androgyny in her famous essay A Room o f One's Own (1929).21 Carolyn G. Heilbrun in her study Toward a Recognition o f Androgyny (1973) goes further in her discussion o f the relevance o f androgyny for writing and social life and rejects a denial o f the importance o f sex and gender. For Heilbrun, androgyny is the ideal solution to the current discriminative situation, but she does not see it only as a com bination o f man and woman, o f male/masculine and fem ale/fem inine traits in every human being because that would still perpetuate the old dichotomy. She defines it as a movement away from sexual polarization and the prison of gender toward a world in which individual roles and the modes of personal behavior can be freely chosen. . . . This ancient Greek word - from andro (male) and gyn (female) - defines a condition under which the characteristics of the sexes, and the human impulses expressed by men and women, are not rigidly assigned. Androgyny seeks to liberate the individual from the confines of the appropriate.22 F o r H eilbrun then, physical opposites and their union are not the issue any m ore, but the characteristics that have been connected to them, the social norm s that define w om en and men and what they have to do, say, think etc. These feminine and masculine traits could still be called feminine and m asculine but would not have to be automatically connected to female and male. A w om an could choose masculine aspects as well as feminine aspects and so could the man. Thus, a writer would not have to repress her/his sex and would not have to write in a certain way because o f her/his sex either. H eilbrun's concept o f androgyny would level out and balance the opposition o f m ale/fem ale and masculine/feminine but would, o f course, at the same time, deny that all women have certain things in common as well as all men. H er concept denies the differences between the two sexes and

20 "Literarische Gestaltungen der Androgynie kumulieren in der Antike, Renaissance, der Romantik und in der Literaiur urn 1900." Aumhammer 5.

der

21 Cf. Woolf, A Room o f One's Own 101-02. Woolf concludes: " . . . it is fatal for any one who writes to think o f their sex. It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple; one must be woman-manly or man-womanly. . . . Some collaboration has to take place in the mind between the woman and the man before the act of creation can be accomplished. Some marriage o f opposites has to be consummated" (108). 22 Carolyn G. H eilbam , Toward a Recognition o f Androgyny (New York: Norton, 1973) x.

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would counteract, for example, the idea o f a community o f women. Yet, her concept leaves it up to any individual to choose freely from given possibilities and thus emphasizes the acceptance o f differences already present in the 1970s. "When Rich writes such poems as 'Diving Into the W reck' and 'T he Stranger,' she abandons her quest for a female aesthetic, focusing for a time on the ideal o f androgyny."23 Both these poems, "The Stranger" (DW, 1972) and "Diving Into the Wreck" (DW, 1972), reflect Adrienne R ich's quest for an ideal way of life. Her persona is on a journey through streets and rivers and finally dives into the sea to explore her possibilities and to find her identity. In the following, I will use "Diving Into the W reck" to show how Rich not only revisions sexuality but also questions the creation of (male) myths. It will also reveal how difficult it is to define "androgyny": "Bei dem Versuch, das Androgyne zu definieren, gerat man unverm eidbar an die Grenzen des Definierbaren. Denn das Wesen des Androgynen ist nicht nur die Zweiheit in der Einheit und die Ruhe, sondern auch das Vermischte und die Spannung."24 In "Diving Into the W reck," a woman dives into the sea towards her own "self." This quest for the self is represented in the quest for the wreck. The persona's starting point is the reading of the book of myths that do not seem to satisfy her desire for a definition of herself. The term myth implies the ideas o f legend, story, and lies; the representation o f women in this book o f myths is not to her satisfaction; she does not see herself reflected in these texts. She, therefore, decides to start the journey into the sea alone. The persona in "Diving Into the Wreck" is drawn towards the depths o f the sea as the realm o f her unconscious, under the surface level o f the water. In contrast to Plath, who often describes the desire for this other world in traditional mythic terms, Rich rejects the existing myths. Her persona intends to use the plunge into water as a means for reaching the depth o f her being, o f the wreck that she is, in order to find some valid definition o f herself. For Plath, the union with the river is the final goal, an escape from a patriarchal world to the motherly pulse o f water. R ich's persona needs the ladder to climb down the schooner and establishes a community with others who have used it for the same purposes: "We know what it is for, / we who have used it." The diving is a difficult task and not without obstacles, and there is no-one to support her: ”[A]nd there is no one / to tell me when the ocean / will begin." The mask

23 Keyes, The Aesthetics o f Power 156. 24 Ursula Prinz, "Einfuhrung," Androgyn: Sehnsucht nach Vollkommenheit, ed. Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (Berlin: Reimer, 1986) 9-32; 10.

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that she wears infiltrates her with power and assures her survival. The sea, however, cannot be encountered with force or power; there is no doubt that the sea is more powerful, but her idea is not to fight with the sea but to locate herself within the sea. Thus, both have to coexist. Having reached the depth o f herself and o f the sea, she is surrounded by "so many who have always / lived here." She encounters the fragments that she consists of, fragments which she can accept individually but none of which defines her as a whole human being. It is easy to get lost in the sea of these fragments and forget why she has come down here. H er desire is to find the one unifying force in her life, the one force that would bring all these fragm ents together: I came to explore the wreck. •

•

•

I came to see the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail. •

•

•

the thing I came for: the wreck and not the story of the wreck the thing itself and not the myth. The myths and the language they consist of - "The words are purposes. / The words are maps." - can only veil and hide the thing itself; language can be misused for certain purposes and can misguide the one who is on the quest. She, however, knows about these masks. She has finally reached the place. She defines herself as "mermaid" and "merman" combined in the personal pronoun "we": "We circle silently / about the wreck / we dive into the hold. / I am she: I am he." Their past co-existence, however, lies rotting inside barrels. Androgyny thus lies at the origin of a human being but has been destroyed by forces other than the sea. Rich here claims that everyone is essentially an androgynous being: "We are, I am , you are / by cowardice or courage / the one who find our way / back to this scene / carrying a knife, a camera / a book o f myths / in which / our names do not appear." In the construction "the one who find" she uses a singular noun but a plural verb which indicates the co-existence o f two in one. Whereas for Plath the plunge into water was clearly motivated by her desire for harmony with her womanhood. Rich, at this point in her life, uses the sea as a means for establishing her concept of androgyny. The book o f myths, a reference to existing patriarchically dominated texts, again appears at the end of this poem and is repeatedly accused o f misrepresenting reality. It turns into a looking glass that does not work for Rich. It does not name or has no name for the androgynous human being

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and thereby denies its existence and is consequently responsible for the wreck. In a very interesting way, Rich thus gives language an enorm ous power, namely that o f determining people's lives. The new self25 that emerges from this quest seems determined to rewrite history and the myths. While there is a hero, a quest, and a buried treasure, the hero is a woman; the quest is a critique of old myths; the treasure is knowledge: the whole buried knowledge of the personal and cultural foundering of the relations between the sexes, and a self-knowledge that can be won only through the act of criticism.26 R ich’s growing self-knowledge and her continued acts o f criticism lead her to a complete change in her attitude towards androgyny in 1977: The 'androgyny people' have not faced what it would mean in and for society for women to feel themselves and be seen as full human beings. I don't think of androgyny as progress anymore, I think it's a useless term, but 1 think of it as associated with the idea of 'liberating' men, giving males the desirable attributes that females have had without having to pay the dues.27 She has obviously re-visioned her utopian ideals o f the early 1970s and has come to the conclusion that every concept that accepts the presence o f men, in whatever form, can only be destructive for women. H er attempt at defining herself within this unifying concept of androgyny has failed and makes her finally turn towards other women to find her self reflected in the other. She also overcomes the concept of androgyny some lesbians in the early 1970s suggested: " . . . gender is more complicated than the simple dualism of masculinity and femininity. Lesbians are neither 'w om en' nor 'm e n .' In that way, the lesbian merges with the figure of the androgyne."28 For Rich, lesbians are clearly women; therefore she rejects androgyny and embraces lesbianism.

25 "The strongest poems in Diving into the Wreck depict a new self at the moment of rebirth." Lorraine Nancy Smith, "Poets in the World: The Political Poetry o f Denise Levertov and Adrienne Rich," Diss. Brown University, 1987; 171. 26 Rachel Blau DuPlessis, "The Critique of Consciousness and Myth in Levertov, Rich, and Rukeyser," Shakespeare's Sisters: Feminist Essays on Women Poets, ed. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1979) 280-300; 295. 27 Elly Bulkin, "An Interview with Adrienne Rich,’ Conditions 1.1 (1977): 50-65; 6162. 28 Bonnie Zimmerman, The Safe Sea o f Women: Lesbian Fiction 1969-1989 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1990) 70.

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Lesbianism Many women writing poetry today in America have come to the conclusion that the only way they can write as women is to reject men and write as lesbians.29 As we have seen in the previous chapters, Adrienne Rich has developed from a wife and housewife critically accepting the conventional and traditional definitions o f these roles, via an androgynous period to a woman embracing the community o f women and lesbianism in her life and her work. W hereas in Diving Into the Wreck (1973) she still looks for a definition of herself through an appropriation of male and female characteristics, she openly writes about relationships among women and her relationships with other women in her next collection o f poetry. The Dream o f a Common Language (1978). The years 1976-78 are a turning point in her private life as a woman and her public career as a poet. Within these years, she writes essays on the issue o f lesbianism ("It is the Lesbian in U s," 1976; "The Meaning o f Our Love for Women is What We Have Constantly to Expand," 1977), publishes her book O f Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (1976) and the poetry collection The Dream o f a Common Language (1978). She further elaborates on the issue o f lesbianism in 1980 in her essay "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence." Again, parallel to the changes in her life, her poetry changes, too; both life and poetry determine each other and the one could not continue without the other. H er development from heterosexuality to homosexuality is, however, not as clear-cut as the above-mentioned chronology might suggest. In analogy to the unconscious subversion of accepted rules for writing and genre, for art and its meaning for women in her early poetry, she writes about woman-to-woman relationships as early as 1962.30 "The lie [of the feminine mystique about femininity] keeps numberless women psychologically trapped, trying to fit mind, spirit, and sexuality into a prescribed script because they cannot look beyond the parameters o f the acceptable."31

29 Karen Alkalay-Gut, "The Lesbian Imperative in Poetry," Contemporary Review 242.1407 (April 1983): 209-11; 209. 30 Cf. "To Judith, Taking Leave" (FD , 1962), even though she publishes it much later. Only in 1977 does Adrienne Rich admit to the autobiographical quality of this poem. Cf. Elly Bulkin, "An Interview with Adrienne Rich," Conditions 1.1 64. 31 Adrienne Rich, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," Signs 5.4 (1980): 631-60; 657.

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Female sexuality in relationship to society becomes more and more the issue in Adrienne R ich's life in the 1970s. Lesbianism for her affects a w om an's life in many respects. The term "lesbian" is rejected by society, and by calling herself a lesbian, she puts herself even more on the margins o f the particular social construct she lives in. For Rich "lesbianism" means a turning away from men towards other women, but because of her rejection o f heterosexuality, she is criticized by men as well as by women. "The gynephobia of men does not touch us nearly so deeply or shatteringly as the gynephobia o f w om en,”32 because "[f]or a long time, the lesbian has been a personification of feminine evil."33 According to her re-definition of "lesbian," for her every woman is a potential lesbian: And I believe it is the lesbian in every woman who is compelled by female energy, who gravitates toward strong women, who seeks a literature that will express that energy and strength. It is the lesbian in us who drives us to feel imaginatively, render in language, grasp, the full connection between woman and woman. It is the lesbian in us who is creative, for the dutiful daughter of the fathers in us is only a hack.34 In her essay "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence" (1980), she uses the terms "lesbian existence" and "lesbian continuum":

Lesbian existence suggests both the fact of the historical presence of lesbians and our continuing creation of the meaning of that existence. I mean the term lesbian continuum to include a range - through each woman's life and throughout history - of woman-identified experience; not simply the fact that a woman has had or consciously desired genital sexual experience with another woman. If we expand it to embrace many more forms of primary intensity between and among women, including the sharing of a rich inner life, the bonding against male tyranny, the giving and receiving of practical and political support; if we can also hear in it such associations as marriage resistance and the 'haggard' behavior identified by Mary Daly . . . - we begin to grasp breadths of female history and psychology which have

32 Rich, "The Making of Our Love for Women is What We Have Constantly to Expand" (1977), On Lies, Secrets, and Silence 223-30; 227. 33 Rich, "The Making of Our Love for Women is What We Have Constantly to Expand" 225. 34 Rich, "It is the Lesbian in Us" (1976), On Lies. Secrets, and Silence 199-202; 20001.

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lain out of reach as a consequence of limited, mostly clinical, definitions of 'lesbianism.'35 Rich breaks out o f the narrow and usually very negative understanding of lesbianism and also m oves away from a merely sexual definition. For her, every wom an-to-wom an relationship is a lesbian relationship since women share, in her opinion, experiences and possibilities for experiences that men do not have. In her broader sense o f the term lesbian, lesbians cannot be considered on the m argins o f the female world. If all women share this experience, they are all on the margin o f patriarchy, but there should not be any m argins in the w om en's world. With her definition, she creates a utopia that cannot be accepted, not even by all women because the traditional definitions o f lesbian and o f what a normal sexual relationship looks like compete with hers. In the same way that she dreams o f a "com m on language," she dreams o f a "lesbian continuum." Both dreams find their resistance in the male as well as in the female world. Rich defines herself as being one with the community of women but is, o f course, aware that not all women want to share her experience and opinions. Even if one does not want to go as far as Rich, it is possible to acknowledge a potentially liberating force in her definition o f lesbianism, because she reveals the arbitrariness with which sexuality and sexual relationships are defined. She opens up tight structures, separates signifier and signified, and shows new possibilities for naming. Through her own definition, she also em powers herself because she is in a position in which she does not have to accept the definitions given to her. At the same time, she develops from a w om an basically insecure, dissatisfied with her life, ignorant o f the forces around her, to a woman who makes her life matter and who is courageous enough to oppose others and to make her private life public. Between 1974 and 1976 she writes her Twenty-One Love Poems (in reality twenty-two poems because she has one between XIV and XV that is "(The Floating Poem , Unnumbered)"). She completely rejects the interpretation o f them as heterosexual love poems because "[t]he love of wom en is the emotional source o f R ich's 'com m on' language."36 Two friends of mine, both artists, wrote me about reading the Twenty-One Love Poems with their male lovers, assuring me how 'universal' the poems were. I found myself angered, and when I asked myself why, I realized that it was anger at having

35 Rich, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence" 648-49. 36 Humm, "Occupied Territories: Adrienne Rich” 170.

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my work essentially assimilated and stripped of its meaning, 'integrated' into heterosexual romance.37 She rejects this appropriation o f her lesbian experience and poetry by a heterosexual world. Her reaction reveals, however, one very interesting and important aspect of her understanding o f poetry. For her, poetry is so closely linked to its author's life and experience that any interpretation that forgets about it is considered a "wrong" perception or misreading o f her poetry. She does not allow a reading like that by her friends because she regards her poetry as political poetry in the sense that she has messages to convey and that she sees her poems as actions within a feminist political context. She sees her poetry as a reflection of herself, and she has declared herself a lesbian, and, therefore, the poem, in her mind, cannot be about heterosexuality. The Twenty-One Love Poems are the story o f two women lovers, and "(The Floating Poem, Unnumbered)" is the assurance the persona gives herself and her lover that "[w]hatever happens with us . . . whatever happens, this is." The story is framed by fear that something might threaten their relationship, but no-one can take away the experiences they have already had together. It is the only poem that is openly sexual and erotic. It compares the body o f the lover to a landscape which the persona explores and travels. She compares the body of her lover to "the half-curled frond / o f the fiddlehead fern in forests / just washed by sun." The com parison is supported by the alliteration on the consonant " f ." "Rich uses the imagery o f w om en's bodies, 'every peak a crater' to undermine the topology o f her male contemporaries whose sexuality is still an adolescent nightm are."38 In contrast to male sexuality, the relationship here is one o f tenderness, innocence and wisdom, full of energy and comfort, protection and security.39

37 Elly Bulkin, "An Interview with Adrienne Rich," Conditions 1.2 (1977): 53-66; 58. 38 Humm, "Occupied Territories: Adrienne Rich" 180-81. 39 However, even among lesbians "difference” is not always accepted, as Rich reveals in "A Woman Dead in Her Forties" (DCL , 1974-77). Here, Rich chooses a woman who has to deal with the rejection she experiences by other women after her mastectomy. Cf. my discussion of Audre Lorde's cancer experience in 3.1.3. The Power of the Erotic. Equally, in the poem "Transcendental Etude" (DCL, 1977) Rich writes the history of women as one of rootlessness and dismemberment: "Birth stripped our birthright from us, / tore us from a woman, from women, from ourselves / so early on." According to Rich, birth then is the origin of estrangement of woman from other women, of the daughter from her mother, of the woman from herself. (Of course, boys are also separated from their mothers at birth. However, this original unity of woman-mother and man-boy is later reestablished in the socially accepted union of man and woman and even institutionalized in marriage. For women, no such institution exists, or is, if attempted by women, negatively

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. . . "(The Floating Poem, Unnumbered)" in its celebration of two women's lovemaking shows how essential the erotic component of lesbian love is to Rich. The Dream of a Common Language argues throughout that woman-identified love, ultimately lesbian in its defiance of the laws of the fathers, makes the poet's work possible.40 Adrienne Rich not only turns towards the world o f women around herself, but she also looks back in history to discover w om en's lives long hidden from the eyes of the public behind their husbands' backs. Rich uses these forgotten women as reflections of her own experiences but also as a warning to herself and other women not to give in to the norms and rules o f patriarchy,41 which could lead to the effacement o f a w om an’s own personality. In the poem "For Ethel Rosenberg" ( WPTF, 1980), Rich shows how Ethel Rosenberg loses her individuality through constant association with her husband; every photo in the newspaper presents both o f them together; they finally die together. The Rosenbergs are executed exactly one week before the persona's (and also Adrienne R ich's own) m arriage takes place. The question that comes up is that o f loyalty and punishment. Both the persona and Ethel Rosenberg want to distinguish themselves, want to be different from others. They both turn away from their families, and in R osenberg's case the family (mother and brother) even testify against her after her death. The persona has absorbed Ethel Rosenberg, ”[h]er figure sinks into my soul / a drowned statue / sealed in lead," but after a while she separates the woman from her husband, similar to Rich's separation from her husband several years earlier. The representation of Ethel R osenberg's life is intimately connected with and even reflects Adrienne R ich's own experiences. In contrast to other poems in which Rich focuses on the actual experiences o f women o f the past, here she reflects on what Ethel sanctioned.) "The longing for the mother . . . is the root of women's longing to be touched by a woman and is fulfilled in a lesbian relationship." Carol Christ, "Homesick for a Woman, for Ourselves: Adrienne Rich," Diving Deep and Surfacing: Women Writers on Spiritual Quest (Boston: Beacon Press, 1980) 75-96; 89. The physical separation at birth is continued in and after the oedipal crisis when the girl sides with the father against the mother. Rich, however, condemns the rules of socially imposed heterosexuality. 40 Susan Stanford Friedman, "'I Go Where I Love’: An Intertextual Study o f H.D. and Adrienne Rich," Coming to Light: American Women Poets in the Twentieth Century , cd. Diane Wood Middlebrook and Marilyn Yalom (Ann Arbor: The U of Michigan P, 1985) 233-53; 242. Cf. also Mary Carruthers, "Imagining Women: Notes Towards a Feminist Poetic," Massachusetts Review 20.2 (1979): 281-307. 41 Cf. her poem "Paula Becker to Clara Westhoff" (DCL, 1975-76) in which Rich explains the historical and personal background of these two women and comments on their intimate friendship and on the (unnecessary) death of Paula Becker in a hemorrhage after childbirth.

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Rosenberg might have done if she had continued living. W ould she have stood up for other women even though women inflicted pain on her? "[H]er mother testifies against her / her sister-in-law testifies against her. " Ethel Rosenberg was a model of loyalty to her husband for which she was punished with death. Rich can only wonder if Ethel Rosenberg would have ever joined the w om en's cause: "Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg would you / have marched to take back the night / collected signatures / for battered w om en who kill / What would you have to tell us / would you have burst the n e t." This poem is a re-visioning of a well-known historical wom an figure, a wish to understand her and see parallels and differences, a wish to associate with her. She wants to see her as a human being, a woman with similar problem s, and no longer as the wife of her husband or as the historical event. Rich takes her back into the w om en's community from which she is excluded by her mother and her sister-in-law. Loyalty to her husband led to punishm ent in the form of rejection and death. Rich shows that a w om an's identity defined by the dependence on a male partner can be destructive to the w om an. The male looking glass only reflects the w om an's image as it is constructed by society, by her partner, and by her own internalization of these norms. The failure of Rich's concept of lesbianism and, therefore, also R ich's ow n failure to find a satisfying way o f life for herself, is finally expressed in one o f her most recent collections of poems, An Atlas o f a Difficult World. H ere Rich presents the results of a non-recognition o f w om en's pow er in w om en's lives. She still upholds her belief in the joined w om en's forces, but after more than twenty unsuccessful years, she does not sound very enthusiastic or convincing. She translates her own pessimism into a concern for poor women. Rich now postulates the value o f the profession of the poet as one of giving stability, a sense of a continuous identity with a fixed geography in the background. The poet moves freely and independently from one place to another, collects material and writes it dow n or represents it in language. In many of her early poems, Rich confronts the issue of role distribution in society. She expresses her dissatisfaction and attempts to bridge the gaps between reality and her idealism first o f all within the given structures. She reveals the mechanisms of how an ideology o f femininity creates an ideology o f masculinity as well which is perpetuated not only by men themselves but also by women who have internalized these social norm s and who want to see their husbands as strong and invulnerable. W hereas Plath stopped at the moment when she rejected heterosexuality as institutionalized in marriage, w om en's disappointment together with a

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growing sense o f awareness o f the impossibility o f com m unication lead Rich to search for a concept that might overcome the dichotomy between the two sexes/genders in order to reach harmony. H er idea o f androgyny does not w ork because it only hides the real experiences o f w om en. R ich's open declaration o f lesbianism is at once a personal, sexual, and a political statement based on her experience as a woman. W hereas Rich creates the persona in her heterosexual and androgynous poems as her alter ego , she adds another alter ego in her lesbian poems. The lesbian persona sees herself reflected in her wom an lover. Thus, the importance o f reflection is emphasized on two levels between poet and persona and persona and lover. Thereby, the lover in the text becomes a reflection o f the poet as well. In lesbianism as a life style Rich finds mutual support and physical love, which she does not hestitate to represent in openly sexual and erotic terms. In the everyday life o f women, however, she sees the problem atics o f lesbianism within a society based on the norm o f heterosexuality. She sees the danger o f a perpetuation o f patriarchal structures within a community o f women when women, such as those with breast cancer, are cast to the margins o f this margin. Yet, with historical examples she warns o f w om en's determination by men and claims that women m atter on their own. In her most recent poetry, Rich turns away from the m ore idealized idea o f the community o f women o f the 1980s to an emphasis on social criticism. Social and economic disadvantages o f women can be overcom e only if wom en help each other to change society. Apart from the acceptance o f various "sexualities," motherhood is the field over which wom en have to take control.

2.1.2. O f Motherhood The perpetuation o f social norms and expectations for w om en is most clearly visible in the understanding o f motherhood in a heterosexual and patriarchal society. In the 1950s, in particular, the family was the most significant unity within the social structure. A w om an's goal had to be to get married first and then give birth to several children. Social acceptance was closely connected to children, and the reconstruction o f the A m erican society after W orld W ar II was based on a new and numerous generation. W hereas in a heterosexual and patriarchal society motherhood is intimately and exclusively linked to a traditional marriage, R ich's lesbianism em braces the possibility o f motherhood for same-sex couples. In her m arriage in the 1950s and 60s, she gave birth to three sons and seemed to accept her role

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o f mother. In the 1970s, however, she needed to find ways o f harmonizing her newly found life style o f lesbianism and her role as a m other against social attitudes in which she could not see herself reflected. In the following, I will focus on Rich’s attitudes towards m otherhood, changing from the acceptance of a more traditional concept o f motherhood to a concept based on personal experience, and their representation in her autobiographical essays. Whereas she describes in her prose the raising o f her consciousness and her growing criticism o f the institution of motherhood and thus draws on her life experiences, she consciously omits this issue in her poetry. Through this omission, she creates herself a space in poetry in which she is not confined by the role o f mothering and in which she sees aspects of herself reflected that would otherwise be concealed by the dominating presence of motherhood in her life. The only poem dealing explicitly with a m other's role seems to be "M other-Right" in which Rich thematizes a m other's desire to escape with her child from the overpowering presence of a man. The poem seems to be the very justification, for Rich, for not dealing with motherhood in poetry, and it also shows that reflection and the object of reflection can be consciously chosen by the woman poet. In a much later poem, "One Life," she tries to get a grasp o f herself through a juxtaposition o f various parts o f herself including motherhood. At this point in her life, Rich has given up the need to define herself with one category. Liberation can only take place in fragmentation with the acceptance of all fragments on an equal level. R ich's children were partly responsible for the raising o f her consciousness. She experienced the contrast between doing what she felt like doing, namely being what is possible for men, poets and parents of children, and what was expected of her. Her attempt at being perfect in all roles seemed to fail and made her dissatisfied: . . . ; I had a marriage and a child. If there were doubts, if there were periods of null depression or active despairing, these could only mean that I was ungrateful, insatiable, perhaps a monster. About the time my third child was born, I felt that I had either to consider myself a failed woman and a failed poet, or to try to find some synthesis by which to understand what was happening to me. What frightened me most was the sense of drift, of being pulled along on a current which called itself my destiny, but in which I seemed to be losing touch with whoever I had been, with the girl who had experienced her own will and energy almost ecstatically at times, walking around a city or riding a train at night or typing in a student room. (OWB 42-43)

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Adrienne Rich clearly experienced the "problem that has no name" because she had internalized the definition o f womanhood at that time. In hindsight, however, she saw herself as not adhering to this definition. She deviated through her dissatisfaction, depression, and despair even though she supposedly had everything she might want to have as a woman o f her time. But she gave herself non-feminine labels such as "insatiable" and "monster" because she experienced the tension between given norms and her own needs for self-affirmation.42 In order to hide her otherness, opportunism or at least silence became the only way for survival. Throughout recorded history the 'childless' woman has been regarded . . . as a failed woman, unable to speak for the rest of her sex, and omitted from the hypocritical and palliative reverence accorded the mother. 'Childless' women have been burned as witches, persecuted as lesbians, have been refused the right to adopt children because they were unmarried. They have been seen as embodiments of the great threat to male hegemony: the woman who is not tied to the family, who is disloyal to the law of heterosexual pairing and bearing. (OWB 251-52) With the rise o f the W om en's Movement and the Civil Rights M ovement, difference is gradually accepted and sometimes even preferred, even though rising feminism is feared by some men: "Much male fear o f feminism is infantilism - the longing to remain the m other's son, to possess a woman who exists purely for him ."43 In the same way Rich redefines lesbianism through an analysis o f what motherhood means and implies for society and for women respectively. In her book O f Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (1976), Rich explains that there is a difference between the experience o f motherhood a woman has, be it actual or the potential motherhood, and what society has made out o f it, namely an institution. This institutionalization o f motherhood takes away the w om an's control over herself in motherhood. Society defines the terms for her, and she has to accept the definitions without questioning them. In the foreword to O f Woman Born, Rich explains her method and goals: Throughout this book I try to distinguish between two meanings of motherhood, one superimposed on the other: the 42 If deviation turns women into monsters, the mechanism at work here can be compared to some extent to the witch hunts in the seventeenth century, the Salem witchcraft trials in 1692, and to the McCarthyism o f the 1950s. 43 Rich, "Husband-Right and Father-Right" (1977), On Lies, Secrets, and Silence 21522 ; 221 .

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potential relationship of any woman to her powers of reproduction and to children; and the institution, which aims at ensuring that that potential - and all women - shall remain under male control. (OWB 13) In R ich ’s understanding, society has turned biological capacities o f wom en into an institution organized and structured by fixed rules that only allow lawful (with rewards) or unlawful (with negative sanctions) behavior of w om en but no free choice. Thus in Rich's perspective, the potential has turned into a must which can be controlled much more easily. Therefore, only in pregnancy "[Rich] felt, for the first time in [her] adolescent and adult life, not-guilty" ( OWB 25). According to Rich, the institution o f m otherhood is completely controlled by men: This institution - which affects each woman's personal experience - is visible in the male dispensation of birth control and abortion; the guardianship of men over children in the courts and the educational system; the subservience, through most of history, of women and children to the patriarchal father; the economic dominance of the father over the family; the usurpation of the birth process by a male medical establishment. The subjectivity of the fathers (who are also sons) has prescribed how, when, and even where women should conceive, bear, nourish, and indoctrinate their children.44 One way out would be "to challenge deeply embedded phobias and prejudices."45 In her essay, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence" (1980), Rich draws an analogy between motherhood and sexuality and suggests "that heterosexuality, like motherhood, needs to be recognized and studied as a political institution " 4 6 and that everyone who deviates "is perceived on a scale ranging from deviant to abhorrent, or simply rendered invisible . . . ."47 Since Rich perceives lesbianism and motherhood as "profoundly fem ale experience^], with particular oppressions, meanings, and potentialities we cannot comprehend as long as we simply bracket it with other sexually stigmatized existences,"48 she supports the efforts of lesbian couples to seek the recognition as parents. "Many lesbians, in and outside o f couples, are having children by artificial insemination. W om en 44 Rich, "Motherhood in Bondage" (1976), On Lies. Secrets, and Silence 195-97; 196. 45 Rich, "Motherhood in Bondage" 197. 46 Rich, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence" 637. 47 Rich, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence" 632. 48 Rich, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence" 650.

