Ariel

Sylvia Plath

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1965

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Background

Literary Context

Plath’s work participates in the Confessional poetry movement, which dominated American poetry in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The movement, which reacts against Modernism’s impersonality, blurs the line between the poet and speaker. Often, Confessional poetry uses the lyric “I” and speaks openly about transgressive topics, such as sexuality and mental illness. Confessional poetry’s emphasis on the speaker’s internal life draws on the prevalence of Freudian psychotherapy in the 1950s. Poets like Anne Sexton and John Berryman wrote works influenced by their therapists.

Confessional poetry acted as a sounding board for many women who used the mode to voice their oppression in a male-dominated society. To this end, Confessional poetry was an essential component in the second wave of feminism. Though Plath stands as an essential figure in Confessional poetry and second-wave feminism, much of her poetry looks back to earlier traditions. In Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, Ariel is a male spirit that inhabits the remote island where Prospero shipwrecks. At the time of Prospero’s arrival, Ariel is trapped under the witch Sycorax’s spell. Prospero breaks the spell but brings Ariel under a form of servitude. At the end of the play, Prospero sets Ariel free. Following a long tradition of female actors playing the role, Plath feminizes Ariel and uses the subjugated spirit to give voice to female oppression and subservience (See: Symbols & Motifs). In her earlier “The Colossus,” Plath engages in a similar way with the work of the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus.

Authorial Context

The Confessional poetry movement encouraged poets to write about personal experiences. Many of Plath’s poems, such as “Morning Song,” which talks about her experience of giving birth, correlate with events in her life. Plath wrote “Ariel” on October 27, 1962, during the five months between her separation from Ted Hughes and her death. This biographical connection suggests that Plath might be working through her troubled relationship with Hughes and her freedom from it. Historically, critics read the marriage between Plath and Hughes as negatively impacting for Plath—perhaps even a driving cause of her mental illness. More recent scholarship is sympathetic to Hughes, citing letters between the two poets to demonstrate that both are problematic.

Whether the emotions explored in “Ariel” line up to Plath’s experience, the poem’s correlation with Plath’s separation is difficult to resist. Plath’s tendency toward fragments and allusion in poems like “Ariel,” however, suggests that she intends to distance herself from the poem’s speaker. One exception is that “Ariel” was the name of Plath’s horse while at riding school in Devon. While Plath is investigating problems and emotions that might touch on her personal experience, “Ariel” resists a strictly autobiographic interpretation.

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This resistance is particularly important to note in light of how critics, historically, have reduced Plath and the other female Confessional poets to their biographies (See: Further Reading & Resources). While biography is important to consider, it rarely provides a key to interpreting Plath’s complex works.