Introduction
Write what you know. It is a commonly heard piece of advice offered to writers of every genre, including poetry, and illustrates the importance of understanding context in order to understand a given work. For most writers, whether they intend to follow this advice or not, the practice of writing what they know includes the tendency to incorporate autobiographical material within the text of their work again emphasizing the importance of context.
This occurs to greater or lesser extent in most forms of writing, but is perhaps most evident in poetry where language is condensed and placed into imagery meaningful to the writer. Poets such as Sylvia Plath are well-known for their autobiographical content as poetry became a sort of therapy for the poet and reflected the state of mind at the time of writing. Plath struggled with depression her entire life, eventually succeeding in committing suicide.
This tendency to include biographical information within the text is also apparent in other genres, such as the short story as seen in the work of Katherine Mansfield. Mansfield, who experienced the shift from the Victorian era to the Modern in the latter portion of the 19th century and early 20th century, used her writing as an outlet for thoughts and feelings that were not acceptable within her upper-class society. In the poems “The Garden Party” by Katherine Mansfield and “Lady Lazarus” by Sylvia Plath, one can find numerous elements of autobiography that helped to shape the sometimes surprisingly similar way in which these writers approached the world.
Main text
Katherine Mansfield was the daughter of an upper-middle-class businessman in New Zealand which is demonstrated through her poetry. In “The Garden Party”, Mansfield tells the story of a young girl as she helps her family prepare for a special garden party. The reason for the party is never given although the details include the placement of a marquee, a tremendous number of lilies and a band of musicians and a hint is provided that perhaps it is a yearly event as Laura’s mother tells her, “I’m determined to leave everything to you children this year” (59). These details reveal elements of the author’s own life as she grew up in some of the more affluent homes of New Zealand and was accustomed to this sort of lifestyle.
Social expectations are shown as the older girls are engaged in activities designed to make them look nice while Laura, presumably younger, is sent out to cope with the party details.
“Meg could not possibly go and supervise the men. She had washed her hair before breakfast, and she sat drinking her coffee in a green turban, with a dark wet curl stamped on each cheek. Jose, the butterfly, always came down in a silk petticoat and a kimono jacket” (59-60). The other female characters are shown as particularly unconcerned with the realities of life, not even capable of occupying their time with the frivolity of party decorations in their all-consuming interest in their own appearance. As is seen in the poem, this shallowness, an inherent aspect of the society Mansfield knew as a child, is contrasted against the depth of her main character.
When Laura interacts with the workmen, she demonstrates an ability to transcend class distinctions that are not shared by her family. As she interacted with the workmen, noticing the way in which they attempted to make her feel more comfortable and their concern for things such as the smell of lavender, she thought, “It’s all the fault, she decided, as the tall fellow drew something on the back of an envelope, something that was to be looped up or left to hang, of these absurd class distinctions. Well, for her part, she didn’t feel them” (62-63).
This is made more obvious when she attempts to stop the party upon hearing of the death of the young carter.
“But we can’t possibly have a garden party with a man dead just outside the front gate … And just think of what the band would sound like to that poor woman” (71-72). The reaction of her family, though, reflects the typical reactions of Mansfield’s society as Jose automatically assumes the carter was drunk when the accident occurred and her mother is only concerned that the accident might have happened in their own garden. This begins to illustrate the types of constraints and confusions Mansfield herself had to cope with as she realized her natural sensibilities did not match with those of her social circle.
She intuitively understood the greater value of people capable of appreciating little things like the smell of lavender or the tragedy that occurred just down the hill as compared to the wealthier set. Her own family demonstrated the source of the social problems in that they must have so many flowers that there isn’t room for them all and are insensitive enough to send the leftovers of a gay party down to the widow with a child in a party dress and hat, completely inappropriate attire and fare for the events then occurring.
Sylvia Plath also struggled with issues of social norms as evidenced in her poem “Lady Lazarus.” Here she is not talking about her own death only just prevented by the intervention of “Herr Doktor”. The title itself illustrates that this is a poem about death and coming back to life as Lazarus is a character in the Bible who was dead and was brought back to life at the command of Jesus. By titling the poem Lady Lazarus, Plath is indicating a woman has been brought back to life while the text of the poem indicates that this woman is Plath herself.