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who coparent with lesbian mothers are seeking recognition as parents, including visitation and custody rights" (OWB xxxi). Obviously, Rich does not reject motherhood but the appropriation by patriarchy o f a realm over which w om en should have at least equal control. Until the mid-1970s, Rich is never the mother o f children in her poems. She creates a new space for herself in which she is not a m other. It is not children whom she wants to criticize, but the patriarchal world that has simply decided that the mother has all the responsibility for the children but no real control; it is the institution that she asks to reflect. "For m e," as she says in O f Woman Born, "poetry was where I lived as no-one's m other, where I existed as myself" (OWB 31). Once she has found the abovementioned possible integration of motherhood and lesbianism, she seems to break this rule, however, only in one poem. M others who try to escape the limitations and confinements o f a maledominated society might constantly have to be fugitives in a world that gives them no control, as Rich says in "M other-Right” (DCL, 1977): "The man is walking boundaries / measuring He believes in what is his." The first stanza confronts the fugitives with the man: "Woman and child running / in a field A man planted / on the horizon." The m an's pow er is defined through his possession o f the three elements, "the grass the waters underneath the a ir ." Despite the m an's knowledge o f his powerful position and possession, escape seems to be possible for mother and child: "[T]he air through which child and mother / are running the boy singing / the woman eyes sharpened in the light / heart stumbling making for the open." This image o f a woman running away from the m an's com pany towards a world outside o f the male-dominated world is symptomatic o f the separatism supported by many feminists in the 1970s. This separation o f men and women, however, does not go as far as a rejection o f male children. Despite the patriarchal potential in the boy (the boy's singing can be read either as total ignorance o f the dangerous situation or as a sign o f allegiance between man and boy) the mother takes her son with her and assumes responsibility for him. For Rich, in 1977 there is only a small hole left for wom en to escape imprisonment. In contrast to Sylvia Plath, who achieved some self-definition through motherhood, and to Audre Lorde, as we will later see, Adrienne Rich, according to my knowledge, has never made motherhood a central idea in any o f her poems. "Mother-Right" seems to be the only one in which a m other's role is evoked, but only in order to show that it is not m otherhood as such that is rejected, but its political institutionalization controlled almost exclusively by men. Her means of discussing motherhood is prose that can

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be m ore public and theoretical, whereas poetry for Rich is a very personal m ode o f expressing herself and the lives she has had: I had four lives at least, one out of marriage when I kicked up all the dust 1 could before 1 knew what 1 was doing. One life with the girls on the line during the war, yes, painting our legs and jitterbugging together one life with a husband, not the worst, one with your children, none of it just what you'd thought. None of it what it could have been, if we'd known. We took what we could. ("One Life," TP, 1988) This passage nicely summarizes Rich's personal development from birth, adolescence, m arriage to motherhood. None of these tem porary steps have satisfied and fulfilled her even though they had a certain, at least imaginary, potential for satisfaction. The woman in the poem is still in search o f a satisfactory life: "I'm walking again. / My heart d o esn 't ache; som etim es though it rages." But in 1988 solutions cannot easily be found. Rich points to the constant changes in life and to the instability o f seemingly fixed concepts such as marriage and motherhood. Only in the 1970s does Rich seriously confront the issue of motherhood in order to save it from oblivion and from reintegration into a patriarchal society. W ith a re­ definition and re-naming of motherhood, Rich tries to reappropriate something that originally belonged to women: the personal experience o f m otherhood. In later years, however, in contrast to Sylvia Plath and Audre Lorde for whom motherhood increased in importance throughout their lives and who constantly found their mirror images in their children, this issue loses importance for Rich because she focuses more and more on her sexuality, on her relationship to her father and social problematics, and on the adequacy or inadequacy of language and poetry to reflect her personal feelings. My mother is a gentile. In Jewish law I cannot count myself a Jew. If it is true that 'we think back through our mothers if we are women' (Virginia Woolf) - and I myself have affirmed this - then even according to lesbian theory, I cannot (or need not?) count myself a Jew.49

49 Rich, "Split at the Root: An Essay on Jewish Identity" (1982), Blood, Bread, and Poetry 100-23; 102.

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2.1.3. A Jewish Poet's Education: Her Father's Daughter Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich are both daughters o f parents who tried to educate their children according to the ideals and norms o f the 1940s and 1950s. In both families the mothers gave up their jobs and all their hopes for a career of her own in order to take care o f a husband and two children. Both mothers perpetuated the legitimacy of this social role distribution along gender lines. In a marriage with children, the m other's sphere was defined by housework and mothering. On the one hand, the m others succeeded in passing on to their daughters (Adrienne Rich has one sister) these role distributions without questioning them, but on the other hand, both Plath and Rich aspired to transcend these limitations o f wom anhood to conquer a space in the public realm. They both unconsciously considered their fathers the key to public life. They learned that they had to be accepted by men in a male-dominated society. Consequently, they received a w om an's education with the knowledge o f the significance o f a "membership" in the "Law o f the Father." "In a small fram e, under glass, my father's bookplate, engraved in / his ardent youth, the cleft tree-trunk and the wintering ants: / Without labor, no sweetness - motto breathed in from him and / learned in grief and rebellion to take and use / - and later learned that not all labor ends in sweetness" (ADW, "III"). R ich's perception o f her mother - which is not very often thematized in her poetry and essays - is very closely connected to her changing attitude towards sexuality and motherhood. Rich writes the first poem about her father shortly after his death in 1964 ("After Dark"), describes her affection for him in almost loving and tender terms, but also sees his death as a liberation for herself. With the gradual emergence o f her lesbianism, she later sees her father as a dominating male force in control o f society and her personal life. Yet, a real psychological confrontation with her image o f her father does not take place before the 1980s when she understands that her father was not just a symbol of a patriarchal culture but influenced her in ways that she only now becomes aware of. She has to deal with the implications o f being Jewish, an aspect with a significance that she has completely neglected and ignored in her life in the same way that her father denied its importance in his life. Rich comes to realize how Jewish women have been invisible in a patriarchal and misogynist Jewish history. It was w om en's exclusive task to take care o f children and family, and they had no share in the social and religious affairs o f the community.

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R ich's late recognition o f herself as a Jewish wom an reflects her developm ent in her search for identity. W hereas until the m id-1970s she focuses on poetry and sexuality as defining patterns in her life, she finally reaches a m ore open concept o f identity in the 1980s and 90s by acknowledging the equal importance o f various other forces such as race and religion. This recognition is also based on the growing importance of the concept o f difference. The following discussion o f Adrienne R ich's relationship with her father as revealed in poems ("A fter Dark" and Sources ) and an essay ("Split at the Root") will show how R ich's concept o f identity develops from fixity and stability to openness and acceptance of difference, which then again gives her new access to her past. She comes to this point because o f her particular situation as a w om an in a society with patterns o f wom anhood that she cannot accept. As Adrienne Rich had always been under the sometimes stifling influence o f her father even throughout her m arriage, his death seemed to have been almost a relief, a liberation from confining forces in her life. She describes her reaction to his death in "After Dark" (NL , 1964) while looking at him, "old tree o f life / old m an whose death I wanted." His death does not seem to cause any feelings o f guilt even though she admits, almost in an aside, that "I c a n 't stir you up now ." H er thoughts wander off into the past, triggered by the faint sound o f music which has become a leitm otif in her life, a constant rem inder o f her fath er's omnipresence and constantly repeated claim: " / know you better / than you know yourself' until she "limped off, tom at the roots." She tries to forget him in vain and rem em bers that she "woke up one morning / and knew [her]self [his] daughter." She does not want his death any more, but "[n]ow, unasked, [he] give[s] ground." She wants to hold him but reminds herself that she not only can finally leave her prison but also that she has to leave the radiance o f her father's attraction even in death: "Now let's away from prison - Underground seizures! . . . No, let's aw ay." She starts to create her own image o f her father as that o f a man with human feelings, with fear, and fantasies that she can help him overcome this fear so that his "hand feels steady." Rich more and more connects her relationship to her father with her attitude towards her own Jew ishness.50 At the beginning of the 1980s, she

50 She does so after a period of extreme aversion for her father. Cf. "Sibling Mysteries" (D C L , 1976). In this poem. Rich tum s the father figure into the epitome of evil for women. He alienates the mother from her daughters and then the children from her. In the name of society, he breaks apart the close unity between mother and daughters (motivated by the fear of possible powerful same-sex relationships?) which can be re­

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increasingly becomes aware o f how m uch the Jewish family background has shaped her in subtle ways without her realizing it. In her essay "Split at the Root: An Essay on Jewish Identity", she not only deals with the question o f whether she is a Jew (since her m other was a gentile), but also with the political meaning of Jewishness and, most importantly, with how m uch her father has put his imprint on her. It comes to me that in order to write this I have to be willing to do two things: I have to claim my father, for I have my Jewishness from him and not from my gentile mother; and I have to break his silence, his taboos; in order to claim him I have in a sense to expose him.51 H er father taught her her basic knowledge about writing and reading, and she spent long hours in his library. H ow ever, it must have been difficult to claim him because he denied his Jewish background as much as possible, knowing that he would have been subject to various kinds o f discrimination. He was, nevertheless, several times in his life reminded of his religion when, for example, he waited to be appointed to the professorship o f pathology at Johns H opkins.52 Rich is able to use the discrimination against Jews for herself in the sense that she draws the analogy between being Jewish and being a woman. A woman who believes that she only has to be brilliant to have equal rights with men in patriarchy, forgets that other people will always see her as a woman. In her essay, Rich describes several incidents o f her life in which Jewishness was crucial to her, e .g ., when her parents refused to com e to her wedding because she married "a Jew o f the 'w rong kind' from an Orthodox eastern European background. . . . My father saw this m arriage as my having fallen prey to the Jewish family, eastern European division."53 This incident describes "the reluctance o f Americanized Jews o f the first migration to accept their Eastern European brethren"54 and the discrimination working on an intra-ethnic level within the ethnic group o f the Jews. She married the professor from Harvard partly because she knew no other way to leave her family.

established in secret only. The father loses all human qualities and turns into a type, a patriarchal presence dominating all generations. Cf. also Sources, VII, 9. 51 Rich, "Split at the Root" 100. 52 Cf. Rich, "Split at the Root" 110. 53 Rich, "Split at the Root" 114. 54 Alfred Homung, "The Making of (Jewish) Americans: Ludwig Lewisohn, Charles Reznikoff, Michael Gold," Ethnic Cultures in the 1920s in North America, ed. Wolfgang Cinder (Frankfurt/Main: Lang, 1993) 115-34; 117.

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She leaves this marriage after seventeen years and after having given birth to three sons, and falls in love with a Jewish woman. A t that point, she starts to acknowledge consciously that she is Jewish and lesbian and was anti-Semitic and heterosexual. All these forces now are in constant com bat one against the other, and she cannot deny any one o f them: Some time during the early months of that relationship [with the Jewish woman], 1 dreamed that I was arguing feminist politics with my lover. Of course, 1 said to her in this dream, if

you're going to bring up the Holocaust against me, there's nothing I can do. If, as I believe, I was both myself and her in this dream, it spoke of the split in my consciousness. I had been, more or less, a Jewish heterosexual woman. But what did it mean to be a Jewish lesbian? What did it mean to feel myself, as I did, both anti-Semite and Jew? And, as a feminist, how was I charting for myself the oppressions within oppression?55 H er experience with the denial o f the Jewish heritage in her childhood and then the inevitable confrontation with it and also acceptance o f it is analogous to her development from heterosexual relationships to lesbian relationships. Both developments take place because of a conscious attempt at understanding the forces that shape Rich's life, because o f a quest for her own identity that has to come to terms with contradicting powers. She concludes the essay - with which she has publically admitted and authenticated her search for her identity - without a conclusion because in 1982 there is none for her: "This essay, then, has no conclusions: it is another beginning for m e .''56

Sources: The Poetical Autobiography of a Southern Jew In ihren neuesten Lyrikbanden, Sources und Your Native Land, Your Life, vollzieht sich schlielMich eine weitere inhaltliche Wende, nach der ihr Interesse erstmals wieder der 'Geschichte der Manner und Vater' gilt bzw. das angesprochene ’Du' im Text ein mannlich identifiziertes ist. Diese Texte stellen eine Auseinandersetzung mit Richs judischem kulturellen und familiaren Hintergrund dar, der auch fur sie im wortlichen

55 Rich, "Split at the Root" 121. 56 Rich, "Split at the Root" 123.

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Sinne das vaterliche Erbe bedeutet sowie mit der schmerzhaften Erfahrung des Selbstmordes ihres Mannes.57

Sources58 is a long poem consisting o f 23 individual poem s, spanning the time from childhood and adolescence to the time o f writing these poems. Sources, as the title indicates, is an attempt at going back to the sources o f Rich's life, back to the roots; it is an attempt at healing this split, this fragmentation into opposing parts. She knows that her present is very much shaped by her past: "Old things, diffuse, unnam ed, lie strong / across my heart. This is from where / my strength comes, even when I miss my strength / even when it turns on me / like a violent master" (II, 4). H er own inner voice asks her coldly: "From where does your strength come, you Southern Jew? / split at the root, raised in a castle o f air?" (Ill, 5) This question is asked over and over again, and it exposes R ich 's desperate attempt at coming to terms with her past. Jewishness, fragm entation, and illusions have to be faced and accepted. Her poetry becomes a m edium for these questions, because (in contrast to an essay that necessarily has an end) poems can repeatedly ask the same questions because they represent various stages in her life and various attitudes at various points in her life. "I think somehow, somewhere / every poem of mine must repeat those questions" (IV, 6). The answers she tries to give in order to settle the question o f what being Jewish means to her fall into three categories: She has to deal with the relationships between her and her Jewish familiy, between her and the Jewish people, and between her and the actual religion. At the root o f her Jewishness lies her father with whom she has to come to term s first. Rich was never instructed in the Jewish religion and never even entered a synagogue before she left Baltimore. She was baptized in an Episcopal church, and when she filled out application forms for college, her m other told her to put "Episcopalian" instead o f "Jewish" or "none." She denied being Jewish when asked by the owner of a little shop. She was told not to behave in a "Jewish" way in public so that others - either Jews or gentiles would not recognize her as a Jew and would not try to make her join them. Even experiences she had at college with her Jewish friends would not be accepted in that sense because it was not "important" to her fath er.59 However, repression - conscious or unconscious - causes suffering; this

57 Hannelore Mockel-Rieke, Fiktionen von Natur und Weiblichkeit: Zur Begriindung femininer und engagierter Schreibweisen bei Adrienne Rich, Denise Levertov, Susan Griffin, Kathleen Fraser und Susan Howe (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 1991) 52. 58 First published as a chapbook by The Heyeck Press, Woodside, California. 59 Rich, ’ Split at the Root" 112.

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insight together with an affirmation o f her womanhood and her own social m arginalization have led Adrienne Rich to understand her father and thus also her own development. One o f the means she uses to understand her Jewish past and the significance o f her father's presence is the return to her family home after sixteen years. Yet, even in her m arriage with an Eastern European Jew, she cannot escape her father's observing, judging and controlling look. H er husband is the "one you [her father] most feared, the one from the shtetl, from Brooklyn, from the wrong part o f history, the wrong accent, the wrong class" (XVII, 19). She chooses him because o f his dissimilarity with her father, but she finally sees that they were much more alike than she thought at that time. "For so many years I had thought you and he were in opposition. I needed your unlikeness then; now it’s your likeness that stares me in the face" (XVII, 19). Both obviously lived in isolation, with a mask, both were members of the patriarchy on which Rich was dependent.60 Oppression, however, is shown to be working on various levels for both father, as a Jew in a non-Jewish society, and mother, as a non-Jew in a Jewish family and as a woman in a male-dominated family and society. The situation o f Rich's mother as religious outsider in the Jewish culture was as oppressive to the mother as was R ich's situation as a woman in a male-dominated culture. Jewish culture, even though a minority culture, uses the same controlling mechanisms as mainstream culture. Rich includes her m other in the larger concept o f feminism, o f finding an identity for herself independent from her husband. In the same way that her father becom es a representative o f patriarchy, her mother becomes the victim of this patriarchy, her own "sister." One o f the effects of denying his Jewishness was that the father never told Rich anything about the worldwide persecution of the Jews and the terrible events during World W ar II. In 1946, she secretly watched films of the Allied liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. A deep sense of "despair, a sense o f inevitability"61 was the consequence. Fearful questions remained about why them and not us? "And I, who believed my life was intended to be so interesting and meaningful, was connected to those dead

60 In a very different context, this insight into the similarities between father and husband, which almost amounts to an identification of the two, is also characteristic of Sylvia Plath's final attitude towards her husband and her father (cf. my discussion of "Daddy" in 1.1.1. The Dutiful Daughter). Whereas Rich's original desire was to find a husband who was different from her father, Plath looked for a merging o f the father and husband figures in Ted Hughes. 61 Rich, "Split at the Root" 106.

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by something - not just mortality but a taboo name, a hated identity."62 W hat could be the reason, she asked, why "I was not living in a bombedout house / or cellar hiding out with rats / there had to be a reason / 1 was growing up safe, American I . . . I through the immense silence / o f the Holocaust" (V, 7).63 The persecution o f the Jews did not only take place in G erm any but also in different terms on the American continent, in Vicksburg and Birmingham, two cities that are also known for the killing o f blacks. Rich thus draws the analogy between the killing o f Jews and the killing o f blacks, goes beyond her personal realm that urged these poems, and finds connections to the group o f black people through the suffering that Jews and blacks, and within these two groups women, have endured.64 Rich presents a world in which wom en are raped and killed because they are women, in which black people are killed because they are black, in which Jews are killed because they are Jews. People are killed because o f the labels they bear: female, black, Jewish. Adrienne Rich is female and Jewish (and lesbian). People are killed because o f these labels once imposed on them , and it does not matter whether they even believe in them them selves.65 Rich pleads for the right to be an individual, for the concept o f individualism that gives people the right to individual identity definitions free from society's labels. Apart from the Holocaust, violence committed against particular groups such as Black, Jews, and women motivate Rich to suggest that separatism is not the way to go. Because o f separatism and categorization and the arbitrary attribution o f worth and values to the individual categories, society has turned into a hierarchy in which certain groups (e.g. white non-ethnic males) have pow er over others. Rich is an individual and loves solitude, but she also admits being part o f this multitude. Labels have 62 Rich, "Split at the Root" 107. 63 O f course, for many Jews the Holocaust has been the major reason to deny their religion. Cf. Rich's poem "1948: Jews" (ADW , 1990) in which she represents excerpts from her mother's letter warning her of being taken up by Jewish people. The best she can do for protection, as her mother suggests to her, is to '[ mjarry out. like your father." 64 In her poem "Yom Kippur 1984" ( YNLYL, 1984-85), Rich goes back to the origins o f the Jewish religion, but does not present them as a source of support because she exposes the concept of the city on a hill as a concept of false hope and sees Jewish life characterized by solitude. Cf. Matthew 5, 14-16: "You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven." Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement in Judaism, one of the two High Holy Days which consists of twenty-four hours o f praying and fasting and implies an acceptance o f a collective responsibility for sins. 65 Cf. " Yom Kippur 1984."

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separated people from each other. The logic between a label and therefore a consequent action has to be given up in favor o f a more holistic definition o f what a hum an being is. A multiperspective has to be adopted that shows that the identity o f human beings is fragmented and that, therefore, a group identity can never be the one and only identity o f a person. Rich shows how the definitions o f gender and ethnicity have to change because o f increasing violence towards the so-called "minority" or "marginalized" groups. She pleads for transparent boundaries and open identity concepts that take social and historical changes into consideration. Only then does such a "multiple identity" not automatically lead to "a sense o f hom elessness."66 This understanding and acceptance o f difference helps her to com e to terms with her father who can no longer be seen as the embodiment o f a patriarchal (non-Jewish) society but as a human being who suffered from social stigmatization and personal psychological repression. In some violent outbursts in her earlier poems ("A fter D ark," "Sibling M ysteries") against the father figure in and his pow er over her life, Rich equates father and patriarchy and m other and community o f women. She clearly prom otes separatism as the only way for wom en to liberate themselves from male oppression. At that tim e, she still rejects him as a force that is not part of her in the same way that he ignores his Jewishness. But in the 1980s, Rich comes to the conclusion that she has to face him and his (oppressed) religion as significant parts o f herself. She translates linguistic and psychological oppression into language, first into the poems of Sources and then into the essay "Split at the Root," both, as the titles indicate, with the aim of finding her identity by going back to her familial origins. The title "Split at the Root" reveals one of the results o f her investigation: fragmentation. This result, how ever, could not have been reached without the poetic evocation o f father and mother. They are brought back into life in the poems that work by association whereas she can organize and structure her insights in her essay. Oppressed forces cannot be successfully oppressed forever. Their existence has to be acknowledged and brought to light.67 Only then can Rich understand how deeply rooted she is in her father's origins. By accepting him as a part of her identity, she opens up the concept o f identity and allows for a multiple identity. R ich's attempt at a definition o f identity is at the same time a definition o f her Americanness: "Thus, the definition of an American is not

66 Homung, "The Making o f (Jewish) Americans" 116. 67 Rich does so frequently also in her later poems. Cf. "Yom Kippur 1984" and "1948: Jews."

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that of a fixed entity, or o f a specific place o f origin; rather, Americanness refers to an ongoing process o f difference and differentiation. "68 R ich’s development towards lesbianism, her changing attitude towards m otherhood, and her gradual acceptance of her father and her father's Jewishness as a significant element o f her identity, allow her to liberate herself from some of the limitations and restrictions of a patriarchal society. W hereas she theorizes her "liberation into fragmentation" in her autobiographical essays, she experiences this development in her poetry. The poems reflect for her many different particular moments o f her life, whereas her essays mostly summarize developments in hindsight. Therefore, R ich's poems are much closer to her actual life experiences and m irror this multiple and dynam ic identity on various levels. The following part, "Poetry - 'C arrier o f the S parks,'" will take a closer look at Rich's understanding of poetry as revealed in essays and her metapoetical statements in order to show how she integrates life and text, but in particular life and poetry, how poetry for Rich is the ideal looking glass in her search for her identity. The relationship among so many feelings remains unclear. But these thoughts and feelings, suppressed and stored up and whispered, have an incendiary component. You cannot tell where or how they will connect, spreading underground from rootlet to rootlet till every grassblade is afire from every other. . . . Poetry, in its own way, is a carrier of the sparks, because it too comes out of silence, seeking connection with unseen others.69

2.2. Poetry - "C arrier of the Sparks" Adrienne Rich's experience o f relationships with other women in whom she can see herself reflected has very much influenced her poetry in the sense that it has necessarily changed the topics o f her poems since she has the urge to see herself reflected in her writing, too. Poetry and lesbianism, for her, can never be separated and are intimately and essentially connected to her life. She can only define herself in and through these tw o media. She turns away from "traditional m ale” poetry to a "new (female)" poetry at the same time that she leaves a "traditional

68 Homung, "The Making o f (Jewish) Americans" 119. 69 Adrienne Rich, "The Herm it’s Scream," PMLA 108.5(1993): 1157-64; 1158-59.

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heterosexual" m arriage for a "new homosexual" relationship. Both turning points, however, never seem to have reached their ideal; both seem to have led to a utopian writing that lives o f the urge and drive to reach this goal. She has set up an ideal and tries to find ways of reaching it. For Rich, poetry has become a means for self-exploration and self­ definition, a means o f coping with life. H ow ever, it has taken her a while to develop from a writer who observes form and tradition to a selfconscious wom an who experim ents freely with form and w ho tries to make form expressive o f its content. Yet, she is also aware o f the important fact that she not only consciously shapes her poetry but that it is her unconscious that is also responsible for what she writes. In a way, she unconsciously (and maybe unwillingly) wrote herself into the text of her earlier poems. She declares in her essay "W hen W e Dead Awaken: W riting as Re-Vision" (1971) that poems are like dreams: in them you put what you don’t know you know. Looking back at poems I wrote before I was twentyone, I'm startled because beneath the conscious craft are glimpses of the split I even then experienced between the girl who wrote poems, who defined herself in writing poems, and the girl who was to define herself by her relationships with men.70 One way o f reaching her ideal is to reflect constantly on the functions and meanings o f poetry and on the intimate bond between her conscious and unconscious life experiences. We will see how the poem for Rich becomes a looking glass in which she attempts to locate herself and into which she inscribes herself. The focus, therefore, will be on metapoetic or self-reflexive poem s,71 in which Rich makes statements on the act of writing and on the forces that shape her writing. Poetry and the (traditional) form of poetry ("A t a Bach C oncert"), poetry and danger ("A unt Jennifer's Tigers"), poetry and pow er/know ledge ("The Trees), poetry and w om an's space ("Origins and History o f Consciousness"), poetry and lesbianism ("Twenty-One Love Poem s"), poetry and the failure o f language ("Cartographies o f Silence"), are essential issues to be discussed. In her most recent collection o f poetry, ADW, she finally attempts an allembracing and almost summ arizing approach to poetry's potential for representation. Rich comprises most o f the issues mentioned before in this volume. The analysis will proceed chronologically in order to show how 70 Rich, "When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision (1971)," On Lies. Secrets, and Silence 33-49; 40. 71 Cf. my discussion of the self-reflexive text in II.3. Representation in Women's Poetry.

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Rich views her own poetry, how she evaluates it before and after the turning point at around 1970 when she finally becomes aw are o f many of the important forces that shape her life, and how the meanings and functions she attributes to poetry have developed. In one o f her earliest poems, "At a Bach Concert" (CW , 1951), Rich does not present a dream but an unconscious dissatisfaction with the prevailing modern poetics even though most o f the poem, as we will see, seems to affirm the m odem poetics that art and life have to be separated, that art has nothing to do with feelings, that if art has anything to do with feelings, it is bad art. This idea, generally accepted in the 1950s, is presented as that o f wanderers who com e "by evening through the wintry city," and it is not a statement made by an ”1" but by a "we": "We said that art is out o f love with life." With reference to art as an "antique discipline, tenderly severe," art teaches a new kind o f love that can be accepted by the collective persona. This new kind o f love is characterized by the subduing o f feeling and the presentation of grace and craft on the outside. W hereas in the first two stanzas Rich talks about the necessity o f controlling emotions, in the last two stanzas she explains how this can be done effectively. Love offers "form" to the artist; personal desires and sufferings have to be submitted to this form for "[a] too-compassionate art is half an art. / Only such proud restraining purity / Restores the else-betrayed, too-human heart." The form o f this poem is itself a reflection o f its content because it consists o f relatively regular four stanzas with three lines each and a regular rhyme pattern (aba cdc efe gfg). The rhythm varies but consists mostly of four-feet iambs or sometimes dactyls. The reference to Bach is also a reference to the control o f feelings in form because Bach is known for strict adherence to form. Yet, at the same time he is also known for expressing his inner feelings in his music despite the form. Thus, like Bach, Rich combines adherence to given forms o f art and subversion o f these forms from within. In the same way that Plath used these modernist techniques in her early poems and submitted herself to the influence o f Ted Hughes, Rich expresses in "At a Bach Concert" the prevailing tenor about poetry and art in general o f the early 1950s.72 Form was meant to control the content o f a

72 "I read the older women poets with their peculiar keenness and ambivalence: Sappho, Christina Rossetti, Emily Dickinson, Elinor Wylie, Edna Millay, H.D . 1 discovered that the woman poet most admired at the time (by men) was Marianne Moore, who was maidenly, elegant, intellectual, discreet. But even in reading these women 1 was looking in them for the same things I had found in the poetry o f men, because I wanted women poets to be the equals o f men, and to be equal was still confused with sounding the

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poem ; form did not allow emotions to erupt and even explode the boundaries o f a poem . The poet who was able to master these emotions was a good poet who could also reach the "else-betrayed human heart" in a time right after W orld W ar II when everything else was in utter chaos.73 Art was an attem pt at finding ways o f dealing with hum an beings. The analogy betw een the reading o f a poem and the encounter with a hum an being is also expressed by W .H . Auden in his "Forew ord" to A Change o f World: Reading a poem is an experience analogous to that of encountering a person.74 I suggested at the beginning of this introduction that poems are analogous to persons; the poems a reader will encounter in this book are neatly and modestly dressed, speak quietly but do not mumble, respect their elders but are not cowed by them, and do not tell fibs: that, for a first volume, is a good deal.75 Adrienne Rich was able to obey these above-stated rules o f poetry and art and was, therefore, praised by her male critics and her audience. The mere fact, however, that she felt the urge to make aesthetic statements indicates that she did not feel quite at ease with them. Since these statements were generally accepted, there would have been no need for her to write about them explicitly in her poetry. But by making them the subject o f a poem , she made the poem self-reflexive, metapoetic, and unconsciously questioning the thoughts presented. In 1993, Adrienne Rich can finally state: Many of the poems in The Diamond Cutters seem to me now a last-ditch effort to block, with assimilation and technique, the undervoice of my own poetry. With the poems in Snapshots of

same. I know that my style was formed first by male poets: by the men I was reading as an undergraduate - Frost, Dylan, Donne, Auden, MacNiece, Stevens, Yeats. What I chiefly learned from them was craft.” Rich, "When We Dead Awaken," On Lies, Secrets, and Silence 39-40. 73 Cf. Margaret Morrison: "Artists - not only composers, but poets, too - Rich is saying, must avoid romantic excesses and sentimentality. Too often, in poems and in music, passion dominates the intellect. To avoid spoiling a poem, a piece of music, or a painting with too much passion, then, the artist must detach himself and impose restraints on his art. Form grips feelings like a vise and controls them .” "Adrienne Rich: Poetry of R e-V ision" 332. 74 W .H. Auden, "Foreword," A Change o f World, Adrienne Rich (New Haven: Yale UP, 1951)7-11; 7. 75 Auden, "Foreword" 10-11.

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a Daughter-in-Law (1963), I began trying, to the best of my ability, to face the hard questions of poetry and experience.76 Still in 1951, Rich thematizes the external writing conditions, and reflects the male personal and poetic influences, "Aunt Jennifer's T ig ers” (CW, 1951) addresses the opposition between the inside and outside o f a hum an being, between the real artist (and maybe rebel) and the false or social artist in a more direct way by opposing the tigers, the "[b]right topaz denizens o f a world o f green" who "do not fear the men beneath the tree," with the "terrified” Aunt Jennifer who is heavily under the control o f her husband. This metapoem makes several statements on the art o f poetry and the art of being a poet or an artist: 1. Art can be dangerous because it expresses a person's secret inside. It is particularly dangerous if the artist is a wom an who cannot but work against the social norms because they are against her. 2. The act o f creation is difficult. 3. Art remains even after the artist's death.77 Although Aunt Jennifer is afraid, she is the artist who is able to express her inner wishes and desires through her a n , which here takes the form o f panels that she is knitting. Even the act o f creation is not an easy one since her "fingers fluttering through her wool / Find even the ivory needle hard to pull. / The massive weight of U ncle’s wedding band / Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand." Her creation is a form o f speaking, one way o f transforming silence not into action yet but into language. She is afraid both o f her husband and o f a discovery o f her real thoughts.78 The poem "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" changes meaning depending on when it is read. People reading it in 1960 certainly would not have understood the criticism in the poem because being allowed and able to write poetry was regarded as a privilege, which parents, relatives, and friends could give and take. Yet, the rebellious inside o f the child was

76 Adrienne Rich, "Forword" to Collected Early Poems ixx-xxi; ixx. The most important “aesthetic" influence in her life probably was her father (as discussed in 2.1.3. A Jewish Poet's Education: Her Father's Daughter) who taught her how to write poems and suggested the topics. She often wrote under his supervision in his study or library. Cf. "Juvenilia" (SDL, 1960). 77 Cf. Sandra Runzo: "Her [Rich's] use of tapestries, however, also invests those poems with mythic reverberations, for the poems recall the long history of myths and fairy tales in which women weave and spin for their livelihood, self-expression, and very survival . . . ." "Adrienne Rich’s Poetry and the Politics o f Language," Diss. Indiana University at Bloomington, IN, 1986; 35. 78 Similarly, Emily Dickinson’s poems are often considered realizations o f her unfulfilled wishes and desires, extemalizations of something from deep inside. Cf. also Rich's poems "Tear Gas" (FD, 1969), "North American Time" (FD, 1983), and "Blue Rock" (YNLYL, 1985).

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hidden from their eyes. Her poetry already enacts her resistance, and ”[i]n short, her father gave her the tools not just to free herself, but to m urder him , in the form o f patriarchy, as w ell."79 As in "At a Bach Concert," Rich elaborates on these very subversive topics without in any way breaking the formal rules of poetry writing. The form o f the poem is absolutely regular: the rhyme scheme consists of rhym e p"irs (aabb ccdd eeff); the meter is five-feet iambic (with only a few exceptions where the movement o f the tigers is stressed); the poem consists o f three stanzas with four lines each. Creation and imagination can still win and be fruitful despite the limiting and restricting formal features. The poem , then, is a criticism o f formal restrictions on artists, o f the ordeals suffered by women in marriage, and of language in general: Poetry is, among other things, a criticism of language. In setting words together in new configurations, in the mere, immense shift from male to female pronouns, in the relationships between words created through echo, repetition, rhythm, rhyme, it lets us hear and see our words in a new dimension. . . . Poetry is above all a concentration of the power of language, which is the power of our ultimate relationship to everything in the universe.80 But there is a deeper level that Rich herself explains in "W hen We Dead Awaken": In writing this poem, composed and apparently cool as it is, I thought I was creating a portrait of an imaginary woman. But this woman suffers from the opposition of her imagination, worked out in tapestry, and her life-style, "ringed with ordeals she was mastered by." It was important to me that Aunt Jennifer was a person as distinct from myself as possible distanced by the formalism of the poem, by its objective, observant tone - even by putting the woman in a different generation.81 In hindsight, Rich clearly sees herself in the woman artist, realizes that she unconsciously inscribed herself into the text and that Aunt Jennifer was a concealed and masked alter ego of herself at that time. In 1971, Rich is no longer afraid o f admitting to the autobiographical quality o f this poem. But back in 1951, the situation was very different, and the "problem that has no

79 Bennett, My Life a Loaded Gun 175. 80 Rich, "Power and Danger: Works of a Common Woman" (1977), On Lies, Secrets, and Silence 247-58; 248. 81 Rich, "When We Dead Awaken," On Lies, Secrets, and Silence 40.

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nam e"82 could not be openly expressed. Distance from and formal control o f her poetry is characteristic of her early writing.

