Marginalisation in Three Women by Sylvia Plath and Her Naked Skin by Rebecca Lenkiwicz

Goldsmiths, University of London.Department of Theatre and Performance

[Explore the ways in which traditionally marginalizedexperience is foregrounded in the work of any two writers

studied on the course]

PLAGIARISMThis is an extremely serious matter and any occurrence is always dealt with formally by the Board of Examiners. Please read carefully the following statement from the Examinations Office:“You are reminded that all work submitted as part of the requirements for any examination of the University of London must be expressed in your own words and incorporate your own ideas and judgements. Plagiarism – this is the presentation of another person’s thoughts or words as though they were your own – must be avoided, with particular care in course-work and essays and reports written in your own time. Direct quotations from the published or unpublished work of others must always be clearly identified as such by being placed inside quotation marks, and a full reference to their source must be provided in the proper form. Remember that a series of short quotations from several different sources, if not clearly identified as such, constitutes plagiarism, just as much as a single unacknowledged long quotation from a single source. Equally, if you summarise another person’s ideas or judgements, you must refer to that person in your text, and include the work referred to in your bibliography. Failure to observe these rules may result in an allegation of cheating. You should therefore consult your tutor or course convenor if you are in any doubt about what is permissible. Recourse to the services of ‘ghost writing’ agencies (for example in the preparation of essays or reports) is strictly forbidden, and students who make use of the services of such agencies render themselves liable for an academic penalty. Word-processing services which offer ‘correction/improvement of English’ should not be used”.Clearly, any instance of plagiarism within an essay, examination or dissertation, makes the whole work suspect. It will render your work invalid for examination and assessment purposes and undermines the entire value of apersonal and scholarly response to your subject.Self-plagiarism is also referred to in the following statement, also issued by the Examinations Office:

Candidate Number

33299967

Year of Study Year 2

Module Modernism and Postmodernity B- Women, Feminism and Playwriting

Module CodeDR52020A

Word Count 3710

Module Convenor

Ben Levitas

Tutor for thiselement

Deidre Osborne

“You are reminded that you may not present substantially the same material in any two pieces of work submitted for assessment, regardless of the form of assessment. For instance, you may not repeat substantially the same material in a formal written examination or in a dissertation it if has already formed part of any essay submitted for assessment. This does not prevent you from referring to the same texts, examples or case studies as appropriate, provided you do not merely duplicate the same material.”

Marginalisation is what occurs when a group of people

experience powerlessness and exclusion, being made to

feel less important or relegated to a lower position in

society. Those in traditionally marginalised groups must

learn to be bicultural, or fit in with the dominant

culture to be able to survive, even if they do not share

the same perspective as the status quo. Strong

objectivity, or feminist objectivity, supported by

Standpoint Theory is a term created by feminist theorist

Sandra Harding and is the theory that the understanding

of the perspectives of marginalised and oppressed

individuals creates a more objective understanding of the

world. Through the phenomenon of being the outsider-

within, these individuals are in a position to be able to

recognise unique behavioural traits that those in the

dominant culture are unable to recognise or understand.

In submitting this work I confirm I haveread and understood the regulations relatingto plagiarism and academic misconduct that Iaccepted when I submitted my assessment

“Standpoint theory gives voice to the marginalised groups

by allowing them to challenge the status quo as the

outsider within. The status quo representing the dominant

white male position of privilege.” 1(Buzzanell, 2003,

p53). In both Her Naked Skin, by Rebecca Lenkiewicz and

the poem Three Women by Sylvia Plath, there is evidence

of female marginalisation and the oppression women faced

in the patriarchal society. In Her Naked Skin, we explore

the sexual relationship between Celia and Eve, two women

from different social backgrounds incarcerated in

Holloway Prison for their actions as suffragettes.

