The motif of duality in Anne Sexton’s poetry

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The motif of duality in Anne Sexton's poetry

S.Y. Gonzalez Munis

Oles Honchar Dnipropetrovsk National University

Стаття присвячена вивченню специфіки художньої реалізації мотиву двійництва в ліриці Енн Секстон. У статті розглянуто особливості втілення цього мотиву в образах Іншого, Двійника, дзеркала, зв'язок з мотивами віддзеркалення та відчуження. В роботі проаналізована пов'язаність мотивів двійництва та інакшості, які стають найбільш константними мотивами в американській жіночій поезії другої половини ХХ століття.

Ключові слова: мотив, тема, образ, жіноча поезія, фемінність, двійництво, інакшість, Двійник. sexton poetry duality

Статья посвящена изучению специфики художественного выражения мотива двойничества в лирике Энн Секстон. В статье рассмотрены особенности воплощения этого мотива в образах Другого, Двойника, зеркала, а также связь с мотивами отражения и отчуждения. В работе проанализирована взаимосвязь мотивов дуальности и инаковости, которые представляют собой константные мотивы американской женской поэзии второй половины ХХ века.

Ключевые слова: мотив, тема, образ, женская поэзия, феминность, двойничество, инаковость, Двойник.

The article focuses on the peculiarities of the duality motif development in the poetry of Anne Sexton a wellknown American female poet. The analysis is centered on ways of the duality motif realization in the images of the “double” and the Doppelganger as well as the mirror and reflection images in Sexton's poetry. What is more, the duality motif is viewed as one of the dominant in American women's poetry and is compared in the poetry of Anne Sexton and her female contemporary Sylvia Plath. The research has shown that in Anne Sexton's poetry the motif of duality involves a creation of the “Doppelganger” image which is a ghostly double or counterpart of a living person poet's lyrical persona. The problem of “two worlds” in Sexton's poetry is embodied in the mirror and reflection images, and leads to a wide exploration of the otherness theme. It has also been pointed out that the creation of the other supernatural counterpart, a Doppelganger of her second self generates from the poet's uneasiness with male myths of femininity and is developed into the wider motif complexes which include despair, madness, suicide, dying and resurrection.

Key words: motif, theme, image, women's poetry, feminity, duality, otherness, Doppelganger.

The image of the “double” in the history of literature has been developing since the Ancient times, and by 18th 19th centuries three main directions of this image were formed: the “double” as persona's mirror image, the Doppelganger as a real person and the “double” as persona's worse, darker part (his/her `alter ego'). This image is closely connected with the categories of duality, dialogism, contrast, split, ambiguity etc.

The article is aimed at studying the peculiarities of the duality motif development in the poetry of a famous American female poet Anne Sexton. According to Diana Hume George, Anne Sexton “explored the myths by and through which our culture lives and dies: the archetypal relationships among mothers and daughters, fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, gods and humans, men and women” [4, p. 157]. Anne Sexton perceived, and consistently patterned in the images of her art, the paradoxes deeply rooted in human behavior and motivation. Her poetry presents multiplicity and simplicity, duality and unity, the sacred and the profane, in ways that insist on their similarities even, at times, their identity. Sexton's poetic ambitions to combine sometimes quite opposite phenomena accounted for the wide usage of the “double” imagery in her poetry.

What is more, the duality motif is considered to be one of the dominant in American women's poetry. It is explained by the fact that a woman poet writes in a hostile masculine environment, using the language which “does not belong to her” (Helene Cixous). In order to write with greater directness and honesty about her own experience, Sexton and other women poets of her time such as Sylvia Plath, Denise Levertov, Adrienne Rich, Diane Wakoski, Muriel Rukeyser, Erica Jong have tended to avoid the poetic strategies of modernism to derepress poetry, so to speak and have sought to achieve their effects by other means. Anne Sexton's turn towards open forms, as though in trust, is an example [6, p. 285].