But [my emphasis] there was one major problem with this [believing in poetry, in all art as the expression of a higher world view], I had been born a woman, and I was trying to think and act as if poetry - and the possibility of making poems - were a universal - a gender-neutral - realm. . . . The dissonance between these images and the daily events of my own life demanded a constant footwork of imagination, a kind of perpetual translation, and an unconscious fragmentation of identity: woman from poet.83 We will see how she becomes more and more aware o f her situation as a w om an in a male/patriarchal world and how this awareness translates into the language and the form o f her poems and also changes her concept o f poetry.84 This awareness finally diminishes the distance between poem and hum an being so that they almost become one. She emphasizes the translation o f matters of the unconscious into matters of the conscious, the alteration o f the conscious by the unconscious and vice versa, the constant war-like interaction - according to Kristeva - between the Semiotic and the Symbolic, and thus the integration o f life and art: By cristallizing awareness that would otherwise be repressed or remain in a shadowy, murky region of unarticulated experience, Rich intends that her writing record 'the process of going from the conflicts and strife of the unconscious into the sayable, into the actable.' Rich has observed that poetic form should reflect this interaction of unconscious and conscious experience: 'A poem can't exist without form, but it should be the result of a dynamic or dialogue between what is coming out of the unconscious and what is coming out of experience. This dialogue is expressed through the medium of language, and everything that means - rhythm and sound and tone and repetition and the way words can ring off each other and clash against each other ( TCWM) .'85

82 Cf. Friedan, The Feminine Mystique. 83 Rich, "Blood, Bread, and Poetry: The Location of the Poet” (1984), Blood, Bread, and Poetry 167-87; 175. 84 Rich increasingly needs poetry as a support for herself, as she explains in "The Fact o f a Doorframe" (FD, 1974): "The Fact of a Doorframe / means there is something to hold / onto with both hands I . . . . I Now, again, poetry I . . . 1 1 grasp for you........... " 85 Wendy Martin, An American Tryptych: Anne Bradstreet, Emily Dickinson, Adrienne Rich (Chapel Hill: The U of North Carolina P, 1984) 169. Cf. also Lorraine Nancy Smith: "Rich goes further than Levertov, however, to assert that poetry can actively alter the

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H er poem "The Trees" (NL , 1963), which can be compared to Sylvia P la th 's "Tulips" because of the liveliness o f nature and the com m unication o f nature with the persona, metapoetically deals with the act o f writing, the process from "the unconscious into the sayable, into the actable." The detached speaker depicts for the readers how the trees, a m etaphor for the w ords that are leaving the w riter’s brain, are leaving the house and finally join the forest and come onto the page. It is hard work for the roots and the leaves to break free: "All night the roots work / to disengage themselves from the cracks / in the veranda floor. / The leaves strain toward the glass / small twigs stiff with exertion / long-cramped boughs shuffling under the roof / like newly discharged patients / half-dazed, moving / to the clinic doors." They break away from the confinements of an institution that is here com pared to a hospital. The trees are needed in the outside world since the forest "was empty all these days / where no bird could sit / no insect hide / no sun bury its feet in shadow." The focus of the poem changes in the third stanza where the persona is presented as "writing long letters / in which I scarcely mention the departure / of the forest from the house." The parallel actions of the trees leaving the house and the words leaving the mind are, however, not connected to the content of the letters. The w riter's experience is not expressed directly in her writing. The writing within the poem thus finds no words for the experience but the writing about the writing - the poem - mentions the exodus of the trees but establishes no visible contact between writer and trees. It is only by denying the importance o f the trees that the reader's attention is drawn to them. The trees, however, speak to her; she hears the voice o f "the smell o f leaves and lichen" as if they wanted to tell her to leave the house, too. The w riter's "head is full of whispers / which tomorrow will be silent." In the last stanzas, the trees force their way out: "The glass is breaking. / The trees are stumbling forward / into the night. Winds rush to meet them ." The moon in the crown o f the tallest oak looks like a broken m irror. The connection between the moon, the mirror, and the woman w riter in the poem attributes female qualities to the two former elements. The moon reflects the piece of paper, the page, that was clear and blank before the words poured out onto it, and now is "broken" in the sense that the white o f the paper is covered with the black o f the words, of language. Thus, the surface reflects the mind o f the writer which is not, of course, a blank but full o f little details that look like branches of trees. Trees are symbols of

unconscious for both writer and reader, hence expanding the possibilities for collective, re­ visionary myth-making . . . . ’ "Poets in the World: The Political Poetry o f Denise Levertov and Adrienne Rich," Diss. Brown University, 1987; 130-31.

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knowledge and wisdom and try to speak to the woman writer who hardly listens to them. The woman remains inside the house, within her sphere. Rich clearly shows in this poem that restricting oneself either by choice or by imposition to the one (female) sphere is a mistake a wom an has to avoid because the world around her needs her like the forest needs the trees to fulfill its natural tasks. "The broken doors to the house, the broken m oon, and the broken lines o f the poem itself seem to reflect R ich's shattered enclosures, the broken barriers that once contained her self . . . ," 86 The wom an here is associated with nature whereas culture is restricted to the house. The trees leaving the house veil a feminist statement; they are a symbol o f other women leaving their domestic spheres and finding their spaces in the world. But the woman in 1963 does not dare yet speak out openly. H ow ever, she subverts the (writing) tradition from within by mentioning in the poem what she does not mention in her letters.87 Several years later, in "Origins and History o f Consciousness" (DCL, 1972-74), Adrienne Rich is in a position to speak out openly what she veiled in her form er poetry. "Like her marvelous trees, it appears as if Rich has finally em erged from her alienation, to resume her place in the world as a poet, and to establish her identity as a poet/w om an."88 She can now refer to the "origins" and the "history" o f her "consciousness" which means that she has undergone the step from consciousness-raising to consciousnes; itself and has woken up from the dead. This poem makes very clear that fo her consciousness and the process of becoming conscious is closeb connected to her poetry writing and that poetry becomes a medium in whicl and through which awareness grows. In the first section of the poem, she depicts the nightlife o f a poet wit letters and journals spread around her, bourbon in a glass and poems on th walls. The poems reflect the poet's internal emotions and struggle becau* they are "crucified on the wall, / dissected, their bird-wings severed / lil> trophies." They represent the "crisis" that the poet has gone through in tl process o f production: "No one lives in this room / without living throuj some kind o f crisis." The poet walks around among poems, books, ai 86 Morrison, "Adrienne Rich: Poetry o f 'Re-Vision"' 93. 87 In later poems, e.g., "Dreamwood" (TP, 1987), Rich openly states the necessity knowledge because knowledge is power, as Michel Foucault emphasizes in Power/Knowledge (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), an idea taken from Frar Bacon's Novum Organon (1620). To Foucault, "knowledge and power are inextrica linked in discourse." Hekman, Gender and Knowledge 18. Therefore, poetry and poare intimately connected, as are dreams and the material in the dreams because they m up a poem. 88 Carol Hudson-Martin, "Moments of Change: The Poems of Adrienne Rich," D University of Notre Dame, IN, 1979; 63.

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"photographs o f dead heroines" and is at a point where she does not yet understand "the true nature o f poetry," which is "[t]he drive / to connect. The dream o f a com m on language," common to all women. Rich symbolizes this idea o f a common language in the form o f lovers, "their blind faith, their / experienced crucifixions." The analogy between the poems that are crucified and the lovers' crucifixions is striking. But despite the fact that she is surrounded by icecold snow (or a hostile society), she is immersing herself into the depth o f the water, into a relationship with another woman, into a relationship with her own inner self. The imagery she uses suggests the idea of going back to the "origins" of a human being, to the Semiotic, back to the m other’s womb where the embryo is also surrounded by water. In addition, water is also an element o f purification; it "washes off the scent - / You are clear now / o f the hunter, the trapper / the wardens o f the mind In her attempt at emphasizing the primary experience, she goes back to the origins of humankind and turns into an animal that is hunted and trapped - all images of a patriarchal society that persecutes the woman poet as well as the wom an89 - and feels the urge and the need to be together with another human being or animal; ”[Y]et the warm animal dreams on / o f another animal / swimming under the snow-flecked surface of the pool, / and wakes, and sleeps again. ” The connection between beings under the surface o f the water suggests the ideas of C .G . Jung's "collective unconscious" and F reu d 's "depth psychology." "No one sleeps in this room without / the dream o f a com m on language." "In her poetry, this translates into a belief that she is writing now out of a subjectivity which is no longer private but shared, so that a poem in another w om an's name is merely tapping another outlet o f a collective unconscious."90 The second section of the poem then connects the more theoretical and abstract reflection o f the first part with the actual encounter between the persona and another human being, which is also the encounter between the self and its other self91: "[T]hese two selves who walked half a lifetime untouching - / to wake to something deceptively simple . . . ." Adrienne Rich emphasizes the necessity for the creation o f a female world that comes from the inside o f a woman and finds a natural outlet in poetry. This female world has to find a way of coexisting with the male world and even collaborating with it because otherwise a survival for wom en is not 89 Cf. my discussion of Sylvia Plath’s poem "Pursuit" in 1.1.2. The Sexual Monster. 90 Susan R. Van Dyne, "The Mirrored Vision of Adrienne Rich," Modern Poetry Studies 8.2 (1978): 140-73; 140. 91 Cf. Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter (1977; Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1985).

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possible. She claims a subversion o f the patriarchal system from within, attempted by women who neither accept the Symbolic order nor refuse to participate in it.92 However, section three of the poem exposes the first two sections as dreams that are not fulfilled yet. It is dangerous if she really chooses to trust her lover, if they have "lowered [them]selves into this, let [them]selves / downward hand over hand as on a rope that quivered / over the unsearched." She exposes herself to the other, in the same way a poet does to the public, and simply has to trust her not to use it against her in the outside world. The persona takes the risk: "We did this. Conceived / of each other, conceived each other in a darkness / which I rem em ber as drenched in light." They thought about themselves and imagined themselves, and in addition to this more conceptual and verbal process they gave birth to each other. They thus became mother and child, poet and poem , creator and creation at the same time and interchangeably; no hierarchies are present. The persona concludes this presentation with an attempt at naming her experience: "I want to call this, life. / But I can't call it life until we start to move / beyond this secret circle o f fire / where our bodies are giant shadows flung on a wall / where the night becomes our inner darkness, and sleeps / like a dumb beast, head on her paws, in the corner." "Helpful though sexual truth-telling may be, however, it does not resolve the more difficult problem these poems so starkly articulate: the difficulty of reinventing names for experience, o f placing the female Self at the center o f this mimetic process.”93 As long as these encounters still take place inside and are opposed and silenced by the outside, they remain a constantly dangerous activity and fight. The threat is always there. The image of the sleeping dumb beast, however, also suggests a potential revolutionary awakening from this transitory sleep. . . . reality was nothing so simple and dismissible as the fact that two women might go to bed together. It was a sense of desiring oneself; above all, of choosing oneself; it was also a primary intensity between women, an intensity which in the world at large was trivialized, caricatured, or invested with evil.94

92 Cf. my discussion o f Kristeva's idea of revolution in II.3 Representation in W omen’s Poetry. 93 Joanne Feith Diehl, "'Cartographies of Silence’: Rich's Common Language and the Woman Poet," Reading Adrienne Rich: Reviews and Re-Visions. 1951-81, ed. Jane Roberta Cooper (Ann Arbor: The U o f Michigan P, 1984) 91-110; 98. 94 Rich, "It is the Lesbian in Us" (1976), On Lies, Secrets, and Silence 200.

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Being a woman and being a poet are intimately connected in the act o f imm ersing oneself into o n e's own and other w om en's unconscious. W om en lovers create each other as the poet creates her objects o f love, the poems which then re-create the poet herself. It is a mutual relationship in which one depends on and reflects the other. The origins and history of consciousness lie, for Adrienne Rich, in the recognition of this relationship and in the knowledge o f this sphere inside. At the end o f the poem , consciousness has reached the point where it becomes a necessity to stand up and enter the public realm and speak out instead o f remaining silent. In poem II in DCL, in the section called "Twenty-One Love Poems" (D CL , 1974-76), Adrienne Rich writes openly about a lesbian love relationship and shows how, for her, this is the only way of enduring the wasteland into which a poet is b o rn .95 She cannot remain silent but presents the relationship in the form o f a dream: " [0 ]u r friend the poet comes into my room / where I'v e been writing for days, / drafts, carbon, poems are scattered everyw here, / and I want to show her one poem / which is the poem o f my life." H ow ever, she hesitates because "I dreamed you were a poem , / . . . , a poem I wanted to show someone... She falls asleep again and continues dream ing "of the desire to show you to everyone I love, / to move openly together / in the pull o f gravity, which is not simple, / which carries the feathered grass a long way down the upbreathing a ir ." Ironically, however, if one takes away the dream, the lesbian love relationship still rem ains on the reality level. This poem almost reads like a sequel to "Origins and History o f Consciousness." In this dream, poem and lover become one; in the metaphor, the textual body o f a poem and the physical body o f another woman mix into one presence. The analogy, how ever, goes beyond a mere metaphor because in a metaphor one realm is used to explain the other. Here, both realms exist at the same time. The w om an dreaming is a poet (the poet Adrienne Rich writes the poem about a w om an poet who dream s about poetry) and a woman (lover) and treats both parts as equals, as parts o f herself, with the same importance. She is proud o f her lover and her poems because both are, like in "Origins and History o f Consciousness," her creation in a mutual relationship. " . . . R ich's dream o f her lover being a poem offers an example of the correlation she establishes between the unconscious, reality, and poetry . . . ," 96 T herefore, she feels the desire to stand up for these relationships in public because they have to be taken out o f darkness into light, out of the dream and inner world to the outside world. It is not simple, however, to move

95 Cf. "Poetry: II, Chicago" ( YNLYL . 1984). 96 Diaz-Diocaretz, The Transforming Power o f Language 60.

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with the "upbreathing air," to move against the conventions and norm s o f society. As Rich explains: "One thing 1 was trying to do in The Love Poems was constantly to relate the lovers to a larger world. You're never just in bed together in a private space; you can’t be, there is a hostile and envious world out there, acutely threatened by women's love for each other. . . . So many of these things enter in when two women are together: joy like none other, vulnerability like none other, the breaking of the core prohibition at the heart of patriarchy.”97 The idea of the map as a represention o f the oppressor's language that imposes silence on the female poet is further thematized in "Cartographies o f Silence" (DCL , 1975). Adrienne Rich elaborates a whole concept o f the relationship between language - poetry - silence in the form o f maps that can be read, misread or torn up. She emphasizes that it can sometimes be necessary to destroy language because letting a false language live and spread could be much more dangerous. For her every "conversation begins / with a lie. And each / speaker o f the so-called com m on language feels / the ice-floe split, the drift apart / as if powerless, as if up against / a force o f n atu re.” Words are never what w om en really want to say; the linguistic possibilities are missing. Although she still dream s o f a com m on language, all she has been able to achieve so far is the knowledge that such a com m on language does not exist yet and certainly not between the male and female speakers of the so-called "common language." Although ”[w]riting has often been regarded as the sphere in which wom en, denied a full existence in society, could assert their independence and creativity,"98 writing can also represent another form of confinem ent within an alien linguistic universe. The dream versus its non-existence causes the feeling of powerlessness which is stressed by the com parison o f the opponent with a force o f nature. Rich establishes the difference between a poem and a conversation, a difference which lies in the fact that a poem can be destroyed whereas a conversation "has other laws / recharges itself with its own / false energy. Cannot be tom / up. Infiltrates our blood. Repeats itself. / Inscribes with its unreturning stylus / the isolation it denies." A conversation, therefore, is much more dangerous than a poem because things that are expressed once can never be undone and will even perpetuate the falseness. The

97 Bulkin, "An Interview with Adrienne Rich," Conditions 1.2 57. 98 Janice Markey, A New Tradition? The Poetry o f Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton and Adrienne Rich (Bern: Lang, 1985) 228.

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infiltration, the repetition, the inscription o f the false language widens the gap betw een potential sharers o f the com m on language. Thus language, though m eant for communication and com m unity, produces isolation and loneliness in its speakers; that is the failure of language. "The phenomena Rich wishes to describe - a new female identity, the nuances o f a m ale/fem ale relationship - make impossible demands on a limited and sexist vocabulary."99 The unsaid word, w om an's non-expression o f will leads to silence that, for Rich, should not be confused with absence, because the words are not absent but simply unspoken. Society has developed a whole "technology of silence / The rituals, etiquette / the blurring of terms I . . . I Silence can be a plan / rigorously executed." Silence is there, "[i]t is a presence / it has a history a form ." But if silence is practiced, it means that there is some agent for the execution, and Rich here blames these agents for the existence o f silence: Most of all I would like to speak of how the u n sp o ken - that which we are forbidden or dread to name and describe becomes the u n sp e a k a b le . . . , how the nameless becomes the invisible. And 1 am going to try to suggest some thoughts to you about the acts of writing and teaching, as a choice between collusion with silence, or revolt against silence.100

The acceptance o f silence would impose a double silence on her: on the one hand, the feeling o f powerlessness towards language and on the other, the absence o f the manifestation o f silence in public. Silence is the "scream / o f an illegitimate voice / It has ceased to hear itself, therefore / it asks itself / How do I exist?" This illegitimate voice comes from somewhere inside, from the unconscious, and needs to be listened to. The com m on language can only work if it can be shared with others and if the others are willing to listen and communicate: "This was the silence I wanted to break in you / I had questions but you would not answer / I had answers but you could not use them / This is useless to you and perhaps to others." Although she knows that "(ljanguage cannot do everything -," she wishes she could turn the poem , her only m edium, into an object that would finally bring people together, the you and the I. All she can do is to choose "these words, these whispers, conversations / from which time after time the truth breaks moist and g re e n ."

99 Judith McDaniel, Reconstituting the World: The Poetry and Vision o f Adrienne Rich (Argyle, NY: Spinsters, Inc., 1978) 5. 100 Adrienne Rich, "The Transformation o f Silence into Language and Action," Sinister Wisdom 6(1 978): 17-25; 18.

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Despite the fact that Adrienne Rich emphasizes very strongly language's failure to articulate the truth, the real feelings o f a w om an, to fulfill the dream of a common language, she remains the poet she is. Only in poetry does she see a possibility of communicating with other wom en. Rich herself never had a choice; the alternative o f remaining silent never was an alternative for her because silence for her could take the forms o f "namelessness, denial, secrets, taboo subjects, erasure, false-naming, non­ nam ing, encoding, omission, veiling, fragmentation and ly in g ."101 As "writers, as scholars, as teachers, we have a choice: to name or not to name. But non-naming is also action: the adding o f yet another layer - our own - to the walls that entomb a part o f the truth, a part o f our fre e d o m ."102 The unconscious with its own language and its own rules translates into poetry much more easily than into any other kind o f language, and thus poetry is the medium that comes closest to "reality," to the "tru th ." There is the constant desire in Rich as a wom an poet to equate what is inside her with what she expresses, to connect signifier and signified in a one-to-one relationship. Poetry connects to what was repressed during the thetic phase. Poetry becomes a medium through which the coupure between the Semiotic and the Symbolic can be turned into an elem ent linking the two realms and dissolving the repression o f the Semiotic. Thus, poetry for Rich can become the genre in which the Semiotic and the Symbolic are no longer at war but form a complem entary and harmonious unity. In this way, the personal conscious and unconscious life experiences are turned into autobiographical poetry. This is, for Rich, the only way to come close to expressing herself in language and to accepting the text on the page as a mirror image of herself. In poetry, R ich's written self and the writing self become one. Rich considers her poems as the results o f the translation o f her life experiences into poetic language. This autobiographical mode o f her poetry is enhanced by the political messages she wants to convey to other women. Yet, her idea o f communication is based on the assumption that all women read her poems in the same way, namely in her way. By admitting to her fear o f abuse, she also admits to the at least partial failure o f this concept. The concept that would work for each individual woman would be "difference." The individual poem then can be seen as ingrained in the social, political, historical, and psychological background o f the individual poet, becomes a relative point in time, and would not have to be considered

101 Rich, "The Transformation of Silence into Language and A ction” 18. 102 Rich, "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action” 22.

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an absolute statement about the poet, but as the poet's individual statement at a certain point in time. For Rich, the sum o f her poems written at different times in her life constitute the map o f her life. The poems form a map in hindsight, but the further Rich comes in her life, the more she considers life in the image o f maps that are characterized by an often clear layout, a system that offers the readers various alternatives but no real alternative to the map itself. One either follows the roads o f the map or is completely outside o f it. Like in An Atlas o f the Difficult World, she increasingly sees the connections o f the various roads and how they all come together at some point. The only choice a poet has is to prevent others from imposing a map by creating a map o f her own, which is exactly what Rich does in An Atlas o f the Difficult World. At the end, only poetry, reflecting the past, remains. If language is a map o f our failures, then Adrienne Rich has published a new map in the form o f a collection o f poetry in 1991, An Atlas o f the Difficult W orld. 103 Here she no longer emphasizes the importance of change but focuses on the attempts to sketch a map of the world the way she as a wom an sees it. The title indicates the emphasis on geography. Her poem s have become a part of an atlas that represents geographical and geological details o f the surface of the earth. The world that Rich represents spans from the East to the West coast of the United States and includes English and Spanish languages. It seems like an attempt to grasp the boundaries o f her world since she moved from the East coast (M assachusetts) to the West coast (California) herself. The map she unfolds in this collection is the map of a "difficult" world that is full o f social and psychological problems for her personae and herself. "Repeatedly in this volum e, Rich registers such insiduous connections: between poverty and exploitation; between battered wives and swaggering boys; . . . . " 104 Many o f these poems are autobiographical and focus on the problem of poetry or writing in general. The title thus explains her method: the atlas is another term for a way of representation, a visual representation with its ow n language that can be understood by some people and not by others; it unfolds connections and disconnections and reveals all the facets o f the

103 The collection is subdivided into two major sections, the first one entitled "An Atlas for the Difficult W orld,” the second one without title. Part I consists of thirteen poems that do not have titles but numbers, except for poems number VII (The Dream Site) and XIII (Dedications). 1990-1991 is the date for the whole section. Part II consists of another 12 poems with some of them being subdivided into several parts. These poems are all dated and were written between 1988 and 1991. 104 Gertrude Reif Hughes, "Eternal Vigilance," The Women's Review o f Books 9.3 (Dec. 1991): 11.

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world: valleys and mountains, rivers and oceans, forests and cities etc. Everything that can be located becomes part o f the atlas, the book that is supposedly highly mimetic of reality. In the same way, "poems" - as the book is subtitled - are meant to represent reality, are meant to explain reality (which is something else than merely rendering reality) with a language that is proper to the medium and to the material that is chosen for the poems. The poet and the poems are meant to carry the world on their shoulders (as a reference to the mythic figure of Atlas who had to carry the world on his shoulders). At the same time, Adrienne Rich undertakes a geographical and literary re-reading or re-visioning of the known world in order to outline the shape of the world that she sees so that she can turn the map o f our failures into a map of success.105 To motivate change or improvement in society does not seem to be the task o f the poet any m ore, but to present the "map o f our country" (6). She delineates a geographical net o f the destruction o f the earth through so-called civilization. W hereas the above-mentioned map collects information that is partly taken from the past and thus from memory, in the third poem the act o f writing a poem and of reading triggers off memories. The symbol o f the connections that she establishes through writing and reading is the spider that is weaving its net and trying to progress. The connections are made in the same way the poet travels new roads but remains the same herself. She links one geographical place to the other. However, the analogy does not completely work since the poet realizes that she does not "know what she [the spider] needs. Maybe simply / to spin herself a house within a house, on her own terms / in cold, in silence." Analogies only work to a certain extent. Thus, the poet cannot endeavor to speak for others but can only speculate. This, in a way, could be an answer to many o f the claims made by, e .g ., black feminists such as Audre Lorde that white middle-class women should not speak for all women. Rich also admits that concepts which claim to be all-embracing might not work.

105 Cf. her own essay, "When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision"; cf. also Harold Bloom's term "misreading" as a way of revisionism: "What is revisionism? As the origins o f the word indicate, it is a reaiming or a looking-over-again, leading to a reesteeming or a re-estimating. We can venture the formula: the revisionist strives to see again, so as to esteem and estimate differently, so as then to aim 'correctively.'" A Map o f Misreading (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1975) 4. See Annette Kolodny: "It is no mere coincidence, therefore, that readers as diverse as Adrienne Rich and Harold Bloom have arrived by various routes at the conclusion that re vision constitutes the key to an ongoing literary history." "A Map for Rereading: Gender and the Interpretation of Literary Texts," The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature, and Theory, ed. Elaine Showalter (London: Virago Press, 1985) 46-62; 59.

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H ere we find an appeal for accepting difference, for accepting o n e's ow n shortcomings, for acknowledging the existence o f a multi-society. W hereas in earlier poems she used to generalize about w om en, she now partly seems to admit to the failure o f the community o f women. For Adrienne Rich silence has never been an answer to her questions about wom anhood but rather a restriction imposed on her. She now has to accept that silence could be one possibility to understand herself as a woman. Her task as a poet can only be the establishment o f possibilities for connections, like on a map, and then leave it up to the individual to decide. The poet, as she says in poem number IV, can only try to reach "the desperate / woman, the desperate m an," but even for this she needs the help o f those that are concerned: "-never-to-be-finished, still unbegun work o f repair-it cannot / be done without them / and where are they now?" The poet, like the astronom er, the historian, and the architect, is necessary in the world but serves mostly as a catalyst rather than as an active agent. "There are roads to take" for the "poet journalist pioneer mother / uncovering her country," there are ways to "catch your country's moment" (poem num ber V). Thus, Rich has turned to a more modest, insecure, and also pessimistic position leaving it open for women to accept her ideas. She has to convince herself that "there are [indeed] roads to take." The very last poem, "XIII (Dedications)," focuses on the act of reading the particular poem that the readers have in front of their eyes. For the first tim e. Rich refers to the reader, not to a specific "you" or to a woman, and gives up the distance between them. The persona talks to the reader: "I know you are reading this poem" and then mentions several situations in which the reader might be reading the poem. The almost refrain-like repetition of this first sentence reminds us o f W hitm an's attempts at including all American people in his poetry. Poetry is introduced into everyday life, as everyday life is introduced into poetry, since everything has become the material o f poetry. Rich breaks down the boundaries between life and art in manifold ways although, of course, she has hardly any control over the intrusion of poetry into everyday life, except in her own life. All the readers she mentions have one thing in com m on: they are looking for something that could be contained in the poem to calm their thirst. Although the poem is written in a language that is not completely comprehensible to everyone, the readers continue: "I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language / guessing at some words while others keep you reading / and I want to know which words they are." The poet tries to establish an interaction between the reader and herself; she wants to learn about possible effects of her poetry and admits that the poet does not exactly know her readers: "I know you are reading this poem

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listening for something [my italics], torn / between bitterness and hope / naming back once again to the task you cannot refuse. / I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else / left to read / there where you have landed, stripped as you are." She locates the reader in a geographical space, "there where you have landed," but purposely leaves it in the dark. There is nothing concrete mentioned about possible tasks for a poet; Rich has very much reduced her claims for what poetry can do in society and instead of asking for fixed feminist ideas, such as the community o f women, she leaves her goals open for women to decide. But she is also convinced that her poetry is the only thing that remains which can reach women no matter how stripped they are. In conclusion, six phases in the development o f Rich's metapoetical poetry can be noticed.106 At the beginning, Rich was conscious o f her social self, o f what society expected from her, but unconsciously she also knew that this social self was in opposition to her inner self. I would, therefore, call the first step "unconscious subversion o f tradition" and the second step the "transference of the unconscious into the conscious," the third step "dual consciousness." These three steps describe women in a patriarchal society. The fourth step as the "open criticism o f social categorization" and the fifth step as an "attempt to redefine the self and the world" describe Plath's and Rich's translation o f their particular life experiences into language and poetry. The last step o f "mapping and m irroring o f experience" addresses the poets’ particular means o f representation and, in terms o f chronology, does not stand at the end but accompanies the poets' various stages. In this sense, the six phases in the development o f Rich's metapoetical poetry run parallel to the growing consciousness o f Plath and Rich. Whereas Plath never concludes the sixth phase, Rich has to admit at the end that she has not yet been completely successful either. Despite Rich’s failure to achieve social and political changes, in her search for identity she has successfully used her poetry as a reflector o f herself and her experiences. She does not deny the close connection between her life and her poetry and knows that, for her, autobiographical poetry equals survival and life.

106 Cf. Annas, "A Poetry of Survival" 11-12.

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2.3. Smoky M irrors: Representation in Adrienne Rich's Poetry In contrast to Sylvia Plath, Rich's poetry does not contain as many m irror images and doubles; nevertheless, she uses them in very crucial and relevant poem s that deal with aspects which can be called leitmotifs in her life. Rich - as well as Plath - is determined by the tension between socially imposed norms and her desires for an affirmation o f her womanhood. N either o f the two, however, can clearly state what their own desires are. T hus, their poetry becomes the location of a search for identity that has to overcom e this opposition between the "I" and the "others." Logically, both believe in m irrors as an ideal means to reflect this tension. The following analysis will focus on the poems "I Dream I'm the Death o f Orpheus," "The M irror in W hich Two Are Seen as One," "Dear Adrienne," and on sections o f "Eastern W ar Tim e," which each represents a significant step in R ich's search for identity from the birth of an optimistic twofold self via a manifold and fragmented self back to the double self finally united in death. In "I Dream I'm the Death of Orpheus" (WC, 1968), Rich attempts a definition o f the persona as a woman. She tries to answer the question of "who am I?" and to affirm her womanhood. Every part of the definition starts with "I am a w om an," and then continues to list aspects that reflect her pow er, obstructed by hidden authorities, "powers severely limited / by authorities whose faces I rarely see." The w om an's position in society has killed the poet in her, "I am a woman in the prime o f life / driving her dead poet in a black Rolls-Royce / through a landscape o f twilight and th o rn s." She is a "woman with a certain mission / which if obeyed to the letter will leave her intact." If she fulfills her mission o f motherhood and wifehood, no-one will kill her. Thus, automatically the confrontation between her and the hidden authorities becomes a question of life and death; a fight she needs to win in order to survive. Like "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers," the poem outlines a w om an's power as she herself imagines it. The difference, how ever, is that this time - which coincides with the high tide o f the political activities o f the W om en's Movement - Rich chooses a persona who is aw are o f her situation. The woman is conscious o f her fear but also of what she is able to do. She is a woman "with the nerves o f a panther / a w om an with contacts among H ell's Angels / a woman feeling the fullness o f her pow ers." She, however, is restricted in her actions by these authorities who try to tell her when the time is come to use her power. She is a w om an who has a clear mind and can see through the surface of the w orld around her, "a woman sworn to lucidity / who through the mayhem,

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the smoky fires / o f these underground streets / her dead poet learning to walk backward against the wind / on the wrong side o f the m irror." She divides herself into two parts, woman and poet, and the wom an in her is the one who makes the decisions and acts rationally. The w om an has understood her situation; the poet still has to learn. For the poet, it becomes a kind of rebirth learning how to oppose the generally accepted direction. The poet still walks "on the wrong side o f the m irror," on the side o f the dead who have, for a time, submitted to the authorities, but she walks back to the m irror out o f the country behind the looking glass, back to the real world. The right side o f the mirror is that where the underground forces have no power over her any more, like in the legend of orpheus, who goes to the underworld to save his wife Eurydice. She is only allowed to leave with him if he does not turn around and look at her until they reach the upper world. But he turns around too early, so that she disappears again in the underworld. The persona of the poem dreams that she is responsible for O rpheus's death and the final separation. In the legend we have Orpheus, the poet, and his wife Eurydice. In the poem we have the w om an and the poet. The myth is turned around because the woman needs to rescue the dead poet who walks in the underworld. For her, it is not so much a question of looking back at the wrong moment but of using her pow ers in the right moment. Any wrong movement can throw the poet back into the underw orld, back to the wrong side o f the mirror. The m irror here stands for the separation between the underworld and the upper world, between illusion or dream and reality, between imprisonment and freedom, between death and life. Adrienne Rich rewrites the myth o f Orpheus in two ways: 1. She makes the woman rescue the poet. 2. The rescuer and the one that needs to be rescued are two parts of one and the same person. Thus, the woman in Rich's poem becomes independent and self-sufficient and totally relies on her own powers. However, still another reading o f the re-reading o f the m yth is possible. The perspective in the myth is that o f Orpheus; in the poem , it is that of the woman. Orpheus is the poet, and the woman sees the poet. The woman kills the poet, Orpheus, in order to make the birth o f a new poet possible. Thus, the poem becomes a farewell poem to R ich's old craft and thereby to the poet adhering to the rules of her male models. The woman becomes the active and aggressive one who openly rebels against the role of the victim and the helplessness traditionally attributed to women in fiction and myths. She has overcome the phase o f unconscious rebellion, but in 1968, she does not yet have the courage to say "I am the Death o f Orpheus" or "I Want to be the Death of Orpheus," but she uses "I

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D ream " instead. A dream can always be rejected on the grounds o f not being real, and thereby the poet is safe to write about it. Yet, a dream is also the reflection o f the unconscious o f the persona like the poem is a reflection o f the mind o f the poet. In the same way that a dream can express this illusion o f pow er that can only be exerted in the imaginary w orld (an escape from reality and at the same time, the creation o f a new world in which the woman has found new possibilities and new space), the poem can em pow er the poet as well. By hiding her thoughts behind the m ask o f a dream , by rewriting a well-known myth and by inserting the m irror as a medium between the two opposing worlds, Rich is able to subvert the expected distribution o f roles, to integrate a w om an 's life and art, and to show, for a certain time, a utopian concept o f wom anhood. In contrast to the m ore future-oriented "I Dream I'm the Death o f O rpheus," "The M irror in W hich Two Are Seen as One" (DW, 1971) pictures a w om an’s fragmentation into various selves in the present. In the poem , three women are present: "she," "you" (who is addressed by the speaker o f the poem), and the speaker herself who is not present with any action in the poem but serves as a mediator between "she" and "you." By choosing this distanced perspective, Rich is able to extrapolate from herself and to consider the relationship o f two wom en lovers - or even two parts o f one body. The "'o th er' is the one you call sister." Love is equally essential to both women whom the speaker presents. But it is also revealed as an illusion: the love a wom an experiences in a patriarchy in which her duties consist o f preparing food for her husband leaves nothing but "sour leftovers." The open refrigerator as a symbol o f the speaker's soul that is ripe but "bleeding [its] heart out in plastic film ," covered by the norms of society through which she can see but through which she cannot escape. "This harvest is a failure," but there is a "crate . . . waiting in the orchard / for you to fill it." The second section o f this poem almost sounds like an attempt of the "you" to convince the "sister" that her way o f life is the only enlightened way. The first stanza is full o f light imagery, "blaze like lightning," "flicker around her like fire," "dazzle yourself in her wide eyes." The "you" has the mission o f telling her sister what is wrong with her life and what she needs and thus imposes her idea o f life on her sister. However, the needs o f the two are not identical. It is another kind o f imposition o f a w om an by a woman, or o f a woman by herself. The criticism o f this equalizing desire is a plea for the acknowledgm ent of difference; not every w om an has the same needs; not every woman wants to be enlightened; w om en cannot all lead identical lives; one part of this particular woman longs for the beauty o f physical work, the other part for the stimulation by

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mental work, by pictures, by w ords, and by music. Both parts co-exist and have to be accepted as constituting traits o f one p e rso n .107 So far, the three constituents are clearly separated, the you, the she, the speaker; now, however, they are united in the "we": "we are sisters." The speaker leaves her position o f distance and enters the same level o f discourse. "She," "you" and "I" form a unity. In the third section, the narration goes back to the level o f the present. After having experienced two sides o f herself, the "you" now sits in front o f her m irror and questions her identity, wanting to know "who are you?" H er thoughts run through different stages o f her life: childhood (nunnery, nursery), adulthood (hospital), and death (graves), and they all tell her that she has always been dom inated by a m ore powerful authority (e.g. patriarchal religion and education, masked doctors). The element that connects the different steps is wom anhood and its submission to the biological capacity of childbirth. W hereas Sylvia Plath in "Two Sisters o f Persephone" creates the socially accepted wom an vs. the condem ned poet and still presents the first one as more desirable,108 Rich here clearly criticizes this alternative and shows its disadvantages. W om en literally have died in childbirth, but they also die in a psychological sense because they give up themselves when giving birth or are already condem ned and predestined to give themselves up when they are born. She connects this general description with her own m other "dying in childbirth over and over / not knowing how to stop / bearing you over and o v e r." H er m other gave birth to her and her sister, an idea that connects "you" and "sister" o f the previous two sections. Com ing from the same womb, two sisters can go different ways, but they will always be related through their m other, through their womanhood, and through their interdependence. Birth is not seen as a one-time action in this poem; it is an ongoing process o f trying to separate mother and child, and yet, the m other is finally dead and "you unborn." So your only chance is "your two hands grasping your head / drawing it down against the blade o f life / your nerves the nerves o f a midwife / learning her trade." A wom an thus becomes her own m other, midwife, and child, and is therefore responsible for and able to cause changes in her life. Being a midwife seems to be every w om an's fate, for herself and for others. One o f the possibilities for the "you" to become her own midwife is the book, language, the poem that the reader is handed over by the poet. The

107 Cf. "Women see themselves mirrored in each other, and they often do not like what they see." Morrison, "Adrienne Rich: Poetry o f 'R e-V isio n" 207. 108 Cf. 1.3.2. Her Body, Herself.

