Plath domestic Poetry, interiors and exteriors in Plath's poetry

The section pertaining to Plath’s exploration of domestic spaces as a projection of her psychic landscape, will take on two main categories: public and private places as well as interior and exterior surrounds. Attention will be paid to how she manipulated her surrounds to reflect her conflicting perspectives on (for example, but not excluding); life and death, marriage and children. An attempt will be made to order the exploration of the proposed poems chronologically with the life events that helped shape her psyche. The natural flow of this section will take shape as follows; interior private places to interior public places, to exterior private places to exterior public places. The poems will be explored against this backdrop and examined with reference to the life events that shaped Plath’s work within these topographical settings to include Plath’s dominant views on domesticity of the 20th century woman. By interior private places, I would be referring to elements of the home and or home life such as depicted in 'Nick & the candlestick.' Here for instance, Plath is intimately projecting her emotions surrounding pregnancy onto a 'miner' in a cave. Although technically the cave could also be considered an exterior private place. Interior public places will include allusions Plath made to public areas that reflected her emotions such as in 'Bucolics' which involves a hospital room with more than one individual contrasted with a morbid view of love/death. Exterior private places could include her perspectives on domesticity personified on a natural/external landscape as in 'Electra on Azalea' where the cartography is the gravesite of her Father. Exterior public places is alluded to best in examples such as 'Withering Heights' where the landscape is the Yorkshire Moors The specific poems to be considered (and in no particular order yet) are; Soliloquy to a Solipsist, Tale of the Tub, Tinker Jack and the Tidy Wives, Cut, Lesbos, Vanity Fair, The Munich Mannequins, Manor Garden, Moonrise, Poem of a Birthday, The Jailor, Purdah, In Plaster, Words in a Nursery, The Detective, Three Women, Landowners & Widow. As was mentioned in the proposal for this chapter, exploring her ‘domestic cartography’ will allow snap shots or portraits of her perspectives. For example, the image of the home as a prison and the only safe shelter from outside fears illustrates this. A combination of two spaces could be fused in this section. Plath’s Gothic cartography covers the argument concerning the horrors of domesticity as twentieth century women who are more likely seen to be imprisoned in domestic spaces(the kitchen for example) as opposed to haunted or deserted places endemic to the eighteenth/ninetieth century writers. The best examples to be taken to cartograghizes gothic are: ‘Tale of the Tub,’ ‘Thalidomide,’ ‘Moonrise,’ ‘Lady Lazarus,’ ‘Cut,’ and ‘Lesbos.’ Further exploration of the attachment to a place that also includes people who lived there will be examined. For instance, her desire for children, as this is evidenced to be one of the central themes related to domesticity (Examined in previous work with ‘Nick and the Candlestick’) and her attachment to housewife activities in the home. A comparison will be made to places she saw and visited before and after getting divorced and how she interpreted them accordingly. The section will be rounded off with de-familiarization of places and things as the final focus. This will highlight how Plath felt towards them. For example; ‘Tulips’ which reflect her fluctuant views concerning children.