“The big strip tease”: Identity and Trauma in Dismemberment as Seen in Sylvia Plath

Abstract

Confessional poetry draws a thin line between the poetic voice and author. As a genre, it can be used as a medium of introspection, for self-recognition, or as a cathartic and therapeutic experience. Sylvia Plath’s seemingly intense autobiographical work functions in this liminal space where her concise verses allow a glimpse into the author’s own experience. “Lady Lazarus” and “Daddy” contain specific instances of violence where the narrative self seeks to make sense of personal trauma by means of biblical and Holocaust related metaphors. In both poems, the body appears in a state of dismemberment, cataloged into parts and painfully broken to emphasize nonconformity in the search for identity. The brutalized treatment of the body evokes processes of dissociation, according to Jacques Lacan’s theory of the “fragmented body,” resembling how Primo Levi treated the trauma of dehumanization in his narrative concerning life within concentration camps. Therefore, the use of a foreign historical tragedy in Plath’s two poems acts as a general device for intimate expression. The narrative self transforms into an object by borrowing the communal experience of the most immediate historical event, that of the Holocaust, to capture the author’s individual concerns (such as her anxiety towards nuclear war and a difficult relationship with repressive masculinity). In “Lady Lazarus” and “Daddy”, interweaving mental and physical hurt with bodily pain is a common thread providing coherence to Plath’s dislocated sensibility, both as an enhancer of trauma or as an element of contemplation and liberation. Understanding the above, this article aims to analyze the use of problematic imagery—described as impersonal historic references—for the author’s expression of the body’s experience in both poems; thus, this text puts the possible limits of the semi-autobiographical element in Sylvia Plath’s confessional work to the test.