| This thesis explores Sylvia Plath's struggle with identity construction by reading her poems from a psychobiographical perspective, divulging Plath's inner chaos to her self-actualization among her split selves as a daughter, a wife, a mother and above all, a poet. While much critical attention has been devoted to discover Plath's identity issues, few critics endeavor to observe her individual identity quest from her whole life cycle. For instance, Susan R. Van Dyne and Jeanine Dobbs mainly focus their attention on Plath's domesticity, namely her mother identity and her wife identity. And William Freedman, with the mirror symbol in Plath's poems, discusses the passivity of Plath's woman identity. In previous studies, Plath's identity issues are approached comparatively in a more fragmental way.By analyzing her poems, this study, however, with the help of Erik Erikson's theory of "identity crisis" and the related academic resources, examines Plath's mental turmoil for a valid identity taking her as a bereaved daughter, a disappointed wife and, a suicidal mother of two, and a poet of abundant imagination and original creativity. In this study multiple identity crises that Plath encountered are unfolded through an... |
