Plath, domesticity, and the art of advertising

College Literature, Summer 2002 by Bryant, Marsha

Scaling little ladders with gluepots and pails of Lysol

I crawl like an ant in mourning

Over the weedy acres of your brow

To mend the immense skull-plates and clear

The bald, white tumuli of your eyes. (Plath 1981, 129)

Plath creates a space that is both outside and inside suitable position from which to utter a poem that is, at one level, a public mourning of her own father. It is also a space that allows the speaker to domesticate the father-- landscape through her repeated labors.

The speaker's self-presentation within this space contributes to the poem's ambivalent representation of female agency. Ladder scaling seems adventuresome, while crawling ant-like does not. Plath's Lilliputian image intersects with advertising's domestic adventures, as we see in a 1951 ad for Murray ovens (Figure 7). In the upper portion, tiny people scale a colossal gas range and marvel at its modern features. The ad creates a space that is both domestic and foreign with its slogan, "Let's take a Cook's Tour of Murray Ranges!"; the pun relates food preparation to mass tourism by invoking the 19th-century travel agency. If we examine the tiny figures, we see that male "tour" guides accompany groups of women dressed for an excursion; one woman even carries an umbrella. The ad copy continues the work of blurring indoor/outdoor space by describing the smooth contours of the range's "famous 'Waterfall' front," thus enlarging the realm of domesticity while diminishing the world outside.

The speaker's size may be diminutive, but Lysol dramatizes her labor so that it looms as large as the Colossus himself. We could read this paradox as a further sign of the speaker's entrapment in patriarchy, drawing on Friedan's shrewd observation that in the 1950s, "housework not only expanded to fill the time available, but could hardly be done in the available time" (1983, 241). In other words, Plath's speaker is condemned to a life of drudgery. While we cannot ignore the subordinate role of unpaid housework within American capitalism (and patriarchy), we also cannot overlook Lysol's status as an agent of purifying violence. Using gluepots "to mend" skull-plates would restore the father, but using Lysol to "clear" his eyes would blind him. In Mythologies, Barthes notes that ammonia- and chlorine-based cleaning fluids signify "a kind of absolute fire, a savior" through their myth of"a violent, abrasive modification of matter" (1987, 36). If, as Plath writes, "more than a lightning-stroke" from Zeus is required "to create such a ruin" as the Colossus, then the poem's speaker requires the most powerful mythic product to transform it (1981, 130). "Now Lysol' needs no poison label," claimed a 1954 ad in Good Housekeeping, even though it has "up to 30 times more disinfectant power than bleaches." In a 1956 ad from Ladies' Home Journal, Lysol is the housewife's "shield," "defender," "ally," and "friend" who will do the "dirty work" of killing odors and attacking dirt (Figure 8). Plath's brand cleans more aggressively than its competitors. Clorox emphasized its capacity for "gentler bleaching," while Jet Bon Ami provided "lacy froth" in an aerosol bottle. Lysol also gives its user more control than the latter product. In the ad for Jet Bon Ami, the housewife appears to be a floating zombie who can "fly through housework" with her eyes closed, an unusual attribute among her levitating peers. But Plath's speaker must see clearly if she is to disinfect her father's vision. As she performs her domestic labor, she chooses a product that renders her more active (shield, ally) than passive (defender), more equal (friend) than subordinate. By restoring the meanings of Lysol to the poem, we see how Plath's engagement with advertising furthers, rather than hinders, the poet's interrogations of gender and power. Mainstream images from popular magazines were crucial sources of her emerging poetic voice. Falling in Love with Appliances