The American writer and actor Lena Dunham asked her millions of Twitter followers what The Bell Jar meant to them. 'My favorite response', Dunham tells us, 'was a simple "it made me feel less alone." Because that's how it made me feel, too.' 1 One of the fundamental ways that Plath makes readers 'feel less alone' is having her fictional characters and poetic persona speak to them directly. The second person direct address that she deploys repeatedly in her writing is a key mechanism for achieving this.Plath famously said, 'I think that as far as language goes I'm an American, I'm afraid, my accent is American. My way of talk is an American way of talk. I'm an old-fashioned American.' 2 Integral to that 'way of talk' is Plath's fluent use of the second person narrative viewpoint, and the intimacy and immediacy it can convey. This is in keeping with Joshua Parker's observation that 'the "you"-designated protagonist in a text often seems to develop out of an author's desire to give an effect of spoken word '. 3 What is crucial about second person narrative is that it establishes a relationship between the speaking 'I' and the 'you' who is being addressed. At the same time, it cements a bond between these 'I' and 'you' persona and the reader, who is made to occupy both of these positions at once. That is to say, the reader is simultaneously located as the person speaking and the person spoken to. Hence, there is a fluidity and mobility inherent in the second person. To put this negatively, 'second person narration is semantically unstable'. To put it positively, 'Narrative "you" generates a complex series of perspectives whose multiple angles deserve to be explored.' 5 We will see that there can be an intensity, too, in second person narration. In Plath's case, this is often amplified through additional rhetorical and/or poetic devices, such as repetition, rhyme and even sudden shifts in point of view. The latter force the reader to experience different positions in relation to the story, subject matter and characters. 84 use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

scihub/10.1017/9781108556200.009.pdf

Sylvia Plath in Context (Literature in Context)

Cambridge Library Collection

Literature in context (Cambridge University Press), Cambridge United Kingdom ; New York NY, 2019

Literature in context, 1st ed, Cambridge, 2019

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

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Sylvia Plath in Context brings together an exciting combination of established and emerging thinkers from a range of disciplines. The book reveals Plath's responses to the writers she reads, her interventions in the literary techniques and forms she encounters, and the wide range of cultural, personal, artistic, political, historical and geographical influences that shaped her work. Many of these essays confront the specific challenges for reading Sylvia Plath today. Others evaluate her legacy to the writers who followed her. Reaching well beyond any simple equation in which biographical cause results in literary effect, all of them argue for a body of work that emerges from Plath's deep involvement in the world she inhabits. Situating Plath's writing within a wide frame of references that reach beyond any single notion of self, this book will be a vital resource for students, scholars, instructors and researchers of Sylvia Plath.

"In recent years, literary critics have engaged in a variety of new approaches to Sylvia Plath's work. Readers themselves are increasingly aware of the complex array of backgrounds and frameworks which shape Plath's writing. Bringing together an exciting combination of established and emerging thinkers from a range of disciplines, Sylvia Plath in Context is an important new landmark in this ongoing project"-- Provided by publisher