Taylor Swift and Sylvia Plath: The Making of “Mad Women”

 

Taylor Swift and Sylvia Plath: The Making of “Mad Women”

Separated by some forty-plus years in time (Taylor’s debut album came to get in 2006 whereas Plath’s poetry initial got revealed around 1963), one may be wouldn't imagine Plath and Taylor Swift to own a lot in common. Yet, in their art, these 2 influential female artists share bound similar threads, which, once plain-woven along, facilitate produce the larger image of women making art terribly paternal world with narratives that go against that world’s very basic notions.

In her 2020 song powerfully titled Mad Woman, Taylor sings — And there’s nothing sort of a mad lady / What a shame she went mad / nobody likes a mad woman / You created her like that’ — and uncalled-for to mention, more true words have not been spoken. In past times, ancient patriarchy has tagged a woman not conforming to their definitions, rules, or laws as a ‘mad woman’, usually commanding their own hand in driving them towards bound extremes.

Both Sylvia Plath and Taylor are victims of such tries. Their lives are scrutinized, and their work is torn apart below patriarchy’s dominating lenses. Sylvia Plath and Taylor are known by all varieties of names — mad, crazy, insane, attention-seeking, childish, immature, and additional. All of that's simply because each of those women is ready to be brave enough to require their personal experiences and weave lyrical masterpieces that combat the shame and judgment inflicted upon them and on girls generally day-to-day by the male-dominated world.

Many, over the years, have equated their windstorm life events, their men, and dangerous habits, as Taylor writes in her song titled The Last great American Dynasty, however even on the far side of such surface similarities lies an additional delicate association, an association solely intelligible through the personas they need to be crafted for themselves through their art.

Plath was in the vicinity of the booth movement in poetry that rose in prominence around the mid-20th century, however, her writing was distinctive to her and varied from different booth writers like Lowell, thought of as the foremost of the booth poets. whereas Lowell’s booth poetic writing meant confessing one thing personal realistically through a speaker terribly like his own self, Sylvia Plath believed in making exaggerated figures or sorts in her poems to confess one thing that was galvanized by her real-life personal experiences.

Plath, the writer, and Sylvia Plath, the speaker, are clearly completely different, and nevertheless, most critics fail to work that out. Sylvia Plath herself mentioned, that I assume my poems directly start the aesthetical and emotional experiences I ever have, however, I need to say I cannot sympathize with these cries from the center that are advised by nothing except a needle or a knife, or no matter it's. I think that one ought to be ready to manage and manipulate experiences, even the foremost terrific, like madness, being tortured, this kind of expertise, associated one ought to be ready to manipulate these experiences with an advised and intelligent mind.

As the critic M.D. Uroff writes, that Plath’s angry speakers don't confess their misery most as they vent it. In her literary composition ‘Miss Drake take to Supper’, Sylvia Plath writes however the ‘mad woman’ is “No novice / In those elaborate rituals / that allay the malice / Of knotted table and crooked chair’ and then rather than a confession, the literary composition is an additional elaboration upon insanity; the ‘mad woman’ making an attempt to regulate her terrific experiences with practice preciseness.

Such is the capability of Sylvia Plath’s writing that several have thought the ‘mad woman’ within the literary composition to be Plath, the brutal honesty of her lines rendering the persona an unlikeable quality, creating readers to equate it with Plath’s own temperament. However, whereas Sylvia Plath will manipulate and switch her personal experiences with an intelligent, creative mind once writing, what distinguishes her from the “mad woman” is her use of the exaggeration of the figure in crafting the “mad woman’s” persona, a grotesque caricature of her own self.

It is seriously ugly to ascertain what percentage of blatantly misogynistic comments are directed at Sylvia Plath and her writings over the years with a whole disregard for her art. Her death, her disruptive relationship with her husband Hughes, and her mental state all are the center of attention, and sadly her writings are pushed to the background as mere proof of her psychotic self. This fate has been equally shared by Taylor and different girls’ artists through the ages, and honestly, it’s a tragic and brutal cycle.

Taylor Swift, an American singer, and writer had her roots in country music she eventually transitioned into pop over the years. Ever since she set out in her adolescent years, she two-faced constant backlash and criticism that had very little to try and do along with her art and additional concerning however the paternal world viewed her life and activities.

While men writing concerning their love lives is seen as romantic and natural, albeit they're squirting nothing but excessive misogynistic statements, women writing concerning their love lives came to be viewed as immature, hysterical, and uncalled-for. Taylor, throughout her career, received first-hand expertise in such nefarious portrayals of her temperament.

In an interview, she says, from 2012 to 2013, they thought I used to be qualitative analysis an excessive amount of as a result of I dated 2 individuals in an exceedingly year and a half, however, no matter – we’ll leave it there,” it absolutely was simply quite excessive and, you know, initially, it absolutely was hurtful then I quite found a touching comedy in it. This character is therefore fascinating, though, if you go and skim these gossip sites and that they describe however I’m, it’s therefore opposite to my actual life.

That is the purpose once she determined to write down ‘Blank Space’ and Swift sums up the unreal persona she determined to form in the song concerning, “You know, I will get these guys. I’m rather like a nightmare and I’m clingy and I’m awful and I throw fits and tantrums and there’s drama. on the other hand, they leave. They can’t keep one's hands off in order that they return. then again, I drive them away again. I’m showing emotion fragile and simply [this] unpredictable mess…I painted a full image of this character; she lives in an exceedingly mansion with marble floors and she or he wears Dolce and Gabbana around the house. She wears animal print, unironically. and then I created this whole character, and that I commemorated doing it.

And even then, individuals mistook her space mad persona to be her real identity. rather than that specializing in her unbelievable art, an excessive amount of attention was given to her qualitative analysis of life.

So, Taylor and Sylvia Plath have each been termed the ‘Mad Woman’, and folks try and box them into that class as and after they work, however rather than succumbing, Sylvia Plath and Taylor have created their own mad women personas through their art as subversion and mockery of paternal society’s perceptions of women and their art.

Sayeri Biswas recently graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English from St. Xavier’s faculty, Kolkata. whether or not it’s philosophically considering life or gushing concerning the foremost recent book/series she has indulged in, she is usually up for a deep language. Literature is the nice love of her life, and in the future, she hopes to continue talking concerning all art forms as turbulently as she is bothered by them. Sayeri is found on Instagram and joined.