Masters Thesis

Dead subjects: resurrecting the female voice

Beginning with Emily Dickinson, I trace the posthumous voice to Lorine Niedecker and Sylvia Plath. In opposition to the elegy convention, I examine how Plath and Niedecker revive figuratively dead female speakers, specifically the voice of the wife, in select poems to bring awareness to women's inequality through anatomization, commodification language, consumerism, and societal expectations of femininity from the 1940s onward. Considering the tradition and the trajectory of the posthumous voice, I analyze the specific function and the greater political purpose of the dead female speakers as a means to promote individual identity and equality. Ultimately, I argue that the posthumous voice functions as the ideal vehicle for marginalized speakers and transforms the place of death from stasis to one of resistance and power.

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