실비아 플라스의 「불온한 뮤즈들」에 나타난 여성 형이상학 비판

Sylvia Plath’s Critique of Female Metaphysics in “The Disquieting Muses”

The aim of this paper is to clarify Sylvia Plath’s theme of criticizing female metaphysics functioning as a mechanism of oppression, by analyzing her poem “The Disquieting Muses.” Extant feminist Plath studies, in line with the theories of deconstruction and feminism in general, are based on the dichotomy of male-oppressors vs. female-victims. But Plath’s poetic insight undermines this polarized gender perspective, exposing and accusing metaphysics and oppression sustained and practiced by woman. The focus of analysis is on the speaker of the poem denouncing Christian metaphysics and resisting the mother’s “phallic” desire to identify her daughter’s life with, and incorporate it into, her own. Theories of Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction and Luce Irigaray’s feminism are applied to the analysis. In the end, this paper illuminates Plath’s dream of the desirable feminine life characterized by an anti-metaphysical aestheticism of enjoying the material and bodily sensations of earthly life.