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Plath's Possession Aesthetic: Visual and Object Libido

Tisha Nemeth-Loomis

Sylvia Plath was incited by visuals with an ability to poetically archive what her eyes
caressed. Her work infers that everyday objects were worth noticing and desiring, and Plath's
need to enliven objects suggested her necessity to possess them. The poet's fondness for ordinary
objects was evident in her use of personification, and I will explore her tendency to apply
unnamable presences, energies, and abilities to the things of her world. Plath's remarkable
attention to objects suggests fixation, aptly described by Sigmund Freud as "object libido" (Freud
78). This condition activates visual embracing or hoarding, and may indicate more than
enthusiasm for seeing or possessing objects. Two of Plath's poems, "Tale of a Tub" and "Black
Rook in Rainy Weather" demonstrate an anomalous object libido in which items are perceived
and handled in an unexpected, intimate manner. It is essential to include why Plath's desire was
assuaged by placing value on objects, as the result was essential to Plath's creative process. Her
visual possession, integration of self into objects, and notable transference presented a greater
challenge, one that cannot be harnessed or possessed: love.
Plath's poems captured her love for objects, a psychological investment that was noticed
by her husband, Ted Hughes, "This genius for love she certainly had, and not in the abstract. She
didn't quite know to manage it; it possessed her. It fastened her to cups, plants, creatures, vistas,
people in a steady ecstasy. As much of all that she could, she hoarded into her poems." (qtd. in
Holbrook 279). Plath employed a visual exactitude which indicated surprising states of
perceptual awareness; it filled her poems and objects with curiosity and dimension. When
engaged in these states of visual connection, it is possible that Plath attempted to integrate herself
with images and objects. For Plath, objects surpassed the mundane; they were unique, enviable
entities.
Sigmund Freud's 1914 paper "On Narcissism" addresses how one might have this
perspective and how it is enacted, and his theory of object libido explains how one transfers love
into inanimate objects. Freud formally describes object libido as a dueling system of the self-
preserving (libido) instinct and the ego (agency of repression) instinct (Freud 68).
Two of Plath's poems vividly demonstrate how libido could be drawn from objects. Her
persona poem, "Tale of a Tub," uses Jonathan Swift's eponymously titled story to convey a
Plath Profiles 33

journey of mankind's universal improvement. Plath upends Swift's intended message and
narrative quest by modernizing and exploiting the poem's voyage. In her version, the tub has a
higher mission: to convey messages and also receive her visual attention. Plath might have used
Swift's poem as a template to tackle her own personal issues which strayed from Swift's original
content.
Instead, the poet reconfigures the narrative and redirects the focus: a desire to comply with her
eyes, her obsession with seeing, and owning. "Tale of a Tub" delivers clues to support her own
object libido with a keen attention to items such as washbowl, towel, window, and tub (Plath 24-
25). Plath's first stanza asserts that eyes are more than bodily organs; they are agencies which
absorb and "record" images, and capable of great feats. If the eye is capable of seeing this way,
then the seen object must serve a critical function because it provides answers. The object's
essentiality to the poet is observable in the second stanza where objects reveal secrets to Plath
and correspond with her – or choose not to. Utilitarian items transcend their outward appearance;
for Plath, objects possess value because they contain messages and meaning. Plath maintained
that we are at fault, even guilty if we fail to perceive objects' messages to us, and that a failed
communication occurs (24). Readers become complicit with Plath's observations: we are also to
blame if we choose to ignore objects' omens. Plath warns that the wash tub could even breed its
own compendium of omens (25). In the tub's presence, Plath re-sees it beyond a mere object of
domesticity; she inventively translates potential meanings and alternative realities. The tub also
operates as a sounding board as the poet could address the tub, hold discourse, and convey
intimate concerns to it which include her stifled dreams (25). Objects could fill and appease
Plath's insatiateness even as she ambitiously pursued answers and reasons; the tub provided
direction for the poet, and it reminded her to move past absolute facts, even if facts are an
intrusion when the eyes are closed (25).
While this discovery is valuable to the poet, it also leads to an unsettling truth: what lies
beyond fact are dreams, and even dreams may not necessarily contain enough imaginative
potency to surpass one's own reality of self (25). As Plath realizes this truth, fact then becomes
an intruder that pierces deeply even into one's dreams—and objects, rather than people—stand as
witness to the poet's deflating self-revelation. Plath's dreams within "intransigent lines" (re toxic
topics, handled best by deflecting her realization. Easing her discomfort might include using
objects as a listening piece for her confessions. The poet admits her dreams were static and she
Nemeth-Loomis 34

