The Role Of Gender Roles From A Young Age And Plath s Daddy

females being condemned to a life of dissatisfaction and depression. It is crucial to understand the significance of gender roles from a young age and Plath’s ‘Daddy’ â€Å"fits perfectly into the Freudian concept of the Electra complex† . This is evident in the repetitive structure of the words, short and structured lines and the continuous use of the rhyme (/u/) throughout the poem which forms an almost bleak nursery-rhyme. The speaker s obsession with her father is revealed by the imago , an individual’s fixation on the childhood image of their father with various dark and heavy adjectives such as â€Å"black†, â€Å"marble-heavy†, and â€Å"grey† symbolising the unresolved anxiety within an abandoned child. The speaker remains in the fearful state of†¦show more content†¦The determiner â€Å"every† suggesting women naturally succumb to becoming ‘male-identified’ as radical feminists believe women â€Å"have been conditioned to identify with the male aggressor, to be aroused by male dominance.† Females are â€Å"conditioned† to conform to males through the patriarchal family, this is clear as Plath â€Å"makes a model† of her father through her husband, Ted Hughes, as she needed a substitute male figure. Hughes acknowledged this in his poem ‘The Shot’ , Your real target stood behind me/ Your Daddy†, arguing that Plath projected her unresolved issues onto him, when the â€Å"real target† for her depression was her father. This exemplifies the belief that women â€Å"have been conditioned to identify with the male†. The poem has a form of sixteen stanzas with five lines in each, reflecting her built up emotions over the decades as free verse such as in ‘Ariel’ would make her appear vulnerable. The concluding line â€Å"Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through† condemns her father’s tyrannical nature through the repetition of Daddy, and addition of bastard to make this denunciation final. The tone articulated in the final line is that of a liberated woman, perhaps why Plath is seen as a feminist figure by many. Thus, ‘Daddy’ depicts how identity is formed for the archetypal feminine figure through emancipation from the authoritarian father figure. Similarly, the excessive reliance on paternal figures is evident through Clarissa in ‘Enduring Love’ whose father passed