ENGL 377(F) Suicides and Survivors
Adrienne Rich and Sylvia Plath were contemporaries, vying in the 1950s for the same poetry prizes and recognition as "obedient daughters" to a literary tradition that prized craft and impersonality as poetic virtues over confession or politics. Both poets have become feminist heroines for their disobedience, each diverging radically and in her own way from this tradition in the 1960s. As biographer Janet Malcolm puts it: "Women honor Plath for her courage to be unpleasant" about being a "good girl" in the 1950s and about a philandering husband in the 1960s. Her suicide in 1963 was immediately followed by analyses of her poems in Ariel that directed critical interest toward her life as an explanation of her craft. Her survivors have battled strenuously but ineffectually to preserve the secrets of her life from "the voyeurism and busybodyism" of eager biographers and readers. Rich's life competes with her poetry for critical interest and approval because of its political shape; its dedication to feminism. The wife and mother of the 1950s became the political activist of the 1960s; the lesbian feminist of the 1970s. As expressions of a survivor and heroine of these movements for change, her life and art trace the forces, both political and ideological, that have affected the lives of American women. This course will explore the lives of each poet and the impact an understanding of their lives has on critical recognition of their art. We will be reading from the fiction, poetry, journals, biographies, essays and correspondence of Plath and Rich, together with interviews and reviews that have shaped critical reception of their work. Requirements: one 4- to 5-page essay, one 6- to 8-page essay, a field trip to the Smith College Plath archive, and a take-home final exam. Prerequisite: a 100-level English course, except 150 (formerly 103). Students who have taken Women's and Gender Studies 101, but not the English prerequisite, may enroll in this course with permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 25. (Criticism)