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You will be taken through this Cheatsheet with Melvern Kurniawan (6th in NSW English Advanced 2019), Chloe Zhu (16th in NSW English Advanced 2018) and Grace Roodenrys (1st in NSW English Adv, 5th in Eng Ext I 2018)!
Ariel/Birthday Letters
Textual Conversations is all about unpacking the dialogue or discourse suspended between the two texts that you are studying. It’s also about pinpointing and then deconstructing what exactly the conversation the two texts are having with one another (that is, understanding what the composers are talking about conceptually/ thematically e.g., Agency, Truth, etc.) such that you are able to construct an essay that is anchored by ideas. Yet, the rubric wants us to look a lot deeper than just unravelling the concepts which the two composers explore and instead encourages (or demands) us to then disentangle the relationship between the two texts in terms of their exploration of certain ideas as they are mediated by divergent personal contexts and communicated via distinct forms. With the rubric using words like resonances, dissonances, collision, alignments and mirroring, it doesn’t take a genius to understand that NESA wants us to critically analyse the way textual meaning becomes an inherent product of context when Sylvia Plath’s original anthology – Ariel, a poetic suite giving voice to the traumas and personal truths which defined her personal life – is being recrafted and reconstructed via Hughes’ distinctly unique context in his reimagination, Birthday Letters.
Overview
(Plath)
Purpose
Plath’s Ariel seeks to challenge patriarchal attitudes and societal restrictions on female agency. It seeks to urge women to mobilise by rebelling against entrenched limitations and seizing their own sense of liberation. Although Plath’s concerns are largely grounded in such broader, contextual issues, she often uses details from her personal life as a point of focus. In divulging details about her own life, she accuses Hughes of abuse and neglect, conflating him with the patriarchy and with misogynistic repression. Ariel also seeks to wrestle with other issues central to Plath’s own personal experience such as her struggles with her father’s ghost, with the nature of life and death and with motherhood.
Textual strategies
Ariel is written in the style of confessional poetry, a style which emerged in the 1950s and 1960s that focuses heavily on self- exploration. It is written primarily with a first-person narrative voice and is very personal, endeavouring to close the gap between writer and the author. Although most of Plath’s poetry is centred on an examination of herself and of events central to her life, she also connects personal life with broader social issues, employing a rebellious voice that challenges societal and cultural norms. In connecting with broader social issues, Plath also uses many sociocultural motifs. This includes links to religion, war, celebrity, history and mythology. Plath also writes openly about taboo subject matter, dealing intimately with topics such as suicide, depression, trauma, mental illness and abuse.
Context
Ariel was written during 1962-1963 and published in 1965, two years after Plath’s suicide. This anthology was also written 3 years after Plath had caught Hughes cheating on her, precipitating their separation. At this time, Plath was living alone with her children. She had tried to take her life several times before. The broader societal context of this period was characterised by the chauvinism and conservatism of the post-WW2 era. Society was still very much patriarchally oriented, although the second wave of feminism was starting to emerge (it argued for sexuality and reproductive rights for women).
(Hughes)
Purpose
Hughes’ Birthday Letters focuses less on broad, conceptual issues as Ariel does, tunnelling more deeply into the biographical details of Hughes’ relationship with Plath. It specifically challenges the misogynistic caricature of Hughes which Plath puts forward in Ariel. This response to Ariel is at least partially founded by his desire to deflect hatred and outcry from the public eye that stemmed from Ariel. Hughes aims to plead his own innocence and absolve himself of blame for Plath’s ultimate demise through a self-portrayal which juxtaposes severely with Plath’s villainous portrayal. He also further complicates the public’s attitude toward Plath by emphasising her volatility and manic tendencies, seeking to complicate the narrative of their relationship and of her life.
