MENTAL ILLNESS IN SYLVIA PLATH’S CUT AND ELM: AN ANALYSIS OF THE POEMS THROUGH THE FEMINIST DISABILITY THEORY

Abstract

This study aims at analyzing mental illness in two confessional poems by Sylvia Plath from the Ariel collection through the Feminist Disability Theory perspective. To be able to do that, representations of mental illness are extracted from the poems Cut and Elm, marks that establish a relation between women and mental illness are detected, and are discussed through the Feminist Disability Theory perception of mental illness and normative gender roles. This study is significant to increase the awareness that amidst Disabilities there are mental illness, pointing out how society sees disabilities, and to understand what is to be human, a multiple and unstable being at the same time. The study produces a literature review about the confessional style of poetry (WATERS, 2016) and the Feminist Disability Studies (GARLAND-THOMSON, 2002), as well as gathers many perceptions of how society observes Disabilities (MOLLOW, 2015; DONALDSON, 2002; KITTAY, 2011; SONTAG, 1990). The analysis section contains a brief introduction on the Ariel collection, with individual analysis for the poems Cut and Elm, finishing with a comparison and contrast exercise. The poems are intrinsically linked with mental illness in their use of metaphors that represent the mental collapse of the persona, as well as make use of Pound’s (1951) phanopoeia, melopoeia, and logopoeia to picture mental forms related to mental illness in the reader’s mind.