Plath + Hughes Critics Flashcards
Elizabeth Warren on the nature of heterosexual relationships in Plath’s poetry.
‘[…] Heterosexual love relationships are problematic in Sylvia Plath’s poems.’
Elizabeth Warren on husbands in Plath’s poetry.
‘Inadequate, cold or sadistic husbands are mirrored by other sinister male figures’
Elizabeth Warren on father’s violent portrayals
‘the most shocking descriptions of male violence occur when she describes the father figure[…]’
Bates on Sylvia’s attempts to control Hughes’ sadistic nature.
‘Sylvia Plath described [Ted Hughes] as a very sadistic man. . . she thought she could manage. . . his sadistic characteristics.’
Seamus Heaney on Hughes’ landscapes and love of nature
‘a boy completely at home on the land and in the landscape’. – Seamus Heaney
Bates on Hughes within the landscape
‘He himself was part of that landscape, elemental, unchangeable.’
According to Bates, Hughes descended into…
‘descent into poetic self indulgence, misogyny and all too parodiable blackness.’
Bates on Hughes’ view of astrology
‘For Ted, astrology, like poetry, was a way of giving order to the chaos of life.’
Bates on Hughes’ shamanism
‘Ted the wild apocalyptic shaman’.
Plath on the nature of Hughes’ alleged abuse
‘he’d bash my head in’.
Hughes on the nature of his alleged abuse
‘I kick her around and everything goes as I please.’
Bates on Plath’s martyrdom
‘Plath was turned into a martyr of a movement which she was not really a part.’
Bates on the sexual perspective in Hughes’ poems
‘unpleasantly. . . misogynist. Quite a lot of the poems are directly or indirectly about sex, viewed from a very masculine perspective.’
Bates on the culture of Hughes’ voice
‘He saw rural England as his sub culture – the place he knew best, the source of his literary voice.’
John Bates on Hughes’ theme of animals
‘his animal poems were the dramatization of his internal psychodrama’.