Throughout history and at the time of writing, sexual

love and desire between women has been greeted with a

sense of scepticism, and the concept of ‘female

homosexuality’ and lesbianism was often completely

denied, although male homosexuality was acknowledged and

disgraced by society. The persecution these women faced

led to this minority collective to become marginalised by

society and not taken seriously. Three Women is a poem

1 Buzzanell, Patrice M. (2003). "A Feminist Standpoint Analysis of Maternity and Maternity Leave for Women with Disabilities". Women and Language 26 (2): 53–65.

that shares three women’s situations in regards to

fertility and child bearing. All three women represent

the rejection of motherhood through the telling of each

voice’s experience of pregnancy. Women have been

marginalised in society as it is often wrongly assumed

that the woman’s sole purpose is to reproduce. However,

Plath explores how the pressure of child bearing and

expectation from society is not realistic for women to

often achieve, with the dominant group (male) unable to

understand the difficulties associated with being and

becoming a mother. “All healthy women are biologically

potential mothers, but not all women are mothers in

practice; infertility, childlessness, conception,

paternity, pregnancy, childbirth, motherhood,

breastfeeding and care of dependent children are all

variable social concepts of behaviour which occur in

historically variable social relationships.”2

(Ramazanoglu, 1989, p70).

2 Caroline Ramazonoglu. (1989). Women Against Men- Feminist Knowledge of Women's Oppression. In: Feminism and the Contradictions of Oppression. London: Routledge. 70

Originally written for radio in 1962, Three Women

consists of three intertwining monologues, all

contextualised by a dramatic setting, ‘A maternity ward

and round about’ 3 (Plath, 1969). In this setting, the

three women are patients, each with their own story to

tell. Plath identifies three major situations using the

three voices to portray some form of female stereotype;

the adoring wife, the office worker/secretary and the

college student. Plath’s experiences of marginalisation

are important to note in regards to this poem, as Plath

felt like a victim to the men in her life: her father,

her husband and the male dominated literary world she

tried so desperately to break. This poem can be

understood as a response to these feelings of oppression,

with male figures in the poems able to be interpreted as

all male forces she encountered.

3 Sylvia Plath. (1981). Three Women. In: Ted Hughes The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath. New York: Buccaneer Books. 76.

At the beginning of the poem, all three women are

pregnant, and Plath explores the difference in their

situations as the poem ends. The first voice is going

into labour, but is very calm and almost ambivalent about

the process “I am dumb and brown, I am a seed about to

break”. 4(Plath, 1969). She identifies with the earth and

is characterised by its abundant fertility, rather than

the moon, often seen as a symbol of sterility in Plath’s

work. The pain described in her labour emphasises that

although women are biologically prepared to bear

children, the process of childbirth is not simple, and is

depicted with violence, “There is no miracle more cruel

than this. I am dragged by the horses, the iron hooves. I

last. I last it out. I accomplish a work” 5 (Plath, 1962,

p76). Though she will shed her “dead self” 6 (Plath, 1962,

p76) she must go through much pain first. The wife aims

for the image of the ‘perfectly achieving mother’, but

Plath creates a more human and relatable character in the

4 Sylvia Plath. (1981). Three Women. In: Ted Hughes The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath. New York: Buccaneer Books. 76.

5 Ibid.6 Ibid.

fact that destructive forces threaten her achievement.

The Second Voice is characterised by sterile, bleak

imagery, with constant reference to the colour white,

evoking a stark and clinical atmosphere. The secretary’s

voice recalls the exact moment when she realises she has

miscarried, the implication of her failure as a mother,

“when I first saw it, the small red seep, I did not

believe it”7 (Plath, 1962, p76). In a similar vein to the

wife, this struggle to ‘achieve’ is central to the second

voice, leading to her self-hatred and feelings of

inadequacy as a woman, “I can love my husband, who will

understand. Who will love me through the blur of my

deformity as if I had lost an eye, a leg, a tongue”.8

(Plath, 1962, p76). This element of inadequacy and

societal expectation is highlighted in Standpoint Theory,

“Women’s activity as institutionalised has a double

aspect- their contribution to subsistence, and their

contribution to childrearing…women as a sex are

institutionally responsible for producing both goods and

human beings and all women are forced to become the kinds

7 ibid8 Ibid.

of human beings who can do both.”9 The Second Voice is the

dominant voice in the poem, and her situation is

presented with more detail and emphasis than the other

two voices of Three Women. The language used in her

verses is heavy with mechanical imagery, in contrast to

the images of plants and nature used for the Wife

character, and the animals and plants in the Girl

character. She also ends the poem, with a hopeful

element, “I am a wife. The city waits and aches. The

little grasses crack through stone, and they are green

with life”10 (Plath, 1962, p79). This could be perceived

as an acceptance of her infertility, and her gratitude of

having a loving husband, or contradictorily, that she has

been able to conceive again and she is pregnant.

