Ariel

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Ariel" depicts a woman riding her horse in the countryside, at the very break of dawn. It details the ecstasy and personal transformation that occurs through the experience. After Otto's death, Aurelia moved her children and her parents to 26 Elmwood Road, Wellesley, Massachusetts, in 1942. [7] Plath commented in "Ocean 1212-W", one of her final works, that her first nine years "sealed themselves off like a ship in a bottle—beautiful, inaccessible, obsolete, a fine, white flying myth". [5] [13] Plath attended Bradford Senior High School (now Wellesley High School) in Wellesley, graduating in 1950. [5] Just after graduating from high school, she had her first national publication in the Christian Science Monitor. [10] College years and depression [ edit ] Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts The horse is described as a flame, a dewdrop, an arrow, and a cloud in trousers, among other things. The poem is indeed full of sexual imagery. Some examples include: lines 5 and 6 ("How one we grow,/Pivot of heels and knees!"); line 17 ("thighs, hair"); and the imagery of the phallic arrow. All of these lend credence to the claim that "Ariel" is an erotic poem. Plath is clearly the female rider, but she identifies with the horse's masculinity. Further, when she ignores the child's cry, she is refusing to accept the traditionally female role of mother and care-giver. Shakespeare's Ariel is an androgynous figure, and Plath's "Ariel" might also be statement about how a female poet, when possessed by the poetic creative fury, is not a female anymore – the genius transcends gender. The transcendence is not a violent one, and is not aimed at destroying men, however. Instead, it lies entirely outside of gender.

a b c Axelrod, Steven (April 24, 2007) [2003]. "Sylvia Plath". The Literary Encyclopedia. Archived from the original on October 11, 2007 . Retrieved June 1, 2007. It has been speculated that, being written on her birthday as well as using the general theme of rebirth, "Ariel" acted as a sort of psychic rebirth for the poet. [3] The poem, written just five months before her eventual suicide, thus, not surprisingly given its name as well, is one of her Ariel poems. "Ariel" was the name of the horse Plath rode at a riding school on Dartmoor in Devon. [4] Ted Hughes, Plath's husband, comments: In 1950, Plath attended Smith College, a private women's liberal arts college in Massachusetts. She excelled academically. While at Smith, she lived in Lawrence House, and a plaque can be found outside her old room. She edited The Smith Review. After her third year of college, Plath was awarded a coveted position as a guest editor at Mademoiselle magazine, during which she spent a month in New York City. [5] The experience was not what she had hoped for, and many of the events that took place during that summer were later used as inspiration for her novel The Bell Jar. [14]Plath, Sylvia (2000). Karen V. Kukil (ed.). The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. New York: Anchor. ISBN 0-385-72025-4.

I went out with this guy once and then I found out he liked to catch rabbits. So he was toast. I should have dimed the bastard. The couple married on June 16, 1956, at St George the Martyr, Holborn in London (now in the Borough of Camden) with Plath's mother in attendance, and spent their honeymoon in Paris and Benidorm. Plath returned to Newnham in October to begin her second year. [5] During this time, they both became deeply interested in astrology and the supernatural, using ouija boards. [25]Ariel"'s short length and seeming simplicity – a woman rides her horse through the countryside at dawn – is belied by the incredible amount of critical attention and praise that the poem has received since its publication in 1965. It is considered one of Plath's most accomplished and enigmatic poems, for it explores far more than a simple daybreak ride. It must be noted that this poem provides the title for her collection Ariel, selected after she rejected the title "Daddy." The poem justifies its centrality through a use of dazzling imagery, vivid emotional resonance, historical and biblical allusions, and a breathtaking sense of movement. Critics tend to discuss the poem as explorations of several different subjects, including: poetic creativity; sexuality; Judaism; animism; suicide and death; self-realization and self-transformation; and mysticism. The poem shares some of its ideas with a 1960's feminist movement known as 'Second Wave Feminism'. This can be seen in the inclusion of the female figure of Godiva. Lady Godiva stood up to her husband on behalf of the poor. Stevenson, Anne (1990) [1989]. Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath. London: Penguin. ISBN 0-14-010373-2. So a trivial incident gathers into a whole complicated nexus of feelings about the way her life is getting out of control. It is a brilliant balancing act between colloquial sanity and images which echo down and open up the depths. The nurse was due to arrive at nine on the morning of February 11, 1963, to help Plath with the care of her children. Upon arrival, she could not get into the flat but eventually gained access with the help of a workman, Charles Langridge. They found Plath dead with her head in the oven, having sealed the rooms between her and her sleeping children with tape, towels and cloths. [42] She was 30 years old. [43]

