Plath’s diaries show that she felt restricted by her mother’s constant attention. Plath combines four separate but related sets of imagery the Medusa jelly fish, the Medusa gorgon in the Greek myth religious imagery and maritime imagery. There is no regular rhyme scheme, though Plath uses a range of poetic devices for example, enjambment as in lines one and two of the second stanza repetition assonance as in ‘breath’, ‘dead’ and ‘moneyless’ in stanza six' consonance as in ‘blood’ and ‘bells’ also in stanza six. There are eight five-line stanzas known as quintains and one concluding single-line stanza. This is evident in Plath’s poem “Medusa.” However, she needed to break free of her in order to establish her own creative identity. The application of Freudian analysis to Plath’s poems is, of course, a matter of debate.ĭespite later assumptions by those who have studied Plath and critical comments by Sylvia herself about her mother, the letters she wrote show love and respect. This suggests that “Daddy” represents an Electra complex - love/hate relationship between daughter and father - whereas this poem, by extension, represents a distorted Oedipus complex. The latter can be compared to the Greek gorgon whose snake-covered head was fatal to men who gazed upon it.Ī Freudian interpretation can be applied to “Medusa” and “Daddy”. Jellyfish also belong to the genus of creatures known as Medusa because of their umbrella shape and tentacles. The jellyfish imagery in “Medusa” links to Plath’s mother, Aurelia, as the name of the moon jellyfish is Aurelia Aurita. This should be born in mind when studying this poem and ‘Daddy’. The opposite seems to be the case they are remembered as warm, outgoing people. (See studies by Jon Rosenblatt and Paul Breslin). It is worth noting that research undertaken by biographers into Sylvia Plath’s family have found no evidence that her father was a Nazi or her mother was cold. Plath had already written “Daddy,” a poem of exorcism in which she distanced herself from her dead father’s influence in “Medusa,” she does the same with her mother, Aurelia. “Medusa” was written just a few months before Plath’s death in late 1962, when she was writing what she believed were “the best poems of life".
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