ORCID
https://orcid.org/0009-0001-8753-1175
Creation Date
5-1-2026
Degree
Bachelor of Arts (B.A.)
Major(s)
English
Document Type
Immediate Campus-Only Restricted Access
Abstract
Sylvia Plath’s poetry, written during the 1950s and 1960s, has achieved acclaim for exposing the dangers of confining women to the domestic sphere. In doing so, Plath uses allusions to mythology. However, few Plath scholars focus on the poet’s relationship with myth. The scholars who do analyze Plath’s use of myth often compare Plath to male myth theorists whom Plath would have studied as a student of literature. While it is perhaps unsurprising that Plath would be discussed alongside Freud and Eliot, it is surprising that more scholars have not considered Plath’s relationship with female theorists who write about myth like Alicia Ostriker. I would like to extend Ostriker’s argument as it applies to Plath by examining Plath’s use of the Electra myth over the course of her life. Plath wrestles with the danger of perpetuating stories that give men power over the women in them because in rewriting the Electra myth, she confines her first Electra speakers to subsidiary roles. However, Plath consistently revises the Electra myth in multiple poems, giving her speakers more anger and agency with each poem. She, therefore, clings to myth only to distance her speakers and herself from the myth later. In this thesis, which is broken into two sections, I will make the case that Plath is indeed a “feminist revisionist mythmaker” as Ostriker suggests. I will also argue that Plath’s revisions of the Electra myth reveal that while Plath felt compelled to reference myths in her poems about grief, she also grappled with the consequences of using myth.
Date Defended
4-24-2026
Thesis Director
Dr. Christie Collins
Second Committee Member
Dr. Robert West
Third Committee Member
Dr. Christopher Snyder
Recommended Citation
Feasel, Rowan G., "Sylvia Plath’s “Desultory” Daughters: A Poet’s Revisions of the Electra Myth" (2026). Honors Theses. 190.
https://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/honorstheses/190
Rights Statement
"Sylvia Plath’s 'Desultory' Daughters: A Poet’s Revisions of the Electra Myth ", Copyright 2026 by Rowan G. Feasel. My thesis may be used for non-profit educational and research purposes. Note that in addition to my own works of authorship, this thesis may contain and provide citations to third party content. If your use goes beyond fair use, you would need to contact those rights holders for additional licensing/permissions.
