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    Apple of My Eye: Objectification in Slyvia Plath's Ariel Tastes Not So Sweet

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    Nicole
    The document discusses Sylvia Plath's poetry collection Ariel and how it explores the narrator's conflicted relationship with material objects. The narrator is both attracted to and distrustful of objects, seeing how they have the power to control and define people. This is exemplified in the poem "The Applicant" where a naked man is offered objects like a suit and wife that are presented as necessary for success but ultimately constrain his identity. The document analyzes how Plath depicts the struggle of maintaining one's self-identity in a society where relationships and success are tied to possession of certain objects and statuses.

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    Apple of My Eye: Objectification in Slyvia Plath's Ariel Tastes Not So Sweet

    Uploaded by

    Nicole
    61 views3 pages
    The document discusses Sylvia Plath's poetry collection Ariel and how it explores the narrator's conflicted relationship with material objects. The narrator is both attracted to and distrustful of objects, seeing how they have the power to control and define people. This is exemplified in the poem "The Applicant" where a naked man is offered objects like a suit and wife that are presented as necessary for success but ultimately constrain his identity. The document analyzes how Plath depicts the struggle of maintaining one's self-identity in a society where relationships and success are tied to possession of certain objects and statuses.

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    The document discusses Sylvia Plath's poetry collection Ariel and how it explores the narrator's conflicted relationship with material objects. The narrator is both attracted to and distrustful of objects, seeing how they have the power to control and define people. This is exemplified in the poem "The Applicant" where a naked man is offered objects like a suit and wife that are presented as necessary for success but ultimately constrain his identity. The document analyzes how Plath depicts the struggle of maintaining one's self-identity in a society where relationships and success are tied to possession of certain objects and statuses.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    61 views3 pages

    Apple of My Eye: Objectification in Slyvia Plath's Ariel Tastes Not So Sweet

    Uploaded by

    Nicole
    The document discusses Sylvia Plath's poetry collection Ariel and how it explores the narrator's conflicted relationship with material objects. The narrator is both attracted to and distrustful of objects, seeing how they have the power to control and define people. This is exemplified in the poem "The Applicant" where a naked man is offered objects like a suit and wife that are presented as necessary for success but ultimately constrain his identity. The document analyzes how Plath depicts the struggle of maintaining one's self-identity in a society where relationships and success are tied to possession of certain objects and statuses.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 3

    The Apple of my Eye:

    Objectification tastes not so sweet in Sylphia Plath’s ​Ariel

    By Nicole Vento

    In her collection of poetry, ​Ariel​, Sylvia Plath’s metier becomes set designer as equally as

    it is poet. Her sets look familiar to her audience: a countryside dotted by flowers and hills, her

    Victorian home, the beach, a train departing it’s station, yet Plath’s genius paranoia and sneering

    suspicions strip these traditional domestic spaces from any sense of comfort or familiarity they

    may imbue us with. Like that of the most gifted of artists, her process fashions a new truth for

    her audience and even though many a reader and critic would like it to be certain, whether or not

    this is Plath’s own truth cannot ever fully be known.

    One of the conflicts central to Plath’s poems is the narrator’s dual attraction and repulsion

    to material objects. Make no mistake, the narrator is drawn to objects despite her obvious distrust

    of them. They catch her eye, “shimmering like curtains,” and she is quick to profess their beauty.

    However, her appreciation belies the core of the conflict: by virtue of their attractiveness, objects

    possess a very real, hypnotic, and terrifying ability to control and create us.

    In early development, possession of an external object can confer a protective element

    onto the possessor. Screaming babies are soothed, entertained, or puzzled by their baubles and

    blankets. This preoccupation assures they are no longer in distress. Objects become valuable by

    virtue of this functionality. But what happens when the baby’s dummy, or favorite doudou, is

    finally taken away? For most children, save for a brief period of distress, nothing dire. Others
    might become inconsolable, because their ability to self-soothe is entirely dependent upon the

    thing in question.

    The idea that objects create an identity is not a novel one at all. People buy products that

    they feel will reflect and curate their uniqueness. Stripped of its props, a movie set is no longer

    an upper-class family’s living room, but just an ordinarily, sad soundstage. A Hitchock film

    without a McGuffin is no Hitchcock film at all.

    Plath expresses the conundrum of possession best with her poem, “The Applicant.” The

    applicant appears on the scene as a naked creature completely untouched by material culture.

    Over the course of the poem, the applicant is offered items that the interviewer considers

    invaluable to the human experience. These objects include a suit, a symbol of high

    socioeconomic status, and a hand, so that the applicant will be well equipped to acquire and

    handle new objects. “Will you marry it?,” the interviewer asks, when presenting the applicant

    with each prize. Of the suit, the interviewer ssures, “[...] they’ll bury you in it,” suggesting that

    being buried in such finery would inflate the general public’s opinion of the applicant and

    immortalize him in their memory.

    But the choices that the applicant is presented with don’t seem very much to be choices at

    all. If he commits to these objects in a symbolic “marriage” of sorts, his success is guaranteed

    and he will be welcomed into the fold. If he doesn’t, hope for him is lost; the interviewer

    stresses that these commitments are his “last resort.” However, the applicant would not be remiss

    in having doubts about this arrangement. Even in death, he would forever be remembered in

    terms that he himself had no hand in construing. The narrator does limit her distrust of

    relationships to only material objects. Human relationships are subject to the same suspicion. Her
    famed applicant is offered a wife with the same sales pitch that he is offered the other objects.

    She is equally functional: “a living doll, everywhere you look/ It can sew, it can cook/It can talk,

    talk, talk.”

    If human beings need to be in possession of certain objects or relationships to be

    successful in society, can one ever be certain of who they are to others; can they be certain that

    they aren’t just a means to an end? If the looking glass theory is correct, and ​people’s conception

    of themselves comes from how others perceive them to be, can one even be certain of who they

    are to themselves in such uncertain conditions?​ These quandaries are the narrator’s main

    preoccupations in Ariel, and it seems that she is wont to reject, rather than accept material

    relationships under these terms. The words of the narrator in “The Courier” confirm this: “​The

    word of a snail on the plate of a leaf?​/ ​It is not mine. Do not accept it./Acetic acid in a sealed

    tin?/Do not accept it. It is not genuine.​/ A ​ring​ of gold with the sun in it?/ ​Lies. Lies and a grief.​”

    Does this mean that current society must act in the same extreme manner and reject these

    relationships to save ourselves? When we see how Ariel’s metacognitive narrator is unable to

    escape the doubts of her existence just as Plath was incapable of escaping her own, we are

    tempted to answer in the affirmate. But whether we must undertake such action depends entirely

    on a similarly personal fortitude, which literary works such as ​Ariel​, become instrumental in

    helping us evaluate.

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