El suicidio del «ángel del hogar». Un acercamiento a la maternidad de las poetas con trastorno bipolar. Los casos de Anne Sexton y Sylvia Plath

Abstract

The representation of women writers as "bad mothers" is today a fact still discussed in different historical-social, cultural and critical areas and disciplines. In the case of the poets Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, framed in the American society of the mid-twentieth century, it is even more controversial, since they suffered from an undiagnosed bipolar disorder. This article seeks to examine the way in which both poets, against social and family constraints, and under their illness, face motherhood by addressing it in their poems as a form of therapy. First, aspects of their biographies are probed to determine how this influences their mother-child relationships. Secondly, considering Jungnian psychoanalytic theories ("archetype of the mother"), an approach to their roles as women, patients and mothers is proposed with a selection of poems and testimonies. Finally, we try to offer another perspective when classifying women and authors (poets), excluded from society because of their psychic disorders, as "bad mothers".