displays her vulnerability to the tub though it is unseeable, behind her back, privy to her
confessions (25). Plath's choice to confide in objects rather than people provides compelling
insight into her personality, as she fulfills her need for correspondence through objects in the
absence of human companionship. Concurrently, the tub stands incommunicado with the poet as
its presence glitters, suggesting beauty, self-sufficiency, and inaccessibility. Plath's objects seem
to be embedded within her moments of feeling, and she transfers her disappointment and
personal secrets into them, perhaps as a form of object attachment. A disturbing inequality exists
as Plath's objects are peculiarly separate and not effected by her attention, regardless of her
concentration.
At her height of visual possession, it becomes noticeable that the poet is accessing her
own disquieting foresight: objects are desirable because they are possibly the only things which
remain true.
This is a startling statement for Plath because it rejects humans' capacity for reliability
and loyalty, and instead entrusts these qualities to objects. A puzzling hierarchy is established,
and in an unsettling way, Plath's objects demonstrate a strange resistance to the poet, a point of
concern as she engages in her own brand of object libido. To commune with objects and
interpret their messages led to questionable results, which left her emotionally expended. "Tale
of a Tub" demonstrates Plath's interpretation of objects as viable personal possessions; her
windows, tubs, and washbowls are also empowered with human abilities to give answers or
omens. Plath's interplay with imagination creates tensions of thought in her poetry, but her
emphasis on the objects' importance created a different tension, in that she was between two
realms—the animate and inanimate. Without the intimacy found in objects, Plath was subjected
to isolation which surfaces as a theme in her poetry. However, Plath's relationships with objects
positively influenced her creativity and enabled her to realize a higher identity in her writing and
poetic growth. Objects seem to be catalysts which placate the poet's uncontrollable visual senses,
and exactly how Plath located herself within ordinary objects suggests that her possession had
another function: it was a way she distinguished herself and her own ordinariness.
Plath's "Tale of a Tub" conveys objects' varying influences and their ability to organize
her feelings which may have neutralized her emotions. Further, the poet suggests that humans are
rutted in imperfection. Plath conveys objects' blissful unawareness to imperfection and the
Plath Profiles 35

human struggle to reconfigure the world. Plath sought to emotionally navigate through these
realizations and confiding in objects might have alleviated her anxieties.
To accomplish this, she focuses and emphasizes objects' inherent qualities such as "glittering,"
"true," and "honor" (25) which creates a mystique in objects. This act repositions her thoughts
beyond the world's "present waste" (25) and into something greater as one of her last, but
innovative, achievements.
Objects relentlessly incite Plath's feelings and senses once again in her poem "Black
Rook in Rainy Weather." By the second stanza, the poem already suggests Plath's desire to be
visually roused, "To set the sight on fire" (56). Perhaps even a miracle would do, although the
poet mentions that she is not expecting this to happen (56). While the poet does not forecast this
occurrence, she did anticipate a chance communication with objects. The sky, a kitchen chair,
and table are empowered to correspond with her and provide moments of privately perceived
banter and companionship. Plath reminds us how objects take on a life of their own and become
inwardly animated. Objects perhaps serve as a way to mark her daily experiences and heighten
them beyond seemingly inconsequential moments.
Conversing with objects, though implausible, was indeed possible when Plath infused
them with life-giving properties such as a "celestial burning."(56) Plath even identifies her
yearning for objects to animate as though possessed or imbued with a power strong enough to
consecrate certain interludes in any given day. Here, the poet creates a holiness or separateness
within moments graced by over-looked objects, such as a commonplace crow that catches her
attention:
I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
My eyelids up and grant

A brief respite from fear

Of total neutrality (57).

