ARTWORK: Maddy Watson
Madwomanhood By Rachel Chopping
Is Sylvia Plath still alive?
I didn’t think so, but it’s recently become clear to me that she is as influential as ever. Often invoked as a kind of literary madwoman, Plath continuously makes her presence known in both popular culture and university literature classrooms. Why is she still sticking around? Writer Becca Klaver comments that Plath’s long-lasting appeal “must have a lot to do with the fact that her story conflates glamour (beautiful, blonde famous poet ...) with destruction (...kills herself).” There is a ‘Sylvia Plath Effect,’ coined in 2001 by psychologist James Kaufman, that attests “Female poets were found to be significantly more likely to suffer from mental illness than female fiction writers or male writers of any type.” The consequences of the Plath phenomenon are far reaching— ranging from literary analysis of madwomen to contemporary illness-recovery memoirs.
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