The third voice is of the college student, who can

be interpreted, according to Marta Perez Novales of the

9 Nancy M. Hartsock. (1998). The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Ground for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism: The Sexual Division of Labour. In: Virginia Held and Alison Jaggar The Feminist Standpoint Revisited and Other Essays. Oxford: Westview Press. 11710 Sylvia Plath. (1981). Three Women. In: Ted Hughes The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath. New York: Buccaneer Books. 79.

University of Barcelona, as a young woman who has fallen

pregnant against her will and has been raped, due to the

imagery we encounter. Novales theorises, “She experiences

her own biological fertility as "dangers: doves and words

J Stars and showers of gold - conceptions, conceptions!"

the "showers of gold" being an allusion to the classical

myth of Danae, who was impregnated by Zeus against her

will.11” The theory is then further explored and we

further are lead to understand how this Voice deals with

unwanted pregnancy. “The image of the "swan" with a

"white, cold wing", associated with a "snake" -a

traditional phallic symbol, and a symbol of evil in the

Bible-, also suggests rape, as in the legend of Zeus

adopting the form of a swan to rape Leda.”12 The theory

that the student character was raped is logical in terms

of her speech, the anger and fear she shows throughout

the poem.

11 Marta Perez Novales. (1993). THE THEME OF FEMALE CREATIVITY IN SYLVIA PLATH'S "THREE WOMEN. A POEM FOR THREE VOICES". Available: http://www.raco.cat/index.php/bells/article/viewFile/120311/164734. Last accessed 27/04/2015.

12 Ibid.

Each female character, or ‘voice’ in Three Women is

constantly under the dominance of the status quo, with

constant reference and comparisons being made between

these voices and the male figures each encounters in

their own experience. The term ‘flatness’, which is

prevalent in the poem, is solely used to describe men,

with the second voice describing the men in her office

as, “They were so flat! There was something about them

like cardboard, and now I had caught it.”13(Plath, 1962,

p76). Furthermore, this does not only draw attention to

the difference in body, but the implication that she has

‘caught it’ sounds like this ‘flatness’ is a disease, the

fact that she has miscarried makes her seem diseased and

abnormal. This reference to shape is evocative imagery

regarding the spherical nature of a woman during

pregnancy, the dome like aspect of their stomachs almost

cartoon like in comparison to the slimmer, flatter figure

of the men. This awareness of being so physically

different in carrying a child further isolates these

women. This idea of physical difference is again 13 Sylvia Plath. (1981). Three Women. In: Ted Hughes The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath. New York: Buccaneer Books. 77.

highlighted in the third Voice, “The doctors move among

us as if our bigness frightened the mind…They are to

blame for what I am, and they know it. They hug their

flatness like a type of health.” (Plath, 1962, p76).14 The

Third Voice distinguishes her “mountainy” self from the

“flatness” of those around her, who appear to not

understand the conflict in which she is going through.

Her awareness of another self, one more dark and powerful

has separated her from the one dimensional, ‘flat’ aspect

of her old self that was considered ‘normal’ by those

around her. She feels that anyone else experiencing the

same split condition would “go mad with it.”15 (Plath,

1962, 78). The blame she places on the doctors (a group

of men) is in reference to her rape and unwanted

pregnancy, as although men have to care for a child

paternally they are not physically bound to their unborn

child in the same way as a pregnant woman is to hers. “In

early pregnancy the stirring of the foetus felt like

ghostly tremors of my own body, later, like the movements

of a being imprisoned in me; but both sensations were my

14 Ibid.15 ibid.

sensations, contributing to my own sense of physical and

psychic space”.16 This roundness is something that these

men don’t understand, and the normality seems to be the

flatter, more typically masculine form, “It is these men

I mind. They are so jealous of anything that is not flat!

They are jealous gods that would have the whole world

flat because they are”.17 (Plath, 1962, 78).

“Men” seem to be a symbol not only for the “normal” world

the poet links to her normal self, but also, form,

control, repression and expectation, whereas these women

are connected to nature, and seem to think more deeply

than these men.

