Blackburn, Shilo R.

The female subject in the late poetry of Sylvia Plath experiences a physical and intellectual transformation, as Plath attempts to challenge and redefine the social construction of woman through Virginia Woolf's influence. Plath aspires to achieve a poetic voice that embodies characteristics of both genders simultaneously, an androgynous consciousness by Woolf's account, and one that can speak despite Western culture's imposed inferiority of women writers. Since traditionally masculine language has defined women's social roles through their physical bodies, Plath's aim is to immerse her female subject in the experiences of her corporeal body as a means to transcend her physical existence and symbolically achieve a supreme consciousness unadulterated by gender designs. Through the transportation of the physical, female body, then, Plath believes that her poetic voice can emerge in the form of an androgynous spirit capable of accessing powers of both genders.