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From Victim of the 'feminine mystique' to Heroine of Feminist Deconstruction: Auto/biographical Images of Sylvia Plath 1963-2001
294 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2002
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May 9, 2025
This book is a combination of two things I’ve been interested in lately: Sylvia Plath and literature’s relationship to truth.
In her book ”From victim of the ’Feminine Mystique’ to heroine of feminist reconstruction: Auto/biographical images of Sylvia Plath 1963-2001” Iris Lindahl-Raittila compares auto/biographical texts about Sylvia Plath and analyses how they have contributed to the creation of the public image of Plath after her death. The book demonstrates how divergent pictures can be created of a person using largely the same sources. The book also brings to light how the biographer’s own biases and theoretical background influence the conclusions they draw from their biographical subject’s life, personality, work and relationships.
Sylvia Plath is a poet whose work and life have been posthumously shadowed by her death. The auto/biographical images Lindahl-Raittila surveys in this book have played a large part in creating the many and varying stereotypical images of Plath: the depressed suicidal woman with daddy-issues, the ”bitch goddess” and the ”creative female force”, just to name a few.
The writers of Plath’s biography view and construct Plath’s personal relationships in their texts in vastly different ways. Most prominent divergences can be seen in the way Plath’s relationship with her husband Ted Hughes has been presented. Across most of the biographies, the married couple has been wanted to see in a good/evil dichotomy, their parts in the dichotomy differing according to the biographer.
The attitude toward’s Plath’s writing and the themes of her writing also differ from one examined text to another. Some biographers want to, for example, diminish the political nature of Plath and her writing whereas others may try to even overemphasize it. One of the biographers comments on Plath’s writing almost only as foreshadower of her death.
As a whole, this book is a great brief overview of both Plath biography and the nature of biography in general. Lindahl-Raittila does pretty good job at analysing objectively, although her own sympathies can also be glimpsed from time to time.
In her book ”From victim of the ’Feminine Mystique’ to heroine of feminist reconstruction: Auto/biographical images of Sylvia Plath 1963-2001” Iris Lindahl-Raittila compares auto/biographical texts about Sylvia Plath and analyses how they have contributed to the creation of the public image of Plath after her death. The book demonstrates how divergent pictures can be created of a person using largely the same sources. The book also brings to light how the biographer’s own biases and theoretical background influence the conclusions they draw from their biographical subject’s life, personality, work and relationships.
Sylvia Plath is a poet whose work and life have been posthumously shadowed by her death. The auto/biographical images Lindahl-Raittila surveys in this book have played a large part in creating the many and varying stereotypical images of Plath: the depressed suicidal woman with daddy-issues, the ”bitch goddess” and the ”creative female force”, just to name a few.
The writers of Plath’s biography view and construct Plath’s personal relationships in their texts in vastly different ways. Most prominent divergences can be seen in the way Plath’s relationship with her husband Ted Hughes has been presented. Across most of the biographies, the married couple has been wanted to see in a good/evil dichotomy, their parts in the dichotomy differing according to the biographer.
The attitude toward’s Plath’s writing and the themes of her writing also differ from one examined text to another. Some biographers want to, for example, diminish the political nature of Plath and her writing whereas others may try to even overemphasize it. One of the biographers comments on Plath’s writing almost only as foreshadower of her death.
As a whole, this book is a great brief overview of both Plath biography and the nature of biography in general. Lindahl-Raittila does pretty good job at analysing objectively, although her own sympathies can also be glimpsed from time to time.
Displaying 1 of 1 review