superman and paula browns snowsuit by sylvia plath

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This essay is going to be looking at the short story of Sylvia Plath Superman and Paula Browns New Snowsuit. Aspects that will be looked at will be areas such as the comparisons of reality and fantasy, the use of colour to symbolise innocence along with the possibility that the story may be auto-biographical of the writers life. Sylvia Plath was born into a time that was male dominated and because of her controversial work has been described as a victim in a male dominated society by feminists like Sambrook (1990 pg 10). Wagner describes Plaths struggles in a male society as ’Wagner –Martin Claims Plath is broadly feminist in her own talent…and her anger that her fame would be more difficult to achieve and her work judged by different standards because she was a woman’ Gill (2005 pg 8) A lot of her semi biographical work such as The bell jar has female characters who can’t achieve their potenticial because of the male dominated society. Sylvia Plath writes about realism a lot in her work which was seen at the time to be ‘necessary because the actualities of women’s lives had been overlooked.’ Reynolds (1999 pg170). To write about ‘reality was to engage in revolutionary and revisionist acts of story telling’ Reynolds (1999 pg 168). Sylvia Plath uses her work to tell us of her own domestic life. It could be said that the story ‘Superman and Paula Browns New Snowsuit’ is one of them as references to her father and the unusual relationship with the mother reflects her own relationships with her parents . Feminists thought it important to the voicing of ‘domestic ideology’ which was a period of idealisation of family, marriage at young age, women returning home when not needed in work. It was designed to keep women in their place at that time. This can be seen in the story with the description of the table setting ‘candles were set on the white linen tablecloth,
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