Given Sylvia Plath’s self-avowed ‘love’ of nature, it is surprising that in over 60 years of Plath scholarship, few have acknowledged any ecological intent in her writing. There are over 60 references to non-human nature in the titles of her Collected Poems alone, not to mention the many more poems which are suffused with images of the natural world. This thesis is first full-length study which addresses the obvious omission of ecological perspectives in Plath scholarship to date. I argue that Plath’s poetry engages with varied aspects of non-human nature, from wilderness landscapes like those found in ‘Two Campers in Cloud Country’ and the moortops of ‘Wuthering Heights’, to aspects of wild non-human nature that surprisingly and defiantly assert themselves amidst the suburban in poems such as ‘Owl’. Plath frequently depicts animals and other organisms in her poems; the speakers in these poems recognise animals’ autonomous otherness as well as finding a sense of kinship. These sorts of human and animal encounters, which defy problematic binarism, are represented in poems such as ‘Mussel Hunter at Rock Harbor’ and ‘Incommunicado’. In her later poetry, I argue that her interest in non-human nature continues but broadens; poems such as ‘Ariel’ and those in the Bee Sequence explore the ways in which traditional Western, hierarchical dualism inferiorises all those deemed ‘other’: women, non-white ethnicities and non-human nature. In all these nature focused poems, Plath denies anthropocentric assumptions, challenging the Cartesian dualism which underlines humanist assertions of human superiority to non-human. Instead, she reconceptualises a way of interpreting human and non-human relationships beyond the binary.
| Date of Award | 23 Jan 2025 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Supervisor | David Rudrum (Main Supervisor) & Stephen Ely (Co-Supervisor) |
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