“We found ourselves reduced to I”: la protesta afectiva y autorrepresentación en “The Rabbit Catcher” de Sylvia Plath

Abstract

Since its first use in 1959, confessional poetry, a term used to describe poetry of a biographical nature and emotional rawness, has provoked diverse reactions and rejection from different schools of thought. On the one hand, formalist studies deny the possibility of making an analysis under the confessional logic because it would be incurring in the intentional fallacy. Feminist studies, on the other hand, have problematized the uncritical use of the term, since there is a tendency to think that confessional writing is not serious literature, but only scribbles in women’s intimate diaries. Thus, due to its connotation and mostly pejorative use, a fraction of this field of studies is reluctant to use the term and has sought to discourage such readings, since they demean the work of women writers. However, today, the confessional label continues to be used to evaluate and read, within and outside the academy, the works of authors such as Sylvia Plath. In this research, I will address Sylvia Plath’s poem “The Rabbit Catcher” (1962), which was recovered by Frieda Hughes, the author's daughter, in Ariel: the Restored Edition after being removed by Ted Hughes, Frieda Hughes’ father, in his posthumously published edition of Ariel. Drawing on the biographical facts known about Plath and the proposals of Andrea Muriel López and Gabriela García Hubard, which belong to affective turn, I will analyze how Plath’s self-representation manifests itself in this poem with the purpose of reflecting on the relevance of the confessional term, and how it informs the readings. This, in order to argue that Plath’s case is fertile ground to bridge the gap between the alleged objectivity of the intrinsic analysis of a text and the emotionality found inside and outside of it.