subject: A True Heroine, Sylvia Plath [print this page] A True Heroine, Sylvia Plath A True Heroine, Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath is a heroine who committed suicide in a war. She had the courage to stand up to tell, to educate, and to reveal the truth to the mid 1900s society. She used her writings, stories and poetry to attack the traditional minds of the people and to help them understand that women were suffering and the mid 1900s society was having double standard towards the gender issue.
In Sylvia Plath's poem "Mirror", she used the view of the lake to see the nature of women. In the poem, the lake said that it, the river, is important to women and women come to see the lake to see their own reflection all the time. It quoted, "In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman. Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish." Meaning that women look at the lake since they were young until they became old with wrinkles like the terrible fish's skin. Sylvia spread the idea that in the mid 1900s society, the only thing on women that is valuable is their outlook, their beauty. When they become old, they become some worthless terrible fishes. On the other hand, men were able to do whatever they wanted to do and they were able to be respected even they do not have the look. They were also able to work outside of the house and went out freely to taste and experience the adventure outside instead of being locked in a prison-like life like the women had in the mid 1900s.
Sylvia Plath used her poem "The Applicant" to tell the society that women are all applicants waiting in line to sign the application. The application means the marriage. She is telling the women how their lives will become after they get married. It is the kind of life where the women had during the mid 1900s, the lives where women were sewing, cooking and being a housewife all the time at home. At the end of the poem she quoted, "Will you marry it, marry it, marry it" meaning that all the marriages are just an "it", that all the women will get the same life after they get married. She asked all the women in that society that would they still want to live that life.
In another poem she wrote about "Dying", she said that dying is like an art and she does it exceptionally well. It is possible that this poem significant that she is going to suicide, in a special way. She also uses this poem to express that women die like art. They need to commit suicide in a special way so people will remember them. They want to do things that men can do and not be held back to their typical women roles. In order to do that, they need to die to lose their feminist so they can win this war. But when they die, there's nothing left in life.
Sylvia Plath did not commit suicide because she had thought she lost this war. She committed suicide in this war, because she thought she had finished her goal and it was all enough. She succeeded her goal of educating the society about the unfair gender issues. The reason that today's people start to change the idea that women can do things as well as men do is somewhat because of her influence. She did not just change the whole society's view in one day, but she influenced people's minds little by little. That is why today we start to accept her writings and think that women and men are equal. Sylvia Plath made the women suffrage, a history.
