The existence of Sylvia Plath's mental illness Research Paper

The existence of Sylvia Plaths mental illness - Research Paper ExampleThe powder-puff self that Plath often explores in her poems is permeated with an autocratically free zeal which fiercely struggles for more breath under the choking grip of her male counterpart and ferociously victimizes her male foes. In an article Mad Poets Society, Alex Beam confirms that Plath began to develop schizophrenic syndromes and manic depression at the age of twenty. He says in this regard, At the age of twenty, Plath experienced mild depressions while studying at Smith (Beam 98). But a close psychoanalysis of the evidences in her poems as well as her life-events will necessarily reveal that her mental illness -schizophrenia and manic depression- can directly be connected to her experiences of her father Otto Plath and her husband Ted Hughes. In this paper I will explore the evidences of Plaths real-life mental illness in Plaths poems and stories. Also this paper will discuss whether Plath successfull y uses her mental illness to her advantage, or whether she dissociates from it. When Plath was eight, Otto developed gangrene in one foot after minor trauma and was found to cave in late stage untreated diabetes mellitus (Cooper 4). ... Secondly, it was the end of a male authority and restriction under which Plaths young feminine had been panting. This death at such a young age for Plath had some mixed bag of a belated effect on her mental health (Dyer 5). Referring to the complexity of Plaths relationship with her father, Ling notes, Plath herself faces a confusing relationship with her father, whom she lost to diabetes at quite an early age.Her need to please her father remains with her even to her death, as she was unable to exorcise the hold of this strange, authoritarian figure over her (2). Later, this emotional complexity about her father further got aggravated by Ted Hughess extramarital affair as well as academic failure. Consequently, her literary works show an abundanc e of schizophrenic symptoms. Apart from Plaths inability to think rationally, a good deal of her poems displays the paroxysmal and spastic emotions like sunburn anger, hatred and wrath against her father and her husband. Daddy, Lady Lazarus, Colossus Full Fathom Five, etc are some of these poems which displays her real-life schizophrenic symptoms. Indeed Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that makes ithard for the patient to a. tell the difference between what is real and not real, b. think clearly, c. have normal emotional responses, and d. act ordinarily in social situations (Freudenreich 23). In Daddy, Plaths hatred for her father obviously surpasses her rationality. She successfully portrays and then disparages a patriarchal father-figure in which she have lived like a foot / For thirty years, poor and white, / Barely daring to breathe or Achoo (Plath, Daddy). It is quite normal for a feminist to come any patriarchal authority