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poem 's function thus seems to be to unite all women, or the different parts o f oneself, and give birth to a new woman. The m irror does not give her an answer, but it shows her her past, present, and future, and com bines her various social roles o f private duties (mother, wife, housewife) and public aspiration in one m edium. The reflection necessary for change takes place on various levels: Adrienne Rich sees herself reflected in the speaker o f the poem , who then sees herself in the quest o f the "you" to find a definition o f herself and to sit in front o f her m irror which reflects the "you" in its present state but which also reflects the various other old or new selves. According to Luce Irigaray, a wom an is always two, already in term s of biolo gy,109 and the speculum is the instrument used to reveal this doubleness110; it is the gynecologist’s tool for the inspection o f a w om an’s vagina, thus, "a male instrument for the further penetration o f the wom an, . . . . " m Rich, however, uses the m irror in the poem and transform s the poem to a m irror in which she herself and all women can see themselves reflected: " . . . the 'm irro r' could well be the divided, doubled m ind o f the poet, or m ore palpably, the poem itself."112 She learns that she can only exist together with other women, and she can only survive if they all learn how to define themselves, how to give birth to themselves, and how to reject any force that tries to break the com m unity o f women apart: If we have a common history, a collective future, it is not through the m irrors o f centuries o f misogyny that we will recognize each other. But more and more, even the 'special' woman is learning that her capacity to live as a 'human being' in patriarchy is indivisible from the nature of her relationships with other women, and her self-chosen identity as a woman. We do not annul the bitter past by pretending to have detoured around it; we do not come into possession of ourselves by detaching ourselves from each o th er.113

Therefore, in 1971 it is necessary for Rich to turn away from the male world, to turn away from anything that is alien to her, to reappropriate the m irror, and to turn truly and faithfully to the world of women. The 1980s become a time o f change for Adrienne Rich because she starts questioning the reasons for speaking out, for not remaining silent. In the two poems "Dear Adrienne: I'm calling you up tonight" and "Dear 109 Cf. Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One. 110 Irigaray, Speculum o f the Other Woman. 111 Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics 130. 112 Van Dyne, "The Mirrored Vision of Adrienne Rich" 165. 113 Adrienne Rich, "Introduction," Susan Griffin, Voices (Old Westbury, NY: The Feminist Press, 1975) 5-13; 9-10.

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Adrienne: 1 feel signified by pain," that are part o f "Contradictions: Tracking Poems" ( YNLYL , 1983-85) and that are put on two opposite pages that m irror each other, she uses the epistolary form to hold a conversation between two o f her many selv es.114 The one writes a letter to the other to ask "what [she] intend[s] to do / with the rest o f [her] life .” She has reached a point in her life where she knows what she has been able to achieve and that language has perhaps not been as successful as she has wanted it to be. Her answer is very pessimistic and depressing because she does not seem to be in control o f herself any longer: "I feel signified by pain I . . . I nothing is predictable with pain / . . . / I'm already living the rest o f my life / not under conditions o f my choosing / wired into pain / rider on the slow train." The active, angry, energetic, and feminist Adrienne Rich the readers know from the previous poems speaks to an Adrienne Rich who has lost her belief in her own writing and her own possibilities and who is too ill to write o f anything but pain. The physical pain almost immobilizes her whereas the psychic pain o f the years before motivated her into writing and action. Yet, she has no real choice; she has to write because silence for her means death, and as long as she is writing she will not die. But a new tone o f despair, depression, immobility, and pain has entered her poems in the 1980s. "T im e's power" leads to an analysis o f the present and an evocation o f the past; the look towards the future is given up. The question o f identity in the transitional and autobiographical poem "Dear Adrienne" is reduced to a doubling o f the poet and the double's questions about a future that has already become a present, namely the rest o f the life. In a part o f An Atlas o f the Difficult World called "Eastern W ar Time" (ADW , 1989-90), Rich finally almost exclusively focuses on the past. She gives an autobiographical account o f what happened in 1943 in a first section called "M emory lifts her smoky m irror: 1943" (ADW 35), so that she can finally see clearly what happened in her past and claim it as part o f her personal history. The m irror sheds light on a w ar that destroyed millions o f Jews. She thematizes "the double bind o f Jewish parents in antiSemitic surroundings who will wound their child equally whether they tell the truth or deny it, . . . . " 115 In a few words she tries to answer her question o f "w hat's an American girl / in wartim e her permed friz o f hair / her glasses for school and movies / between school and home ignorantly Jewish / trying to grasp the world / through books" {ADW 36). This private activity, which she later on makes public, is contrasted - also in print with

114 Cf. 2.1.3. A Jewish Poet's Education: Her Father's Daughter. 115 Hughes, "Eternal Vigilance" 11.

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capitals - with the shocking events o f the resolution o f the "JEWISH Q U ESTIO N IN E U R O PE." Birth and death are very closely linked, and R ich's conclusion is "SITUATION D IFFIC U LT ether of messages / in capital letters silence" (ADW 37). Language here is not enough to render the facts, not even if capitalized. M emory is needed to survive but memory alone cannot make you survive. "I c a n 't be still I'm here / in your m irror pressed leg to leg beside you / intrusive inappropriate bitter flashing / with what makes me unkillable though killed "(ADW 43). The m irror serves as a means for introspection that reflects thoughts and the interior life of a person; it makes visible what otherwise could not be seen; it thus externalizes part o f the psyche o f the woman. The externalization takes the very concrete shape of a hum an body that is, like a lover, "leg to leg beside y o u ”; the memories that com e up, however, are all very negative. In the next section "M emory says: W ant to do right? D on’t count on m e." The examples of memory Rich presents in this poem are taken from historical events all over the w orld, including Israel. Memory becomes a metapoetical device when it situates itself in the present poem: "I am standing here in your poem unsatisfied / lifting my smoky mirror" (ADW 44). Memory as well as the reader are unsatisfied, but there is nothing the poet can do about m em ory's presence in her poem. The poem becomes a shape, almost like a container that is offered by the poet and then filled by memory. It is methodologically done by clearing up the smoky m irror that used to hide truth. Once the smoke is cleared away, the knowledgeable m irror seems to present the truth about the past. The m irror has thereby turned from an instrument o f reflection of the immediate present to a reflection o f the past, to an instrument revealing woman’s (Rich's) story o f the past. M em ory, as the mental m irror o f the past, is turned into poetry as the linguistic m irror o f the p a st.116 This chronological presentation of Adrienne R ich's use o f m irror imagery and doubles has revealed that the function o f the m irror has undergone the change from the representation o f a future with the hope of overcom ing the split between woman and poet in "I Dream I'm the Death o f Orpheus" via the recognition and acceptance o f various present female selves in "The M irror in Which Two Are Seen as One" to an almost exclusive focus on the past. The mirrors no longer reflect what a woman could become but what she has been in the past. Rich no longer focuses on

116 This very pessimistic view of the past is continued in a different way in the imag of the mirror in poems number II and III of "Through Corralitos Under Rolls of Cloud" (ADW, 1989-90). Here the mirror becomes a symbol o f death; the mirrors have to be turned over" because of the death of a person's "other."

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the idea of a female community; she has no dream any m ore; what remains is memory of a past that seems to be unacceptable to her. Through smoky m irrors, Rich confesses that she has failed in offering an acceptable alternative to patriarchy. Thus, the poems m irror the change o f the optimistic Adrienne Rich of the 1970s and 80s, who thought that the will and the pow er to change would suffice to change the world, to an individualistic and pessimistic poet. She finally defines herself apart from her comm unity, but "[h]er new book shows us the poet as 'A tlas' shouldering a burdensome world, and provides a guide [an atlas] to the difficulties it d escrib es."117 This volume of poetry can be compared to a m em ory, an autobiography that is written when the poet has reached a certain age at which she can look back at the past. W hereas topography in earlier poems showed "newer and broader horizons for w o m en ,"118 for Adrienne Rich the horizon in Atlas has narrowed dow n to resigned visions o f the past and to death. In contrast to Sylvia Plath, who never actually had the chance to name the tensions she experienced and her desire for recognition and acceptance o f difference, Adrienne Rich has been able to actually experiment with alternative ways o f life which were motivated and shaped by her search for identity. She experienced and named the tensions and the recognition o f the fragmentation o f identity into various equal selves. H ow ever, as her m irror imagery shows, she never gave up hope to achieve a dissolution o f this fragmentation into a unified human being. The poems o f her most recent collection present a more realistic and more pessimistic and resigned poet who has not come to terms with the idea o f identity that resists any stabilizing or unifying attempts. If Rich has failed to gain a satisfying concept o f identity and an acceptable way o f life for herself as a woman poet, she has not failed to integrate life and poetry. Autobiographical poetry has made it possible for her to survive. Plath's m irrors are sheeted at the end and connect poetic and actual physical death; R ich's mirrors are smoky and show war, destruction, physical illness, and pain; yet, they still are a few steps away from final death.

117 Hughes, "Eternal Vigilance" 11. 118 Beth Ann Bassen, "Topographical and Astronomical Images in Adrienne Rich's Poetry," Women and Death: Linkages in Western Thought and Literature (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1984) 179-89; 179.

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3. Audre Lorde: "Black Lesbian Feminist W arrior Poet Mother'*1

"So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive."2

In the preceding two chapters on Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich, reflection has revealed itself as the structuring and dominating principle in both poets' lives and works. In the 1950s, the m ajor period o f their education and socialization, both were strongly affected by the white middle-class feminine mystique with its strict definitions o f wom anhood in the fields of m otherhood, m arriage, sexuality - and its clearly maledominated and m odernist concept o f poetry refusing women to become poets without struggle. Both Plath and Rich wanted to be accepted as wom en and poets in their society and therefore tried to adhere to the established norms. Yet, both experienced a tension between what they did and what they felt like doing, started to reflect on their wom anhood, and attempted to establish an identity o f their own. They translated this need for definition through mental reflection into a textual reflection by inscribing themselves into their poems, at first unconsciously, then more and more consciously. Through this integration o f life and text, these poems turned into looking glasses for Plath and Rich as women and poets. Both Plath and Rich used the persona of a poem as an alter ego for themselves, as a m irror o f their lives and their need for identity. The personae of their poetry reflected metapoetically on poetry. Audre Lorde was as much a poet o f the 1950s as Plath and Rich. Even though the feminine mystique was mainly a white middle-class phenom enon, many African Americans internalized this code o f behavior because o f their desire for acceptance in and assimilation into white America. Lorde was bom February 18, 1934 in New York City. Her parents had immigrated to the U .S. in 1924 and shaped her life as the daughter o f immigrants from Barbados and Grenada in an American society 1 Audre Lorde, "What Is at Stake in Lesbian and Gay Publishing Today: The Bill Whitehead Memorial Award Ceremony - 1990 (ABA - Las Vegas)," Callaloo 14.1 (1991): 65-66; 65. 2 "A Litany for Survival," The Black Unicom: Poems (New York: Norton, 1978) IB U ) .

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that did not fully accept them. She experienced her childhood as a period o f maturation and growth, painful and pleasurable at the same time. She got married in 1962 and divorced in 1970. Having written poetry early in her life, she published her first collection in 1968, The First Cities . 3 Graduation from Hunter College and an M .L .S . from Columbia University helped her secure a professorship for English language and literature at Hunter College. For Lorde, the 1960s were a period o f racial, social, sexual, and poetical awakening. Like Plath and Rich, Lorde had attempted to fully integrate into American society, but became finally aware o f her situation o f "otherness" as a black woman who wanted to write and publish poetry and who came out as a lesbian. Lorde, "a poet o f difference"4 and activism, became one of the founders o f Kitchen Table: W omen o f C olor Press, a small feminist publishing house. Because o f her struggle with cancer, she retired to St. Croix on the U.S. Virgin Islands, where she, together with her friend and partner, Gloria I. Joseph, initiated the W om en’s Coalition and continued to support SISA (Sisterhood in Support o f Sisters in South Africa) and CAFRA (Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action). In the same way that Lorde was shaped by American society, she left her imprint on those who knew and read her. She was Poet Laureate o f New York State from 1991 to 1993. Audre Lorde, later named Gamba Adisa (W arrior - she who makes her meaning known) died o f cancer on N ovem ber 17, 1992. Numerous obituaries from all over the world, the memorial service held at the Cathedral o f St. John the Divine in New York City on January 18, 1993, five honorary doctoral degrees, and her fifteen volumes o f poetry and prose testify that, in Gloria I. Joseph's words, "[t]he voice o f the poet, Audre Lorde, cannot be silenced. / The work o f the poet, Gamba Adisa, will never be forgotten. For Audre Lorde has imprinted the

3 (New York: Poets Press, 1968) (FCJ; further poetry collections are: Cables to Rage (London: Paul Breman, 1970) (C7?]; From a Land Where Other People Live (Detroit, MI: Broadside Press, 1973) [FL\\ New York Head Shop and Museum (Detroit: Broadside Press, 1974) fiVy); Between Our Selves: Poems (Point Reyes: Eidolon Editions; Berkelely, CA: Book People, 1976) \BO]\ Coal (New York: Norton, 1976) (Cl; Chosen Poems, Old and New (New York: Norton, 1982) [CP]; Our Dead Behind Us: Poems (New York: Norton, 1986) [OD)\ Undersong: Chosen Poems Old and New Revised (New York: Norton, 1992) (t/S); The Marvelous Arithmetics o f Distance: Poems 1987-1992 (New York: Norton, 1993) \MAD\. If the year when a poem was written is known, it will be added in the text. In all other cases, the year of publication will not be repeated. 4 Sagri Dhairyam, "’Artifacts for Survival’: Remapping the Contours o f Poetry with Audre Lorde," Feminist Studies 18.2 (1992): 229-56; 229.

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lives o f all who know her w ork."5 In her teaching and life as well as throughout her prose and poetry, she was a radical feminist, an outspoken lesbian, and a political activist. She was interested in the present and the past situation o f black women and saw herself and her own identity deeply rooted in this com m unity. "Lorde's challenge to current aesthetic inquiry lies in her assertion o f an abiding connection between individual and social identity."6 One o f the underlying themes in her work is the representation or (re)creation o f her self, of a multiple identity that had undergone m ajor changes which she painfully recorded in her work. To find or present her "self" was not only a purpose but also a means to overcome a crisis or the m ore general feeling of being marginalized in a white, male, and heterosexual society. Audre Lorde used her writing as a personal and political therapy in which she spoke about herself and others. Even though "Audre Lorde would often introduce herself as a Black, feminist, lesbian, poet, mother, w arrior," she would add that "[h]owever accurate these words may be, we know that the whole is greater than the sum o f its parts, and so being Audre Lorde cannot be defined by a list of w ords."7 Each poet discussed so far brought some new aspects into the discussion of women poets' identities and their means and m echanism s of reflection. With Audre Lorde, the spectrum of identity is further fragmented with the additional ethnic dimension, which not only adds to but melts with the issues o f class, gender, and creed. The following analysis of Audre L orde's work will attempt to reveal how she translated her position as a multiple outsider in the American society into the textual creation of a new self. She turned her experiences of discrimination and fragmentation and her belonging to various "cultures" from a position o f weakness into one o f strength and had the "multi-cultures" of the self communicate with each other. Plath and Rich saw the impossibility o f an adequate reflection o f themselves in traditional genres and therefore changed form and content of poetry and prose in order to create truly autobiographical writing. Lorde also experimented with genres. Thus, for her, it was no longer autobiography and poetry and essay and journal, but all o f them at the same time. She opened up all genres and made them autobiographical. H er multicultural self is thus reflected in a multicultural

5 Gloria I. Joseph, "Audre Lorde: O f Marvelous Distinction," Publication o f the Memorial Service held on January 18, 1993 at the Cathedral St. John the Devine in New York City. 6 Anna Wilson, "Audre Lorde and the African-American Tradition," New Lesbian Criticism: Literary and Cultural Readings, ed. Sally Munt (New York: Columbia UP, 1992) 75-93; 90. 7 Gloria I. Joseph, "Of Marvelous Distinction."

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text, in multi-genres, in which the individual cultures are no longer separate and autonomous unities but melt into a larger whole without losing their individual importance. Some o f her poems could be discussed in several sections of this chapter; yet, they will only be used in the section which deals with the particular p o em 's major aspects. Once in a while, references will be made in one section to poems that are analyzed in a different section. A clear-cut distinction between the various categories is often not possible. This, however, only enhances the idea that boundaries o f identity categories and o f genres begin to blur. In "Audre Lorde and the Textures o f Life," the analysis will focus on L orde's life experiences as the daughter o f black Caribbean immigrants in the U .S ., as an African American who redefined motherhood and searched for m irror images in her children, her African origins, and her lesbianism. These experiences resulted in new textual and generic forms. Since poetry was her most essential means for speaking out, a second part, "'Poetry Is Not a L u x u ry ,'" investigates into Lorde's poetics and the intimate relationship she saw between her life and her poetry as one o f mutual reflection. As was the case for Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich, L orde's representation works through mirroring, and, therefore, a third part will look at "Individual or Communal Specula: Representation in Audre L orde's Poetry." In L ord e's poetry, the material world of the poet and the textual world o f poem and persona constantly reflect each other.

3.1. Audre Lorde and the Textures of Life

3 .1 .1 . "Black M o th er Woman" Sylvia Plath constantly experienced the tension between attraction to her mother and father as instances of love and as authorities for social acceptance on the one hand, and the need for separation from those close bonds, the desire for independence and for an identity o f her own on the other. Whereas Plath’s poetry is marked by this struggle for and final achievement o f separation from her mother and psychological distance from her father who died when she was a child, Adrienne Rich is much more concerned with her father's influences on her life. She is reunited with him through and in her own independence. Audre Lorde, more than Sylvia

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Plath and Adrienne Rich, saw herself connected to her m other, her m o th er's influences and heritage (she hardly ever mentioned h er father in her work). W hen she started to write about her m other - from the perspective o f a daughter and then as a mother herself - and to create an image o f her, she did so with the intention of establishing the missing links between the generations in order to achieve a harmonious unity and mutual reflection that would help her find her own place in society and in a com m unity o f women.

A D aughter's Perspective The m other is the first woman who enters a daughter's life. This m other-daughter relationship therefore is the basis for all further relationships o f a woman in her life. That is exactly what Audre Lorde recognized and why she, after a certain point in her life, went back to her childhood memories with her mother which are full o f tears because o f her m other's strict methods of education.8 As we have seen in the discussion of Sylvia P lath 's poetry, women frequently experience the problematic closeness to their mothers, are afraid of this closeness as an impediment to the establishment o f an identity of their own. The reason is precisely that they do not "give up this preoedipal relationship completely, but rather build[ ] whatever happens later upon this preoedipal base."9 F or Lorde, the problem lay in the fact that she felt attracted towards her m other, who, however, did not show the tenderness and love for her children that they would have wanted. Lorde's childhood, therefore, was characterized by a constant longing for her mother and trying to impress her and earn her love, as was the case for Sylvia Plath. From L orde's perspective, the m other seemed to have considered her primary function to be a teacher for her children. She taught them how to survive.10 The discussion of the poem "Black M other W oman" will focus on the contradictory attitudes of mother and daughter about race, on the daughter's later reconciliation through the recognition o f the m other's love for her, and finally on the self-confidently assumed identity shaped by but now separated from parental influences.

8 Cf. "Pathways: From Mother to Mother" (BU ), "All Hallow's Eve" (NY). 9 Chodorow, The Reproduction o f Mothering 115. 10 Cf. "Ballad from Childhood" (NY), "Hanging Fire" (BU), "Prologue" (FL, Nov. 1971), "Relevant Is / Different Points on the Circle" (FL, 1971).

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Despite her m other's unwillingness to offer her daughter the possibility for reflection, reconnection with the mother seems possible in "Black M other Woman" (FL , 1971), which is a rendition o f the daughter-m other relationship from the perspective of the daughter and from a certain distance in time. Lorde writes this poem as an adult who has overcome certain anxieties and confusions. The daughter realizes that, at least on the outside, she has become an image o f her mother with the same splits in her flesh. The image o f the mother is that of a woman who is not gentle on the outside but contains a "heavy love" inside.11 Childhood memories are not pleasant for the daughter since she remembers very well that her m other always tried to hide or expose her in a negative way. The reasons are never given, but the nightmare o f the mother obviously was "weakness," and in order to prevent her daughter from becoming weak she treated her in such a way that she never became comfortable with anything, that she never believed in what other people told her, that she never made too many friends outside of the family. Because the mother was "socialized into the norms of patriarchal society," she took "responsibility . . . for socializing her daughter into these norms, male-definitions, superseding the prim ary female connection of the pre-Oedipal bond, causing a disruption o f female continuity."12 Lorde's understanding is that she survived despite her m other's attempts to force assimilation into the dominant culture on h e r .13 But the daughter is now in a position to "peel[ ] away [her m other's] anger / down to the core o f love." The inside comes to be seen on the outside, and with it understanding comes also. The m other’s "core o f love" and her "true spirit” are continued in her daughter; that is what the daughter tries to show her. Only this true spirit can be "beautiful / and tough as chestnut / stanchion against [the] nightmare o f weakness." This insight into her self is the first step towards strength and self-definition, but the daughter continues to be full of "conflicting rebellions.” At least, however, she has found a way for self-definition: "I learned from you / to define myself / through your denials." Lorde certainly expressed her urge for separation from her mother; at the same time, she did not deny their mutual affiliation. She acknowledged a continuity between them that shaped

11 Cf. also "Story Books on a Kitchen Table" (C, 1970). 12 Barbara DiBemard, "Zami: A Portrait of an Artist as a Black Lesbian," The Kenyon Review 13.4 (1991): 195-213; 201. 13 In the poem "Story Books on a Kitchen Table," the only books available to the black child are "Fairy Books" written for white children in which the black girl cannot see herself reflected. In "Outside" (BU) she admits: "I grew up in genuine confusion / between grass and weeds and flowers / and what colored meant / except for clothes you couldn't bleach."

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her life and taught her what she needed to do differently. H er identity was dependent on her m other14; it could not be understood without knowing about this influence. This knowledge then helped her to define her own id entity.15 Lorde never idealized her childhood in her poems. The memories she had were always characterized by the experience o f a lack o f love from her m other, by loneliness, by confusion and not understanding. Despite her reproaches, she did not hold her mother responsible for all she had gone through. In her poetry, she found ways of understanding why her mother had acted in certain ways that seemed justified for her but that Lorde could not accept. She overcame the pain at her m other's rejection. L orde's solution was to unify outside and inside, to be honest and not to deny parts o f herself. H er mother had to conceal her blackness, womanhood, and m otherhood at a certain historical point as factors of weakness. Strength was necessary for survival and could only be achieved through adherence to the social norms and "normalities." For Lorde, strength precisely lay in the admittance o f weaknesses. In this sense, Lorde established a continuum with her m other and found "the relationship with her m other ultimately affirm in g ."16

A M other's Perspective Knowing that her relationship with her mother was of significant importance for herself, Lorde was equally concerned with her own children (Lorde had a daughter, Elizabeth-Lorde Rollins [*1963] and a son, Jonathan F .A . Rollins [*1965]). Except for very few poems, she almost exclusively dealt with either her daughter or daughters in general or even children in general: "The significance she placed on having children is borne out by the number of times that children, her own (Elizabeth and Jonathan) and all children appear in her poetry, the object of her concern and sy m p ath y ."17 She never described her reaction after the birth of her son. That she focused on mother-daughter relationships instead of mother14 It also depended to a much lesser extent on her father. Cf. "Outside." 15 Cf. "Outside": "I am lustful now for my own name. I . . . I I seek my own shapes now / for they never spoke of me / except as theirs I . . . I I am blessed within my selves / who are come to make our shattered faces / whole." 16 DiBemard, "Zam i' 202. 17 Jean Gould, "Audre Lorde," Modem American Women Poets (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1984) 288-96; 292.

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son relationships, has to be seen in the light of her understanding o f black women as double outsiders in society and of the particular female bonds between mothers and daughters. The following discussion o f the poem "Now That I Am Forever With Child" will deal with the, for Lorde, crucial issues o f motherhood, pregnancy, education, and stability. The experiences pregnant women share, which often change their lives, are the months before birth, months o f happiness and despair, o f expectations and fears, o f affirmation and negation. In hindsight, Audre Lorde found only positive words for her experience before birth. In "Now That I Am Forever W ith Child" (FC , 1963) she uses the image o f fertility, grow th, and nature to express her positive attitude towards giving birth: "How the days went / while you were blooming within m e." She observes every change in her body and draws a picture in her mind o f how the child develops and connects the movements and the shape: "I thought / now her hands / are formed, and her hair / has started to curl / now her teeth are done / now she sneezes." The image she creates is neither race- nor genderfree, because she clearly develops the image of a black girl. New life is given in spring, the beginning o f a new season in nature. She gives birth not only to a new life, but also to "[a] new world" for which she as the m other provides the necessary safety and strength: "[M]y legs were towers between which / A new world was passing." From then on, the child remains the center o f her life; it is the "one thread within running hours." Yet, in her child's development she sees m ore than merely physical changes. She is aware o f how the child develops psychologically, of how the creation o f a self goes on, of how various steps have to be taken until a personality is created: "You, flowing through selves / toward You." Here, I think, Lorde lays the foundation for a reasonable relationship with her children. Not even at such an early stage in the ch ild 's life does she make the mistake of wanting to incorporate it into her own life. Once the child is bom , she does not consider it her possession but a separate entity and a separate being that has its own laws and rights. She also points at the self developing through time, undergoing changes under psychological and social influences. Lorde, however, sees the necessity o f conveying her children certain experiences o f her own life. She does not believe in the denial o f o n e's blackness and w om anhoo d.18 Education gives the mother the chance to form the next generation and to instill the ideals of womanhood and blackness. For Lorde, the education o f both her children, in contrast to the

18 "[S]he knows / what you know / can hurt / but what you do / not know / can kill." ("But What Can You Teach My Daughter," BU). Cf. also "Progress Report" (FL, 1971).

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way she herself had been educated, always had to do with race; the education of her daughter had to do with race and womanhood. Lorde did not deny either her race nor her womanhood because she knew how im portant it was to be aware o f both since others always a re .19 In L orde's opinion, it is one o f the m other’s m ajor tasks to provide her children with stability.20 Awareness of the difficulties their children will face socially and occupationally in a racist society causes deep concern for mothers in every socioeconomic class. The strength o f the early nurturance helps carry the children through the difficult adolescent years.21

In the poems written from a child's perspective, Audre Lorde presented her relationship with her m other as one full o f love and misunderstanding. The poems served as a means o f making herself understand this relationship and o f com m unicating to her m other that she was not interested in complete separation but rather in continuity, but continuity only with reference to the "inner se lf.” Lorde refused to play her m other’s game of assimilation and integration and rather pleaded for acceptance of their difference and thus o f their "real" selves. She proudly defined herself as female and black and as the daughter o f a black m other woman. "To make it better" than her m other certainly was behind L orde’s philosophy o f education. In her poetry, Lorde faithfully recorded the various steps in the development o f her daughter: the time before birth, right after birth, the time o f developing awareness o f race and gender, the tim e o f obedience and then rebellion, and finally the time o f separation. This is how she saw times changing. She considered it a m other's task to give her daughter safety and strength, to let her develop her own personality with the chance o f accepting and rejecting her m other's offers, to give her the possibility o f understanding the necessary discontinuity within the necessary continuum by breaking the silence. This is how she never lost touch with the political reality of her country and how she secured survival.

19 "Dear Toni / Instead o f a Letter o f Congratulation / Upon Your Book and Your Daughter / Whom You Say You Are Raising to Be / A Correct Little Sister" ( FL , Sept. 1971). 20 Cf. "Future Promise" (BU) in which Lorde uses the metaphor o f the house for the mother. Lorde creates a female utopia in which the mother has fulfilled her tasks and can go back to herself. Yet. she also implies a distopia in which the mother's life (one life o f a woman) has ended after the children do not need her stability any more. 21 Gloria I. Joseph and Jill Lewis, Common Differences: Conflicts in Black and White Feminist Perspectives (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press / Doubleday, 1981) 85.

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Often the grasp she takes on more public events involves a sense of, What does it mean to the children. That is the heft of what 1 mean when I say that mothering is one o f the basic ways she relates to the world and one o f the basic postures and strengths of her w riting.22

In her poetry, Lorde created an image o f herself as the daughter o f a "Black M other W om an" in whom she could finally see herself reflected. By turning herself into an image o f this newly created "Black M other W om an," she herself, in turn, could become a "Black M other W oman" as "an embodiment o f energy to draw upon - an em bodim ent with a history."23 In her search for adequate reflection and understanding o f herself, Lorde turned towards motherhood but also towards two other m ajor forces in her life, namely her African heritage and her sexuality, both deeply rooted in her concept o f the "Black M other W om an."

