Feminine Writing in Sylvia Plath's Poetry

Rhetoricians have challenged the function of language as a neutral mirror of objective reality; rather they assert that it plays a powerful undeniable role in shaping human experiences and perceptions of the world. Having such a view of rhetoricians towards language in mind, feminists consider the structure of language as being gender-based functioning both as a means of expression and repression. Lacan, utilizing Derrida’s term, illustrates the phallogocentric structure of language to refer to the privileging of masculine in construction of meaning throughout the patriarchal history. Lacan believes that Western thought is based on systematic oppression of women’s experience brought about by the phallocentric structure of language which allows no place for feminine writing. The speech pattern used by women exhibits powerlessness and inferiority; thus, they need to make their own language through changing the present phallogocentric language and adopting a more powerful speech pattern that allows them to express their real feeling. Hence, female writers such as Plath exhort to a feminine mode of writing as the inscription of female body in their texts.