SOURCE: "'Viciousness in the Kitchen': Sylvia Plath's Domestic Poetry," in Modern Language Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1977, pp. 11-25.

In the following essay, Dobbs examines allusions to marriage and motherhood in Plath's poetry. According to Dobbs, the hostile and often violent imagery in such pieces reflects Plath's strong resistance to the prospect of domestic entrapment as a wife and mother.

      There's a hex on the cradle
      and death in the pot.

For Sylvia Plath, domesticity is an ultimate concern. Like Erica Jong, Tillie Olsen, Marge Piercy and many other contemporary women writers Plath frequently explores what it means to be a woman in terms of the traditional conflict between family and career. Plath's life and her writing are filled with anxiety and despair over her refusal to choose and instead to try to have—what most males consider their birth-right—both. It is apparent from her life and letters that...