ABSTRACT--Samirafiq A Comparative Study of selected poems of Sylvia Plath and Kamala Das Though Sylvia Plath
happens to be American by birth, and Kamala Das Indian by birth, a comparative study of some of their
selected poems has yielded some interesting insights on the universality of female
experience, the growth of the feminist movement and the rendering of female experience in a unified idiom. In other words though the two women poets have a different cultural and historical background, and the images and symbols are diverse, yet they echo the conviction and the fury of the feminists at limitations placed on women in a male dominated society. Childbirth, wifehood, the relegating of a secondary status to women are some ideas that are dealt with by both poets and they in each of their worlds explore the gross injustices done to women.Two poems from Sylvia Plath’s posthumously published collection of poems namely “Lady Lazarus” and “The Applicant” which have received much critical acclaim for their feminist interpretations serve as interesting contrasts to Kamala Das’s poems “The Descendents” and “The Old Playhouse”. The following lines of Plath’s poem establish the superiority of woman by asserting that woman is a unique composition and after having opened up her metaphorical skull or personality, it is impossible to define her: Not man nor demigod could put together The scraps of rusted reverie, the wheels Of notched tin platitudes concerning weather, Perfume, politics, and fixed ideals. Das in her poem however attempts to give identity the narrator of the poem who is a woman. In the following lines it can be seen that a woman plays many roles, however there is touch of irony, because the woman acquires mixed roles of saint or sinner while the man remains aloof in his extremely secure world like a ‘sword in it sheath’: Anywhere and , Everywhere, I see the one who calls himself If in this world, he is tightly packed like the Sword in its sheath. Just as Plath has rebelled against a male ordered world where everything is defined through male oriented images and has attempted to free womanhood of the construct of ‘woman’, Das too acknowledges the invincibility of the male ego anywhere and everywhere. But unlike Plath she instead of trying to free the woman of male imposed shackles tries to bring female experience at par with male experience. Dr. Sami Rafiq, Dept. of English, Faculty of Arts, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India