“The identification of women with the physical ability to

nurture children within their bodies, and to bring them

into the social world through a mysterious but messily

physical process of birth, does seem to put women really

16 Nancy M. Hartsock on Adrienne Rich in Of Woman Born. (1998). The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Ground for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism: The Sexual Division of Labour. In: Virginia Held and Alison Jaggar The Feminist Standpoint Revisited and Other Essays. Oxford: Westview Press. 116.17 Sylvia Plath. (1981). Three Women. In: Ted Hughes The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath. New York: Buccaneer Books. 77.

closer to nature than men”. 18 Presenting women in this

light in comparison to men harks back to Hartsock and

Standpoint theory again,

“Women and men then, grow up with personalities affected

by different boundary experiences, differently

constructed and experienced inner and outer worlds, and

preoccupations with different relational issues.”19

Hartsock continues, “This early experience forms an

important ground for the female sense of self as

connected to the world and the male sense of self as

separate, distinct, and even disconnected…as a result,

women define and experience themselves and men do not”.20

Plath presents these three women as having been

marginalised due to the unrealistic expectations pushed

upon them by society to achieve perfection in motherhood.

18 Caroline Ramazanoglu. (1989). Feminist Knowledge of Women's Oppression. In: Carolina Ramazanoglu Feminism andthe Contradictions of Oppression. London: Routledge. 70.

19 Nancy M. Hartsock. (1998). The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Ground for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism: The Sexual Division of Labour. In: Virginia Held and Alison Jaggar The Feminist Standpoint Revisited and Other Essays. Oxford: Westview Press. 117.

20 Ibid.

This striving to achieve what is perceived by society to

be the most normal and natural thing for a woman to go

through is what unites these three women, and it has been

argued that each of these women represent Plath at some

stage of her life and her battle with fertility and

motherhood. This patriarchal expectation and desire for

children required the mate to be prepared to give her

life to her child, and being a mother.” The couple is a

fundamental unity with its two halves riveted together,

and the cleavage of society along with the line of sex is

impossible. Here we find the basic trait of woman: she is

the Other in a totality where the two components are

necessary to one another”,21 (Simone De Beauvoir, 1949,

p679). This idea of the ‘other’ and masculine dominance

is further explained, “In truth woman has not been

socially emancipated through man’s need- sexual desire

and the desire for offspring- which makes the male

dependent for satisfaction upon the female”.22 (Simone De

Beauvoir, 1949).

21 Simone De Beauvoir, Extracts from The Second Sex (1953 trans. Into English) extract from Alice S. Rossi, ed. TheFeminist Papers, New York: Bantum Books, 1973 p 672-705.22 Ibid.

Her Naked Skin was premiered in 2008 at The National

Theatre, and was the first original play written by a

female writer that was performed there. Lenkiewicz

explores in this play the struggle for love and equality

for two lesbian suffragettes from different class

backgrounds; at a time when having homosexual desire

(between women) was seen as ‘pathological’. Nineteenth

century doctors and physicians believed that lesbianism

stemmed from cerebral abnormalities, and was an inherited

diseased condition of the central nervous system,

“ The new scientific ‘knowledge’ defining lesbianism as a

medical problem, combined with society’s anxieties over

women’s increased independence, ensured that romantic

friendships, previously tolerated and encouraged, would

now be regarded as deviant, anti-social, and dangerous”23

(Susan Kingsley Kent, 1987, p53).

To some suffragette women during this period, refusal to

take part in heterosexual relationships was intrinsically

linked to their political standing: these women did not

23 Susan Kingsley Kent (1987). Sex and Suffrage in Britain, 1860-1914. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 53.

want to be the property of their husbands, and found more

attraction, desire and understanding in women,

“The lesbian feminist case against institutionalised

heterosexuality, however, has proved divisive since most

women remain self identified as heterosexual…problem

could also be posed as one of insufficient consideration

of the potential or more fulfilling women experience

sexuality, what they know of sex, and what they regard as

normal, acceptable, pleasurable”24. (Ramazanoglu, 1989,

p156)

Celia’s relationship with her husband William is not

initially presented as unhappy as much as ambivalent.