Plath, Sylvia (March 13, 2008). "Ariel". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on March 12, 2017. Many of the poems are more difficult than that, rawer, more extreme. But all have that combination of exploratory invention, violent, threatened personal involvement and a quizzical edge of detachment. The poems are casual yet concentrated, slangy yet utterly unexpected. To begin with, the name Ariel refers to three different things: Sylvia Plath's own horse, which she loved to ride; the androgynous sprite from Shakespeare's play The Tempest; and Jerusalem, which was also called Ariel in the Old Testament. Critics who discuss Shakespeare's Ariel tend to read Plath's poem as an exploration of poetic creativity and process. Shakespeare's Ariel embodies this power, and Plath may be attempting to fashion a metaphor for the process of writing a poem. The poet begins in darkness, but is then hauled along by the inspiration of poetic language. The poem begins in passivity, but moves into one of control and power. The critic Susan van Dyne notes how the poet's self-transformation is manifest in her use of complete sentences, which begins midway through the poem. She becomes both male and female, horse and rider, poet and creative force, arrow and target. She is not merely a captive of the creative drive, but its agent. Some of her images take on forceful private meanings. Poppies are associated with violence and with the malignant blood cells of hemophilia, the Medusa head with the reality of death, bees with the life of the soul after death. a b c d e "Sylvia Plath". Academy of American Poets. February 4, 2014. Archived from the original on February 4, 2017.

Ariel Sylvia Plath - Key takeaways

Runco, Mark A.; Pritzker, Steven R., eds. (1999). Encyclopedia of Creativity, Two-Volume Set. Academic Press. p.388. ISBN 978-0122270758. Archived from the original on October 28, 2019 . Retrieved August 31, 2017. Padnani, Amisha (March 8, 2018). "Remarkable Women We Overlooked in Our Obituaries". The New York Times . Retrieved March 24, 2018. Plath, Sylvia (1979). Ted Hughes (ed.). Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams (2nded.). London: Faber and Faber. p.vii, cited in Ferretter 2009, p.15

Grady, Constance (January 22, 2019). "Sylvia Plath wrote this short story in 1952. It's now out in print for the first time". Vox. Archived from the original on November 12, 2020 . Retrieved January 12, 2021. Badia, Janet; Phegley, Jennifer (2005). Reading Women: Literary Figures and Cultural Icons from the Victorian Age to the Present. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0-8020-8928-3. Nadeem Azam (2001). " 'Ted Hughes: A Talented Murderer' December 11, 2001". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on February 18, 2018 . Retrieved February 17, 2018. Butscher, Edward (2003). Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness. Tucson, Arizona: Schaffner Press. ISBN 0-9710598-2-9. Rare Books & Literary Archives | Smith College Libraries". www.smith.edu. Archived from the original on October 23, 2017 . Retrieved October 23, 2017.Thorpe, Vanessa (September 17, 2011). "Sylvia Plath given stamp of approval". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on March 12, 2017. The speaker is in a place of “darkness” in which nothing is happening. She is in “stasis,” frozen in place. The reader is also waiting at the beginning of the poem for something to happen. This does not last long as the second and third lines of the poem jump into action. Gill, Jo (2006). The Cambridge Companion to Sylvia Plath. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-84496-7. Wagner, Erica. (2002). Ariel's Gift: Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and the Story of Birthday Letters. New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-32301-3. Both Lowell and Sexton encouraged Plath to write from her experience and she did so. She openly discussed her depression with Lowell and her suicide attempts with Sexton, who led her to write from a more female perspective. Plath began to consider herself as a more serious, focused poet and short story writer. [5] At this time Plath and Hughes first met the poet W.S. Merwin, who admired their work and was to remain a lifelong friend. [26] Plath resumed psychoanalytic treatment in December, working with Ruth Beuscher. [5] Chalcot Square, near Primrose Hill in London, Plath and Hughes' home from 1959