A escrita de si nos diários de Sylvia Plath

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the adult stage diaries belonging to the poet Sylvia Plath, covering the period from 1950 to 1962. To better understand the characteristics that make up the overall of these diaries, I turn to Philippe Lejeune, in The autobiographical pact and "Diaries of French girls in the nineteenth century." In the opening chapter, I associate her writing of herself to the strengthening of the modern notion of individual as well as the split between public and private space, notions that have been built throughout history. From this initial panorama, in the course of this work, I try to reflect on the women's issue, as well as the relationship between gender and authorship, through the intimate writing left by the poet. To this end, I resort mainly to the texts A room of One's Own and "Professions for women", by Virginia Woolf, as well as to the work The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir. I seek to reflect also on the construction process of the self carried out by Plath within her diaries, since this kind of writing makes possible what we call "archiving of oneself". Thus, I understand the text of the diary as a discourse, a narrative that, as such, is endowed with fictional aspects. I work then with the multiple identities experienced by Sylvia Plath, and with the different images and interpretations that others made of her.