When asked about whether she understands her husband, Eve

responds with,

“I’m not supposed to. I’m his wife. We grew up together.

I adored him from age eight to eleven. So I suppose we

had three good years”.25 (Lenkiewicz, 2013, p238)

24 Caroline Ramazanoglu. (1989). Divisions between Women- Into the Impassé. In: Carolina Ramazanoglu Feminism and the Contradictions of Oppression. London: Routledge. 70.25

Rebecca Lenkiewicz. (2013). Act One Scene Twelve. In: Rebecca Lenkiewicz Rebecca Lenkiewicz, Plays: Her Naked Skin. London: Faber and Faber. 238

Celia describes a scenario in the prison yard between the

suffragettes with fondness, and this is where we can see

her definition of love,

‘One was about eighteen the other perhaps thirty. The

girl’s hair kept blowing into her face and eyes and her

companion kept brushing it away for her because the girl

needed to keep her hands warm in her pockets. The friend

understood that.’26 (Lenkiewicz, 2013, p271)

As Celia and Eve are from such different social

backgrounds, their relationship is instantly unequal. For

Celia, it seems that this romantic affair between her and

Eve is passionate and dramatic, perhaps an escape from

her unfulfilled marriage,

“Women are prisoners in their own home. They don’t even

realise it”.27 (Lenkiewicz, 2013, p247). Even though she

has never been with a woman sexually before, she talks of

their relationship in a very laidback, casual way,

“Because I haven’t. With a woman. I’ve had affairs,

darling. Just a few”.28 (Lenkiewicz, 2013, p267). Celia is

also much older than Eve, and has five children of her 26 ibid.27 ibid.28 ibid.

own. As the play progresses, we learn of Celia’s sexual

dissatisfaction with William, and we feel sympathy for

her character for being in such an uncomfortable

situation, when she asks her husband to turn on the

lights,

“ I felt your cold sweat of relief every time it was

done. I felt you reclaim yourself…Weeping. You put all

your bodily effort in to keeping your tears silent. So

much so that I didn’t turn around and ask you what was

wrong. Or, try to touch you again”29 (Lenkiewicz, 2013,

p271). However, Eve is in love with Celia, and is almost

a daughter figure, possessed by the idea of this older,

wiser woman. Eve admits only ever to have slept with one

man, and the thought repulsed her,

“He always wanted the lamp turned up full. He said he

wanted to see the things I was doing to him and that I

should see them too… [I was] old enough. I wasn’t a

child. I felt nausea.”30 (Lenkiewicz, 2013, p166).

Lenkiewicz presents the audience with two types of

lesbian relationships found in the suffrage movement: one

29 ibid.30 ibid.

born out of genuine love and desire for another woman,

and one born of intrigue and the feelings of freedom

found outside a traditional heterosexual marriage.

Although this affair is kept secret, (fortunately for

these characters), the perception of woman in the eyes of

men in this play is negative, especially towards the

suffragettes. Force-feeding was used on Suffragettes who

went on hunger strike once they had been sent to prison

in an act of protest. Usually associated with women who

were well educated, it was traditionally a method used on

women held in asylums and was a controversial method,

frowned upon by many members of the public. In an

exchange between William and Curzon, William makes a

remark about Celia,

“Hasn’t lost her appetite lately?”31(Lenkiewicz, 2013,

p258) This crude remark on the hunger strike protest is

later followed with,

“Go on Cain. Save your money and spend it on your wife.

Buy her a square meal. Or a gag” (Lenkiewicz, 2013,

p260). This disregard and mockery toward the suffragettes

31 ibid.

was not uncommon in this era, as these men thought these

women were being reactionary and pathetic.

The patriarchal world and the rise of the

‘sexologist’ gave those that disagreed with homosexuality

to attack lesbians under the guise of ‘science’.

“If lesbians were ‘perverted’, ‘inverted’ women who

preferred female companionship, then the suffrage

movement seemed a lesbian hotbed… He32 claimed that

women’s loving relationships were based in eroticism and

pathological. He established that lesbians could be

mannish, working class and cross dressers or feminine,

genteel and educated women”33 (Zimmerman, 2000, p742).

