video poetry
I first read Sylvia Plath's "Daddy" as a teen, having spent years delving into the history of the persecution of the Jews. I also was the daughter of a cold, misogynistic, Jewish father of German/Austrian parents. I found her poem cathartic and felt I understood every line on a visceral level without having to analyse it.
Many years later, having spent months taking care of my father until his death, the poem still speaks from my heart and makes me weep.
Having grown up with my own father and knowing his Austrian-born father, then having lived in Germany and Austria myself, watching how emotionally repressed the people are [and how they repress their children], I could imagine Sylvia's father's influence was at once both overpoweringly present, and utterly absent. The Germanic father makes himself felt by his authoritarian aura which is pervasive whether he is at home or away. At the same time, he is emotionally absolutely absent. His attitude toward women is subconsciously arrogant and dismissive (even for many men today who say they are feminists, not realizing how deeply rooted this attitude is).
If she had had a chance to interact with her father all her life, perhaps Sylvia might have found some way to examine, process and work through all that she absorbed subliminally as a young child. Perhaps she, like me, would have found ways to move past the guilt she must have felt at hating her father. Perhaps she too would have found understanding, if not forgiveness.
Instead, she was left with this unassailable, iconic image of him. As she grew older and understood the effect he had on her, the frustration she felt at not being able to communicate her pain, love and anguish to him must have been immense.
This poem is a beautiful declaration of independence - a sentiment that ultimately was unable to sustain her.
To me, nothing about this poem is political. The imagery is so rich. The shoe - the box into which she had to fit herself to be a good little girl (children seen but not heard is still the default in traditional Germanic families) was also the boot in the face. Also, as someone else suggests here, perhaps his empty shoe after the amputation.
"Daddy I have had to kill you," recalls to me the Zen saying that if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. It is a metaphorical killing. In the case of the Buddha, we are freeing ourselves from our mental image of who he should be. In the case of Daddy, Sylvia is declaring herself free of the oppression and repression which, after his death, she continued to enforce on herself to perpetuate his memory.
In talking about his town, she expresses her desire to retrace his steps, to know him from her current perspective as an adult. Maybe if she could, she would know herself better. But she is frustrated in her attempt to do even that.
All she can recall of him is her terror of him as a looming, monolithic creature. Maybe he was so cold and withholding because she was really a Jew and he a Nazi? It felt that way to her. How could Daddy not love me, set me on his lap, make much of me? Something must have been as wrong with me, in his eyes, as was wrong about the Jews in the Nazis' eyes.
She hates him and wants to punish him for the pain she feels. She would like to tell him to his face, but cannot. The villagers punish him in a way she will never be able to do.
At the same time, loving, and wanting to know and be close to him, she did what most of us do who have unresolved and paradoxical feelings of pain, love, and abandonment about a parent, she found a man who would treat her the same way and married him.
"Daddy, Daddy, you bastard, I'm through," is at once the defiant declaration and the wistful cry of a woman who wants to be free. Later events suggests she could not sustain that sentiment.
In my own experience, having spent thousands upon thousands of dollars in therapy and spent years in spiritual practise, I'll never really be through. The pain of having lived with a father who could never express love for or pride in me, who refused to speak to me or have my name mentioned in his presence for years because he did not like my life style, who, even when I moved 3,000 miles with my child to live with and take care of him, wiping his behind, picking him up off the floor at 3 am when he fell going to the bathroom, could not tell me he appreciated or loved me will never fade.
I am just grateful to have had the resources and teachers to help me learn to live with the pain and slowly learn to like myself enough not to commit suicide. I am grateful to have had the help I needed to get to a place where I could, in fact felt the need to, move cross-country and be with him in a loving way until he died.
I firmly believe that, at the age of 16, I was headed in the same direction Sylvia went. Reading "Daddy" then opened my eyes to the possibility that I could start directing my anger away from myself so that I didn't sink into that final, hopeless depression she was unable to escape.
Thank you! Sylvia
Guilderland , USA
Friday, 11 May 2007Â
There have been many useful comments on this page, and I agree with most of them. but I have to answer a couple of posts.