In Anne Sexton's poetry the motif of duality involves the creation of the “Doppelganger” image a ghostly double or counterpart of a living person, the problem of “two worlds” in her poetry embodied in the mirror and reflection images, and as a result a wide exploration of the otherness theme. For example, in the poem “The Other” (“The Book of Folly”, 1972) the author implores an image of mysterious Mr. Doppelganger who is both a real person (brother, spouse) and persona's `alter ego' her stronger, better part: “It is waiting. /It is waiting. /Mr. Doppelganger. My brother. My spouse. /Mr. Doppelgtinger. My enemy. My lover” [9, p. 303]. The “Other” in this case is Sexton's supernatural self, her masculine imaginary `twin', who, according to Sandra M. Gilbert, she associates (in her poetry collection “The Death Notebooks”, 1974) with the mad eighteenthcentury poet Christopher Smart [5, p. 125]. Smart was primarily recognized as a religious poet, and the fact that he was also locked away in a mental asylum for many years like Sexton, made him her `soul mate', her better, stronger other self.

The image of the Doppelganger is also used in the poem “Rumpelstiltskin” (“Transformations”, 1971) where the author establishes a literary conversation with the original Grimm tale using one of the most enigmatic and unforgettable figures to emerge from German folklore:

Inside many of us is a small old man who wants to get out.

No bigger than a twoyearold whom you'd call lamb chop

yet this one is old and malformed [9, p. 227].

Her Doppelganger entity emanates from the unconscious, uncontrollable, it is a `voice usually censored' who speaks with `Truman's asexual voice' [7, p. 78]. By including the personality of the thirtythird American president Anne Sexton the author connects the double motif with the `dark sides' of an accepted public face of the American nation (making an allusion to dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, involvement in the Korean War). What is more, the Doppelganger in the poem is also a manifestation of the queen's unconscious which is her `dwarf', her `enemy within' [9, p. 233]. This dark, other, second self is associated with the irrational, subconscious and supernatural `in the best romantic traditions' [3, p. 124].

The image of the “double” as a dominant, frightening part of persona's identity is similar to the one used by another American women poet Sylvia Plath in her poem “In Plaster” (from “The Collected Poems”, 1981): “I shall never get out of this! There are two of me now: / This new absolutely white person and the old yellow one, / And the white person is certainly the superior one” [8, p. 160]. This perfect copy of the speaker (`white person') represents a dominant but false “I”, and is associated with the physical body, whereas an `old yellow one' stands for the soul. The speaker in Sylvia Plath's poem, as well as in Sexton's “The Other”, realizes that the stronger `alter ego' creates an obstacle for the unity of her personality, consequently the only way is to free oneself from this unwanted “double”, even at the cost of one's life. As a result, to become whole and free the speaker must die in order to resurrect in a new and better form. Thus, the motif of duality and the image of the “double” are merged in a wider thematic field, which includes the theme of death, the motifs of dying, resurrection, and renewal.

Anne Sexton's poetry is based on the sets of oppositions: death dying, body soul, art madness to name a few. In the poem “Demon” from the posthumously published book “45 Mercy Street” (1976) the author creates an image of a demon which is close to Plath's `old yellow person' (“In Plaster”) and represents the speaker's real “I”. However, in contrast to Plath, Sexton's persona is not proud of that part of her identity, it repulses and disgusts her:

My demon,

too often undressed,

too often a crucifix I bring forth,

too often a dead daisy I give water to

too often the child I give birth to

and then abort, nameless, nameless...

earthless [9, p. 554].

At the same time, the speaker's dark, other self is also the source of her poetic power, the center of her art, her socalled “gnawing pestilential rat” which is both the reason for her poetry and the destructive force that ruins the wholeness of her identity. The body and soul are tightly connected in Anne Sexton's poetry and the speaker, though welcomes death, realizes that physical experience is vitally important for her as a poet. Thus, her persona is willing to accept this terrifying “double” in order to become a true artist: “Yes. / Yes. /1 accept you, demon. /1 will not cover your mouth” [9, p. 555].