She is unable to keep herself out of the poem at all, openly referring to the fact that she is writing this poem following her third attempt at suicide, “This is Number Three. / What a trash / To annihilate each decade” (22-24). As she discusses the various attempts she’s made on her life, she illustrates how the first time she did it, it was an accident while the second and third were means of feeling something. “I do it so it feels like hell. / I do it so it feels real. / I guess you could say I have a call” (46-48). Although she is talking about herself and her own experiences, she nevertheless manages to pull in the idea that her life, or death, is controlled by men.
This is made clear as it is the men who continue to bring her back to life, even when she doesn’t want to be, as evidenced by her placing herself in the role of the Jew and the doctor in the role of the Nazi. In lines 73-78, Plath writes, “Ash, ash / You poke and stir / Flesh, bone, there is nothing there / A cake of soap / A wedding ring / A gold filling.” This is an allusion to the Nazi practice of burning Jews in giant ovens during World War II. As if this weren’t bad enough, the remains were then used for making soap and the ashes were picked through for any possible valuables with concern at all for the former owners of them.
Having investigated each poem for clues as to the context in which they were written reveals some surprising similarities. They both use the concept of death to bring out their personal issues of the social divide that they struggled within their real lives. For Sylvia Plath, living in the early period of the feminist movement, these issues are displayed in terms of the male/female divide. For Mansfield, living just a little earlier when several of these social issues were beginning to come to light, it was the issue of social class divisions. In either case, the issues were seen to separate society into two factions, one which gained all the benefits at the expense of the other.
In each poem, the language of the female character, the only character of note within the text, is not at all what might be expected from a female or a female writer. Mansfield explores the concept of stream of consciousness as she allows Laura’s thoughts to convey the action of the story. This is effective in bringing to light the emotional context as Laura struggles with her unacceptable thoughts within her own society even as she knows that they are the correct thoughts from a moralistic point of view. Plath similarly employs language not expected of a lady in her description of her latest suicide attempt and the reasons for its failure, as she again falls under the control of the men around her. Her language is full of harsh criticism, angry rejections and cynical observations.
Both writers wrote during a period in which women’s rights were significantly different than they are for today’s modern audience, forcing us to read diachronically the words they presented synchronically within their environments. To their contemporary audience, both of these writers would have been considered alarming, using language that was considered to be highly unladylike in an almost masculine tone, also considered quite out of keeping with polite society.
For both writers, this was precisely the point. Both Mansfield and Plath had issues with the status quo and called into question the assumptions of the elite and the established standards. These standards are illustrated through their work as adherence to the dictates of the family, particularly to the male members of the family, and obedience to the dictates of a society regardless of personal opinion, observation or common sense.
Today’s readers are unable to gain the same sort of impact from these words because of the shifts in society that have taken place as a result. Today’s readers are more open-minded regarding the possibilities for women, have a greater respect for the cognitive abilities of women and are generally more exposed to educated women with views and ideas regarding the way society should function.
Women are more forceful about speaking their minds, using language and language structures that are no longer characterized as being primarily ‘male’ or ‘female’ but are instead different forms of discourse. The shock value of a woman speaking out against the social order or the individual woman struggling against the male constraints of her world has worn off with modern conventions and venues in which women participate in this sort of discussion on a regular basis. Thus, understanding the context in which these women wrote helps to inform the significance of the work involved.
Conclusion
Through Plath’s poetry, there is a clear conflict with the male-female relationship all couched within strong autobiographical allusions and artfully communicated through linguistic tools. Almost all of her poems make some kind of reference to death, either as it has affected her, eluded her or threatens her. In addition, almost all of her poems seem to suggest an adversarial male-female relationship in which the male is the dominating dictator wielding all power and the female is the unwilling subject of his undivided attention with only one way out of the situation – death. Even when men express concern or go to extremes to help her, she interprets this as having some kind of ulterior motives, such as self-aggrandizement or scientific inquiry as is seen in “Lady Lazarus”.
Mansfield’s poems also struggle against social norms as she first runs about the property more like a boy than a young lady and then struggles to understand the division between classes that somehow makes it okay for her family to continue with their garden party in spite of being in easy hearing distance of the tragedy that struck a lower-class family. Like Plath, she includes many autobiographical details within her poetry that serves to highlights the most common characteristics of her society while her stream of consciousness language use serves to illustrate the dramatic difference between expectations and actual female thought.
By examining the context of these two poems, the autobiographical and historical nature, it is possible to gain a greater understanding of the poems themselves.
References
Mansfield, Katherine. (1922). “The Garden Party.” The Garden Party and Other Stories. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Plath, Sylvia. (2005). “Lady Lazarus.” Ariel. New York: Perennial Classics.