Plath's disclosure of spirit and beauty in objects may have integrated her own sense of
wholeness and personal orderliness. Just as the raven moved its feathers, Plath found order in
her shining visuals by objectifying them.
Nemeth-Loomis 36

Plath's object fixation may even serve a higher function: visual possession. She could
absorb an object's beauty and get feelings of wholeness to assuage her fear of "neutrality." (57)
Avoiding this type of detachment led Plath toward an unusual pursuit where intensity of feeling
was the mission but most likely exhausting. Her possessive, all encompassing love might reduce
impartiality, but this was a difficult contract to psychologically fulfill, and in the end
would prove to be impossible. The poet moves forward with resignation and finds relevance in
contentment, despite fatigue from sensory overload (57).

In both poems, Plath constructs a belief system that reveres objects—they were essential
and their heightened properties elevated her otherwise mundane intervals of time. As a result,
Plath signals that she may have identified more closely with inanimate forms in her environment
than with people. Writing became a translative action between Plath's sensory capacity, her
domestic topography, and the objects themselves. The poems yield how the poet experienced
communion between objects and herself; one might even "call this love," as Plath suggested in
the fifth stanza of "Black Rook in Rainy Weather" (57). Plath's joining with objects as 'other' or
non-self suggests a fixation with revisiting things and images to feel connection. This connection
informed how Plath fit—or did not fit—into the world. Her objects were incomparably
transformed through her visual concentrations and reflection. Plath's necessity to look continued
to feed her obsession and may have contributed to her Freudian-tinged, object-focused themes.
The fruit of Plath's possessiveness is the connection and communion she felt with objects.
Her writing translates her own personal payoff: she relished her capacity to love the peculiarity
of tubs, tables, even feathers on a bird. Joining with objects as 'other' was indeed more than
object libido; it was a means through which she reached significance and even accessed miracles
(57). For Plath, to place an object above herself was a strangely sublime act, perhaps a strategy to
rise above her own self, which would be a miracle in itself—reflected in the poet's conjuration.
Plath's attraction to objects was perhaps a way to create a bridge to a greater force, such as love –
an unownable, uncontrollable entity. Since love is elusive and objects are not, Plath must
ennoble objects "By bestowing largesse, honor, / One might say love" (57); gaining access to
love must include a process of embodying and objectifying it.
Plath Profiles 37

In both of Plath's poems, specific objects such as the tub and rook remain distant as
objects of Plath's affection. These specific objects are visually alluring—the tub's surfaces and
the rook's gleaming feathers—but unwilling to reciprocate Plath's attention. Their distant
qualities contain subcurrents of superiority and indifference, and Plath's quest for the ideal image
and object then becomes another unsolvable concern. Her fixation presents more questions than
answers, and in the final stanza of "Black Rook in Rainy Weather," the poet is brought down to a
subservient level of waiting for a celestial descent of inexplicable causes. Plath's patience must
endure until she is visited by objects—celestial, earthly, or otherwise—in order to transform her
own prosaic moments. If Plath's objects must perform a "descent," the poet is inferring that she
was stationed on a lower level than the objects she empowered. Even as she infused objects with
a hovering ability, she was also at their mercy until they descended at their own whim or
randomness.

Plath may have felt pacified only when her inner world was populated with things and
their intrinsic, imagined value; a convincing thread that would lead readers to ponder Freud's
object libido. The poet must have received some psychological, recuperative effects once her
eyes captured a specific visual of her desiring, whether situated in the moors or a kitchen corner.
Perhaps Plath made this desiring her poetic project, her emotional work, or her examination of
self via objects.
Plath's psychic possessing of objects in "Tale of a Tub" and "Black Rook in Rainy
Weather" also discloses how she internalizes objects' perceived value. Her reasons for possessing
allude to her specific need to observe and catalog beauty during the act of seeing. Visually
absorbing and possessing may have elevated Plath's feeling in an odd transcendence. Her ability
to see so acutely had an even deeper significance—to enhance Plath's existence during her final
and solitary days in England. It is worth noting that the poet's visual possessiveness
strengthened her discourse and enlivened her writing. As the poet elevated her objects, their
vitality imparted their own powers of invention to Plath's cognition. Through this remarkable
exchange, Plath's energies survive and give shape to a symmetrical love that perhaps surpasses
containment in objects, humans, or emotions.
Nemeth-Loomis 38

Works Cited
Freud, Sigmund. "On Narcissism." Standard Edition, 14:67-102. 1914.
Holbrook, David. Poetry and Existence. London: Athlone Press, 1976.
Plath, Sylvia. The Collected Poems. New York: Harper & Row, 1981.