Sylvia Plath's Poetry

When I first read Sylvia Plath's writing in high school, I was amazed. I had never read anything so powerful and honest. Her poem "Daddy" which was the first poem I read by Sylvia Plath, was nothing like any other poem I had read. It was different and unique, full of endless possibilites. Sylvia Plath does not try and hide behind her emotions or problems that occur in society, she embraces them and instead of shoving them away, she writes explicitly about them and does not try to cover them up. She writes what society wants to be swept under the rug and to remain passive and silent, but she cannot stand for that. I especially believe Sylvia Plath does this in her short stories. I have read Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams which contains some bizaare stories but which also question the role of women in many of them and the way women were treated by society in the 1950's when Sylvia Plath was alive.
There are a few lines that I find particularly fascinating in her poems. In "Daddy", I especially like the line "The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you".
I believe she is speaking not only of her deceased father in this line, but also any man who demeans women and pushes women down intellectually. I also find her personal passage in this poem intriguing "Bit my pretty red heart in two
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue".
Sylvia Plath was a beautiful woman and I think she tried to live the way society told her too. She flirted with men and would get dressed up and go to parties. She married Ted Hughes and had two children and was a successful writer. Society told her that this would be enough for her to be happy, but she wasn't. When Sylvia Plath says "they", I think she is talking about society and how they tried to put her life back together after she made her suicide attempts, but that kind of a life was not good enough for her, and I don't blame her for wanting more. I wonder if she lived in a different time period, like the 1980's or the 2000's, if she would have been content with her life or if she still would be unsatisfied. I think that is one of the messages Sylvia Plath is trying to portray in her poems. She talks about marriage and the cultural patriarchy and how women were taught to be silent and passive, but I think she wants the readers to think about their own life and if life has changed, or if it's still the same when she wrote these poems. I know the United States has come a long way since the 1950's, but we still have a long way to go. I was with a group of friends, mainly men, there was only one other woman in the group and one of the men said "Want to hear a joke? Women's rights!" All of the men instantly started laughing. I was extremely uncomfortable and upset, and I wonder how much has changed if some men still think that women having equal rights is some kind of a joke. I know this was only the opinion of a few men, and not all men are like that. But I still wonder. I also had a woman in her forties tell me that she does not think any woman should be the President of the United States. I do not understand this kind of thinking. Even though women are supposed to be paid the same as men for doing the same amount of work legally, that still does not happen in every job situation. I am not trying to say that women are victims and that men are evil. Women are not victims, we are human beings, the same as men are, and should be treated the same way as men and given the same opportunities. When I turn on the television, I still see women microwaving something for their children, or baking cookies, not men. I think these stereotypes need to be changed, and I believe that is one of Sylvia Plath's points in her poetry. Each person is a unique individual, and should not be judged solely by their gender.