To accept the demon within her means to let in the fears that inhabit the deepest layers of our subconscious and speak these fears out in the form of poetry. For Anne Sexton the poetic language is something similar to the language of a mentally disabled person, she strongly believed that real poetry can be written only when the invisible veil of censorship is lifted between all men and women.

The image of a mirror is also tightly connected with dichotomies outer/inner, visible/invisible, private/public. Seeing oneself in a mirror, according to M. Bahtin, is “always the look at oneself with the eyes of the Other" [1, p. 31]. For Anne Sexton and women poets like her the problem of the mentioned above Other or Others has always been of extreme importance, because women are writing to realize themselves in this act, for them to write means to exist, as the language, according to Helene Cixous, is “the way to break once and for all the bonds and classifications of the phallocentric/ logocentric systems'" [2, p. 378379].

Anne Sexton uses the motif of reflection to create the image of the “double” on the intertextual level, as the problem of the language as an alien environment for a woman poet becomes an integral part of her poetry. The journey from the imaginary space to the symbolic language order is made by the lyrical persona in Anne Sexton's poem “The Double Image” (“To Bedlam and Part Way Back) (1960) where trough images of portraits, selfportraits, mirrors she tries to convey the double, or doubled images of mothers and daughters. The poem's events are doubled too: the lyrical subject attempts suicide and returns from the institution twice in the poem and the subject's mother is ill after her daughter's suicide attempt and accuses her daughter of `giving her cancer' [9, p. 38]. The author uses an opposition: physical mental illness, this dichotomy is also embodied in the image of “the double woman" who stares in the mirror, “as if she were petrified' [9, p. 41]. The portraits of mother and daughter on the opposite walls become the manifestation of the motherdaughter relations where the mother's portrait becomes “my mocking mirror, my overthrown / love, my first image" [9, p. 41]. Symmetrical structure of the poem, constant reiterations `Too late, / too late', `as if', `as if' imitate numerous reflections creating the claustrophobic effect as if all three participants are in the room full of mirrors “I rot on the wall, my own / Dorian Gray. And this was the cave of the mirror, / that double woman who stares / at herself, as if she were petrified / in time...” [9, p. 39]. Consequently, the mirror image in this poem transforms from the culture item to the textual construct allowing the subject to regain her female identity being realized in the act of writing. The double motif is embodied in Anne Sexton's poetry with the help of mythological, biblical images of womandemon, angel of revenge, witch, mad woman, female dwarf etc. These demonic images are often associated with madness, guilt, death, and vary from the witches in the book of poems “To Bedlam and Part Way Back" to mysterious `angels' in “The Book of Folly" which Sexton's persona acquaints with `slime... bedbugs...paralysis' and a slow pace of a `Death baby' who becomes subject's second self in the poem “The Death Notebooks" [3, p.17].

In conclusion, the exploration of the “duality" motif in Anne Sexton's poetry is one of the main modes of selfanalysis offered to her lyrical persona who is always struggling to define her identity thus experimenting with different propositions about her own nature, her body and her relation to the masculine tradition. Creation of the other supernatural counterpart, a Doppelganger of her second self generates from the poet's uneasiness with male myths of femininity and is developed into the wider motif complexes which include despair, madness, suicide, dying and resurrection.

References

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3. Coming to light: American women poets in the twentieth century : [Edited by: Diane Wood Middlebrook, Marilyn Yalom] // Stanford University Center for Research on Women. Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 1985. 277 p.

4. George Diana Hume. Oedipus Anne : The Poetry of Anne Sexton / Diana Hume George. Urbana : University of Illinois Press, 1987. 210 p.

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6. McClatchy J. D. Anne Sexton : Somehow to Endure / J. D. McClatchy // Anne Sexton : The Artist and Her Critics : [Ed. by J. D. McClatchy]. Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1978. P. 285.

7. McGowan Philip. Anne Sexton and Middle Generation Poetry: The Geography of Grief / Philip McGowan. Westport (Conn.) ; London : Praeger Publishers, 2004. xiii. 147 p.

8. Plath Sylvia. The Collected Poems / Sylvia Plath. [Ed. by Ted Hughes]. New York : Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. 1981. 351 p.

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