3.1.2. Present, Past, and Future: The Search for an African American Identity To stay in touch with the political developm ent o f her time was important for Audre L orde's survival because o f the dominant pow er o f racism. To be black in American society today still means to be subject to racism despite the movements o f the 1960s (Black M ovem ent, Civil Rights M ovement), a racism defined by Audre Lorde as ”[t]he belief in the inherent superiority o f one race over all others and thereby the right to dominance, manifest and im plied."24 In the following, I will argue that Lorde recognized two different kinds o f racism in American society. "Inter­ ethnic racism" mostly takes place on the level o f the dominant white culture against blacks.25 "Intra-ethnic racism" is practiced by black people within 22 Marge Piercy, "An Appreciation of Audre Lorde," Parti-Colored Blocks fo r a Quilt (Ann Arbor: The U o f Michigan P, 1982) 235-46; 242. 23 Estella Lauter, "Re-visioning Creativity: Audre Lorde's Refiguration o f Eros as the Black Mother W ithin," Writing the Woman Artist: Essays on Poetics, Politics, and Portraiture, ed. Suzanne W. Jones (Philadelphia: U o f Pennsylvania P, 1991) 398-418; 409. 24 "The Uses of Anger" (1981), Sister Outsider 124-33; 124. 25 It would also include racism between two minority races such as Jews, blacks or Native Americans. But Audre Lorde almost exclusively focused on the black-white relationship. She did not, however, go as far as some contemporary black rappers, e .g ., Sister Souljah, who practice a kind of colonization by assuming that all non-white groups, including Native Americans, would simply accept being integrated into the black people.

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the black com m unity due to the huge variety of colors, origins, perspectives, nationalities, etc. Based on the analysis of L orde's status quo as a black person in American society, I will then show how she tried to relate to the black people's African origins and in particular to the African m yths as a means for turning blackness into an affirming concept o f strength and for reintegrating Africanness into her identity. In 'h e following analysis of inter- and intra-ethnic racism, I will use various genres for the clarification o f Lorde's position towards this issue. L o rd e's use o f the genres of essay, poem, and biomythography26 was guided by the idea o f the integration o f life into text so that all genres were necessarily autobiographical for her. The difference, however, lies in the degree o f political directness and universality. W hereas L orde's essays are direct m eans for appealing to people, for raising people's consciousness, for motivating them to action, and for drawing general conclusions from her own experiences, her poetry and her (poetical) biomythography are much m ore focused on personal experiences and its reflection in the text. The boundaries o f both poetry and biomythography start to collapse in L o rd e's presentation o f very personal and individual moments of experience. Therefore, it is not surprising that her search for a very personal and mythic African heritage is mostly expressed in these two latter genres in which Lorde created images o f her own vision and imagination.

Inter-Ethnic Racism L o rd e's response to overt racism in the United States was first of all anger, an anger o f which she was afraid at the beginning but which she accepted when she learned the difference between anger and hatred. Hatred for her was destructive, not only to others but also to herself, but anger can turn into a creative force: . . . anger expressed and translated into action in the service of our vision and our future is a liberating and strengthening act o f clarification, for it is in the painful process of this translation that we identify who are our allies with whom we have grave differences, and who are our genuine enemies.27

This attitude denies that not only race is an issue in the structure of a society but also gender, class, creed, etc. 26 Zami: A New Spelling o f My Name. A Biomythography (Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1982) [ZJ. 27 "The Uses o f Anger" 127.

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Before it is possible to use anger in this constructive way, one has to be aware of one's blackness/race; one has to analyze and understand o n e's own feelings; one has to accept one's race; one has to learn the m echanism s o f how to translate personal experience and anger into political action. After a short discussion of race and inter-ethnic racism in Zami, the following issues will be o f particular interest: L orde's fear for the life o f her son because o f racism ("Equinox") and female racism ("A M eeting o f Minds"). On her way towards the recognition and acceptance o f difference, Lorde had to undergo some painful experiences. As the child o f im m igrants from Grenada, she was an outsider in American society, but her parents shielded her from seeing her difference in childhood. She discussed the term "colored" with her sisters but neither o f them really knew what it meant. Audre Lorde herself was totally confused since she had learned that she better not talk to white people but then her m other looked white, too; she could pass for w hite.28 In high school, she experienced racism for the first time because she was the only black child in St. C atherine's School, and she had nothing to set against it: "Their racism was unadorned, unexcused, and particularly painful because I was unprepared for it. I got no help at home" (Z 59). She understood more and more that she was different, but at the beginning she did not even relate her difference to her skin color but to her individualism. She had the belief that all people were different because they were different individuals: "It was in high school

that I came to believe that I was different from my white classmates, not because I was Black, but because I was me" (Z 82). Consequently, when she experienced rejection and otherness, she was not able to see the underlying social patterns but attributed it to something that was typical o f her. Because o f her subsequent experiences at various work-places she learned that it was color which counted and that she happened to be o f the disadvantaged color. She gradually became aware of her feelings towards her ow n situation as an outsider in society. The execution o f the Rosenbergs - even though they were white - became a symbol o f her own life. She drew an analogy between their fate and her own and thus externalized her marginality: "The Rosenbergs' struggle became synonymous for me with being able to live in this country at all, with being able to survive in hostile surroundings" (Z 149). Sylvia Plath found a correlative in the Rosenbergs as well. Both identified with them and their suffering because they were outsiders in a 28 Here, Audre Lorde seems to connect with the idea of "passing" which played a major role in the Harlem Renaissance and was expressed in novels such as There is Confusion by Jessie Fauset and Passing by Nella Larsen.

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society that did not accept deviation and difference from norm s on positive terms but saw difference as a threat that had to be destroyed. Rich, on the other hand, used Ethel Rosenberg as an example and warning for herself and other w om en by pointing at what could happen if "otherness" as a woman were given up, if the identity o f a wife merged with that o f her husband. Lorde decided to go to Mexico, where she, for the first tim e in her life, did not feel like an outsider: W herever I went, there were brown faces of every hue meeting mine, and seeing my own color reflected upon the streets in such great numbers was an affirmation for me that was brandnew and very exciting. 1 had never felt visible before, nor even known 1 lacked it. (Z 156)

The experience o f being different with respect to race was a painful experience but she accepted what and who she was and dealt with it. During her visit to M exico, she felt for the first time that her color was not a deviation from a norm but simply different. She started to explore the experienced injustices and the imposed marginality and looked for means to reattribute value to herself and her race and was absolutely determined not to follow her m o th er's example of total denial of their color. She explored the social and political realities of the blacks in W estern civilization (not restricted to the American society) in the present, followed her race's history back to Africa and learned about the myths o f the African continent. She comm unicated her newly acquired insights through her poetry, talks, and essays, tried to reach other women, in particular black w om en, but also made it a private issue by letting her children know about her past, present, and their possible future. In her poem "Equinox" (FL , 1969), Lorde expressed the fear she experienced when she was pregnant with her son29: "I lay awake in stifling Broadway nights afraid / for whoever was growing in my belly / and suppose it started earlier than planned / who would I trust to take care that my daughter / did not eat poisoned roaches / when I was gone?" She related public events directed against blacks to her personal life.30 The year her

29 Even though Lorde refers to the time before the birth of her son, her daughter and not her son is the issue and her object for concern in this poem. Whereas the birth of her daughter was accompanied by very positive feelings, this poem here expresses unease and fear. 30 But she had personal experiences of racism directed against her. In "Cables to Rage" (NY, 1969), Lorde describes the event of being ignored by a white bus driver. In “Every Traveler Has One Vermont Poem" (OD), two boys holler "nigger" at the passing black group.

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daughter was born was intimately connected in her m em ory to political events such as the death o f Du Bois, the march on W ashington etc. At the time o f that experience, she only saw what went on in her own country, what happened to children in Birmingham, Alabama, Los Angeles, New Y ork,31 o r C hicago,32 but at the time of writing the poem "Equinox," she was able to transgress the national borders and notice that similar things went on all over the w orld.33 Rereading Malcolm X 's work helped her to understand, as she wrote later, that [they] need to join [their] differences and articulate [their] particular strengths in the service of [their] mutual survivals, and against the desperate backlash which attempts to keep that Africanness from altering the very bases of current world pow er and privilege.34

As early as 1969, she saw the danger that her children would easily forget what the world they lived in was like, and she saw it as her task to connect them to the past they shared with all blacks in order to give them a means for survival and wanted her children to share her "vision" o f life.35 A particular form o f inter-ethnic racism which was, for Lorde, most aggravating is practiced by white feminists.36 This racism within the same sex becom es an issue in her poem "A Meeting o f Minds" (OD). in which she shows a w om an who is not allowed to dream while she is dreaming. She is imprisoned "in a crystal / all around / other women are chatting," but is not allowed to communicate with anyone, "the agent o f control / is a zoning bee." She wants to talk to the women, "her lips are wired to explode / at the slightest conversation," but she is not even "allowed / to kiss her own m other / the agent o f control / is a white pencil / that writes / alone." The m etaphor o f the controlling bee turns into a metaphorical pencil, the instrument needed for writing, and ironically, it is this instrument that prevents her from communication. The adjective, however, explains why this utensil does not offer her the possibility o f writing. It is a white pencil

31 Cf. "The Same Death Over and Over / or / Lullabies Are For Children" (BU). 32 Cf. "The Day They Eulogized Mahalia" (FL, 1971). 33 Cf. also "Vietnam Addenda* (NY, 1972). 34 Audre Lorde, Apartheid U.S.A. (Latham, NY: Kitchen Table, 1985) 12. 35 Cf. "Conclusion" (FL, 1970). 36 Cf. "Who Said It Was Simple’ (FL, 1970) in which she draws an analogy between blacks and women. The white women in this poem are about to march for women's rights. Ironically, however, they have hired girls, presumably black, "to make them[selves] free."

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and excludes her from writing with it because she is black.37 In addition to the white pencil in "A M eeting o f M inds," the paper is white and contrasted with her brow n arm that is used as a paperweight. Thus, the controlling agent is not only the pencil, but the pencil becomes a symbol for white w om en, white feminists who exclude black wom en from com m unication, even with their own people. ". . ., white w om en face the pitfall o f being seduced into joining the oppressor under the pretense of sharing p o w e r."38 In a letter to Mary Daly, Audre Lorde writes: Mary, I ask you to be aware of how this serves the destructive forces o f racism and separation between women - the assumption that the herstory and myth o f white women is the legitimate and sole herstory and myth of all women to call upon for pow er and background, and that non-white women and our herstories are noteworthy only as decorations, o r examples of female victimization.39

The black w om an, therefore, experiences a double discrimination: racism from white w om en and white men, and sexism from white and black men.

Intra-Ethnic Racism Differences among various groups within the black people turn into issues o f intra-ethnic racism. Even hair becomes a political issue: "Is Your Hair Still Political?" ("A Question o f Essence"). Audre Lorde shows how any kind o f discrim ination is arbitrary but stable once it is socially agreed upon ("Revolution Is One Form o f Social Change"). Ironically, L ord e's hair actually became an issue of discrimination in 1990 when she decided to go from St. Croix to Virgin Gorda, an island in the Caribbean, to spend a vacation there. She was told at immigration that she could not enter with her braided hair because o f a law that existed on the island: I touched my natural locks, o f which I was so proud. A year ago I had decided to stop cutting my hair and to grow locks as a personal style statement, in much the same way I had worn a natural Afro for most of my adult life. I remembered an 37 That Lorde was very much aware of her color even while writing poetry and that her color influenced her writing is expressed in the poem "After a First Book" (1969. CR\ republished in C under the title "Paperweight"). 38 Audre Lorde, "Age, Race, Class, and Sex" (1980), Sister Outsider 114-23; 118.

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E sse n c e story in the early 1980's that had inspired the line 'Is

your hair still political?' in ’A Question o f Essence,' one o f my most popular poem s.40

The reason for this discrim ination then dawned on her. M embers o f the Rastafarian religion w ear their hair in locks and are know n for smoking marijuana as a religious rite. Thus, this law is m eant to prevent drug smuggling. Lorde wondered: How many forms o f religious persecution are we now going to visit upon one another as Black people in the name o f our public safety? . . . How little have we learned from the bloody pages of history, and are we really doomed to repeat these mistakes? . . . How long will we allow ourselves to be used as instrument of oppression against one another?41

Lorde looked for com fort in other black women. She "dream[ed] o f Alice W alker / her tears on [her] shoulder" ("A Question o f Essence," OD), but somehow the other w om en have becom e pale, are trying to change color and turn into clay pale, have tried to assimilate in order not to be different any m ore. The clay surrounds them , "clay in their eyes in their ears / around their noses / their tongues bedded dow n in clay." They even shut themselves o ff from their past: ”[S]ome are building shelters / against the past." W hereas, in L o rd e's opinion, white feminists try to incorporate and thus silence the voices o f black feminists, some black women practice this m ore passive type o f racism within a race which is a denial o f one's race, an assimilation into the white society but can turn into active racism w hen confronted with this rejection. Audre Lorde saw the origin o f racism and sexism, o f any form o f discrimiation in the fact that scapegoats are needed whenever something goes wrong. Because o f their color, blacks are most likely the first to be discriminated against. The various shades o f color in blacks are contained in the one category o f black and become the object o f discrimination: "W hen the man is busy / making niggers / it doesn't m atter / much / what shade / you are" ("Revolution is One Form o f Social C hange," NY, 1968). Size, then, becomes the next form o f discrim ination, and then sex: "If he runs out o f one / particular color / he can always switch / to size / and when h e 's finished / o ff the big ones / he'll just change / to sex / which is / after all / where it all began." Lorde shows how discrim ination in its

39 Audre Lorde, ”An Open Letter to Mary Daly" (1979), Sister Outsider 66-71; 69. 40 Audre Lorde, "Is Your Hair Still Political?" Essence Sept. 1990: 40, 110; 40. 41 "Is Your Hair Still Political?" 110.

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various forms is completely arbitrary and not based on any rationalistic principle. The categories o f color, size, and sex are randomly chosen because they somehow distinguish some people from others. Thus, in her presentation of racism, Lorde transgresses the boundaries o f race and reveals the relationship with other forms of discrimination. L orde's experiences of discrimination through both inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic racism made her turn towards the idea of African heritage which transforms blackness into a strong and superior social category.

African Heritage '"Stand and fight' . . . 'that is the only way o u t,'" was Audre L orde's answer in 1990.42 One way o f fighting back is to find the connection to their African origins, to find support and strength in the continent from which they were taken to be made slaves in the New W orld. For Audre Lorde it was not so much a going back to Africa as her home country, because after all she was born in the United States, was an American citizen with parents not bom in Africa either. But "Black women contend that their group condition commenced with separation from the land o f their birthright. European colonialism in the form o f slavery brought about the uprooting o f their African ancestors for use as human chattel."43 The first step is to understand and to learn about one's ancestors in Africa and to accept them as such. The second step then, and this is what Audre Lorde did in many of her poems, is to identify, as a black person, as a member of the black people, with their struggle for freedom and liberation despite the distance. Lorde tells them: "Rise Africa You Will Be Free" ("Generation III," OD ), but mutual support is necessary. The connection to her African heritage was for Lorde possible through a global community of women ("Sisters in Arm s"), based on mythic mother figures who represent female strength, and through the redefinition of white W estern master narratives ("The Black Unicorn"). Both finally result in the celebration of a female (mythic) principle ("Call").

42 "Women on Trains" published in Ms. Sept./Oct. 1990, 64; rpt. in US. 43 Andree Nicola McLaughlin, "Black Women, Identity, and the Quest for Humanhood and Wholeness: Wild Women in the Whirlwind," Wild Women in the Whirlwind: AfraAmerican Culture and the Contemporary Literary Renaissance , ed. Joanne M. Braxton and Andr6e Nicola McLaughlin (London: Serpent's Tail; New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1990) 147-80; 169.

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In her introductory poem to Our Dead Behind Us, "Sisters in Arm s," the individual woman is able to bridge the distance between the United States and South Africa through a love relationship with a woman from South Africa because "Black women have a history of the use and sharing o f pow er from the Amazon legions o f Dahomey through the Ashanti w arrior queen Yaa Asantewaa and the freedom fighter Harriet Tubman, to the economically powerful market-women guilds o f present West A frica."44 Thus, through her blackness, femaleness, and gay ness, she, as an individual, connects continents and establishes understanding and com m unication. She reads about South Africa in the New York Times, "a half-page story / o f the first white south african killed in the 'unrest' / Not o f Black children massacred." By not capitalizing "south african" but "Black," she wants to put the emphasis on the common color and not on the different nationalities and wants to convey the idea that color transgresses national boundaries. The persona is outraged by the racism expressed in concealm ent o f the massacre of black children; in particular when she rem em bers making love to the black woman from South Africa who asks her: "Someday you will come to my country / and we will fight side by side?" H er lover shows her what she needs to do: "Mmanthatisi . . . dresses again for war / knowing the men will follow. / In the intricate Maseru twilights / quick sad vital / she maps the next day's battle."45 For Lorde, it was logical that the woman had to turn into a warrior, because all her exam ples o f m urder of black people focused on the fate of black children, and for Lorde, it was the particular task of the mother to protect her children. "Lorde highlights not only the divinity o f Earth Mother but also w om en’s w arrior strength."46 L o rd e's most effective way o f relating to her ancestors and the African continent was the recreation of African history through myths. In the ancient stories o f myths, history and legend can be united. The importance o f m yths lies in the fact that originally, even though they are mythic stories, they were closely related to reality and often served as explanations

44 Audre Lorde, "Eye to Eye: Black Women, Hatred, and Anger" (1983), Sister Outsider 145-75; 151. Cf. also "For the Record" (OD). 45 Mmanthatisi: warrior queen and leader of the Tlokwa (Sotho) people during the mfecane (cmshing), one of the greatest crises in southern African history. The Sotho now live in the Orange Free State, S.A .; Maseru: scene of a great Tlokwa battle and now the capital o f Lesotho. Cf. OD 5. Cf. also "The Women of Dan Dance With / Swords In Their Hands to Mark The / Time When They Were Warriors" (BU). 46 Andrea Benton Rushing, "A Creative Use of African Sources," Obsidian 5.3 (Winter 1979): 114-16; 115. Cf. also "Mawu" (OD), "125th Street and Abomey" (BU).

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for society. They contain elements o f truth that have disappeared from socalled factual or historical reports: For the greatest mythical tales make a direct appeal to the unconscious; they work through intuition. Their power is the flash o f insight that illuminates the narrowness of matter-of-fact explanation and compels the intellect to acknowledge the need for a more adequate understanding. Myths possess an intensity o f meaning that is akin to poetry.47

Cotterell sees the link between myth and poetry, between past and present, between the personal and the communal, a "collective m ythology."48 For these particular reasons, Lorde used myths in her poetry and in Zami: "In a sense, the political implications o f myth are to be understood as the reality that m yth actualized for traditional societies. The mythic name is the true nam e."49 Yet, because of the size of the continent, the range o f climate, the m igration o f peoples, and the presence o f separate ethnic groups, the com plexity o f the term "African" is constituted by a "diversity of local belief . . . rather than the evidence o f a common heritage."50 In her work, Audre Lorde focuses on the country o f Dahomey (West Africa) and its particular myths o f the female/male god/dess o f M awu-Lisa51 because o f her desire for a strong androgyny: "I have always wanted to be both man

and woman, to incorporate the strongest and richest parts o f my mother and father within / into me - to share valley and mountains upon my body the way the earth does in hills and peaks'' (Z 7). And even more: "I have felt the age-old triangle o f mother father and child, with the 7 ' at its eternal

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47 Arthur Cotterell, A Dictionary o f World Mythology (New York: Oxford UP, 3 1990)

48 Claudine Raynaud, "'A Nutmeg Nestled Inside Its Covering of Mace': Audre Lorde's Zami," Life/Lines: Theorizing Women's Autobiography, ed. Bella Brodzki and Celeste Schenck (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1988) 221-42; 234. 49 Raynaud, "'A Nutmeg Nestled Inside Its Covering of Mace'" 222. 50 Cotterell, A Dictionary o f World Mythology 235. 51 "Within the major pantheon of the Vodu, Mawulisa is the Dahomean female-male, sky-goddess-god principle. Sometimes called the first inseparable twins of the Creator of the Universe, Mawulisa (Mawu-Lisa) is also represented as west-east, night-day, moonsun. More frequently, Mawu is regarded as the Creator of the Universe, and Lisa is either called her first son, or her twin brother. She is called the mother of all the other Vodu, and as such, is connected to the Orisha Yemanja" (BU 120). Mawulisa thus embodies the female and male principles in one body, in the same way as do the two women lovers. This is the proclamation of an androgynous concept that here implies that women - from Lorde's perspective - do not need men to live a full life. Women's relationships with other women are reflected in Mawulisa and thus turn into a unity.

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core, elongate and flatten out into the elegantly strong triad o f grandmother mother daughter, with the 7 ' moving back and forth flowing in either or both directions as needed" (Z 7). Lorde was constantly in search o f myths that transgress the boundaries of generations to connect the female m em bers o f each generation with each other.52 Mythic figures assist her in her labor: Seboulisa,53 M other Yemanja,54 beautiful Oshun, Shango, Oya, and Eshu. T hrough myth and through the written text, Lorde intended to achieve changes in society. For a reader who is not acquainted with African m ythology, Lorde offers explanations o f most o f the names she uses in a glossary added to The Black Unicorn, which is, at the same time, the collection of poems that almost exclusively deals with myths. In "The Black Unicom" (BU), Lorde attempts a redefinition o f a W estern myth. In the original myth, the unicorn - by nature white - is hunted but can only be tamed when it lays its head into a virgin's lap. Lorde gives it a new color - black - and thus makes it a symbol o f the whole black race. She clearly sets her myth apart from the original one: "It is not on her lap where the hom rests / but deep in her moonpit / g ro w in g ." She defines the unicorn as "greedy," "impatient," "restless," "unrelenting" and "not free." The unicorn goes through the stages of the blacks: It is "taken / through a cold country / where mist painted mockeries / o f my fury." Although the unicorn seems to be quiet on the outside, it is growing and restless underneath. But Lorde also goes beyond the aspect o f race by letting the unicorn's horn rest inside the woman. The Black Unicorn is the restlessness that grows in all (black) women out o f their sexuality to free themselves from their imprisonment. Lorde rejects a traditional myth and writes her own one but can only do so by contrasting it with the white myth. She claims part of the myth as her own and admits that she has become part of this society, but parts o f her belong to other traditions. She

52 Cf. "The Winds of Orisha" (FL, 1970). "The Orisha are the goddesses and gods divine personifications - of the Yoruba peoples of Western Nigeria" (BU 120). 53 The goddess of Abomey and "the Mother of us all." Seboulisa is asked for help in "October” (CP, 1980): "Seboulisa, mother of power I . . . I give me the strength o f your eyes / to remember / what I have learned / help me to attend with passion / these tasks at my hand for doing." Cf. also "Dahomey" (BU). 54 Cf. "From the House of Yemanja" (BU). "Mother of the other Orisha, Yemanja is also the goddess o f oceans. Rivers are said to flow from her breasts. One legend has it that a son tried to rape her. She fled until she collapsed, and from her breasts, the rivers flowed. Another legend says that a husband insulted Yemanja's long breasts, and when she fled with her pots he knocked her down. From her breasts flowed the rivers, and from her body then sprang forth all the other Orisha. River-smooth stones are Yemanja's symbol, and the sea is sacred to her followers. Those who please her are blessed with many children" (BU 121-22).

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includes herself in both traditions but shows that she is not accepted in the w hite/m ale one ("m y fury"). She finally bursts out in "Call" ( OD ), which is a celebration of all w om en, o f all family relationships, but in particular of that between mother and child. Lorde worships Aido Hw edo, "the Rainbow Serpent and at the same tim e a representation o f all ancient divinities who must be worshipped but w hose names and faces have been lost in time" (OD). Every stanza ends on the line "Aido Hw edo is com ing," and the poem concludes with a threefold repetition o f it. The wom en are "piecing [their] weapons together" to be ready when Aido Hwedo is there. The worship and announcement o f Aido H w ed o 's com ing can be com pared to the Christians' belief in the com ing o f Jesus and their proclamation o f the good news - a belief which originates in her Am erican background. Some o f the lines are variations on C hristian prayers, e .g ., "and I believe in the holy ghost / m other," but the decisive difference is that whereas the traditional Christians believe in God the Father , she believes in the feminist concept o f the holy ghost mother or woman (cf. Hebrew Ruach is female and means 'holy ghost'). Like a m issionary she has passed on her belief to other women. Aido Hwedo em bodies all the goddesses (Oya, Seboulisa, M awu, Afrekete), and through the persona other women sing (Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Ham er, Assata Shakur, Yaa A santew a,55 "my m other," W innie Mandela). The chain of w om en is continued in the daughters, and thus Aido H w edo's call is heard by and passed on from one generation to the next. The poem is a celebration o f the female principle as all-encompassing, as re-writing history and myth, as connecting past, present and future, as forming another religion. It is an optimistic view of the future, a utopia that is not yet fulfilled, as we have seen in L orde’s most recent essays and her poem "W om en on Trains."

55 "The last major war in Africa led by a woman was the Yaa Asuntewa War. Y Asuntewa was the Queen Mother of Ejisu, and the inspiring force behind the Ashantis, a fierce and warlike people who inhabited what is now the central portion of Ghana. In 1900 the British Governor, Lord Hodgson, demanded that the Ashanti surrender the Golden Stool, the supreme symbol of the sovereignty and independence of the Ashantis. This demand was a terrible blunder and a tremendous insult to the Ashanti people. They prepared for war. During the meeting discussing war, Yaa Asuntewa saw that some o f the chiefs were afraid. She stood up and made a historic speech ending with these words: 'If the men of Ashanti will not go forward, then we will. We the women will. I shall call upon my fellow women. We will fight the white men. We will fight till the last of us falls in the battlefields.' This speech stirred the chiefs to battle and for many months the Ashantis, led by Yaa Asuntewa, fought the British. They were finally defeated by fourteen hundred troops with large guns. Yaa Asuntewa was the last of a long line of African warrior queens that began with Hatshepsut fifteen hundred years before the birth of C hrist." Joseph/Lewis, Common Differences 88-89.

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The functions of myths were very different for Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, and Audre Lorde. Sylvia Plath used traditional ancient G reek and Latin myths because they were part o f her education and would therefore point to her knowledge. She changed the myths so that they would reflect her experiences but never questioned their adequacy for a representation o f herself.56 Even though Adrienne Rich received the same education in the classics, she, to the contrary, denies that the male "book o f myths" could reflect her in any way. She uses myths in her poetry, but mostly in order to either destroy or re-write them com pletely.57 For Audre Lorde, her discovery o f African m yths was at once a turn away from W estern civilization and an anthropological affirmation o f tribal identity and power. The re-writing of these myths in her poetry helped her connect her Africanness and her Am ericanness with her sexuality: "By reclaiming figures from African mythology . . ., Lorde simultaneously redefine[d] and celebrate[d] her access to language's transformative p o w e r,"58 and came closer to an adequate reflection o f herself in her poetry. Lorde appropriated the pow er o f myths, o f female myths, to overcome the racism and sexism o f a society that was not yet ready to be multicultural.

3.1.3. The Power of the Erotic L o rd e's rediscovery o f her African heritage was as much linked to her idea o f the "Black M other W oman" as was her understanding o f sexuality. Like Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich, she was married and had two children. Like Adrienne Rich, she came out as a lesbian in the late 1960s. Lesbianism, for Lorde, became more than just a sexual orientation; it turned into a concept of life, based on the "Black M other W om an," which connected the desire for reflection o f her "otherness" with the physical presence o f another woman. This relationship then found its m irror images in her poetry. In her m id-forties, she had cancer for the first time, breast cancer at first and other forms o f cancer later on. For Audre Lorde, then a prim ary lesbian, losing a breast was a traumatic experience that at first threatened her status as a w om an because she had internalized society's idea

56 Cf. my discussion of "Two Sisters of Persephone" in 1.3.2. Her Body, Herself. 57 Cf. my discussion of "1 Dream I’m the Death of Orpheus” in 2.3. Smoky Mirrors: Representation in Adrienne Rich's Poetry. 58 AnnLouise Keating, "Making 'our shattered faces w hole’: The Black Goddess and Audre Lorde’s Revision of Patriarchal Myth," Frontiers 13.1 (1992): 20-33; 28.

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that the absence o f this physical sign o f a w om an's sexuality would also imply the absence o f sexuality as such and of womanhood. In addition to the physical changes through her illness and the threat to her life, she also had to deal with the psychological consequences o f cancer. But because she was a lesbian and a poet, she was able to find support and consolation in a community o f w om en and through w riting.59 In the following, I will first discuss Audre L o rd e's representation o f her cancer experience and show how she was able to overcom e the physical, psychological, and social limitations imposed by society on a wom an with breast cancer because o f her rootedness in a community o f women. In this sense, it is justified to include L orde's cancer experience in this section on sexuality. Then I will analyze L orde's representation of active sexuality - not only in the sense o f physical activity but also o f a positive affirmation o f lesbianism - that deviates from the social norms, as one o f L orde's major means for survival. Lorde translated both her cancer experience and her lesbianism into language and texts and thus integrated life and text.

The Cancer Experience The Cancer Journals ,6° written from 1977 to 1980 and published in 1980, focus on the most crucial event in her life which questioned her identity as m other and lesbian lover. The essays or talks Audre Lorde gave at various occasions and the journal entries from the period right after her mastectomy show how Lorde tried to deal with her breast cancer.61 The Cancer Journals are more than a traditional journal that the author or someone else decides to publish. The book in the present form was written with the intention o f being published. Even though the very private journal entries might not have been meant for publication at first, Audre Lorde had always felt the need for com munication. In the introduction to the Cancer Journals she describes herself as "a post-mastectomy woman who believes our feelings need voice in order to be recognized, respected, and o f use" {CJ 9). She shows, however, how each woman reacts differently to similar

59 Cf. Adolf Muschg, Lileratur als Therapie? Ein Exkurs uber das Heilsame und das Unheilbare. Frankfurter Vorlesungen (Frankkfurt: edition suhrkamp, 1981). 60 Audre Lorde, The Cancer Journals (San Francisco: spinsters / aunt lute, 1980) [CJ]. 61 This was the first appearance of cancer in her life. She later developed other kinds o f cancer which she had treated in Berlin and then back in St. Croix on the U.S. Virgin Islands.

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crises and that these reactions are shaped by their respective backgrounds.62 Some prefer covering up their experiences and try to pretend that they have not changed. F or Lorde, however, that is not a possibility. She speaks of the necessity o f "integrating this crisis into [her] life" (CJ 10). She needs to acknowledge the existence of this illness in her life and breaks the silence that surrounds it by giving a voice to her feelings and thus makes this very private experience part o f the public image society has o f her. If woman as such is seen as different from man, then a woman with an illness like breast cancer is doubly marked. Since many wom en share the same experience but simply do not know about each other, the silence needs to be broken and thus strength can be gained63: May these words serve as encouragement for other women to speak and to act out of our experiences with cancer and with other threats o f death, for silence has never brought us anything of worth. Most of all, may these words underline the possibilities of self-healing and the richness o f living for all women. (C J 10)

Audre Lorde thus subscribes to the often proclaimed idea o f the community o f women and the other-relatedness. She cries out for help, mythic help ("Seboulisa," CJ 11) and knows that she can either "die o f difference, or live - myriad selves" (CJ 11). She transform s the "loneliness o f difference" (CJ 10) into a powerful source o f life. She thus uses her cancer experience as an example o f "otherness" and a plea for the acceptance o f her "difference," and turns it into a political statement for the recognition of color. In this context, Lorde uses white feminists' denial o f the difference of wom en o f color to declare that difference counts and defines women whether it is difference in the form o f an illness or difference in color: The arrogant blindness o f comfortable white women. What is this work all for? What does it matter whether I ever speak again or not? I try. The blood o f black women sloshes from 62 Cf. my reference to Adrienne Rich's poem "A Woman Dead in Her Forties" in 2.1.1. Heterosexuality, Androgyny, Lesbianism: The Search for a Sexual Identity. 63 Cancer condemns the woman to silence and suffering. Breaking this silence, in Lorde's view, can bring at least some relief to the suffering. Cf. her essay "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action" (CJ 18-23) in which she describes the woman breaking this silence as a warrior. In a way she contradicts the popular belief "that cancer is a disease o f insufficient passion, afflicting those who are sexually repressed, inhibited, unspontaneous, incapable o f expressing anger" (2 1 ),"that the character causes the disease - because it has not expressed itself. Passion moves inward, striking and blighting the deepest cellular resesses" (46). Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor / Aids and Its Metaphors (New York: Doubleday, 1990).

