Mirror Images in the Work of Ingrid Jonker and Sylvia Plath

Abstract: Writing poetry has an element of healing in it, but how? Plath and Jonker continually wrote about several themes and often left mirror images, eyes and other questions of identity unanswered. Different psychological theories (incl. those of Winnicott, Jung & Lacan) surrounding this issue are discussed. Plath’s “Mirror” and “Words” as well as Jonker’s “On all faces” are specifically examined. Concluding remarks reveal that a mental block, or crypt, will always force a poet to reword his/her trauma.

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1. Introduction

Franz Kafka discovered that his writing was somehow therapeutic and once claimed that, “The existence of a writer is truly dependant on his desk. If he wants to escape madness, he really should never leave his desk. He must cling to it with his teeth” (Ludwig, 1995:3). Along the same lines, Ingrid Jonker said: “... I found a way of making my own happiness and I suppose that was the beginning of my poetry” (De Vries, 1975:210), which is a statement akin to Sylvia Plath’s: “I find myself absolutely fulfilled when I have written a poem, when I’m writing one” (Lane, 1979:184). A good current example of this “redeeming” aspect of writing – though it’s not poetry – is Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way (1994). This document enabled Cameron to bring her alcoholism under control. Since the publication of The Artist’s Way several others have followed, all with a greater or lesser level of marketing success. One does wonder, though, exactly what is it about writing that creates this healing aspect? Does the writer simply repeat the same thing (e.g. about mirrors) because a central question about it remains unanswered?

The answer perhaps lies in the fact that an individual’s art, be it a poem or a painting, can be a reflection of his/her identity. Below this statement is discussed using the mirrors depicted in the poetry of Jonker and Plath. Occasional use has been made of psychological theories in order to explain some of the aspects in the poems.

2. The mirror image

Anne Sexton’s daughter, Linda Gray, had this book published in 1985 (pictured). Here she describes the relationship between a mother and her daughter, as well as a psychologist that wanted to be a mother, but couldn’t. Yet the psychologist still played the role of a mother for her patients. An image that strongly comes to the fore in the book is based on a painting by Mary Cassatt (on the cover of this edition), called “Mother and Child” (1905). As you can see, a little girl is sitting on her mother’s lap with a mirror in her hand. The mother twists the girl’s wrist so that she can see her own, rather than her mother’s reflection in the mirror, all of which are reflected in a larger mirror behind them. With this image in mind, Linda Sexton makes the point that it is important for any mother to show her child(ren) what they look like, rather than focussing all the attention on herself, otherwise mother and daughter have a warped relationship – something Linda Sexton had first-hand experience of. Plath had an equally troubled relationship with her mother, but never expressed it as eloquently as Sexton, whereas Jonker’s mother died when little Ingrid was 11.

3. What is seen in the mirror: Self-image

Plath apparently had an obsession with mirrors and double images. It’s something that started with her thesis entitled “The Magic Mirror” (Stevenson, 1998:54), “on the double in Dostoyevsky, contrasting and comparing the literary treatment as it corresponds to the intention of psychological presentation” (Wagner, 2000:45). The mirror images in Plath’s poems “Mirror” and “Words” may be linked to the “I” in the poem and her relationship with her mother, according to the psychologist, Donald Woods Winnicott.

Before birth there’s naturally no division between mother and child and the baby still experiences it like this shortly after birth. This makes it important for the baby to learn that it is an independent being. Winnicott argues that the mother’s face – specifically her eyes – become the first reflection of self during the first few weeks following birth (Davis & Wallbridge, 1981:121; Jacobs, 1995:51; Van Wyk, 1986:228). The French psycho-analyst, Jacques Lacan, had a fair amount of influence on Winnicott’s theory in the sense that there’s an interpretation that takes place between mother and child (Davis & Wallbridge, 1981:122). In other words, it’s not merely a case of the mother looking at the child and simply seeing two eyes, but there’s some form of communication. Lacan calls it “the gaze” (Lacan, 1977:75), where a person isn’t just “looking”, but also “showing”. The mother is looking at the baby and seeing an entire being, a new human and not just a weeping doll: “... such inter-communication is an urgent need for the baby” (Davis & Wallbridge, 1981:121). If this inter-communication is absent, the child looks for other ways to “find itself” and sometimes a “false self” is created is this need is not fulfilled.

Ideally the mother satisfies the child’s needs in such a way that it feels as if it’s the most important being on earth. The mother plays the role of supporting its very low sense of self in the sense that she fills in what is missing for the child. As the child develops and becomes more independent, it learns that its behaviour causes reactions and in this way develops its own self-images. This is also an indication that the image the mother portrayed to the child has been internalised. In die absence of such an interaction between mother and child, where the mothering might have been compromised and she did what was more important for her rather than the child, the latter will react against its own needs and develop a “false self” (doing what it feels would make the mother happy). Stated differently, the child will deny its mother’s absence as if she’s still part of him/her (Chodorow, 1978:59-60; Davis & Wallbridge, 1981:51).

According to Anne Stevenson, Plath was quite self-absorbed (something that also comes through in her diaries), “not because her ego was strong, but because it was perilously weak” (Stevenson, 1998:164). This problem could possibly have originated from the poor mothering she experienced where narcissism occurred, making individuation difficult (Kloss, 1987; Chodorow, 1978:60). Plath often gambled with her identity. She wanted to be a poet as well as a good wife to Ted Hughes and a good mother of their children in addition to living up to her own mother’s expectations. It’s impossible to fulfil all these roles perfectly and simultaneously. Stevenson adds that Plath often had a “good girl > < bad girl” argument with herself. This is depicted in her poem, “Two sisters of Persephone” (Plath, 1981:31) where two women are being described. The one like a shadow in the house, the other outside, in the sunshine; one remains fruitless and alone, the other gets a king for a son. These two women depict something which Plath would like to be – a virgin (but not a woman, according to the last line) yet still a woman.

