Book contents
- Sylvia Plath in Context
- Sylvia Plath in Context
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Chronology
- Abbreviations and Textual Note
- Key Archives
- Introduction
- Part I Literary Contexts
- Part II Literary Technique and Influence
- Part III Cultural Contexts
- Part IV Sexual and Gender Contexts
- Chapter 16 ‘Minor Scandal’: Lesbian Writing Contexts for The Bell Jar
- Chapter 17 ‘Woman-haters Were Like Gods’: The Bell Jar and Violence Against Women in 1950s America
- Chapter 18 Plath and the Culture of Hygiene
- Part V Political and Religious Contexts
- Part VI Biographical Contexts
- Part VII Plath and Place
- Part VIII The Creative Afterlife
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 18 - Plath and the Culture of Hygiene
from Part IV - Sexual and Gender Contexts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 August 2019
By
Edited by
Book contents
- Sylvia Plath in Context
- Sylvia Plath in Context
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Chronology
- Abbreviations and Textual Note
- Key Archives
- Introduction
- Part I Literary Contexts
- Part II Literary Technique and Influence
- Part III Cultural Contexts
- Part IV Sexual and Gender Contexts
- Chapter 16 ‘Minor Scandal’: Lesbian Writing Contexts for The Bell Jar
- Chapter 17 ‘Woman-haters Were Like Gods’: The Bell Jar and Violence Against Women in 1950s America
- Chapter 18 Plath and the Culture of Hygiene
- Part V Political and Religious Contexts
- Part VI Biographical Contexts
- Part VII Plath and Place
- Part VIII The Creative Afterlife
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Laura Perry argues that Plath’s concerns with purity and cleanliness take the form of a poetics of hygiene. This poetics engages in conversation with a transatlantic discourse evident in post-war advertisements and government publications that trafficked in mid-century anxieties about biological containment, sexual purity and interracial contact. Perry shows how Plath links hygiene to gender, geopolitics, and poetic form throughout her writings. She reframes Plath’s search for transcendental purity by showing how this purity is embodied and historically located.
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- Sylvia Plath in Context , pp. 191 - 200Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019
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