This paper argues that Plath takes mythology as her topos and confronts stereotypical characters and notions in this mythology. Plath focuses on the marginalized female characters, especially for Medea and tries to subvert the stereotypes from the perspective of a modern female poet. In the so-called “Ariel Poems”, her later ones, Plath focuses on her female self who is confined in the traditional feminine sphere of submission to men like Ariel trapped in the tree. This conflict derives from the patriarchal society in which Plath feels the strain of a double bind, as a woman and poet. Plath attempts to emancipate her confined female self by taking on her strong, and furious, female mythic persona, Medea. Plath’s Medea, however, is not the traditional evil one, but the subverted modern one: the emancipated female self who redeemed the lost female voice and the violent power. Taking Medea Myth as a poetic solution, and revising it with her strong and unique vision, Plath eventually constructs her own Modern Medea Myth through a subtle and creative mytho-poesia in her own “Plath Myth”.
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