Hello All!

Well, it is that time again that I must give you an update… I am still enjoying my vacation on Earth and still enjoying the beach. I have a nice bronze tan that makes me look much younger. Ha-ha.  Anyway, I have been exposed too a few more extraordinary authors that have taken society by storm with their powerful words of expression.  The American culture continues to express the need for social change through their own experiences, which are reflected in their poems and short stories. Women writers have made quite an impression in American literature with their candid words that question social norms while capturing much attention across generations. These women include, Sylvia Plath, Gertrude Simmons, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. 

Sylvia Plath, another postwar confessional poet along side, Anne Sexton (as I discussed in my last letter) who also struggles with the traditional image of gender roles in her poem “Lady Lazarus”.  In the poem, Sylvia Plath compares her life through allusions made to the biblical Lazarus and the Holocaust as a way for readers to understand her pain and her suicidal thoughts. Plath states that she is “A sort of walking miracle”  with each time she attempts suicide and fails it is as if she has been born again into a life of unhappiness that she is unable to escape, as she sees herself as different and not the typical woman of her time (I. 4).  Plath “was also very much a woman of the 1950s, plagued with thoughts that she had to marry and have children” which such thoughts of fulfilling this wifely role may be responsible for her depression and the release of societal pressure and stress while writing the poem (Wagner-Martin).  She refers to dying and her suicide attempts particularly in the lines “I have done it again” and “like the cat I have nine times to die” (II. 1, 21). With every line, her sense of life withers away into calming thoughts about death.  The poem’s theme revolves around death and it seems Plath has written her eulogy but not the traditional eulogy.  “Lady Lazarus” portrays dark images and as Arthur Berg writes, “poems like “Lady Lazarus” in the end may not be the triumphs which their momentum and inventiveness at times celebrate. Instead, and this is my sense of them, they belong to elegy and to death” (Berg).  Plath celebrates her death rather than her accomplishments and success in life.  Death and dying are her safe havens where she no longer has to worry about being a “complete female” and is free of judgments casted upon her from society (Wagner-Martin).  Andrew believes, “Lady Lazarus” as Plath’s way to recall “her struggles with depression and suicide attempts” which may very well be (Potter, “Lady Lazarus”).  Writing about these difficult times could also be therapy or short-term postponement of another suicide attempt.   Then again, the poem could partly be her imagination-running wild while in a depressed state of mind as she calls upon society to acknowledge that not every woman fits neatly into the category of wife and mother. Many years prior to the era of confessional poets, Gertrude Simmons Bonnin a frank advocate who attempted to find middle ground among the white and Native American cultures made quite an impression with her essay “Why I Am a Pagan”.

Gertrude Simmons Bonnin is, “one of the most outspoken voices raised on behalf of Native Americans during the early twentieth century” according to Deborah Welch as she writes in the biography of Bonnin. Bonnin continues “the fight for American Indian freedom of religion” by challenging rather than rejecting traditional Christian values and beliefs in her essay “Why I Am Pagan” (qtd. In Creel, “Week Six – Gertrude Bonnin notes”).  Bonnin lives in world that is dominated by Christianity but she is not so quick to follow the Christian culture over her own Native American traditions simply because it is the norm. Bonnin’s essay, “Why I Am a Pagan” suggests the openness of believing in more than one God as “she embodied the need for the two cultures to live cooperatively within the same body of land” (Voices from the Gaps project at the University of Minnesota). Although Bonnin’s heritage is partially white she seems to relate and identity more with her Native American heritage that is displayed well in the essay.  Bonnin allows her readers to understand the beauty of God’s creations with vivid imagery through the “soft cadences of the river’s song” as if the rhythmic flow of the river speaks to her in a special way that many Native Americans cherish as part of their native traditions (802).  In addition Bonnin appeals to her readers sense of smell when she describes the wild prairie flowers by writing that they, “sooth my soul with their perfumed breath” as she walks along the embankment of the river (802).  Bonnin compliments her use of imagery with irony to give the essay more flavor by stating that Christianity is “the new superstition,” and the statement of, “jangling phrases of a bigoted creed” that once again symbolize her struggle between Christian and Native American customs (803). “Why I am a Pagan” is expressive in feeling and meaning while enriched with nothing less of brilliant imagery and lucid irony that represents the Native American values and views of the world in comparison to Christian values and views of the world.  Gertrude Simmons Bonnin struggles with two opposing forces of religion as she is torn between the two just the same as Charlotte Perkins Gilman is torn between her own ideas and her husband’s ideas in her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”. 

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, another important author in the nineteenth century “was widely known both in the United States and abroad for her incisive studies of woman's role and status in society (Hedges).   Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” addresses the issue of control and realism in a significant way that was not common among writers of her time as she discusses a wife’s place in the home and brings “complex ethical choices” to the forefront of many social issues that require a major shift or change (Penrose). In the story Gilman draws attention to the dissatisfaction of being a woman of this time who was controlled by her husband and expected to do as he says as a way of showing respect for him and doing so without questioning the reasons behind his decisions. The wife in Gilman’s story faces a harsh battle with depression, leaving her “forbidden to ‘work’” as directed by her doctor, which ultimately leads to her insanity (Gilman). “The Yellow Wallpaper” also utilizes irony in a rebellious nature when the wife goes against her husband’s wishes by writing, as she is to obey him, but hiding the fact that she has been writing does make her sick.  The wife acknowledges her sickness by saying, “it does exhaust me a good deal – having to be so slay about it” (Gilman).  “The theme has much to do about feeling restricted” which is an idea presented by Gilman (Williams, “Irony. "’The Story of An Hour’".). This feeling of being “restricted” pushed Gilman to “write and lecture on suffrage and woman's rights, and on the social reforms advocated by the Nationalist clubs” (Hedges).  “The Yellow Wallpaper” depicts a reality and theme for most women during the nineteenth century who were often controlled by their husbands with no say in the matter of what is or isn’t the best solution for them selves. 

Just the same, as the authors mentioned in my first letter these women have chosen to speak out through their poems and short stories to question a higher authority that is in control.   The extraordinary authors Sylvia Plath, Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman have taken social norms by storm questioning the impact these norms have on their lives.  All of these women have written powerful poems and stories that reach out and teach other women to question their role in society and question if that role is right for them as a way of expressing power in a society where they are the minority.

Hope you have enjoyed learning more about the American culture on Earth as much as I have.  Stay tuned, I will write again very soon.  Take care and wishing you well. 

Sincerely,

Serena Silver-Von Hagen