여성시인과 남성뮤즈:실비아 플라스 시 속의 아버지

Abstract

Woman Poet and Male Muse: Father in Sylvia Plath's PoetryPark, RyungFather figure or male muse is the origin of Sylvia Plath's poetic myth. Father figure in Plath's poetry can be read first as her own father Otto Plath, and next, as her husband Ted Huges, and further, all the 'great gods' Plath loves and reveres in male-centered literature. Using and imitating male-centered language, Plath severely wishes to belong to and be successfully accepted by the male literary canon. But the death of her beloved father and the betrayal of her idolized husband leave her to the realization that as a woman poet she has to quest for her own identity by rebelling against the "jealous gods". Only by destroying the colossus-image of the father and killing him, she can establish herself as a genuine woman poet. Her 'father poems' represent that progress.Poems written before "The Colossus", such as "Lament", "All the Dead Dears", "Snakecharmer", "Full Fathom Five" and "Electra on Azalea Path", show Plath's deep love and grief for her dead father. In these poems Plath counts her father as a god-creator and wishes to reunite with him. Her identity as a poet, in her mind, can only be established in her relationship with the dead father. But in "The Colossus", her father is no longer a god, only a ruined statue. She, nevertheless, cannot help laboring to restore his broken images to remain as a woman poet. In "Daddy", Plath feels an inner necessity to kill her patriarchal vampire-father who always oppresses and undermines her creativity, performing the symbolic murder of him. Passing through these processes, Plath finally rejects the male muse. In "Ariel", reborn as a goddess, Godiva, she soars high up into the sky to unite with the center of creation, the sun.