Feminine Writng in Sylvia Plath's Poetry

Poststructuralist feminist theorists consider women as trapped in their own bodies by a language that does not allow them to express themselves. Hence, they exhort to a feminine mode of writing or what Cixous terms as “écriture feminine” as the inscription of female body and female difference in language and text. Patriarchal thought has limited female biology to its narrow specifications. The feminist vision has recoiled from female biology for these reasons but now, as Rich asserts, it should come to view women’s physicality as a resource rather than a destiny. Therefore, while phallus is a masculine metaphor in phallocentric language introduced by Freud and Lacan, female body is the source of meaning in “écriture feminine.” Going with such attitude towards language and femininity, Sylvia Plath rediscovers female body and female experiences in her poems through using what Cixous calls “écriture feminine.” Through viewing women’s sexual difference as a source (of imagery) rather than a point of inferiority to men, Plath exhibits the productivity and plurality of women’s language and experience in her writing