This idea of ‘inverted’ sexuality led to the

medicalization of lesbians. By the mid to late 19th

century, Freud’s ‘Hysteria’ (or sometimes female

hysteria) came to refer to what is today considered to be

‘sexual dysfunction’. Typical treatment was massage of

the patient’s genitatilia, administered by a physician,

32 ‘He’ is referring to British Sexologist Havelock Ellis33 Bonnie Zimmerman. (2000). Suffrage Movement. In: BonnieZimmerman Lesbian Histories and Cultures: An Encyclopaedia. New York: Garland Publishing Inc. 742

and later on, vibrations or sprays of water to cause

orgasm,

“The American neurologist George Beard defined inversion

as when ‘men become women and women men, in their tastes,

conduct, character, feelings and behaviour’. His

definition established the homosexual as the opposite of

their biological sex, based on the idea that the “third

sex,” or homosexual, experienced a complete reversal of

gender role and identity.”34

It seems that although Lenkiewicz explores fairly

obvious lesbian stereotypes for characters, and does not

delve as deeply into Eve and Celia’s relationship as she

could, but Her Naked Skin and Plath’s Three Women

illustrate how as a female, from two different societies,

we can be marginalised. At the forefront of this

marginalisation is the fact that these characters are

women, and both 1960’s American and late 19th Century

Britain was run by the patriarchy (as they still are

today). All characters encountered in the plays are under34 Conference Proceedings – Thinking Gender – the NEXT

Generation UK. Postgraduate Conference in Gender Studies,

21-22 June 2006, University of Leeds, UK.

the dominance of men, and fit into Hegel’s slave/master

theory.

“Hegel’s analysis of the struggle inherent in the

master/slave relationship gave rise to the insight that

oppression and injustice are better analysed and

understood from the point of view of the slave than from

that of the master.”35 Therefore, in order to understand

how a minority have been marginalised, we must understand

primarily the perspective of the oppressed. Both the play

and the poem demonstrate the hardships and injustice

faced as a woman, and the expectation from the patriarchy

to convene to a societal norm, whether that norm is a

heterosexual marriage or being able to bear children.

Bibliography

35 T.Bowell. (2008). Feminist Standpoint Theory. Available: http://www.iep.utm.edu/fem-stan/. Lastaccessed 29/04/2015.

1. Bonnie Zimmerman. (2000). Suffrage Movement. In:

Bonnie Zimmerman Lesbian Histories and Cultures: An

Encyclopaedia. New York: Garland Publishing inc.

2. Bowell. (2008). Feminist Standpoint Theory. Available:

http://www.iep.utm.edu/fem-stan/. Last accessed

29/04/2015

3. Caroline Ramazanoglu. (1989). Divisions between Women-

Into the Impasse. In: Carolina Ramazanoglu Feminism and

the Contradictions of Oppression. London: Routledge.

4. Conference Proceedings – Thinking Gender – the NEXT

Generation UK. Postgraduate Conference in Gender Studies,

21-22 June 2006, University of Leeds, UK.

5. Marta Perez Novales. (1993). THE THEME OF FEMALE

CREATIVITY IN SYLVIA PLATH'S "THREE WOMEN. A POEM FOR

THREE VOICES". Available:

http://www.raco.cat/index.php/bells/article/viewFile/1203

11/164734. Last accessed 27/04/2015.

6. Nancy M. Hartsock. (1998). The Feminist Standpoint:

Developing the Ground for a Specifically Feminist

Historical Materialism: The Sexual Division of Labour.

In: Virginia Held and Alison Jaggar The Feminist

Standpoint Revisited and Other Essays. Oxford: Westview

Press.

7. Rebecca Lenkiewicz. (2013). Act One Scene Twelve. In:

Rebecca Lenkiewicz Rebecca Lenkiewicz, Plays: Her Naked

Skin. London: Faber and Faber.

8. Simone De Beauvoir, Extracts from The Second Sex (1953

trans. Into English) extract from Alice S. Rossi, ed. The

Feminist Papers, New York: Bantum Books.

9. Susan Kingsley Kent (1987). Sex and Suffrage in

Britain, 1860-1914. Princeton: Princeton University

Press.

10. Sylvia Plath. (1981). Three Women. In: Ted Hughes The

Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath. New York: Buccaneer

Books.