Textual strategies
Unlike Plath, who extrapolates beyond the personal to explore broader sociocultural issues, Hughes’ poetry is largely grounded in the autobiographical. This is largely a reflection of his purpose (to escape culpability). Hughes’ poems are considerably more prosaic than Plath’s. This is also ultimately a reflection of his purpose- Hughes’ simple style and conversational tone serves to appeal to a broader audience. In apostrophically responding to Plath’s anthology, Hughes also appropriates and parodies a number of Plath’s motifs and symbols, twisting them to reframe the narrative of their relationship to better suit his perspective- characterising himself as an innocent bystander, and Plath as a manic.
Context
Birthday Letters was published in 1998, 35 years after Plath’s suicide. Since Plath’s Ariel had been published, Hughes had been subjected to much public criticism. This was particularly bolstered by the growing power of the 2nd wave feminist movement which was emerging at the time that Ariel was published. By the 1990s, second wave feminism had grown into third wave feminism and many notable developments toward equality had occurred, including the formation of the national Organisation for Women (1966) and a growing number of women in political positions.
Gender and Power
Both texts explore the tensions inherent to the relationship between gender and power, and the clashing perspectives of each text highlight the complexity of this relationship. Plath uses Ariel to emphasise the female disempowerment caused by the patriarchal male gaze and its restrictive institutions, highlighting how the patriarchy’s objectification and sexual stigmatisation of women strips them of agency. However, whilst her poetry is underpinned by a traumatized voice to make overt her disempowerment, her writing is also thematically expansive in the way she urges women to reclaim their agency by championing a resistance against such gendered oppression. Conversely, Hughes’ anthology seeks to disrupt the gendered narrative of disempowerment that Plath has crafted. He uses biological details from their own relationship to do so, undermining Plath’s feminist claims. Hughes particularly argues that the suffering Plath endured was caused not by sexist oppression, but by her own morbid fixation with her father’s ghost. He also renders impossible Plath’s exaltations of feminine independence by emphasising her emotional instability and her corresponding dependence on him within their relationship. Furthermore, Hughes seeks to disrupt the gendered victim-abuser roles which Plath writes about in her poetry. In describing how he nurtured a volatile and hysterical Plath, he both highlights the female capacity for destruction, as well as the male capacity for tenderness. Altogether these dissonances interrelate with other themes such as the subjectivity of history and truth, emphasising the immensely complex and multifaceted relationship between power and gender and urging the reader to come to their own balanced understanding of that relationship.
The subjectivity of Human Perspectives
There is a great deal of dissonance between the way that Hughes and Plath each frame their relationship. As the reader explores Ariel and Birthday Letters, each composer’s divergent treatment of shared biographical experiences ultimately reveals the inherent unreliability of individual recollection. Hughes’ and Plath’s depictions of even simple, unassuming events such as reminiscing over a photograph (Fulbright Scholars) are charged heavily by their own politics and their intentions (whether conscious or subconscious). A key source of contention between the two anthologies is the poet’s differing perspectives on Hughes’ character and his role in Plath’s death. While Plath villainises Hughes (Daddy, Fever 103o), Hughes constantly seeks to exculpate himself by portraying himself as the victim of Plath’s mania (Fulbright Scholars, Fever). These two perspectives wildly differ, and in examining the textual conversation between Ariel and Birthday Letters, the reader is compelled to realise that subjective experiences and context heavily affect the way that values are represented in texts- no representation can be taken as purely objective. Thus, the reader must think critically and analytically in evaluating historical representations, ultimately reaching their own balanced view of the truth.
Hope this helped give you an insight into Mod A’s Ariel/Birthday Letters! Our full range of material is over 100 pages long co-authored by 6 state rankers. If you’d like to try out a lesson with us, visit our website: https://www.concepteducation.com.au/enquire or email admin@conceptenglish.com.au to enquire today!
P.S: Want some more? Check out our comprehensive state-ranking guide on Module B (https://www.concepteducation.com.au/blog-posts/how-to-ace-module-b-with-state-ranking-samples-mod-b-with-concept) here!
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