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coast to coast and Daly says race is of no concern to women. So that means we are either immortal or born to die and no note taken, un-women. (CJ 12) She does see the efforts o f white female feminists to form a community with all women regardless o f race, but she criticizes it because being a black post-mastectomy lesbian woman simply is part o f her identity and constitutes an experience that is different from a white heterosexual woman without cancer. Lorde puts her emphasis on the authenticity o f experience. She wants her difference acknowledged but not judged; she does not want to be subsumed into the one general category of "wom an." A form of com m unity can be established when she finds out how her "experiences with cancer fit into the larger tapestry of [her] work as a Black woman, into the history o f all women" (CJ 17), finding herself as part of a "continuum o f women" (CJ 17): I am defined as other in every group I'm part of. The outsider, both strength and weakness. Yet without community there is certainly no liberation, no future, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between me and my oppression. (CJ 1213) Despite "the network of woman support" (CJ 29),64 she alone has to go through all of it. She becomes aware that she is not a whole and unified self (wom an, black, lesbian, feminist, mother, lover, poet); she hears a "concert o f voices" (CJ 31) within herself. She comes to the conclusion that she at last has gained a "new perspective of self" (CJ 50) and "power" (CJ 54). Yet, the desire for a "common language" (CJ 49) is still present and not resolved (cf. Adrienne R ich's "dream of a common language"), ever though women with similar experiences have shared her idea o f the connection between politics and cancer as that o f cause and effect.65 It becomes clear through the reading of Audre L orde's Cancer Journah that the traditional genre o f "journal writing" is used and transformed hen in order to find a way o f stepping over the boundary between a very private experience and the desire for public communication. The text has twe m ajor functions: the personal function of coming to terms with her seven illness and of reintegrating into life, and the public function o com m unicating experience to other women and thus creating a stronj network o f women. Her illness gives her the strength to break boundarie wherever they exist. She uses herself and her autobiographical informatioi

64 Cf. her essay "Breast Cancer: A Black Lesbian Feminist Experience" (CJ 24-54). 65 Cf. Blanche Wiesen Cook, "Audre Lorde: Friend of Friends," in the publication c the "Memorial Service."

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for a consciousness-raising not only in terms o f how to deal with pain but also in terms o f how this pain is very much enhanced by a marginalization that can be compared to the sexual and racial marginalization o f black women. The self Lorde presents to the reader is at the same time full of fear and despair but also gains power from pain and wants to appeal to the reader to become politically active. In contrast to society's view o f cancer as an ugly and frightening illness, Lorde thus transformed her experience into the creation o f beauty.66 Audre Lorde war eine Frau von ungewohnlicher Kraft und Ausstrahlung, charakteristisch war ihre Bereitschaft und ihr Drang, sich Menschen und Dingen mit voller Hingabe zu widmen. So uberraschten die Dimensionen ihrer Kreativitat immer wieder, z.B. als sie Kleidungs- und Schmuckstucke fur Frauen entwarf, denen eine Brust abgenommen worden war und die nicht bereit waren, eine Prothese zu tragen.67

The text itself, in the present state, long after having fulfilled the personal purpose o f therapy, would be o f little use if the readers were not willing to accept the reflection of one black w om an's self as the reflection of many (black) w om en's selves. As such, the Cancer Journals are another manifestation o f w om en's stories of the looking glass. Up until L orde's last volume of poetry, The Marvelous Arithmetics o f Distance: Poems 1987-1992, which was published posthumously, she had never written a poem about her cancer experience in direct and open terms. She broke this taboo in 1991 when she was recovering from chemotherapy in Berlin and thus contradicted Susan Sontag's statement that "[cjancer is a rare and still scandalous subject for poetry; and it seems unimaginable to aestheticize the disease."68 The poem "Restoration: A Memorial - 9 /1 8 /9 1 ” was motivated by Lorde's personal illness: "Berlin again after chem otherapy / I reach behind me once more / for days to com e." Yet, since for Lorde the personal had always been the political, the public, the poem draw s an analogy to the event of the hurricane Hugo that "blew one life away" in 1989.69 In the same way that the hurricane swept over the land and left destruction and death behind, cancer and chemotherapy invaded her body: "Death like a burnt star / perched on the rim o f my

66 Cf. Lorde's essay "Breast Cancer: Power vs. Prosthesis" (CJ 55-77). 67 Dagmar Schultz, " I am your sister': Zum Tode von Audre Lorde," Blattgold 1 (Jan. 1993): 21-23; 23. 68 Sontag, Illness as Metaphor 20. 69 She also wrote a poem with the title "Hugo I" in which she connects memories of the hurricane with the absence of her friend Gloria I. Joseph.

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teacup / flaming the honey drips from my spoon / sunlight flouncing o ff the gargoyles opposite." It is as if the catastrophes in nature and in her body happened in a different world, whereas "[s]omewhere it is Tuesday / in the ordinary w orld." H er personal illness is reflected in nature. In the same way that nature com es back to normal again, her body eventually recovers as well: "In this alien and tem porary haven / my poisoned fingers / slowly return to norm al / 1 read your letter dream ing / the perspective o f a bluefish / or a fugitive parrot / watch the chemicals leaving my nails / as my skin takes back its weaknesses. / Learning to laugh again." Through the geographical (Berlin) and psychological (cancer) distances, as the title of this collection indicates, Lorde was able to relativize catastrophes and to actually gain strength from these experiences, as she claims in "C onstruction," another poem from this collection: "In C ancer / the most fertile o f skysigns / I shall build a house / that will stand forever."70 This strength, how ever, was as much a result o f her transform ation o f silence into language as o f her lesbianism as a concept and a life style which she fused with her ideas o f the "Black M other W om an," of racism and African heritage, o f her cancer experience, and o f sexuality.71

Lesbianism Even though Audre Lorde admitted that her father left "his psychic print" (Z 3) on her, it was "the images o f women, kind and cruel, that lead [her] home" (Z 3). The most powerful and most lasting effect is created by her m other.72 In her early childhood, Lorde sees her m other as strong, 70 Cf. Musa Mayer, Examining Myself: One Woman's Story o f Breast Cancer Treatment and Recovery (Winchester, MA: Faber and Faber, 1993); Marianne A. Paget, A Complex Sorrow: Reflections on Cancer and an Abbreviated Life (Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1993). Juliet Wittman, Breast Cancer Journal: A Century o f Petals (Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 1993). Cf. also Naomi Schneider's comment: "Here are three memoirs in which dreaded disease becomes a way to recreate the self. Each of these authors turns her battle with cancer into a means o f weighing and validating her life and of reconceptualizing her future . . . ." "Matters o f Life and Death," The Women's Review o f Books 11.4 (Jan. 1994): 1-3;

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71 Cf. Jewelle Gomez, "A Cultural Legacy Denied and Discovered: Black Lesbians in Fiction by W om en," Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology , ed. Barbara Smith (New York: Kitchen Table: Women o f Color Press, 1983) 110-23; 119. 72 "Mothers in narratives by lesbians o f color and ethnic lesbians are sources of personal and collective identity; mothers connect the protagonist to her racial and sexual heritage. Since they bear their daughters in their own bodies, they provide the explicit link

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powerful, even with strangers. But even at that early age, she had internalized the common understanding o f what a w om an was, which had nothing to do with strength or pow er,73 and from this she derived that her m other must have been "other than w om an” (Z 16). It is only in hindsight that she reinterpreted her relationship to her m other and understood that she had invested her with "a great deal m ore pow er than in fact she really had" (Z 17). The early belief, however, remained ingrained in her and thus the belief in a potential strength o f women. In Zami , Lorde situates the relationship to her m other and to her m other's culture at the root o f her identity. She transfers mother-daughter love into the love between two women, because in Carriacou "it is said that the desire to lie with other women is a drive from the m other's blood" (Z 256). Lorde discovers her sexuality during the journey to the island of Grenada, her m other's birthplace: "In St. Lucia, an island in the Caribbean, 'zam i' is patois for 'lesbian,' based on the French expression, les amies ," 74 Lesbian writers such as Audre Lorde, however, attempt to work their way through the prejudices o f contemporary society and try to explain their inclinations. By seeing her lesbianism as a drive inherited from her m other's blood, Lorde, on the one hand, enlarged lesbianism as a potential for all women, but, on the other, reduced it to a particular (Caribbean) culture. In that sense, in contrast to other contemporary lesbian critics,75

to the ethnic group, the origin, the root. Love for the mother also implies love o f self, of o n e’s race or ethnicity, and o f women. Fathers, on the other hand, either represent patriarchal elements internalized by the nondominant culture, or belong to the dominant group itself.” Zimmerman, The Safe Sea o f Women 191. 73 Cf. Lorde’s definition o f "sexism” and "heterosexism" in "Scratching the Surface: Some Notes on Barriers to Women and Loving" (1978), Sister Outsider 45-52; 45. 74 Chinosole, "Audre Lorde and Matrilineal Diaspora: ’moving history beyond nightmare into structures for the futu re...,'" Wild Women in the Whirlwind 379-94; 385. Cf. "Within this secure and empathetic world women could share sorrows, anxieties, and joys, confident that other women had experienced similar emotions." Carroll SmithRosenberg, "The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America," Signs 1.1 (1975): 1-29; 14. 75 Cf. Adrienne Rich’s "compulsory heterosexuality" and "lesbian continuum"; cf. also Vera Whisman: "In the end, a lesbian must simply be any woman who calls herself one, understanding that we place ourselves within that category, drawing and redrawing the boundaries in ever-shifting ways. For there is no essential and timeless lesbian, but instead lesbians who, by creating our lives day by day, widen the range of possibilities." "Identity Crisis: Who Is a Lesbian, Anyway?" Sisters, Sexperts, Queers: Beyond the Lesbian N ation , ed. Arlene Stein (New York: Plume, 1993) 47-60; 60; cf. also Zimmerman: " . . . to be a lesbian is a choice that any woman can make (or resist). . . . ’identity’ far from being a given or an essence, is instead constructed by the dominant discourse (or discourses) o f a particular era." The Safe Sea o f Women 50.

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for Lorde, lesbianism was not only a personal statement and a personal way o f life but also a cultural expression. According to Lorde, sexism and homophobia can be overcome in lesbianism. In her opinion, those who hate homosexuals/lesbians/gays do so because they are afraid o f sim ilar inclinations within themselves. Therefore, homophobia exists because homosexuals can be seen as a possible externalization o f something "horrible" that might be inside everyone. The homosexual thus becomes a m irror-im age o f a suppressed and denied part in people. In addition to this fear o f latent homosexuality that can be shared by men and w om en alike, m en might see something else in the "independent wom an-identified-wom an-the Black lesbian": "Not only was she a threat to the projection o f Black male macho, but a sexual threat too the utmost danger to the Black m ale's designed role as 'king of lo v ers.'"76 After a discussion o f the representation o f lesbianism in Zami, the following poems will be analyzed with a particular emphasis on the idea of a complete merging o f the lovers and / or a remaining separate individuality o f each as reflected in the concrete imagery o f hunger, nature, and civilization ("Love Poem ," "W om an," "Outlines"). Lorde recognized early manifestations o f a latent lesbianism in her childhood.77 She was fascinated by her m other's strong physical presence and rendered her attraction in erotic term s:78 The click o f her wedding ring against the wooden headboard. She is awake. 1 get up and go over and crawl into my mother's bed. Her smile. Her glycerine-flannel smell. The warmth. She reclines upon her back and side, one arm extended, the other flung across her forehead. A hot-water bottle wrapped in bodytemperature flannel, which she used to quiet her gall-bladder pains during the night. H er large soft breasts beneath the

76 Ann Allen Shockley, "The Black Lesbian in American Literature: An Overview" (1979), Home Girls 83-93; 85. 77 In ihat sense, she could be called a "'bom -lesbian' (women who feel they always preferred women)" in contrast to the "'born-again lesbian' (women who make a political choice or who fall in love and then see the world anew ).’ Zimmerman, The Safe Sea o f Women 52. 78 Cf. Barbara Christian, "No More Buried Lives: The Theme of Lesbianism in Audre Lorde's Zami, Gloria Naylor's The Women o f Brewster Place, Ntozake Shange's Sassafras, Cypress and Indigo, and Alice W alker's The Color Purple,' Black Feminist Criticism: Perspectives on Black Women Writers (New York: Pergamon Press, 1985) 187204: "Zami, L orde’s name for her fusion o f autobiography, history, and myth is a Grenadian word 'fo r women who work together as friends and lovers.' An overt lesbian poet and political activist, Lorde explores her development as a black/lesbian/poet in the 1940s and 1950s in New York City and how that development is rooted in her mother's Caribbean homeland" (190).

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buttoned flannel o f her nightgown. Below, the rounded swell of her stomach, silent and inviting touch. . . . Under the covers, the morning smells soft and sunny and full o f promise. . . . W arm milky smells of morning surround us. Feeling the smooth deep firmness of her breast against my shoulders, my pajam a'd back, sometimes, more daringly, against my ears and the sides o f my cheeks. (Z 33-34)

The images o f the "water bottle" and the "warm milky smells" suggest L orde's desire to reconnect with her m other at the time before and right after birth. The water bottle radiates the feeling o f security a child has in the m other's amniotic fluid. The milk refers to breastfeeding after birth. Thus, Lorde recreates the original harm ony o f m other and child in the Semiotic which continues after birth until the time o f the oedipal crisis. L o rde's presentation suggests that the child’s first love is the mother. After several painful and terrible experiences in sexual relationships with men, o f which one led to an abortion, Lorde decided to have an affair with a woman: "That summer I decided that I was definitely going to have an affair with a woman - in just those words" (Z 119). She made a conscious and rational decision and thus expanded her definition of lesbianism from a biological potential to a rational personal statement o f the individual woman. Both aspects had to coincide for Lorde. In hindsight, she showed how social norms prevented her from recognizing her friendship with Genevieve, also called Gennie, as a potential lesbian relationship that did not come into the open because they were afraid of admitting their feelings: "Things I never did with Genevieve: Let our bodies touch and tell the passions that we felt" (Z 97). H er first sexual encounter with her workm ate and friend Ginger is described in sim ilar terms as the physical presence o f the mother: I reached out and put an arm around Ginger, and through the scents of powder and soap and hand cream I could smell the rising flush of her own spicy heat. I took her into my arms, and she became precious beyond compare. 1 kissed her on her mouth, this time with no thought at all. My mouth moved to the little hollow beneath her ear. G inger's breath warmed my neck and started to quicken. My hands moved down over her round body, silky and fragrant, waiting. Uncertainty and doubt rolled away from the mouth of my wanting like a great stone, and my unsureness dissolved in the directing heat o f my own frank and finally open desire. Our bodies found the movements we needed to fit each other. G inger's flesh was sweet and moist and firm as a winter pear. I felt her and tasted her deeply, my hands and my mouth and my

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whole body moved against her. Her flesh opened to me like a peony and the unfolding depths o f her pleasure brought me back to her body over and over again throughout the night. The tender nook between her legs, moist and veiled with thick crispy dark hair. I dove beneath her wetness, her fragrance, the silky insistence o f her body's rhythms illuminating my own hungers. W e rode each other’s needs. Her body answered the quest of my fingers my tongue my desire to know a woman, again and again, until she arced like a rainbow, and shaken, I slid back through our heat, coming to rest upon her thighs. I surfaced dizzy and blessed with her rich myrrh-taste in my mouth, in my throat, smeared over my face, and the loosening grip of her hands in my hair and the wordless sounds of her satisfaction lulling me like a song. (Z 138-39)

Even though, as a child, she experienced the body o f her mother, she had now learned to follow her intuition and inner feelings that told her what to do. Therefore, in her first encounter with Ginger she took the active part, the strong part, and thus, she followed the image o f her m other as a strong w om an and that being strong - in the sense o f taking a clear stand and fighting for it - was an ideal to be reached out for. For Lorde, this strength here did not mean physical strength but the affirmation o f her lesbianism. This lovemaking became a deja-vu experience, like a hom ecom ing, that she associated with her mother: "Loving Ginger that night was like coming home to a joy I was meant for, and I only wondered, silently, how I had not always known that it would be so" (Z 139). F or Lorde, experience came first and was felt somewhere deep inside a woman and was then expressed in poetical language which gives light to it and explains and makes her understand. Society and education keep women away from this experience with other women. The relationship with Ginger was her way o f coming out, her "rite of passage through which a lesbian establishes and affirms herself."79 Audre Lorde summed up her attitude towards women in the epilogue to Zam i : "Every wom an I have ever loved has left her print upon me, where I loved some invaluable piece o f m yself apart from me - so different that I had to stretch and grow in order to recognize her. And in that growing, we came to separation, that place where work begins" (Z 255). She showed that the connection between her and other women was achieved because she found herself in the other; she saw herself reflected; something that for her was not possible in a sexual relationship with men. Like in her relationship

79 Zim m erm an, The Safe Sea o f Women 34.

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with her m other, it was not a simple recognition but a further maturation, a growing, and then a final separation into two independent w om en who affirm the bonds that exist between them. Lorde stated very clearly that she had become a new person and openly admitted her lesbianism: "The casing o f this place had been my home for seven years, the amount o f time it takes for the human body to completely renew itself, cell by living cell. And in those years my life had become increasingly a bridge and field o f women. Zami" (255). She had changed and could therefore call the book "new" and a "biom ythography." In that sense, Zami was her tale o f com ing out: It is the tale we tell ourselves to state who we are and why we exist. . . . The coming out story explains how we came to be lesbians, how our consciousness formed and our identity developed. It repeats a few basic patterns and defines a collective identity. The coming out story is one of the fundamental lesbian myths o f origin, the first basic tale of all lesbian communities.80

Most o f the poems, yet not all, as we will see, in which she talks about relationships with women were published in The Black Unicorn (1978) and in Our Dead Behind Us (1986), and almost all o f them were written after the divorce from her husband in 1970. The discovery o f her own lesbianism took place much earlier, as early as the 1950s, but the open and public confession occurred in the 1970s, also due to the W om en's M ovem ent of the late 1960s. Most o f the poems that deal with wom an-to-wom an relationships are openly erotic in presentation. F or Lorde, eroticism was a form o f pow er for women and therefore needed to be expressed: "W hen I speak o f the erotic, then, I speak o f it as an assertion o f the life-force o f women; . . . ," 81 Lorde openly connected this life-force with her poetry: "And there is, for me, no difference between writing a good poem and moving into sunlight against the body o f a woman I love."82 Eroticism is reflected in nature imagery in "Love Poem" (N Y , 1971), one o f her earliest lesbian p o em s.83 The lover explicitly becomes the earth a female earth - who is asked to comm unicate with the persona, "Speak earth," and to "bless" her. H er body is compared to a landscape, "m ake sky flow honey out of my hips / rigid as mountains / spread over a valley /

80 Zimmerman, The Safe Sea o f Women 34. 81 Audre Lorde, "Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power" (1978), Sister Outsider 5359; 55. 82 Lorde, "Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power" 58. 83 Cf. also "On a Night of the Full Moon" (written in 1968, published in CR, 1970).

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carved out by the m outh o f rain." The description o f the following sexual encounter is full o f positive images suggesting fertility: "[H]oney flowed / from the split cup / impaled on a lance o f tongues." The persona again metaphorically becomes nature: "And I knew when I entered her I was / high wind in her forests hollow / fingers whispering sound . . . H er desire for her lover is com pared to the greediness o f herring-gulls or to that o f a child and seems to be never-ending, "over and over / again." "W om an's dual sexuality transform s itself into a varied landscape. W om an is earth. She is the earth goddess. Lorde dreams of merging with nature"84 and thus reflects the yearning for oneness with the lover and with nature. In a later poem , "W oman" (BU), the fertility o f the lover is much more concrete. The body o f the lover becomes a place "to build my house like a haven / where I plant the crops [between your breasts] / . . . / an endless harvest . . . ." The value is increased by rocks that turn into "moonstone and ebony opal." The persona takes pride in her lover's blackness, and instead o f a weakness it becomes a strength: "[Y]our night comes down upon me / like a nurturing rain." The persona experiences that her hunger is satisfied by her lover's "giving m ilk," like a m other breastfeeding her child. The contact with images from nature "frees lesbian love from the pornographic associations with which society has traditionally burdened it, and she places it within the natural cycle o f growth and fertility . . . . "85 Whereas "Fog Report" (BU) thematizes the dangers inherent in a relationship which is too close, L orde's autobiographical poem "Outlines" (OD), in which she describes the situation o f a black and a white woman living together with two black children, states that a lesbian relationship has to acknowledge differences. A lesbian relationship does not mean to give up one's individuality but to gain it from recognizing and accepting similarities but also differences. It becomes "a totaling of differences without m erg ing,"86 "for the forms o f solidarity forged here are based on shared but not identical histories, shared but not identical structural positions, shared but not identical interests. . . . - one that provides a new possibilii> for unity without the erasure of differences."87 This recognition o f difference combined with love, for Lorde, can transgress racial boundaries and promote a real multicultural society, but in the poem this idea remains a vision only: 84 Raynaud, "’A Nutmeg Nestled Inside Its Covering of M a c e " 239. 85 Ekaterini Georgoudaki, "Audre Lorde: Revising Stereotypes of Afro-American W om anhood,’ Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 16.1 (1991): 47-66; 65. 86 Lorde, "Eye to Eye," Sister Outsider 163. 87 Biddy Martin, "Lesbian Identity and Autobiographical Differencejs]," Life/Lines: Theorizing Women's Autobiographies 78-103; 92.

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A Black woman and a white woman in the open fact o f our loving with not only our enem ies’ hands raised against us means a gradual sacrifice of all that is simple

Thus, in L orde's opinion, w om en despite their fear of (male) enem ies,88 have to fight. The outcome o f a lost battle will be the com plete destruction not only of w om en but o f the living space, "planet," as well. Winning the battle would at least leave the future open: " . . . the strength o f women lies in recognizing differences between us as creative, and in standing to those distortions which we inherited without blame, but which are now ours to a lte r.”89 Thus, L orde's sexuality is clearly reflected in her poetry. Both connect through the "power o f the erotic": "Now, what does my sexuality have to do with my writing? I believe in the pow er o f the erotic. What does my blood, or my heart or my eyes have to do with my writing. They are all inseparable."90 Audre Lorde traced her discovery o f eroticism and desire for physical relationships with women back to her childhood and to her m other's Caribbean culture. Her lesbianism, therefore, became a personal and cultural statement about race and gender and their close interrelations. The body o f the other woman became for her like a new landscape that on the one hand she knew because she found parts o f herself in it, but that on the other hand she had to explore, find her way through, and discover it like a new land. H er lesbian lover became her m irror image. In that sense, wom en were conquering m ore and more territory for themselves by breaking social and psychological taboos. W hereas Lorde remained more general in her earlier poetry, her later poetry, beginning with The Black Unicorn , relates autobiographical events in which she and her lover are the heroines. The problem they - as m em bers o f a subculture - had in a predominantly heterosexual, male, and white culture, namely the danger of a loss o f individual identity, was reinforced by the psychological problems inherent in a relationship that is very close, that is based on sameness, on the recognition o f o n e's identity in each other. The analysis o f Audre L o rd e's representation o f m otherhood, race, and lesbianism proves that Lorde constantly needed to see herself reflected in 88 Cf. also "The Horse Casts a Shoe" (OD), in which the two women tremble and are afraid of male power, symbolized by a horse. 89 Lorde, "The Uses of Anger" 131. 90 Charles H. Rowell, "Above the Wind: An Interview with Audre Lorde," Callaloo 14.1 (1991): 83-95; 93.

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her environment. The social non-recognition o f black lesbian mothers partially led to her feelings o f invisibility. But Lorde was able to overcome this invisibility through a translation of life experiences into texts, in particular into poetic language. She integrated life and text by inscribing herself into the text and thereby publically claimed her ow n visible subjectivity. Thus, a "poem grows out o f the p o et's experience, in a particular place and a particular time, and the genius o f the poem is to use the textures of that place and time without becoming bound by th em ."91 L o rd e's profession as a poet and her poems thus brought together and m irrored Audre Lorde's various selves. Poems became her looking glasses because "[pjoetry grows out o f the textures o f life."92 Audre Lorde was a great poet because she understood the necessity of poetry to our collective life, and because she knew that beauty and bearing witness to the harsh materials o f human struggle need never contradict each other.93

3.2. "Poetry Is Not a Luxury"94 In the same way that, for Lorde, the turn towards her African heritage could overcom e racism, lesbianism could help her deal with her cancer experience. The discovery of both anthropological and sexual roots is contained in L orde's description of herself as "Black Lesbian M other W om an" and has to be completed with the term "Poet." To com municate through her poetry was an important idea for Audre Lorde, and this aim together with an attempt to define the "self" can be discovered in various form s in her work and show how writing and the writing in various genres were life-giving and life-shaping for Audre Lorde. In her poetry and prose, Lorde transformed a seemingly disadvantaged and m arginalized social position into a position o f strength from which she drew the necessary energies to deal with the various personal and political crises in her life. A circle can then be closed from life to text to life; for Lorde, autobiographical writing became a means for survival. The following analysis will subdivide Audre L o rd e's metapoetical statements into three main categories: the first section will focus on L orde's 91 Rowell, "Above the Wind" 87. 92 Rowell, "Above the Wind" 86. 93 Adrienne Rich in the publication of the Memorial Service in New York City. 94 Audre Lorde, "Poetry Is Not a Luxury" (1977), Sister Outsider 36-39 ["PL"].

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presentation o f her coming to language which was intimately connected with her mother (cf. Zami). It will also look at how L orde's early poem s came into being ("A fter a First Book"). Whereas the m other's language motivated the development of what might be called L orde's authentic language, her high school experiences first of all taught her how to adopt the given (white, male) language.95 Only gradually did she recognize her difference so that she was finally able to translate this difference into her writing and make it into a position o f strength. Analogous to the development o f strength, she turned the image o f herself into that o f a warrior. This first section about coming to language will conclude with a brief discussion o f the various genres Lorde used and will then be followed by the second section which will concentrate on the metissage96 of various genres, and L orde's meta-statements in Zami. Analogous to the multicultural self presented in 3.1. Audre Lorde and the Textures o f Life, Lorde used multi-genres so that she could represent herself adequately. H er new identity also needed a new name. This metissage more and m ore focuses on the insertion o f poetry into prose. The poems inserted at the occasion o f L orde's friend's death are continued in poems published later on in poetry collections. The third section will finally look at L o rd e's poetological essay "Poetry Is Not a Luxury" and her metapoems describing poetry as L orde's most important means for self-expression. Audre L orde's particular life experiences as a black lesbian mother with cancer imposed themselves on her writing and directed her choice of genres and topics ("Pow er"). H er multicultural background demanded a multicultural representation or multi-genres. Prose had to be transformed accordingly, whereas poetry seemed to be inherently multi-facetted. Poems, for Lorde, turned into women lovers, and women lovers integrated into poems ("Therapy," "Recreation"). Lorde achieved integration o f life and text to an utmost degree.

95 Cf. "Learning to W rite” (OD). 96 The term metissage originally refers to a mixture of races, to miscegenation. Frangoise Lionnet uses metissage as "the fertile ground of our heterogeneous and heteronomous identities as postcolonial subjects." Frangoise Lionnet, Autobiographical Voices: Race, Gender, Self-Portraiture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1989) 8. She "redefines [metissage or miscegenation] in a positive sense as a token of a multicultural heritage visible in 'autoethnography' written by authors who are bilingual or multilingual or o f mixed races or cultures." Alfred Homung, "American Autobiographies and Autobiography Criticism: Review Essay," Amerikastudien / American Studies 35.3 (1990): 371-407; 393. I would like to extend the meaning o f this author-oriented cultural term to a textual term and use it to describe the multicultural self and its integration into the multicultural text and into multi-genres. It indicates the need of a multicultural self to inscribe itself into a text which mixes and transforms traditional genres.

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Coming to Language As discussed in 3.1. Audre Lorde and the Textures of Life, Lorde saw her identity as black, lesbian, feminist, warrior, mother deeply rooted in her relationship with her mother. In addition, she considered her m other to be intimately connected to her language capacities and thus to her poetry writing: W hen th e stro n g e st w ords f o r w h a t I h a ve to o ffer co m e o u t o f m e so u n d in g like w o rd s I re m e m b e r fr o m m y m o th e r's m outh, then I eith er h a v e to rea ssess th e m ea n in g o f everything I have to sa y now , o r re -e xa m in e th e w o rth o f h e r o ld w ords. . . . My

mother had a special and secret relationship with words, taken for granted as language because it was always there. 1 did not speak until I was four. (Z 31) Until Lorde was four years old there was no need for her to speak because her m other was there to speak for her and could, therefore, imprint her psychological and cultural influence. The terms 'special' and 'secret' indicate L orde's fascination with her m other's language but also the m o th er’s silence with regard to crucial issues such as race and gender: ". . ., it is the m other's secretiveness, her selective silence, which shapes the daughter's lifelong belief in language's power. . . . From her m other's silence, Lorde learns the importance o f w ords"97 and ”recognize[s] that her voice as a poet owes much to her mother. . . ."98 Even though Lorde had distanced herself from this mythic understanding of her m other's language skills by giving her name a new spelling because she felt the need to "create a new language for female and lesbian sexuality."99 She continued to see her m other's - and thus her own - cultural embeddedness as a source for strength. The black mother, as Lorde emphasizes in "Poetry is Not a Luxury," has poetry in her, and she, Audre Lorde, is the child o f this poet and inherits her poetry: "/ am a reflection o f my mother's secret poetry as well as o f her hidden angers" (Z 32). The writing of Zami helped Lorde to look a iier relationship with her m other from a distance, which showed her the way towards an independent individual and helped her recognize their close and inextricable connectedness.100 97 Keating, "Making 'our shattered faces whole'" 22. 98 DiBemard, "Zamz" 203. 99 Zimmerman, The Safe Sea o f Women 96.

100 Cf. Virginia Woolf: "For we think back through our mothers if we are women." A Room o f One's Own 79. Cf. also Jane Marcus, "Thinking Back Through O ur M others,” New Feminist Essays on Virginia Woolf, ed. Jane Marcus (Lincoln: U o f Nebraska P. 1981) 1-30.

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It is interesting to note, however, that when Lorde started writing poetry in her childhood, the urge to do so was not - at least not directly by Lorde at that time and only hesitatingly so later - related to her sex. But from the fact that already as a child she had the tendency and desire to express herself in poetry, it was possible for her to conclude that there had to be a connection between poetry writing and gender since she, after all, had always been a woman: I [Lorde] looked around when I was a young woman and there was no one saying what I wanted and needed to hear. I felt totally alienated, disoriented, crazy. I thought that there's got to be somebody else who feels as I do. I was very inarticulate as a youngster. I couldn't speak. I didn't speak until I was five, in fact, not really, until I started reading and writing poetry. I used to speak in poetry. I would read poems, and I would memorize them. People would say, well what do you think, Audre. What happened to you yesterday? And I would recite a poem and somewhere in that poem there would be a line or a feeling I would be sharing. In other words, I literally communicated through poetry. And when I couldn't find the poems to express the things I was feeling, that's what started me writing poetry, and that was when I was twelve or thirteen.101

The historical occasion of the poem "After a First Book" (CR , 1969) is the publication o f Lorde's first book, The First Cities (1968), and she defines the poems in this volume: "All the poems I have ever written / are historical reviews of some now-absorbed country." She continues with characterizations that are part of history, o f a past o f which she only has memories. She has absorbed all that she has ever written about, has either made it part o f herself or has made part o f herself part o f the poem s as well. The poem s are like something that is stuck in her throat, and she needs "hawking and coughing them up." As long as they are not outside, they prevent her from speaking. "I have ejected them not unlike children. / Now my throat is clear / and perhaps I shall speak again." She draw s the analogy even further: "All the poems I have ever written / make a small book shaped like another me / called by yesterday’s names / the shedding o f a past in patched conceits / molted like snake skin - / a book of leavings." Children look like their mothers; poems are shaped like their poets. She clearly distinguishes between identification and similarity. The

101 Mari Evans and Stephen E. Henderson, eds., Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation (Garden City, NY: Anchor-Doubleday, 1984) 261. Cf. also "An Interview: Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich" 82-5.

