Female Otherness in Selected Poems by Sylvia Plath

Abstract

American writers, along the history of American literature, have been preoccupied with social, racial, ethnic, religious, and female otherness. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, American literature began to highlight the suffering of women in the American male-dominated society where women were devalued and othered by men. They were regarded as biologically, psychologically, socially, and even intellectually inferior. They were deprived of equal rights; instead, they were assigned the traditional domestic roles of housekeeping, child rearing, cooking, and other similar tasks. They were supposed to remain in their normal place: their homes, and more specifically, their kitchens which represent their prison. Furthermore, women were objectified; they were regarded as mere inanimate objects with no identity. In such a patriarchal American society, women were recognized as no more than means to serve men and satisfy their pleasures.

Keywords

• female otherness
• poems
• sylvia plath