The Supernatural in Sylvia Plath’s Poetry: From Salem to Ariel

Abstract

This dissertation makes a unique contribution to Sylvia Plath Studies by contextualising her poetry within the cultural and political framework of the mid-twentieth century. The six chapters of my dissertation examine Plath’s employment of supernatural concepts, which come from the witch-hunt of the early modern period. I likewise look at representations of the supernatural in various literary texts and popular discourses to interrogate Plath’s employment of the term in her poetry to respond to personal and political issues. My interdisciplinary research reconsiders Plath’s engagement with literary, historical, and political discourses on different aspects of the supernatural. The purpose of this thesis is to re-examine previous approaches with a new critical lens. In the past, Plath’s relationship to the supernatural has been mythologised, misrepresented, and framed within the sexist rhetoric of women and witchcraft by critics and biographers alike. My thesis looks at the socio-political context in which Plath’s poetic deployment of the supernatural is understood to establish her knowledge of the literature of witchcraft, the rhetoric of the witch-hunt in America, and her interest in magical themes. My research uniquely examines Plath’s employment of vocabulary and narratives of the supernatural sourced from various literary texts and political discourses from Cold-War politics to the Grimms’ fairy tales and Shakespeare’s plays. Plath also often engages with the vocabulary of popular culture and public discourses from women’s magazines to psychoanalysis in her poetic deployment of supernatural concepts. This thesis contributes to the broader critical ‘renaissance’ of Sylvia Plath Studies, engaging with recent scholarship and shedding light on a previously overlooked aspect of her poetry. I rely on archival materials, including both newly available audio files and the more established manuscripts that enrich my research. My doctoral thesis is a timely re-examination of supernatural and magical themes that fills a research gap in Plath Studies and prompts further research, more broadly, on magic and poetry.