Sylvia Plath - The applicant notes
The Applicant:
• The concept of marriage and society’s expectations of marriage is reflected through Plath’s satirical portrayal of marriage as a sales pitch, a cunning gimmick that people are forced in to.
• The capitalist economic system of the time period emphasized the need to have a sustainable job, implying that employment is the source of social status and contentment.
• Plath suggests that the government, consumerism and the patriarchy cause the dehumanization of people, especially women who are restricted to the stereotype of the household wife. This is demonstrated in the repetition of the word, “It” in place of “She” or any other more personal term. The US promoted the domestic lifestyle image, which is expressed in The Applicant “A living doll, everywhere you look.” Plath voices her opinion on the way that women were merely a prop, a pretty object without intellectual ability or substantial purpose.
• An increase in industrialization of western society lead to a life lead by machines. Plath critiques this by suggesting that the heavy dependence on consumerism and technology “waterproof, shatterproof, proof/ Against fire and bombs through the roof” is false and promises security that it cannot uphold. This is also a reference to the nuclear weaponry of the cold war period.
• Plath’s concerns here reflect a classic theme of political ethics, the morality of ends and means, as well as relating to her anxiety and mechanization and conformism.
• Writing between the first two waves of modern feminism, her work anticipates many of the issues and ideas that women in subsequent decades were to pursue, as she was deprived of the cultural, political and aesthetic framework in her own time.
• It is a darkly cynical poem about the role of men and women in modern society. It uses the form of a job interview with a dialogue that ultimately makes a comment about the constriction of men and the subjugation of women in modern society.
• Plath critiques the male
• The concept of marriage and society’s expectations of marriage is reflected through Plath’s satirical portrayal of marriage as a sales pitch, a cunning gimmick that people are forced in to.
• The capitalist economic system of the time period emphasized the need to have a sustainable job, implying that employment is the source of social status and contentment.
• Plath suggests that the government, consumerism and the patriarchy cause the dehumanization of people, especially women who are restricted to the stereotype of the household wife. This is demonstrated in the repetition of the word, “It” in place of “She” or any other more personal term. The US promoted the domestic lifestyle image, which is expressed in The Applicant “A living doll, everywhere you look.” Plath voices her opinion on the way that women were merely a prop, a pretty object without intellectual ability or substantial purpose.
• An increase in industrialization of western society lead to a life lead by machines. Plath critiques this by suggesting that the heavy dependence on consumerism and technology “waterproof, shatterproof, proof/ Against fire and bombs through the roof” is false and promises security that it cannot uphold. This is also a reference to the nuclear weaponry of the cold war period.
• Plath’s concerns here reflect a classic theme of political ethics, the morality of ends and means, as well as relating to her anxiety and mechanization and conformism.
• Writing between the first two waves of modern feminism, her work anticipates many of the issues and ideas that women in subsequent decades were to pursue, as she was deprived of the cultural, political and aesthetic framework in her own time.
• It is a darkly cynical poem about the role of men and women in modern society. It uses the form of a job interview with a dialogue that ultimately makes a comment about the constriction of men and the subjugation of women in modern society.
• Plath critiques the male