Entering the magic mirror: the Dostoevskyian Doubles of Sylvia Plath’s poetry

Abstract

This thesis explores the elements of Sylvia Plath's poetic Doubles that emulate those of Dostoevsky’s, specifically from his novels The Double (1846) and The Brother Karamazov (1880), about which she wrote her 1955 Honours dissertation, The Magic Mirror: A Study of the Double in Two Novels of Dostoevsky (1989). The evolution of the Double figure in her poetry has resonances with that of Dostoevsky, developing from a portrayal of the dualism of the psyche, to a more oblique study of misaligned personality traits, eluding reconciliation. I explore Plath’s early depiction of a mirror or twin Double that embodies one’s dark, unconscious traits. I then consider her later Double that represents distorted, potential versions of the real Plath, through which she draws parallels between creative productivity and fecundity, in order to explore writing and motherhood. I relate the conflict expressed in her poetry between her poetic ambitions and identity as a woman to Ivan Karamazov’s theological crisis in The Brother Karamazov. In doing do, I reveal a more salutary trajectory to her poetic oeuvre than is traditionally interpreted by critics, as she uses her later Double to confront and accept her fallibility. Through reading Plath’s poetry alongside The Magic Mirror, considering both her poems directly preceding her time at Smith College as well as those of the early 1960s, I show that her Doubles do not embody inner division that must be synthesised, but rather highlight that such discord is intrinsic to being human.