1) First of all, to Liz Hood (London, UK, Thursday, August 1, 2002) who said: "Theories such as the Electra Complex are far to over analytical in my opinion. Why can't an individual simply possess incredulous psychological trauma when a loved parent will not even return unconditional love by surviving for you?"
Of course they can. But Sylvia Plath very obviously did have an Electra complex, at least if her poems are anything to go by. There's nothing over analytical about it. It seems to me that you are one of the people who either feel uncomfortable with Freudian theories, or think that they have been overused in popular culture - or both. it would be wrong to apply Oedipus/Electra complex to absolutely everyone and everything, but I don't see how it can possibly be ignored in some cases, as in Plath's case. Not only are the images of her father and her husband constantly merging for her in this poem, but she openly addresses her Electra complex in least two other poems, directly in "Electra on Azalea Path" and only slightly less directly "The Colossus" (by mentioning 'Oresteia', which, of course, is the tragedy based on the myth about Orest and his sister Electra avenging the death of their father Agamemnon on their mother and her lover):
"A blue sky out of the Oresteia
Arches above us. O father, all by yourself
You are pithy and historical as the Roman Forum."
(The Colossus)
2) I have to ask Kathleen (Kona, USA, Thursday, November 21, 2002) - what do you mean by "the word 'Daddy' in itself is feminine"??
3) To everyone who complains about the Holocaust imagery: I can't believe all this fuss you're making. For God's sake, "Daddy" is a poem, not an essay or an article!!! It is not meant to be taken literally!! By the same logic, anybody who dares to use the metaphor of 'witchhunt' or 'burning at the stake' (which people do all the time) should be condemned for tastelessness and insulting the real victims of withchunts! And a poem is certainly a place where strong metaphors and hyperbole are far more acceptable than anywhere else.
4) I always loved this poem, but now I feel I have to stress that I have never took it to be about Plath's actual father - rather about her own image of him, which he had built in her mind and lived with and adored for so many years. (same thing goes for "The Colossus) It is this image of a powerful, male figure that turns from God to devil and Nazi. It's not just that I have never thought that Ott Plath was a Nazi (and he wasn't) - I have never attempted to draw any conlusions about him from this poem, I have no idea if he was a good man, and there is no reason to think that he was abusive or cold - I don't know what he was like, as he is only seen through the eyes of an adoring daughter, and his crime here seems to be that he has 'abandoned' her - i.e. died - and that she adored him so much and could't get rid of his influence. And then the image of the father merges with the image of her husband, and it's hard to tell if she is only blaming Otto for what Hughes has done, or the other way round, too. Another thing I should stress is that I wouldn't draw any conclusions about Ted Hughes's character from this poem either. I never hated him and I never thought he was a monster. BTW I am a feminist, at least I think I am, because in my mind feminism is about fighting for equality between sexes, against patriarchality, against strict traditional gender roles, stereotypes and sexism (whether directed at women or men) - not, as some people seem to think, about hating men or considering them enemies or monsters if they happen to be strong, charismatic or sexual. I don't consider 'Daddy' to be any kind of ideological statement, I consider it to be a deeply emotional, personal poem. I shudder at the idea that someone might take statements such as 'Every woman adores a fascist' literally. Surely it should be understood that what he was doing here was confronting her own demons, her dependancy on strong male figures, her masochism, and her feelings of being let down and wanting to be free.
Finally - to Charlotte (Sydney, Australia): "With references to male influence in her life are forthcoming and direct, she also portrays her desperate need for domination from the male, and this sets her aside form the stereotypical, strong and independent feminist, with no need for any kind of male involvement". True, but that is the stereotypical image indeed. Many strong women are not feminists (many are as anti-feminist as possible), and I wouldn't be so sure that all feminists are strong and independent, either. What are ideological views are and what we are like is not always the same thing. And even while feminists should be strong and independent, I dont see why they must be 'without any male involvement'. That sounds like another cliche. Why would male involvement be a bad thing in itself, if the relationship is equal? I don't think that Sylvia was a feminist, but this poem could be considered 'feminist' in the sense that it asks some painful questions about gender roles and male/female relationships - not in the sense of making any straighforward ideological statements. That's what makes it so great.
Belgrade , Serbia
Thursday, September 28, 2006