Article

"Beware / Beware": Coleridgean Surrogacy in Sylvia Plath's Father Figure Poems

Psycho-biographical readings of Sylvia Plath have dominated scholarly interpretations of her work, especially since her suicide in 1963. However, such readings often fail to recognize the highly imaginative nature of Plath's work and her influence by Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In response, this article examines the largely unexplored connection between both poets. In a series of poems featuring a father figure, "Electra on Azalea Path," "The Colossus," "Daddy" and "Lady Lazarus," Plath draws on the four-part structure and employment of "surrogate others" that scholar Peter Barry identifies in Coleridge's "Conversation Poems" (602). When read sequentially and through Coleridge's structure and surrogacy, Plath's poems present the narrative of a daughter mourning her father. At times, she lovingly attempts to reconstruct him, while at others times she declares "Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through" (80). Over the course of Plath's poems it becomes clear that the father is a figure onto whom the daughter projects her oppression and fragmented mind, in a way similar to that of Coleridge's speaker who projects his appreciation for nature onto others. Thus, Plath drew from more than her own life, using Coleridge as a poetic "father," to create some of her most highly regarded works.