A woman’s pilgrimage to herself through the mother complex: A Jungian reading of selected works by Sylvia Plath
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Date
2017-06
Authors
Pridgeon, Sarah Josie
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
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Publisher
University of the Free State
Abstract
Sylvia Plath’s work pioneers woman’s experience of herself, her identity, and the ample
mental, psychic, emotional and physical phases of female development. Past scholarship has
endeavoured to examine her work in terms of the father-daughter relationship, mostly within
a Freudian ‘oedipal’ framework. Yet, to date no substantive study has sought to examine the
inverse: the effects the mother-complex has had on her work and by implication, her identity
and development as an individual, woman, poet and mother. To address this lacuna this study
aims to examine the overlooked and highly significant effect the mother-complex has had on
Plath’s construction of her identity in her work using anomalous Jungian theory, which posits
that above all individuals seek ‘attainment of self’, that is, to unify the various dimensions of
their psyche and become whole. I aim to analyse the rich transformative archetypes and
symbolism indicative of this personal quest which was augured by her confrontation of the
mother-complex.
To ascertain the effects and examine such development, the apposite, selected texts for this
study comprise the last phase of her works, her late poems (post-1961) and novel (The Bell
Jar, 1963), which I have supplemented with her journals (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia
Plath, 2000) and the correspondence she had with her mother (Letters Home:
Correspondence 1950-1963, 1975) to provide a thorough and all-inclusive investigation of
this phenomenon. Plath’s confrontation of the rudimentary mother-complex and identity
construction evident in these texts manifests in the consequential search for role models, the
thematic dichotomies of life/death, creation/destruction and perfectionism characteristic of
Plath’s work.
The theoretical framework used to ascertain this hypothesis includes previously unapplied
and befitting Jungian theory, Bowlby’s attachment theory as well as second-wave feminist
theory. The foremost theoretical constructs, which highlight the effects the mother has on the
daughter’s psyche and psychic growth, emphasises the interconnected dimensions of the
psyche using Jung’s concepts of the mother-complex, shadow, persona, wise old woman and
animus. Attachment theory demonstrates the preliminary nascence of this mother-complex.
Alongside the analytical psychology and developmental models, aspects of second-wave
feminism elucidate the impact that psycho-social factors have on identity development, and
woman’s inherent ambivalence, as modelled by the mother and other women. This includes
Betty Friedan’s ‘feminine mystique’ and how 1950s woman’s potentialities were restricted
due to static professional and personal norms; Simone de Beauvoir’s concept of the ‘eternal
feminine’ and woman as Other and Judith Butler’s ‘gender performativity’ which confines
woman’s capabilities and influence to restrictive gender norms.
Altogether this multi-faceted framework provides pertinent clarifications from a new angle
for this hypothesis in connection with her mother Aurelia Plath, necessitating the impact of
this on her life and work. This study, representative of one poet’s quest to cherchez la femme
which follows the inherent need for ‘attainment of self’, can be extrapolated to fit into a
broader framework that addresses the customary mother-daughter relationship interconnected
with woman’s identity. The expansion of these two fundaments, relative to all women on a
(personal and) collective level, is addressed in the last chapter of this study. This challenges
the existing conceptualisations thereof to create a new narrative that is conducive to and
necessitates woman’s multifarious needs, as an attempt to rewrite and recreate a unique
trajectory for the development of the restrictive and prescriptive expectations established in
woman’s consciousness, symptomatic of culture, as well as the affinities and aspirations
within the collective unconscious.
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Keywords
Jungian psychology, Plath, Sylvia|, Feminism and literature, Psychoanalysis and literature, Dissertation (M.A. (English))--University of the Free State, 2017