The Role of Compulsory Heterosexuality and Male Power in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich Hannah J. Anain College

On the surface, Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich seem like the most dissimilar of contemporary poets: Rich identified as Jewish, lesbian, and a feminist, while Plath considered herself religiously apathetic and although some scholars interpret the writing of Esther Greenwood in The Bell Jar as an admission of queerness, she publicly commented on neither her sexuality nor her status as a feminist, although this may be because she died prior to the second-wave feminist movement. However, as Rich wrote in her essay cc “women are all, in different ways and to different degrees [compulsory heterosexuality’s] victims,” and the fact that these women lived and wrote during the same era surrounded by the constant threat of male power is enough to consider them comparable in experience (645). Rich’s essay explores the darkest parts of patriarchal influence, including the characteristics of male power and various methods and patterns in the reinforcement of heterosexuality on women, and each of these poets addresses and rejects them in their work. Although male power and compulsory heterosexuality impacted them differently in their lives and they incorporate these types of experiences into their poetry differently, it is the barest, rawest...