PSYCHOANALYZING SYLVIA PLATH’S “LITTLE FUGUE” : THE SUFFOCATING GYRE OF A MOURNING DAUGHTER TRAPPED WITHIN HER ELECTRA COMPLEX AND MELANCHOLIA

Abstract

It is an undeniable fact that the loss of the father at an early age is an indispensable poetical pattern for Sylvia Plathʼs confessional and suicidal poetry wherein an ambivalent paternal love and hate relationship surfaces. Her obsession with paternal absence and her dedication to committing suicide lead her to describe death as ʻan artʼ in “Lady Lazarus” (1962) and later cause her to utter the desire to kill her father in the poem, “Daddy” (1962). Most interestingly, within her overall poetry, the ambivalent attitude of Plathʼs poetic persona towards both death and the paternal figure casts parallels and often overlaps since Plathʼs poetic persona reflects a Freudian melancholic and an interrupted mourner with an unaccomplished Electra complex. This paper aims to discuss Plathʼs associated dominant poetical ambivalence towards the father figure and her relational death-oriented and self-destructive poetic tone within the Freudian psychoanalytical frameworks of Electra complex and mourning and melancholia. Thus, elaborating on these crucial Freudian insights, Plathʼs monumental poem “Little Fugue” (1962) will be psychoanalyzed.