• Women's Studies Review
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.207-237
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• 2009

This paper aims to show that Sylvia Plath searched for the female poetic voice, by tracing the aspects of her early poems. This study attempts to demonstrate that Plath disclosed the violence of male-centered literary tradition against women poets although her early poems seem to be written from a male point of view. In her poems, "Snakecharmer", "Full Fathom Five", and "The Colossus", it is particularly found that Plath hoped to be empowered with the poet's voice, which nevertheless resulted almost in silence or babbling. Plath, indeed, devised a strategy in order to show that, for women poets, the patriarchal literary tradition is a destructive power rather than a generative one. Namely, women poets are not able to fully grow out of a male-oriented tradition. On that account, she tried to represent in her early poems herself who sought to be empowered with an authoritative voice, invoking the male muse, but this ended in failure. Plath was skeptical about the way she had desired to find her own voice by relying upon the male muse, and she needed to free herself from that literary tradition.