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poem s are not identical with her; they are only like another me; they, in the same way as the children, serve as m irror images o f their creators. The two m etaphors o f the shedding and the molted snake skin and the designation o f names that do not belong to the present any more show that Lorde separated herself from these poems and the experiences they describe. She was able to release them, as a mother does with her children, and she could then do with them whatever she wanted to. The poems become toys in the hands of their creator, "I can do anything with them ," but they also become everything she can ever think of in terms of feelings, sensations (visual, sensual, accoustic, spiritual), and psychology. Life and poetry are intertwined (as are life and autobiography), but here life boils down to housework and being a wife to a husband who wants his dinner. To serve a husband was clearly not what Lorde wanted to do with her book, "Or fold them [her poems] all into a paper fan / with which to cool my husband's dinner." Her poetry was not supposed to be just another nice attribute to her husband's social standing (cf. Adrienne Rich in "W riting as Re-Vision"). Poetry, for Lorde, had a different function: "To speak the self (in L orde's iconography) is to make oneself a w a rrio r." 102 Lorde knew about the healing effect of language but was also aware o f possible dangers; she was afraid "because the transformation o f silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation and that always seems fraught with danger” (CJ 21). But she was willing to take the risk because "giving the self in language, or to language, is a death-defying a c t," 103 and, at the same time, a means for the affirmation o f difference.104 Thus, w riting for her was a weapon, a life-sustaining and life-saving weapon.

102 Jeanne Perreault, "'that the pain not be wasted': Audre Lorde and the Written Self," a\b Auto/Biography 4.1 (1988): 1-16; 11. Cf. also Doris Davenport, "Four Contemporary Black Women Poets: Lucille Clifton, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and Sherley Anne Williams. A Feminist Study of a Culturally Derived Poetics," Diss. University of Southern California, 1985; 167. 103 Perreault, "'that the pain not be wasted'" 11. 104 Cf. her collection of essays called Sister Outsider or her poems called "Sister Outsider," "Outside," and others. For Lorde, difference was "a given in any human situation" (Barbara Christian, "The Dynamics of Difference: Book Review o f Audre Lorde's Sister Outsider [1984]," Black Feminist Criticism 205-10; 208), "a dynamic force" (Christian, "The Dynamics of Difference" 208) that acts in both the private and public realms. Cf. also "Both Sister and Outsider, Lorde, a black lesbian poet, focuses on her discovery of the importance of the concept of difference in our forming of ourselves, our relating to each other. The understanding of difference is, for her, a creative charge, an aspect of that erotic power that is undermined by society's attempt to promote an 'easy sameness,' an efficient means of controlling people." Christian, "The Dynamics of Difference" 206.

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Even though the transformation o f the self into language was o f utmost importance for Audre Lorde, she distinguished between different genres o f writing which differed above all in the degree of adequacy for a reflection o f her life experiences. F or a very long time in her life, it was virtually impossible for Audre Lorde to write anything else but poetry: For some reason, the more poetry I wrote, the less 1 felt 1 could write prose. Someone would ask for a book review, or, when I worked at the library, for a precis about books - it w asn't that I didn't have the skills. 1 knew about sentences by that time. I knew how to construct a paragraph. But communicating deep feeling in linear, solid blocks o f print felt arcane, a method beyond m e.105

Although she tried to write a story once, she was not able to connect this story to her own self; it was almost as if it was not herself, not the same person who wrote the poetry on the one hand and the story on the other hand. She, therefore, used a pseudonym, Rey Domini, which simply is the Latin word for Audre Lorde. It was a way o f assuming a different identity, a not-me, that existed independently from the "real" self that wrote the poetry. She could not see herself reflected in this story and therefore denied this type o f fiction the qualities of a mirror. Poetry, however, was a m ore satisfying reflection o f what she believed to be. Prose was separated from her deep feelings at that time, and she needed to find a way o f making prose as much part and expression o f her black, female, and gay self as poetry. The m ore Lorde became involved in political activities, the m ore she felt the need for direct political communication with and motivation for others. Therefore, she started to write essays with which she could appeal to people in rational terms. These essays were necessary to explain L orde's position in the fields o f politics and poetics and to achieve the transform ation o f silence into language and action, but they did not grasp the more abstract psychological and emotional Audre Lorde; they were not intimately connected to the "Black M other W om an." In contrast to her essays, L o rde's biomythography Zami combined for her elements o f various genres and, even though written in prose, achieved a poetic quality necessary for adequate reflection. Yet, throughout L orde's life, poetry rem ained for her the most adequate and perfect speculum.

1(<5 "An Interview: Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich," Sister Outsider 81-109; 87.

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Metissage; or, Generic M ulticulturalism in Zami L o rd e's Zami: A New Spelling o f My Name. A Biomythography (1982) seems to be the em bodim ent o f (cultural and textual) metissage. The title alludes to all the "cultures"106 referred to in previous sections: (Caribbean) b la c k n e ss, womanhood, and lesbianism. At the same time, it com bines this m ulticulturalism with multi-genres: autobiography, poetry, history, and myth. The book is known by readers and critics as an autobiography, but the genre is defined more closely in the subtitle: it is a ’biom ythography.' Three constituents are important: bios, 'life 1; graphein, the act of writing, and myth, a legend, a lie, a story. The mythic element is thus inserted betw een life and writing, which means that we confront the writing o f a p erso n 's life - which implies the presentation o f facts - and the introduction o f mythic or fictive elem en ts.107 Even though Audre Lorde defined Zami as "fiction," fiction for her em braced biography and myth: Z a m i:

A

N ew S p e llin g

of My

N a m e was just published. It's a

biomythography, which is really fiction. It has the elements of biography and history of myth. In other words, it's fiction built from many sources. This is one way of expanding our vison.108 Lorde further emphasized the close connection between Zami and her personal experience in the way she explained it in the essay "Poetry is Not a Luxury": "You might call Zami a novel. I don't like to call it that. W riting Zami was a lifeline through the cancer experience."109 She used Zam i, a Carriacou name, for herself and called it a 'new spelling.’ We have the double process o f renaming and thus appropriating her new being 106 Some critics would question the use o f the term "cultures” for women and lesbians Bonnie Zimmerman, however, speaks of a particular "lesbian culture" in The Safe Sea oJ Women 1-32. 107 Aristotle used the term "myth" to describe the imitation and the structure of actioi in a poetic text (Dichiung ); "myth" was thus the mimesis of action. Audre Lorde, however did not us. ”myth" exclusively in Aristotle’s sense, but narrowed it down to the imitatioi o f a particular kind o f action, namely that o f (African) gods and goddesses. She used it ii the contemporary sense of the term to present legends with which she introduced a fictivi and irrealistic element into Zami. In Lorde's understanding, "biography" would b Aristotle's (personalized) myth, and "myth" would help her to go beyond personal lif experiences and to broaden the horizon for the explanation of life for African Americans Her "myths" connected her to a particular (African) heritage and made it possible for her t transcend mere mimesis to an experimentation with the representation o f her life in texts. 108 Claudia Tate, ed. Black Women Writers at Work (New York: Continuum, 1983 115. 109 Tate, Black Women Writers at Work 115.

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and transferring this new identity into language. She thus indicated that what she presents in this book is an old self that has undergone certain changes, that has discovered new grounds, and has thus become a new self. Consequently, she was able to describe a person’s developm ent towards maturation. She was able to claim her m other and her m o ther's history. She reconnected to a tribal (African) and sexual (lesbian) heritage. Both were influences in her life which were repressed in the course o f her socialization into a white male heterosexual society. In this sense, she reinstituted the thetic phase from the Semiotic to the Symbolic but was able to avoid repression. She transformed the Symbolic order through the representation in Zami of what was repressed before. Zami became the signifier o f L o rd e's subversion o f the Symbolic order, and Zami a new name, a "Carriacou name fo r women who work together as friends and lovers" (Z 255). It was still hard "to be Black, to be Black and female, to be Black, female, and gay" (Z 224), and to experience a "world which defined [them] as doubly nothing because [they] were Black and because [they] were W om an But after having "spent so m uch o f [their] young-wom anhood trying to define [them]selves as woman-identified women" (Z 225) she had com e to a new name for her new and multi-layered identity. Throughout her biomythography, Audre Lorde tries to answ er her initial question: "To whom do I owe the power behind my voice, what

strength I have become, yeasting up like sudden blood from under the bruised skin's blister?" (Z 3) What about the consequences o f these influences? She based her answer on concrete life experiences which she rendered in prose and poetry and which she related back to her cultural origins. Thus mythic elements from the Caribbean, in particular those about the situation of women in Carriacou, mix with the social and political realities in the United States of the late 1940s and early 1950s. The crucial insight, however, seems to me that even though she wrote a prose piece, she infiltrated it with various poems that are always connected to important m om ents in her life: In Zami the constructed linearity of the autobiographical narrative is interrupted by poems, or it stops suddenly for poetic exploration and the re-creation of a remembered feeling, for the recapturing of a lost past sensation. Poetry surfaces at the crucial moments of Lorde's life story, as when her first love, Gennie, dies (Z, p. 103). Similarly, a poem marks her passage from the carelessness of childhood to the demands of life (Z, p. 97), and again, she quotes the poem of despair, when writing was her only way of feeling alive (Z, p. 118). It is through these self-quotations that Lorde identifies her commitment to poetry as well as her resistance to prose

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writing. Poetry shapes her life; it also dates her autobiographical text. It creates a plurality of textual selves.110 Interestingly enough, the few passages where the poems occur, seem, according to this quotation, to refer to various stages in L orde's life. H ow ever, a closer look reveals that they are all somehow related to her childhood friend Gennie/Genevieve. The first poem that is printed in Zami (97) is w ritten on M ay 22, 1949. It is inserted in the book to express her em otions on the eve o f G ennie's successful suicide attempt. She obviously found a language and a voice to achieve various things at once: on the one hand, she achieved a unity with Gennie in the "we" which she had not had during the day; on the other hand, she stood up against her parents and for herself without having to declare her position publically. G ennie’s death, for L orde, was intimately connected to poetry. Shortly before G ennie's death, Lorde visited her and implored her to build up the will again for life, but in vain. Lorde then rem em bered one of her own poems from her past that G ennie used to love: "[A]nd in the brief moment that is today / wild hope this dream er jars / for I have heard in whispers talk / o f life on other stars” (Z 100). This poem , as it then came to Lorde's mind, can be seen as a foreshadowing o f G ennie's suicide attempt. L o rd e 's depressive mood continued after her friend's death, even years afterw ards: "W riting was the only thing that made me feel like I was alive" (Z 118). In 1950 at the Harlem Writers' Quarterly meeting, she read poems that she had written a year before, which were full o f "death, destruction, and deep despair" (Z 118). Interestingly enough, she did not use any of these poem s for Zami, but a poem that she wrote two years later (April 20, 1952). G ennie's ghost continued to haunt her even when she went to Stam ford in Septem ber 1950 in order to find a new job. Being away from the fam iliar places they had seen together, Lorde experienced herself a stranger in a strange place and needed someone to share her isolation and to fight her loneliness, "it was as if Gennie had come alive again" (Z 124). "Gennie was the only com panion with whom I shared those first few weeks in Stam ford, and sometimes, for days at a time, she was the only person to whom I spoke" (Z 124). It is only through her poem that she reminded herself o f G ennie’s death: "And you did not come back to April . . . And you cam e not again to sum m er." The poem is a transition piece from a pasl with G ennie's absence to a present with Gennie's presence. Yet, although Gennie was obviously absent in the past, she always remains present in the poem . These autobiographical poems are an essential part of Zami, because

110 Raynaud, " A Nutmeg Nestled Inside Its Covering of Mace’" 230.

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in these poems presences - "absent presences" - becom e possible in a way that is not possible in a linear prose narrative. This discussion o f L orde's representation o f G ennie's death through poems in Zami shows how for Lorde crucial life experiences could be best expressed in poetic language. She was able to integrate life and text in poetry because poetry was intimately connected to her inner self and to her feelings. This insertion o f poems into a prose text also proves that for Lorde autobiographical prose did not have the same mirroring quality as autobiographical poetry. For Lorde, the poems adequately reflected herself at that particular moment in tim e.111 Lorde used this technique of metissage at a m om ent in her life when she was clearly aware o f the importance o f poetry. She com bined autobiography, poetry, and myth into a biom ythography and thus into a multi-facetted m irror for herself and her dead friend. She not only created a new genre but also redefined these traditional genres, in particular poetry. The following discussion of her essay "Poetry Is Not a Luxury" and the analysis of meta-poems will concentrate on the particular meanings and functions Lorde attributed to poetry and on her redefinition o f this genre through the intimate and even physical connection between life and poem .

For every poem written, there is the bedrock of experience(s) within which the poem is anchored. A molten hot light shines up through the poem from the core of these experiences. This is the human truth that illuminates the poem, surrounding it in the light that makes it come alive.112

111 Whereas Zami was written in 1982 and can only represent in hindsight Lorde's emphasis on poetry at the moment of Gennie's death, she wrote several poems about this event over a period of twenty-four years (1950-1974): "Memorial I" (first published under the title "If You Come Softly" in The First Cities [1968] and later in Coal [1976)), "Anniversary" (C, 1953), "Memorial II" (F C , 1954), "Change of Season" (C, 1969), "Memorial III From a Phone Booth on Broadway" (NY, 1973), "Memorial IV" (NY, 1974). 112 Audre Lorde, "Introduction," Undersong: Chosen Poems Old and New Revised xiii

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"Black M other Poet"H3 A udre Lorde specifically dealt with the questions o f what poetry m eant for her and the function of poetry for women in her essay "Poetry is N ot a L uxury." In contrast to Zami and the actual poems, she established the metapoetological foundations for poetry in this essay. As we have seen in the discussion of the generic metissage in Zami and its gradual focus on poetry m ore than on any other genre, poetry was, for Lorde, connected to the person she was and the way she experienced herself. It became a means for the reflection and illumination o f her life. This "illumination" of her life ("PL" 36) in poetry takes place in the form o f language, by naming ideas and thoughts that are "nameless and form less, about to be birthed" ("PL" 36). This image already alludes to the idea that poetry and being a woman are closely connected. "The female m etaphor establishes a matrix o f creativities based on w om an's doublebirthing potential."114 Susan Stanford Friedman argues that the childbirth m etaphor, when used by a woman, brings together the creativity o f the mind and the procreativity o f the body. The creativity of the mind is, how ever, something that has long been denied to women. By "combining creation and procreation" women try to overcome the fear that is caused by society denying them the mind activity.115 Audre Lorde showed no fear of com paring her writing to childbirth because for her (in contrast to Adrienne Rich) "feminism has made the combination of motherhood and authorhood m ore acceptable."116 Giving birth means giving life to a child that has existed before in the m other’s womb but that cannot exist in this same way any m ore and needs to take a different shape and expression. It is part o f the m other but needs to separate. In this particular way, she establishes an analogy between female poet-poem and mother-child. As a lesbian, Lorde was often confronted with the idea that motherhood was said to be impossible for her, that "lesbianism and motherhood are mutually exclusive categ o ries."117 She overcame this denial by giving birth to two children and by illuminating that writing and childbirth were both deeply rooted in and inseparable from her as a woman. 113 Lauter, "Re-visioning Creativity" 415. 114 Susan Stanford Friedman, "Creativity and the Childbirth Metaphor: Gender Difference in Literary Discourse" (1981), Feminisms, ed. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Hemdl (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1991) 371-96; 377. 115 Friedman, "Creativity and the Childbirth Metaphor" 384. 116 Friedman, "Creativity and the Childbirth Metaphor" 385. 117 Friedman, "Creativity and the Childbirth Metaphor" 390.

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The idea o f the illumination is further exemplified in the "places o f possibility within ourselves" that are "dark because they are ancient and hidden" ("PL" 36). Poetry gives light to this "incredible reserve o f creativity and power, o f unexamined and unrecorded emotion and feeling" ("PL " 37), which are the central terms in her understanding o f poetry. In an interview, she explained that poetry "is an art, like any other art, and has a function. The function is to make each one o f us more w ho we are to em pow er u s ." 118 In her essays, she recreates various dichotomies that explain for her the particular status o f the relationship between w om en and poetry. For her, in the European tradition, the "white fathers" ("PL" 37) have focused on the importance o f ideas to make people free. But she rejects all o f these terms and establishes her own oppositions: But as we [women] come more into touch with our own ancient, non-european consciousness of living as a situation to be experienced and interacted with, we learn more and more to cherish our feelings, and to respect those hidden sources of our power from where true knowledge and, therefore, lasting action comes. ("PL" 37) Since Lorde cannot totally ignore the importance o f ideas, she concludes that women can combine both these concepts: ideas/reason and feelings/emotions. On the various levels o f philosophy (reason vs. em otion), race (white vs. black), gender (male vs. female), and civilization (European vs. non-European) she recreates these traditional binary oppositions, but does not do away with the "other" part, which would be recreating a traditional patriarchal structure, but looks for the possibility o f fusing the two, yet, admittedly, with an emphasis on the emotional side: The white fathers told us: I think, therefore I am. The Black mother within each of us - the poet - whispers in our dreams: I feel, therefore I can be free. Poetry coins the language to express and charter this revolutionary demand, the implementation of that freedom. ("PL" 38) "[F]eelings were expected to kneel to thought as women were expected to kneel to men. But wom en survived. As poets" ("PL" 39). W om en’s pow er surfaces in dream s and ”[t]hose dreams are made realizable through our poems that give us the strength and courage to see, to feel, to speak, and to d a re ” ("PL" 39). To make sure that this "womanness" (" P L ” 39) can survive, it is necessary to stress that "poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity o f our existence" ("PL" 37). For Lorde, poetry was m ore than 118 Karla M. Hammond, "Audre Lorde: Interview," Denver Quarterly 16.1 (1981): 10-27; 11.

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ju st language; it was a "revelatory distillation o f experience" ("PL " 37); it was "the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought" ("PL " 37); poetry thus becomes life in a nutshell.119 Thus, poetry expresses and shapes p eople’s lives; "it is the skeleton architecture o f our lives" ("PL " 38). In this essay, Audre Lorde seems to have found - for herself definitely - a way o f connecting her womanness to her writing, even m ore since she shows how the one follows out of the other. W om anness, for Lorde, expresses itself and finds the best expression in poetry because both come from the same source, namely the mother. For Lorde, only poetry written by w om en is the poetry that empowers the authors themselves. Poetry becom es an external ization o f what it means to be a w om an and her connections; "H er poems typically are of and about connection. She writes m ost com m only as a m other, often as a daughter or a sister, not infrequently as a lo v e r." 120 Unfortunately, towards the end o f this essay, Lorde falls back into the much criticized connection between women and feelings. Yet, she finds a com prom ise between the two poles o f reason and em otion and thus synthesizes them, taking away the sharpness o f the opposition. F or Lorde, "'w o m an ' and 'poet' [werel synonymous. Once you touch your own feelings, you can recognize other people's feelings and they becom e re a l." 121 She based her arguments on the assumption that all w om en share sim ilar experiences; yet, on the other hand she equated the black m other with the poet and, therefore, reduced the potential audience am ong all w o m e n .122 Yet, in this essay the question remains open what she exactly m eans by black m other. Since she refers to the darkness in all w om en that is lit by the light of poetry, she could metaphorically be referring to this darkness that would then be shared by all women. H ow ever, the words she uses here seem to be race-related. In the interview with A drienne Rich, she defined her concept o f the "Black mother" more explicitly: "The Black m other who is the poet exists in every one of us. . . . I personally believe that the Black mother exists m ore in women; yet she is the name for a humanity that we are not w ith o u t."123 The racerelatedness thus becomes gender-related, but goes beyond these boundaries, 119 Lorde admitted that her poems were often based on journal entries: "1 keep a journal; I write in my journal fairly regularly. 1 get a lot o f my poems out of it. It is the raw material for my poem s." Evans and Henderson, eds.. Black Women Writers 265. 120 Piercy, "An Appreciation of Audre Lorde" 240. 121 Hammond, "Audre Lorde: Interview" 17. 122 Cf. my discussion of Audre Lorde's concept of lesbianism in 3.1.3. The Power of the Erotic. 123 "An Interview: Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich” (1979), Sister Outsider 100-01.

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so that Black m other becomes a term for h u m an ity .124 Nevertheless, her conclusion is, "[t]hat the human race is evolving through w o m e n ."125 Therefore, "L orde's figure of the Black m other poet, then symbolizes the belief in o n e's own authority to create"126 and in the possibility o f freedom. Poetry for Lorde was intimately linked to blackness and wom anhood. This connection can be discovered in poems such as "To the Poet W ho Happens to Be Black and the Black Poet W ho Happens to Be a W oman" (OD) and "Power" (BU). Poetry and wom anhood is again emphasized in "Neighbors" (FL, 1970) and "There Are No Honest Poem s About Dead W omen" (OD). The following analysis will focus on "Power" in which poetry becomes a way o f life which gives her the pow er and self-confidence to be politically active: "The difference between poetry and rhetoric / is being / ready to kill / yourself / instead o f your children." Using poetry, according to the poem "Power," means using and exposing herself to the world that is dangerous for black people. But poetry can bring about changes in the world and thus prevent the children from being killed, whereas rhetoric, a language that has obviously nothing to do with the poet and truth, simply does not change anything. Here, rhetoric is only empty talk about something but not action; rhetoric is manipulative and deceptive, whereas poetry is action. In her sleep she sees a black child bleeding to death in "the whiteness / of the desert where I am lost / without imagery or magic / trying to make power out o f hatred and destruction / trying to heal my dying son with kisses / only the sun will bleach his bones quicker." The desert is the image o f the white world in which the blacks would be totally lost if it were not for their magic, for their m yth, which is their poetry. A state without poetry would result for Lorde in hatred and destruction whereas poetry can use the anger but not lead to destruction.

124 This idea of blackness in all human beings as a source for literary imagination can be compared to Toni M orrison's discussion of "Africanism" as the major force in the shaping o f an American national literature: "These speculations have led me to wonder whether the major and championed characteristics of our national literature - individualism, masculinity, social engagement versus historical isolation; acute and ambiguous moral problematics; the thematics o f innocence coupled with an obsession with figurations of death and hell - are not in fact responses to a dark, abiding, signing Africanist presence. . . . Through significant and underscored omissions, startling contradictions, heavily nuanced conflicts, through the way writers peopled their work with the signs and bodies o f this presence - one can see that a real or fabricated Africanist presence was crucial to their sense of Americanness." Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (New York: Vintage Books, 1992) 5-6. 125 "An Interview: Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich" 101. 126 Lauter, "Re-visioning Creativity" 415.

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The m otive for writing this poem is incorporated into the writing in the form o f a narrative within poetry about a young black boy who is killed by a white policem an, whose only justification for the act is that he '"d id n 't notice the size or nothing else / only the co lo r."' The outrageousness of these statements is com m ented in the form of refrains: "[A]nd / there are tapes to prove that." Yet, the result o f the trial, where eleven white men and one black w om an are on the jury, is that the policeman is set free. L o rd e's reproach is that the token black woman did not use the pow er that was in her hands, but instead let herself be influenced by the traditional practice and is even convinced at the end that the acquittal is right: " ’They convinced m e' meaning / they had dragged her 4'10" black w om an's frame / over the hot coals o f four centuries of white male approval." She is infiltrated with rhetoric and "let go the first real power she ever had / and lined her own wom b with cement / to make a graveyard for our children." She denied the "Black M other Woman Poet" in herself and thus destroyed her potential for pow er and creativity. This woman does not even know that such different things as poetry and rhetoric exist, whereas the persona o f the poem is aware that she has to learn to distinguish between them. The destruction o f the black race is experienced physically, and unless she learns quickly how to use poetry, she will do something like "raping an 85year-old white w om an / w ho is som ebody's mother" and will thus give people the right to say: '" P o o r thing. She never hurt a soul. W hat beasts they a re ." ' This would then turn against herself, her children, and black people in general. Hatred and rhetoric only give her power for destruction, whereas anger and poetry give her power for constructive action. The poem is an appeal for action without violence, not for simple imitation o f what is done to the blacks, but for answering hatred with love. In this sense, poetry is not just highly personal because it springs from the deepest feelings and m ost personal experiences of a poet, but it becomes extraordinarily political. The right ingredients seem to be coming together in poems in which Lorde com pares poetry writing to the creation o f a (lesbian) self and other ("T herapy," BU) and a poem to a female lover ("Recreation," BU). In the poem entitled "Therapy," she reveals how she develops a self and integrates som eone else within herself while writing this particular poem. She describes what happens to her while writing. She is in the process o f creating an "other" from herself, of modeling the "you" so that they can becom e inseparable, but she never goes as far as making the other an image o f herself or com pletely internalizing someone else. They become one, but

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each one o f them keeps their difference.127 Since it is not clear w ho the "you" is, whether the poem or a lover, the text o f a poem and the body o f a lover become equal objects for her creative energy. O n the way to this unity between creator and creation, her eyes become that o f "a hungry child," and she defines in negation what they are not trying to do, which is "not your face" and not the poem. Through negation Lorde finally reaches affirm ation o f her wishes. The therapy can be called successful since she is able to say exactly what she wants to do: "I do not want / to m ake a poem ," but "I want to make you / more and less / a part / from my self." In "Recreation," Lorde focuses on the idea that the body o f a poem reflects her own body or that of a lover and goes beyond the recognition o f each other to a mutual creation. The process o f love-making is com pared to the process o f writing poetry: "[Y]ou create me against your thighs / hilly with images / moving through our word countries / my body / writes into your flesh / the poem / you make o f me." In the poems discussed in 3.1 .3. The Pow er o f the Erotic, the body o f the lover is often com pared to a landscape. Now the lovers become words, texts; bodyscapes are seen as landscapes that can be read like the body o f a text. The lovers write each other, which means they create each other, they are both creator and creation, w riter and text at the same time. Additionally, they are also the instrument needed to write: "my body / writes" - the pen - "into your flesh” - the paper: "Coming together / it is easier to work / after our bodies / meet / paper and pen." The persona becomes what we have in front o f our eyes: the poem. Consequently, a lesbian relationship and the one between poet and poem are very self-sufficient; they consist o f writer - instruments texts - genre - reader and that equally distributes the various roles necessary to close the cycle between the two participating characters. T hrough their mutual love, the lover transforms the speaker into a poem which is then again w ritten into - or recreated in - the w riter's flesh. The two lovers and thus the w riter and the poem become interchangeable. A hierarchy does not exist; each component has the same importance. Sameness is experienced in a positive way. The reflections of each other are not distorted by what the public wants to see or read because the observer/reader is included in the process o f creation. The language o f this poem is metapoetical because it discusses the process o f writing. Yet, since this is only one level, it can also be called a "meta-love" poem, or a poem on how to m ake love, on the discovery and recreation o f a new landscape, the self.

127 Cf. my discussion of the god-like qualities of the woman lover in 3.1.3. The Power o f the Erotic.

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For Audre Lorde, poetry served two particular functions: on a personal level, she found expression of feelings otherwise hidden and allowed her poems to influence her life; on a political level, her poems were m eant to criticize social conditions (in particular o f black wom en) and to stimulate and motivate political action. She even saw her poem s as a political activity. Lorde traced the existence and significance o f poetry on both levels back to the particular life circumstances o f herself as a black female lesbian mother and located the origin o f poetry deep inside a w om an's and a m other's body. Because o f this intimate connection between poetry and female body, her poetry necessarily is autobiographical and thus also gendered. Only poetic language can become the means for self-definition, for a search for identity because poetic language adapts to the changing body rhythms and therefore composes constantly changing identity patterns. In the same way that Lorde was able to trace her lesbianism and her Africanness back to her relationship with her m other and her m other's culture, she also recognized first desires for poetry writing in her childhood. Poetry, womanhood, and blackness for Lorde cam e together almost naturally in the image o f the poem as a female lover and in their mutual creativity. Writing was thus a way o f reflecting herself on the page, o f reading the parts o f herself, o f dealing with the fact that she was an outsider in a society that proclaim s to be multicultural but in reality discrim inates against some of its cultures: "It was not enough to be Black, to be Black and female, to be Black, female, and gay" (Z 224). Thus, writing - in various genres that do not adhere to the traditional genres any m ore because Lorde transgressed the boundaries - was for her the ideal means o f expressing her view of a multicultural self (black, female, gay, etc.) and a multicultural society that was not yet defined by an equal acceptance o f race, class, and gender. The discovery o f multiculturalism, for Lorde, had led to the development o f "multi-genres" that offered her the instruments for the reflection o f a multicultural self that was American, African, black, female, lesbian, and more. As a black lesbian feminist comfortable with the many different ingredients of my identity, and a woman committed to racial and sexual freedom from oppression, I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self. But this is a destructive and fragmenting

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way to live. My fullest concentration of energy is available to me only when 1 integrate all the parts of who I am, . . . ,128 The physical conditions o f the body provoke em otions that are then expressed in the text. Body and text eventually merge into one. Life and art become one in highly autobiographical poetry. Audre Lorde saw herself reflected in her poetry and reflected in her (meta-)poetry on the (selfre fle x iv e quality o f poetry. She translated her awareness o f the importance o f reflection in her life into the representational device o f m irror imagery.

3.3. Individual or Communal Specula: Representation in Audre L orde's Poetry As we have seen in the discussion of representation (of experience) in the poetry o f Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich, m irror imagery and the double play an im portant part in the poetry o f these two poets. Audre L o rde's autobiographical poetry as well relies heavily on the idea o f "reflection." She, too, saw herself reflected in her poetry, as the analysis o f her metapoetical statements has shown in 3.2. "Poetry Is Not a Luxury." For her, this reflection took place through and in the intimate connection between her body and her language. Nevertheless, Lorde frequently used the image o f the m irror to further emphasize her search for identity as a black lesbian m o th er129 and p o e t.130 She, perhaps m ore than Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich, experienced the tension between society’s definition of her and her ow n attitudes and feelings about her identity which was deeply rooted in the cultural relationship between her African Caribbean origins and her A m erican nationality.131 Thus, for Lorde, the m irror became the meeting point o f different ethnic cultures as well as the battleground for questions o f gender and sexuality.132 The num ber o f actual mirrors in her poetry, how ever, is sm aller than in Plath's or R ich's poetry because she can resort to another means o f reflection: her doubles are her female lovers and finally her female poem -lovers. Lover and poem increasingly become one. Therefore, it is not possible, in the case o f Audre Lorde, to clearly separate her representation o f lesbianism and poetry writing and the idea of 128 Lorde, "Age, Race, Class, and Sex" 120. 129 Cf. 3.1.1. ’ Black Mother Woman" 130 Cf. 3.2. "Poetry Is Not a Luxury” 131 Cf. 3.1.2. Present, Past, and Future: The Search for an African American Identity 132 Cf. 3.1.3. The Power o f the Erotic

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reflection that is inherent in both. This section on "Individual or Com m unal Specula" will focus on those poems with m irror images that reflect the desire for a clear vision ("Good M irrors Are Not Cheap") as well as the fighting and often ambiguous social forces within the female viewers with regard to wom anhood ("The One W ho Got Away"), m otherhood ("W hat My Child Learns from the Sea"), race ("W ho Said It W as Sim ple"), sexuality ("M eet"), and poetry ("C oal”). Whereas neither Plath nor Rich were ever able to establish a satisfying m irror image in their poem s, L o rd e's m irrors were never sheeted or smoky but either individually distorting or communally affirming. Lorde saw herself most adequately reflected in the communal speculum. In "Good M irrors Are Not Cheap" (FL , 1970), Lorde thematizes the social tension and the desire for a clear and unblinded vision a wom an experiences when she looks into her m irro r.133 The instrument o f the m irror and what she sees reflected in it is always connected to the question o f reality and illusion or distortion. The m irror is a product o f a "hand / that m akes glass with distortions." These mirrors do not even have the potential o f reflecting the personal reality but impose a given social image that, at the beginning, is "slight enough to pass / unnoticed / until one day your peer / into your face / under a merciless white light / and the fault in a m irror slaps back / becoming / what you think / is the shape of your e rr o r." Reality and illusion, however, can never be clearly separated because both depend very much on the individual perspective. Distortions are imposed, but in the careful phrasing o f "what you think" Lorde implies the relativity o f this new and personal insight as well. At that point, people start "hating a m irror" because they have to deal with various contrasting images o f themselves and have to live with the insecurity of not knowing their "real" identity, the existence of which seems to be taken for g ra n te d .134 Hate o f the m irror as an enemy turns into the desire for destruction o f the m irror and o f the person - here the persona o f the poem that is "beside that se lf.” This persona next to the one who looks into the m irror serves as an instance o f measurement confirming that the "you” has so far lived with illusions. In that sense, both mirror and persona serve the same functions o f bad conscience and warning and therefore need to be destroyed: "[Y]ou destroy me / or if you can see / the m irror is lying / you

133 Cf. also "Memorial II" (FC, 1954) in which Audre Lorde manifests the need for communal reflection. The mirror contains both her and her friend’s mirror images, and even though a final unity of vision cannot be achieved, the temporary unity helps the persona to understand the necessity o f community. 134 Cf. also "Prologue" (FL, 1971) in which Lorde warns of believing in promises for change too easily.

