Parenthood and the Monstrous in the Works of Sylvia Plath

Parenthood and the Monstrous in the Works of Sylvia Plath

The image of the monster remains fascinating to contemporary readers because it provides opportunities for defying categorization, arousing complex feelings of ambiguity, and dismantling, combining, and inverting traditionally held binaries. The imagery of socially accepted parenthood would seem incongruous with the image of monsters, as parents are expected to love and protect their children, whereas monsters terrorize or destroy whatever they encounter. Nevertheless, the parent-as-monster proliferates in Sylvia Plath’s poetry, and becomes a site for dissecting how easily the parental can become the monstrous, and the monstrous, parental. Applying Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s monster theory to the analysis of three of Plath’s poems, “The Colossus,” “Daddy,” and “Three Women—A Poem for Three Voices” provides an opportunity to explore the links between the monstrous and parenthood through demonstrating how parents in Plath’s poetry transcend their human forms (literally and figuratively) to become monsters on a corporeal and behavioral level.