Customer Reviews

Revising Life: Sylvia Plath's Ariel Poems (Gender and American Culture)

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This critical study is a concise and intelligent look at the cultural
influences that shaped both the personal life, and artistic life of
Sylvia Plath. Van Dyne does a good job of using Plath's poetry to
show the reader how Plath was conflicted by the limited viewpoint of society towards women in the forties and fifties. Van Dyne shows
how Plath fought those stereotypes of women to find her own self and
voice. It's a good book, one of the better critical studies of Plath.

I've read everything, and I mean everything, on Plath, and this is a wonderful study. Sympathetic, very complex without being difficult, clear, and well-written. I learned a lot. I like how she stayed focused on the poems. She extracts a few basic central themes, and really makes her points. It's a wonderfully empathetic feminist study.