Feminism: Draft Version

         The movement I am going to talk about is Feminism: a theme I found at Sylvia Plath’s poetry. This woman was an American poet, married with Ted Hughes, that commited suicide after years of depression, and one aspect of this depression was the infidelity of her husband who left her for another woman, just after they had two children. Her life and suicide inspired a lot of feminist coments, that said her husband was the main responsible of her death.

         But the Feminist movement did not start with Sylvia Plath at the 20^th century. It is thought that any resistance of the woman to the society is a beginning of feminism. One example of this is the Celtic women who defended themselves from the men’s attack.

         But we can talk about feminism as a movement just after the Enlightenment, with women as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the Marquis de Condorcet championing women’s education ( http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/glossary/headerindex.html). I think this moment was when women became to have the opportunity to talk, before the Enlightement women were only an object, men’s object, and at 19^th century women started to fight for becoming free, and because they wanted to have their own thinkings, it is at that moment when we can talk about a feminist movement. I think that the Celtic women were only an example of women that fought for their lifes, but the most important example of the free thinking of the women started at the 19^th century.

         There is a lot of points that started the Feminist movement, for example:

1)     the used of male nouns, never female. Nowadays we can find lots of words that generalize, for example, professions: before “ salesman”;  now “ sales assistant”.

2)     Another point was that women were not hired because they must be at home taking care of their children.

3)     Women had not the oportunity of studying, because I think men thought women had not intelligence, women were in the world for being at home.

         Well, there are more points, but I do not want to talk about the reasons that provoqued the Feminist movement. I wanted to talk about women poets on history.

         During this year we have talked about Poetry from the beginning to the present day, and I have seen more men poets than women. We can talk about Mary Shelley or Ezra Pound, and of course, Sylvia Plath ( but this last woman lived in the 20^th century). We know that women could never write, because as I said before, women had not the oportunity of studying. It was not well- seen women writers. And we know too that there were women that wrote, but they must take pseudonyms.

         Sylvia Plath became a good example of feminist because she wrote about her life, her experiences and of her husband. Throw her poetry we can see she was against the acts of her husband, we can see that she suffered because her husband was infidel. When she died her husband published her poems, and everybody could know all about Sylvia’s concerns. Some women started to criticize Ted Hughes, and we can talk about a feminist movement stated by Sylvia Plath’s poems.

         One woman that talked about Sylvia Plath’s poetry was Janice Markey on her book called: A New Tradition. The Poetry of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton and Adrienne Rich: A study of Feminism and Poetry. Published in 1988. ( http://www.cddc.vt.edu/femisnism/lit.html).

         We could listened to a record of a conversation at the Poetry class, where two persons were asked about what they thought of the relation of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, and we could see that although nowadays Ted Hughes is accused of murdering. Women think the he caused her death psychologically. And he wrote poems where he acussed himself. But i think he said this because he did not want to lose popularity.

         In conclusion I think women started the Feminist Movement because they were very opressed by men, they were threated as objects, as they had no mind. Women were only for taking care of their children and for being good wifes, but they wanted to be more important in society. They wanted to be self- sufficient and they wanted to have their own life. During all history we can see very good women writers, but they could never recognize their talent. The Femisnist movement was a good thing for demostrating the possibilities of women, that they can be as good as men. I think it would be better that men and women left their war of sexs and started to recognize the talent of a writer as a writer not as a woman writer or as a man writer.