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Sylvia Plath’s poem ‘Daddy’ can be read as an allegory of female performance and the final revolt in a world of men who have been responsible for all the disasters and wars of the twentieth century. According to this poem, the women of this time are subdued and oppressed by male priorities. Also, ‘Daddy’ can be considered a poem about the daughter’s relationship with a father.
Plath conveys his paradoxical feelings for the man she worships throughout her youth, but his malicious influence after his death. I used to pray to recover and at twenty I tried to die and respond (line 14, 63-64). Throughout the poem, Plath uses simple language to delay his fathers evil spirits.
The male character poem such as father, statue, teacher, gestapo officer, husband and vampire are created as protagonists and oppressive. The father appears as a powerful, strong and restrictive figure, something like a god. The female character is limited and unable to lead a full life for the sexist society where she is. The father is compared to the Nazis who assume the responsibilities of the massacre, (I thought every German was you) and the female character is represented as the victim (I think he might well be a Jew). Then, comparing his father with the Nazis, what she puts on the same stage as they means that at the same time she also puts women and judges on the same stage, who are raped and exploited.
When Plath said that ‘Every woman adores a fascist, the boot in the face, the brute, the brute heart of a brute like you’ is using irony by representing the stereotype of most women who are and likes abusive men, thus showing inequality between men and women. This irony was justifying that violence was something natural.
Daddy describes that the real power of the men is to make women give in to the dominant ideology, making their additional part of the natural order of the world. It is usually visible in sado-masochistic images which make women to be responsible for their own additional role.
Women are made for wise people to guide you (You stand on the blackboard, dad). While women are emotional and commit suicide when they feel lonely and depressed, men are more rational. . However, the female character is observing these unfair relationships, and sees her father figure as the devil (A cleft in the chin instead of your foot / But no less a demon for that).
The poem is full of the sense of suffocation felt by the female character towards her father and husband. The poem ‘Daddy’ criticizes the male aggression and depicts men being responsible for all the social injustices. The narrator depicts the discrimination of women but at the end of the poem she points out that females break free of these constraints.
The relationship with her father is complicated, confusing, and ambiguous. Plath wants to be close to his father since he has some affection for him. However, the negative aspects of their relationship seem to almost consume how good there is. Plath calls his father for ‘Daddy’ instead of father, since this word gave it a touch of affection and closeness to the relationship of the two of them. Plath shows that she wants to connect with her dad when she says she has a picture of him and later says At twenty I tried to die and get back, back, back to you (53-54). ‘By establishing a parallel between Hitler and the Jews and she and her father, she implies that her relationship with her father is oppressive and cruel.’
In the poem the father was compared to Hitler and the Jews, this definitely shows how much Plath respects and fears his father. Even with all that fear and respect that her father supposedly has, she writes on the last line, daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through. This shows that all this time she was forced to keep that respect and that fear which she really didn’t have.
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