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shatter the glass / choosing another blindness / and slashed helpless hands." Even though neither the m irror nor the persona can ever reflect a "true" image of self, they are necessary as reminders o f the need for an individual's awareness o f a manipulative social environment. Destruction o f these reminders will lead to ignorance, "blindness," and will not prevent the production o f new distorting mirrors: "Because at the same time / dow n the street / a glassmaker is grinning / turning out new m irrors that lie / selling us / new clowns / at cut rate." The attempt o f the female persona to find an individual identity fails because she cannot accept the various selves within her. She realizes that she consists o f at least two different selves o f which one is not conform with society's - and so far her ow n - definition o f who she is. The poem was written in 1970 at a time when Lorde cam e out as a lesbian. The second self present in the poem could therefore be the haunting presence o f her lesbian self which she was only gradually willing to accept as a part of her womanhood. The contrast between what the woman sees reflected in the m irror and what she hopes to see135 is doubly expressed in "The One W ho G ot Away" (MAD) in the media of m irror and dream. Like in Plath's poem "M irror," the woman risks the look into the m irror each day. W hereas in "M irror" the woman is constantly confronted with the same horrifying image, L o rd e's woman is also terrified but by "new landscapefs]" every time. She desires an image, like that of a mother, that approves o f and affirms what she believes to be: "[Y]ou are the fairest / daughter." The morning is the transition point between night and day, between nightmare and everyday life, and the point o f hope, "but never a woman / peeks out from the folds / o f her bed-scented m irro r."136 Nightmare and m irror connect through the term "bed-scented." Smell and view are combined in this synaesthesia to express the urgency of the wom an's search for identity. "And every midnight / over her nightm are's shoulder / a swollen girl / belly pressed against glass / waves goodbye / through the slanting rain." This "swollen girl," perhaps pregnant, is the one who got away, but from what? From the need for social acceptance? Yet, the "swollen girl" is not a real alternative; she is the nightmare, that which the dreamer rejects. Every m orning, she 135 Cf. also "For My Singing Sister" (NY, 1973) in which a "shattered m irror," which is usually the symbol of a destroyed life or of death, expresses the young w om an's psychological state of insecurity and instability and her search for a stable and fixed identity, which, however, cannot be successful as long as she accepts the imposed social norms. Cf. "Chain" (BU): "To what death shall I look for comfort? / Which m irror to break or mourn?" 136 Cf. also "What It Means to Be Beautiful” (MAD): "The child believes / what she sees / becomes her own / each morning over toothpaste / in front of the mirror / another woman's mouth / goes tight as a zipper."

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needs the affirm ation that she is not the "swollen girl." This affirm ation, how ever, is denied because individual identity without reference to society does not exist. The m irror-poem s analyzed in this section so far all reveal some attem pt on the part o f the respective personae to come to terms with them selves as w om en in a society which denies them a full recognition o f their various selves. These poems have shown that for Lorde the definition o f self was inextricably linked to socially imposed norms and expectations on the one hand and to a personally affirmed membership in the group o f black w om en on the other hand. The individual woman, therefore, has to understand and overcom e the limitations in a patriarchal and hierarchical society by defining herself in relationship to other black women and by accepting her various selves in the mirror. A truly com m unal (metaphorical) mirror is established between m other and daughter and will be discussed with reference to the poem "W hat My Child Learns from the Sea." This communal m irror seems to reflect the image o f the m other in her daughter up until the point o f separation. Until then, the daughter is safe from distorting images because the m other serves as a g u id elin e.137 Thus, the origin o f the communal m irror lies in the p re­ natal unity o f m other and daughter as the basis for all further relationships.138 In "W hat My Child Learns from the Sea" (FC, 1963), Lorde stresses the passing on o f experience from mother to daughter, "W hat my child learns o f the sea /. . . / she will learn in my twilights / . . . W hat my child learns / . . . has ripened in my own b o d y .” During the ch ild 's early development the m irror images of mother and daughter are the sam e139; yet, once the daughter is in her "autumn" she will, as the m other sees it, "step / to the back o f a m irror / cutting my ropes" and condem n the w inter, a symbol for the mother. The daughter will then become a stranger, a separate ”1" w ho has her own m irror image, who has passed the "m irror stage" and even overcom e the "Oedipal crisis."140 The separation is very painful and is perform ed by the daughter, not the mother. The m other is the

137 Cf. also "Generation" (FC, 1966) and "Generation II" (FL, 1971). 138 Cf. my discussion o f the mother-daughter relationship in 3.1.1. "Black Mother W om an.” 139 Cf. "Afterimages” (CP, 1981): "Two tow-headed children hurl themselves against her / hanging upon her coat like mirrors." 140 c f "Outside," BU: ”(W)ho do you think me to be / that you are terrified of becoming / or what do you see in my face / you have not already discarded / in your own m irror / what face do you see in my eyes / that you will someday / come to / acknowledge your own? / Who shall I curse that I grew up / believing in my mother's face I . . . I and I am lustful now for my own name."

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object; she is used for her daughter's self-definition. Even though the m irror reflects how the original oneness o f m other and daughter is destroyed, this separation is only a necessary part o f an annual revision o f knowledge. The child will "revise every autum n" what she has learned from her mother. Yet, in contrast to Sylvia Plath, in whose poem s this separation is only painfully achieved, Lorde takes the position o f a m other w ho knows that it is happening. Despite the pain, she can rem ain calm. She knows that the daughter's m irror image contains the m o th er's traces and will never be completely disassociated because knowledge about identity is never achieved once and forever but has to be constantly revised in the light o f this original oneness. The children who thus revise the m other's m irror image learn not to "fear blank and empty mirrors / they have seen their faces defined in a hydrants puddle / before the rainbows of oil obscured them" ("Prologue"). Tim es have changed, and although her own m other would not agree with all she wrote, Lorde saw herself as a necessary m ediator - and mediation through writing as well as mothering/daughtering - between generations. She wanted to tell the next generation that they "[did] not need to relive [her] past / in strength nor in confusion." In both functions as a w riter and a m other she would "leave a dark print / o f the me that 1 am / and w ho 1 am not / etched in a shadow of angry and rem embered lo v in g .” Even though the face o f the mother as a m irror can serve as a guideline for future generations, this mirror, by definition, also prescribes certain rules o f behavior embedded in a particular cultural background that always has to be considered as a whole. This cultural background is shared by black mothers and daughters but is threatened and misunderstood by the attempt o f white middle-class feminists who seem to ignore cultural differences.141 The danger o f a black w om an's slaughter is rooted in color and sex: "But I who am bound by my m irror / as well as my bed / see causes in color / as well as sex" ("W ho Said It W as Sim ple," FL, 1970). She is both, a woman and black, and therefore doubly limited; the m irror reflects color and the limitations connected to it. H er bed defines her sexual confinem ent as a woman. The mirror as well as the bed define the persona and establish two categories o f which none can be neglected in the attempt at liberation. The connection between m irror and color, established through syntactical parallelism, opens up a whole field o f cultural and political implications, important in particular in the 1960s and early 1970s. The land behind the m irror is not only based on a different color (equal to all other colors), but on differences in origin, customs and m anners, religion,

141 Cf. 3.1.2. Present, Past, and Future: The Search for an African American Identity.

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history, etc. In this respect, the m irror includes the persona in the community o f black people. Neither the black persona, who is not only bound but also defined by her m irror, nor the white feminists can successfully ignore this mirror. The irony lies in the last sentence: ”[A]nd [I] sit here wondering / which me will survive / all these liberations." In all the processes o f liberation, the persona never finds herself fully represented; she is not one o f these me's but all o f them at the same time. She is condemned to sit there and watch the attempts others make for her liberation because she does not know where to join and does not want to join one group or the other. In 1970, acceptance o f multiculturalism and differences, as suggested in the m irror's embodiment o f blackness, had not yet entered the public discussion. The actual m irrors or metaphorical mirrors (e.g. the face o f the mother as a m irror for the daughter) referring to womanhood, m otherhood, and race all proclaim the idea that self-definition cannot take place in a vacuum but is only possible through a connection with other "Black M other W om en." The individual self consists of different selves or fragments which establish links to surrounding communities. Lesbianism and the reflection of herself in her female lover, for Lorde, seemed to contain all necessary ingredients for self-definition. In her black female lover, Lorde recognized sameness and an attraction that came from deep inside: ”1 have heard you calling across this land / in my blood before meeting" ("M eet," BU). They both share a common point of reference which is "halfway between your world and mine." Both lovers are compared to an earth with "land," "beaches," "platforms," "trees," "birds," "caverns," "hills." Thus, the female body is associated with nature; bodyscape and landscape become one, and the lovers turn into mutual explorers. After the exploration they both find peacefulness and a mutual recognition of sameness: "Coming to rest / in the open mirrors o f your demanded body." The open m irrors o f the lover's body reflect the physical similarities and the shared cultural background. Because of the plurality o f mirrors, they do not produce the illusion o f oneness but o f a healthy fragmentation that allows the peaceful coexistence of different aspects. Here, the mirrors open up possibilities and are not seen as limiting. Blackness and light are not mutually exclusive but equal: "I will be black light as you lie against me / . . . / our rivers flow from the same sea / . . . . " Recognition of the same origin is expressed in the sea as a symbol for maternity. Women among themselves can be mutually complimentary and therefore satisfying: "It is now more clear how complementarity is a necessary concept. . . . Thus complementarity is

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determ ined by some unconscious grasp o f the fit between the other and o n e ’s own internal o b jects."142 U nder the protection o f the priestess o f Larteh the speaker in "Meet" feeds her lover milk; yet, it is not a clear-cut mother-child-relationship but a floating relationship in which both can take different roles; both become m irrors o f each other and can interchangeably become mother or child or m other and child at the same time; no fixed role separation is necessary because "we have always been sisters in pain." This first note o f pain which destroys the overall harmonic presentation o f a love relationship stands also at the end o f the poem after another emphasis on the mutuality o f their relationship: ”[W]e have mated we have cubbed / we have high time for w ork and another meeting / women exchanging blood / in the innermost room s o f moment / we must taste o f each other's fruit / at least once / before we shall both be slain." This surprising and shocking epiphany o f the slaughter o f animals reveals L orde's awareness o f society's perception o f lesbianism, but it also expresses the absolute necessity o f this lesbian love relationship. The image o f the body o f the other woman as a m irror for herself unites wom anhood, motherhood, race, and sexuality. Lorde defined herself through all these concepts (and many more) and rejected categorizations o f herself as one or the other. Looking at each concept individually reveals that Lorde did not restrict herself to fixed positions. In her poem s, the poet Audre Lorde reflected on her womanhood and blackness and gradually interspersed these concepts with aspects of m otherhood and sexuality until she finally united all o f them in lesbianism. In her poem s, L o rde's personae look into m irrors and find multiple and dynam ic identities. The process towards this identity and its final achievem ents is represented in L orde's poetry. Therefore, being a poet was, for Lorde, an absolute necessity in her search for identity. The poem "Coal" (1962), published for the first time in The First Cities (1968) and then reprinted in Coal (1976), extends L orde's use of m irror images to herself as a poet. It is a genesis o f how words or language com e into being. Throughout the poem, Lorde uses coal as a metaphor for language and, at the same time, also for herself. In this sense, the coal m etaphor m irrors Audre Lorde. The usually non-reflexive black surface of coal is turned metaphorically into a new representational means for reflection. In the first line she tells her readers what her center o f interest is, nam ely "I," and the persona defines herself: "I / is the total black, being spoken / from the earth 's inside." The words that she needs to talk about

142 Beverly Burch, On Intimate Terms: The Psychology o f Difference in Lesbian Relationships (Urbana: U o f Illinois P, 1993) 58.

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herself come out of the inside o f the earth, the earth here seen as a m etaphor for a person. The language needed for self-definition, therefore, comes out o f something very deep inside herself, as Lorde also states in "Poetry is Not a Luxury." The earth becomes an image o f the m other's womb from which literally the child is born and figuratively language is created. This image reflects L orde's idea of the mother as the origin for language and ra c e .143 At the same time, the origin o f language is situated in the Semiotic order. The way in which language surfaces is individually shaped: "There are many kinds o f open." The value o f the "I" is established through the comparison with a diamond. The sound of the words and the translation o f the Semiotic language into Symbolic language depend on ’’who pays what for speaking." She attempts to describe the words that she speaks: "Some words are open / like a diamond on glass windows / singing out within the crash of passing sun / . . . . ” She connects these words with the mood she is in and personifies them, attributes visual images, and also sees them in print: "Then there are words like stapled wagers / in a perforated book - buy and sign and tear apart - / and come whatever wills all chances / the stub remains . . . She elaborates here on her profession as a writer and declares that once you see your own words in print, there is no effacing them any more, no matter what you try, even if you destroy the book. H er imagery is even more complex because she compares the attempt o f destroying the book and what is left to the very physical experience o f "an ill-pulled tooth with a ragged edge." The tooth is a part o f herself, so are the words. The process o f writing or even of speaking can be restricted by "words [that] live in [her] throat / breeding like adders." In the same way the persona of "A Meeting of M inds"144 almost explodes because she is full o f language that does not come into expression, the persona in "Coal" sees the words inside her like "seeking like gypsies over my tongue / to explode through my lips / like young sparrows bursting from shell." As in "Paperw eight,"145 she uses the simile of birth, here the birth of sparrows, to explain her relationship to language. Openness is a concept that is limitless, without any restrictions, individual. The climax o f this potential openness in words is that ”[l]ove is a word another kind o f open / as a diamond comes into a knot o f flame." The last two lines o f the poem then, like a frame, go back to the definition o f the "I" at the beginning: "I 143 Cf. 3.1.1. "Black Mother Woman" and 3.2 "Poetry Is Not a Luxury." 144 Cf. my discussion in 3.1.2. Present, Past, and Future: The Search for an African American Identity. 145 Cf. my reference in 3.1.2. Present, Past, and Future: The Search for an African American Identity.

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am black because I come from the earth's inside / Take my word for jewel in the open light." In these two lines the persona brings together all the threads that she has developed before and unites them to a singular definition o f the persona. Blackness here is not simply color but deeper in the sense that it comes out o f the inside o f a human being (earth), out of something that cannot be controlled by reason. Her words are important, not all in the same way acceptable, but all o f value, like diamonds or jew els. Once they are out, they shine in the open light (cf. her essay collection A Burst o f Light). "Coal" is a poem about the various processes o f coming to speech, o f writing, o f communicating, but it is also the metaphorical definition of a black self, a black poet and thus o f Lorde herself. The words are organic and always come out o f somewhere deep inside a human being, and the writer or speaker is not in control o f these words. In that sense, the poem "Coal" is a m irror for the poet Audre Lorde, for the "total black." The analysis of m irror imagery declares the idea o f "communal reflection" as o f utmost importance in Audre L orde's poetry because it has revealed the relevance o f mirroring in all fields o f L orde's life experiences. The m irrors shed light on L orde's private and public activities, but in particular on the way in which she translated life experience into poetry. She needed to see herself reflected in her environment by making her various selves visible in a society which sanctioned difference with rejection or even total denial, i.e. invisibility. She made herself visible through the creation o f looking glasses which affirmed her womanhood, motherhood, race, and sexuality and translated these social mirrors into mirror-poems and further into m irrors within poems. For Lorde, the wish to achieve a clear vision could potentially be realized in motherhood and lesbianism. The m other’s m irror can serve as a guideline for the daughters because they can recognize themselves and their possible destiny in their m other's faces after the "m irror stage" has led to a separation between them. Daughters, however, often refuse to read their m other's faces as a source for their own lives so that the mothers frequently see their own pasts reflected in the m irrors o f their daughters who repeat history. These mirrors, at least, are not distorted and imposed by society but emphasize the need for communal reflection. The generation gap - in time and often location - is overcome in the mutual reflection in a lesbian relationship. The lovers see themselves reflected in each other, recognize sameness, but never become identical, and never dissolve their individual identity. In this close community - as in the m other-daughter relationship - the dangers o f the surrounding society can be shut out, whereas as soon as the individual black woman is alone with her m irror image, the reflection opens up to the fields o f racism and

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sexism , opposes cultures, and illuminates the dominance o f one culture over another. Society functions through its hierarchical structure and fixed categories o f identity. Difference threatens those in power and would question their system o f belief. In short, Audre Lorde's reflection in society, her reflection in her poetry, and her personae's reflection in actual m irrors express L o rd e's concept o f the communal (and not the individual) speculum as a m eans to achieve the acceptance o f difference and the rejection o f frozen and fixed identity patterns. "What em erges from the self-representational strategies o f Lorde . . . is not only a new way to understand the autobiographical agent, but, in fact, a kind o f autobiographical writing that breaks with monocultural imperatives o f b e in g ." 146 Even though my analysis of Audre L orde's poetry focuses on w om anhood, m otherhood, race, sexuality, and poetry, I do not claim to have covered all aspects constituting L orde's search for identity. This claim would contradict the very premises o f this dissertation and o f L o rde's life as well: ”1 am a Black, Lesbian, Feminist, warrior, poet, m other doing my work. I underline these things, but they are just some of the ingredients of w ho I am. There are many o th ers."147

146 Leigh Gilmore, Autobiographies: A Feminist Theory o f Women's SelfRepresentation (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1994) 39. Gilmore calls this type of selfrepresentation "autobiographies": "I offer the term autobiographies to describe those elements o f self-representation which are not bound by a philosophical definition of the self derived from Augustine, not content with the literary history of autobiography, those elements that instead mark a location in a text where self-invention, self-discovery, and self-representation emerge within the technologies of autobiography - namely, those legalistic, literary, social, and ecclesiastical discourses of truth and identity through which the subject o f autobiography is produced. Autobiographies, as a description of selfrepresentation and as a reading practice, is concerned with interruptions and eruptions, with resistance and contradiction as strategies of self-representation" (42). 147 Rowell, "Above the Wind" 92.

For she [Orlando] had a great variety of selves to call upon, far more than we have been able to find room for, since a biography is considered complete if it merely accounts for six or seven selves, whereas a person may well have as many thousand.1

IV. Conclusion The w om en's stories o f the looking glass can be seen as indicative and expressive o f w om en's positions in American society from the 1950s to the 1990s. The three women poets chosen for this analysis have certainly undergone very different developments in life and w ork, but a closer look reveals com m on features that can be used as paradigm s for the understanding o f w om en's poetry in the United States from the 1950s until today. Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, and A udre Lorde shared the beginning o f their poetry as rooted in a post-war patriarchal society governed by the fem inine mystique. Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich were both from white middle-class families that highly emphasized education, achievem ent, and fulfillment o f the norms (for women) of m arriage and m otherhood. Audre Lorde grew up in a black lower middle-class family that tried to assimilate into a white society by promoting the same norms. Yet, the desire for assimilation was motivated by an awareness o f racial difference and disadvantage. All three women then followed sim ilar patterns. First they accepted the norms, got married, and had children. At the same tim e, they broke the social norms by writing poetry with the am bition o f becoming published poets who might compete with their male counterparts. Because o f their education and intellectual means, they found it hard to understand o r even accept the social rules telling them what w om en could not, should not, o r were not allowed to do or to be. At that point, all three o f them started experiencing the tension between themselves as individuals and them selves as members o f social groups and o f society as a whole. They becam e aware o f the dualisms in a society that favored the exact opposite o f what they were. This opposition full o f tension can be seen as the origin for their quest for identity which led in all cases to a break up o f the m arriage and a rejection o f male authority. Plath knew what she did not want but did not live long enough to theorize and contextualize her situation and to find and 1 Virginia Woolf, Orlando (1928; London: A Triad Grafton Book, 1986) 193.

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evaluate alternatives. Rich and Lorde could go further. Because of the W om en's Movement and the Civil Rights Movement, they were able to name their experience as that in a white heterosexual patriarchal society which constructs norms and behavior patterns and fixes hierarchies along class, race, and gender lines. Both thematized this insight in their poetry which became their means for actively subverting politics. Personal experience is translated into highly autobiographical poetry because, as the slogan goes, the personal is the political, or to include Plath, w ho had no political ambition, the personal is the poetical and the poetical is the personal. In their poetry, they all tried to come to terms with their past and present situations. Throughout most of her life, Sylvia Plath experienced the tension between the socially prescribed femininity and her own ambitious self that somewhere deep inside was not willing to accept control from outside but could not name this emotion. She wanted to be successful and accepted and therefore strove for participation in the "Law o f the Father" by rejecting the close mother-daughter bonds. In contrast to Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde, who both lived through the separation from their mothers but converted it into a mature continuity, Sylvia Plath saw the complete break with her mother as a necessity for her liberation from this tension. Yet, only too soon did she realize that neither her lather nor her husband, in whom she idealized patriarchal norms, could fulfill her desire for a definition of herself as an independent, strong woman intending to become a successful poet. Therefore, she started to destroy these male looking glasses. In her poems, she conjured up images o f father and husband as representatives of a dominant patriarchy and liberated herself from their influence by symbolically killing them. Whereas Rich was able to overcome this stereotypical categorization of her father, Sylvia Plath never took these labels away from either father or mother. Plath enacted the Oedipal crisis and the m irror stage in her poems, in contrast to Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde, who often theorized important stages in their lives. Thus, for Sylvia Plath, experience in the last several months of her life could be identified with her poetry. Only then did she let the volcano inside her erupt hoping for another rebirth, which she had enacted both literally in her life (after her suicide attempt) and symbolically in her work (e.g. in The Bell Jar and in numerous poems). Rebirth was her goal, but even though she finally understood that social discourses were constructing images o f womanhood, femininity, and poetry, she did not see any clear alternatives. She could not see herself in the larger framework of the feminine mystique. For her, the community o f women, which became essential for Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde, did not have any appeal.

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H er last efforts were the poems she wrote in September and October 1962. Poem s had become mirrors in which she tried to reflect herself. This reflection, however, necessarily contained the same dualisms and insecurities o f social and personal self, of reality and illusion. Not even the m irror could reflect the absolute truth because the m irror images depended on the viewer whose identity and outward appearance was subject to historical changes. During a certain point in time, she had the illusion o f a truthful reflection, but at the end she recognized her error. For a while, she hid behind the mask o f the m irror and tried to subvert her environment from that position. She tried to heal the split between personal and social self, between body and mind, even affirmed and accepted her body and thus herself for some time, but turned to her children as m irror images for herself and thus was caught again in the social labyrinth. The mirrors in her final poem s were all clouding over, reflecting the disintegration o f Plath's persona(lity). P la th 's striving for a clear and socially acceptable image o f herself is continued posthumously. Different interest groups and critics with particular theoretical positions claim to know who Plath was, pretend they have the absolute truth, the facts o f her life and work. In my mind, none of them is right or perhaps all o f them are. Truth is very much subject to the historical, social, political, personal, and cultural points in time. Therefore, all theories might be adequate from a certain point in time and space but inadequate from others. The postmodern and poststructuralist idea that identity is subject to change and multi-layered and should not be submitted to any simple categorization should definitely be applied to Sylvia Plath. For P lath, the acceptance o f her confusion as to constructed and competing identity patterns would have been a first step towards an understanding of herself, towards an end o f her search for identity. Adrienne R ich 's situation as a woman in her society is marked by her attitudes towards marriage and sexuality, motherhood, and family life. She experiences the tensions between a socially imposed heterosexual marriage and her personal desire for a lesbian relationship, between institutionalized m otherhood and personally desired and controlled motherhood, between gentiles and Jews. In contrast to Sylvia Plath, who actually found some fulfillm ent in her motherhood, and to Audre Lorde, who actively embraced m otherhood as a means to change the world for future generations. Rich has never considered mothering as a significant possibility in her quest because she has experienced it as a counterforce to her individuality. Her constant search for ways o f overcoming these contradictions leads to experim ents with various concepts o f sexuality (heterosexuality, androgyny, lesbianism ), and for a time, she embraces radically active feminism as the

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ideal m eans o f changing the situation for women in a patriarchal world. T hrough her rejection o f imposed definitions o f femininity, she claim s an "inborn" desire for a community of women, a lesbian continuum rooted in each w o m an 's childhood and supported by the dream o f a com m on language so that w om en's lives and language could be harm onized. For some tim e, she rejects her father as a representative of this oppressive patriarchal culture but gradually becomes aware that such a rejection equals a stigm atization and categorization that women suffer from and that feminists try to break up. She finally sees him as the individual w ho is as rooted in the contradictions o f society as she is. Through the understanding o f her father’s role in her life, she comes close to the recognition o f difference as a defining term for herself as a woman in an A m erican society that is full o f outsiders. The medium through which this awareness is reached is poetry. As much as Sylvia Plath and Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich experiences the urge to w rite poetry in her childhood and the norms and rules imposed on her by poetical traditions. From an exercise in creative writing, her poem s - first unconsciously, then consciously - break the silence about w om en and about her ow n desire to become a poet and oppose the social definitions o f fem ininity. She learns that knowledge about society and its m echanism s is essential for survival and therefore uses her poetry for consciousnessraising, as a tool for political action. She no longer hides her autobiographical impulses, her search for a tradition of female poets with w hom she does not want to compete (as Sylvia Plath did) but takes sides against male poets and asks for w om en’s revisionist writing. She openly criticizes poetic traditions o f form and content, tries to subvert male language and thus to appropriate it for herself, breaks genre conventions, and engenders poetry through her emphasis on the close connection between body and language, between a (female) lover and a poem and thus ”attempt[s] to wrest [her] body[ ] from oppressive cultural identifications."2 Because o f these engendered autobiographical reflections in her poetry, the publication o f poems can become a dangerous activity. With these poems a w om an poet not only exposes herself to a, for Rich, hostile male w orld, but also makes them appear like fixed and final statements, which they can never be, because they - as much as the identity o f the poet - are subject to this constantly changing social, historical, and cultural context. If this car be kept in m ind, however, then poetry becomes the ideal means for the

2 Sidonie Smith, Subjectivity, Identity, and the Body: Women's Autobiographic Practices in the Twentieth Century (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1993) 131.

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reflection o f a constantly developing world in which absolutes have to be relative, center becomes margin, and difference dominates. R ich’s use o f m irror imagery, however, shows that she does not really see this as a chance for change through poetry. The m irrors in her earlier poems present first a utopian vision o f an ideal future and then a present dominated by the wish to connect with other women. Finally, she attempts to lift the sm oky mirrors from her past, e .g ., her Jewish past. W hereas Sylvia Plath mostly focused on the present, Rich, in her sixties, seems to have no image o f the future any more; she appears to be stuck in her past. R ich's resignation is partly due to her own physical illness, but also, to a larger extent, to her disappointment about the "few" changes which she has been able to bring about with her poetry. W hether she has failed in her personal life is not subject to my judgment. But she has certainly not failed in her poetical and political endeavors. She has to be considered one o f the m ajor voices o f the W om en's Movement. Even though political and social changes for w om en only gradually take place and even though R ich's dreams o f a community o f women and their com m on language have remained utopian visions, she has been successful in political and poetical respects: In political terms, she has transformed silences (about women) into action for both intellectual and non-intellectual wom en based on her personal experiences and has paved the way for a critical reevaluation o f fixed identity patterns so that "difference" - not only in terms o f gender and sexual orientation but also of race, class, creed, etc. - is gradually developing into an accepted social concept. In poetical term s, she is one o f the women poets who have successfully subverted the idea o f the "death o f the author" by inscribing themselves into their texts, by integrating life and text, by claim ing autobiographical poetry as their m ajor and most adequate means for expression. In addition, Rich has extended this reflection o f herself in her poetry to the textual recreation o f historical wom en o f the past. She reveals that women have a history and establishes a tradition o f w om en's poetry which links past, present, and future. Audre L o rd e's poetry is a result o f her particular life experiences as a black, female, lesbian mother and poet. The recognition o f herself as an invisible outsider in a multiply marginalized and threatened position and the need for an affirm ation o f her multiple identity made her search for ways o f survival. F or herself, she turned her marginalization into a source o f strength. She emphasized the importance o f m otherhood and the m other's responsibility for her children. With her concept o f the "Black M other W om an," she integrated her womanhood and m otherhood into an American society o f the present and an African background o f the past. In her poem s, Lcrde expanded the mother figure into mythic goddesses, w arriors, who

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incorporate the male and female principles and are thus self-sufficient and independent from the male world. Lorde thereby reached beyond national borders towards a com m unity o f all black wom en and translated this com m unity into lesbian relationships in her private life. H er hunger for self-fulfillment and her desire for life let her expose the dangers for women in hierarchical relationships (submission to a male principle, loss of identity) and discover eroticism and the closeness to nature as sources o f pow er for women. Lorde could not simply make these experiences but had to com m unicate them to other women. W hen she could not find poems in her childhood that would express her ideas and feelings, she created her own poetry, and later on thematized this lack, her m arginalization, and the different connected forms o f discrimination. Because she needed to see herself reflected in her environm ent, she turned invisibility into political and textual visibility. Breaking the silence and translating it into language and action became the motto o f her life throughout her cancer experience. Because o f the intimate connection between body and language, L orde's poetry renamed past and present experiences and thus provided instances o f self-definition. H er poems did not reflect the same Audre Lorde at all times. They were as much subject to the particular point in time as her feelings and were often integrated into othei genres such as her biom ythography, her autobiographical essays, or her journal entries during the cancer experience, because "[s]uch subjects [e.g. L orde's life experiences] require new discourses o f identity and new orientations to the b o d y ."3 In her m irror imagery, Lorde expressed the difficulties o f translating experience into images, the problem atics and relativity o f representation, because m irrors depend on the particular social, historical, political, and cultural circum stances. She warned o f believing in imposed m irror images and offered m others and lesbian lovers as alternative m irror images. Within this reflection, the relationship was not fixed but flexible and subject to changes and not threatened by a willful distortion o r the attempts o f dom ination. This community allowed for private as well as political action, for the recognition o f sameness and difference: "By exploring multiple differences, we resist the conclusion that there are essential categories of being o f any kind at all."4 F or Lorde, this community became a continuum that encom passed her whole being with all its fragmentations and contradictions. In this continuum , this "house o f difference" - expressed in

3 Smith, Subjectivity. Identity, and the Body 184. 4 Zimmerman, The Safe Sea o f Women 185.

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the translation o f her life experience into poetry into m irror images, in short, into autobiographical poetry marked by gender and race -, she was allowed to be m other and daughter, black, lesbian, lover, poet, political activist, feminist ... B ein g w om en to g e th e r w as n o t enough. W e w ere d iffe re n t. B ein g g a y - g irls to g e th e r w as n o t enough. W e w ere d iffe re n t. B ein g B la c k to g e th e r w as n o t enough. W e w ere d iffe re n t. B ein g B la ck w om en to g e th e r w as n o t enough. W e w ere d iffe re n t. B ein g B la c k d y k es to g e th e r w as n o t enough. W e w ere d iffe re n t.

(Z 226) The search for o n e's identity is always also the search for the recognition o f oneself as a whole human being. The attem pt, however, to make oneself and society's image o f oneself into a harm onious unity is doom ed to fail. W hereas postm odern (male) writers, as Charles Caram ello argues, express "a nostalgic desire to resilver the old m irrors o f fiction,"5 the autobiographical poetry o f the three poets discussed - which may be paradigmatic o f contem porary w om en's poetry - is silvered and reflects the increasing insight into the fragmentation o f identity into various selves subject to o n e's ow n and society's evaluations. By consciously inscribing themselves into their texts, these poets show how they see themselves as embedded in a constantly changing cultural context that, nevertheless, tries to impose fixed social and poetical norms because those in pow er do not acknowledge these changes. They experience gender and race as cultural constructs that are often perpetuated in fiction. They rebel against these cultural constructs in their own poetry. Despite Sidonie S m ith’s warning voice Any autobiographical practice that promotes endless fragmentation and a reified multiplicity might be counterproductive since the autobiographical subject would have to split itself beyond usefulness to be truly nonexclusionary. And it is difficult to coalesce a call to political action founded upon some kind of communal identity around a constantly deferred point of departure.6 - w om en's stories o f the looking glass are all about change and difference: It was a while before we came to realize that our place was the very house of difference rather the security of any one particular difference. (Z 226)

5 Caramello, Silverless Mirrors 212. 6 Smith, Subjectivity, Identity, and the Body 156.

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C onclusion

W om en poets who have followed in the footsteps of Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, and Audre Lorde, e .g ., Susan G riffin, Olga Broumas, Alice W alker, Nikki Giovanni, Elizabeth Alexander, Joy Harjo, and Louise E rdrich, to name but a few, can situate themselves in the context o f autobiographical poetry which integrates w om en's lives and texts. They can see themselves reflected in a poetry which firmly established the relevance o f a "woman poet." Plath, Rich, and Lorde were often marginalized by society because of their gender, sexuality, race, class, creed, etc., and because o f their autobiographical poetry and life writing. In resisting this m arginalization, they have paved the way towards an acceptance o f the very m argins as the centers o f interest in today's multicultural Am erican society.

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