The mirrors in Plath’s poetry seldom reflect a stable image of the self because she couldn’t connect herself with that image (Lane, 1979:196). The element that was missing in Plath’s life is what Kloss (1987) refers to as “adequate mirroring”. In the absence of this connection, the unconscious replaces it with a different image. Lacan relates the story of a young girl who told him that she needed someone to look after her father “so that she might seem lovable to herself” (Lacan, 1977:257). Without the mirror of a good caretaker, the individual feels useless and lives the life of a false self. In the absence of a “true self” life loses its meaning and the person could even lose their sense of reality (Davis & Wallbridge, 1981:51). It’s possible that Plath didn’t have a “true self” up until her estrangement from Hughes. Her poems were the only way by which she could express her true feelings, as Hughes states: “By the time Plath wrote ‘Poem for a Birthday’ ... an old shattered self, reduced by violence to its essential core, had been repaired and renovated and born again, and ... speaks with a new voice” (Middlebrook, 2004:110). One can but conclude that her “true self” only came to the fore after 1959.

Different psychologists have different ways of interpreting the development of a person’s self-image. Carl G. Jung refers to it as “individuation”: “I use the term ‘individuation’ to denote the process by which a person becomes a psychological ‘in-dividual’, that is, a separate, indivisible unity or ‘whole’ ” (Jung, 1959:275). What Jung is implying here is that the psyche consists of different subdivisions before individuation, or integration. These elements are united during a process he calls “individuation” and it’s a process that takes all life long. According to Lacan the subconscious is structured by language. This aspect connects his theory to Ferdinand de Saussure’s premise in the sense that De Saussure believed our reality is structured by language, without which it would be a disjointed mass (Cloete et al., 1985:41). His point was that the subconscious comes into being during language acquisition, after which it functions by way of signs, metaphors and symbols. In this sense the subconscious is like language (Appignanesi & Garratt, 1995:88-89). Lacan represents the stages of psychological development with the imagined, the symbolic and the actual ego. The “actual ego” can be equated with Jung’s “individuation”, Winnicott’s “true self” or even Maslow’s “self-actualisation”. The fact that Lacan is of the opinion that the subconscious is structured according to language also has an influence on what is seen in a mirror. This is because Lacan postulated that parents hold their children in front of a mirror and point out familial similarities or differences. In this way the child’s self-image attains aspects it would otherwise not have had and it becomes a process of imitation (Davis & Wallbridge, 1981:51; Lacan, 1977:257).

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4. Jonker’s mirrors

There are two poems that reveal Jonker’s search for something to identify herself with: “I went to seek for the path of my body” (Brink & Krog, 2007:55) and “I searched for my own heart” (Brink & Krog, 2007:57). In the first she could only find “strange scars in the dust / Spoor of blue wildebeest elephants and leopards” and in the second poem she comes across “shadows [of] starlings”. It could be that she’s been so hurt by life that she feels insignificant, especially because of the word “scars” which never really disappear and only come about after having been hurt. All that remains is the “spoor”, footprints, or “shadows”. Jonker is unable to find herself because both of these elements actually refer to nothing. The game in front of two mirrors in “Double game” (Brink & Krog, 2007:43) also offers no certainty as to the poet’s identity (Van Wyk, 1986:145):

???????????that you will rush from glass to glass and ask:

???????????if this is she, by God, who may the other be ...?

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It would appear that Jonker often needed to remind herself of who she actually was. In Jack Cope’s words: “As the mood took her [Jonker] she swung about, would strike her forehead and say with eyes dilated: ‘Yes, I am a poet – don’t forget it – a poet!’ ” (Rabie, 1966:17). André P. Brink once told an interviewee that Jonker enjoyed having several nicknames (Van der Merwe, 2006:251). For example, Cope called her “Pie” and Brink’s name for her was “Kokon” (Cocoon); her grandmother called her “Poplap” (Ragdoll). Playing around with names in this way is another depiction of her broken self-image/false self.

The fact that a mirror isn’t necessarily the reflecting glass found in bathrooms, but a mother’s eyes, gives a different aspect to Jonker’s poems. Johan van Wyk points out that the eyes that appear in Jonker’s poetry are usually blue like the ocean (1986:215). In this way they form part of the subconscious and by way of the symbolism Jonker uses, drowning. In keeping with Jung’s theories, water (the ocean) has symbolic connotations with the mother and is per se the subconscious (Jung, 1959:18). The eyes in Jonker’s oeuvre are present everywhere, as may be seen in “On all faces” (Brink & Krog, 2007:51), where a person’s absence is like an obsession that is seen and noticed in everything the writer experiences. ?

???????????On all faces

On all faces of all people

always your eyes the two brothers

the event of yourself and the unreality

of this world

All sounds repeat your name

all buildings think it and the posters

the typewriters guess it and the sirens echo it

every birth cry confirms it and the renunciation

of this world

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My days search for the vehicle of your body

my days search for the shape of your name

always before me in the path of my eyes

and my only fear is reflection

that wants to change your blood into water

that wants to change your name into a number

and to deny your eyes like a memory

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The typography of the poem is a mirror image where “your eyes” of the first verse reflect “my eyes” of the third verse. The first half of the poem can’t get away from the gaze of the eyes, whereas the second half is an attempt at getting away from the reality there-of, an attempt to flee this aspect of “blood is thicker than water”. Should the addressee in the poem be Jonker’s mother, as suggested by the blood relation in line 14, her search (lines 10 and 11) will remain futile. The implication is that the mirror has broken, as it does in “Bitter-berry daybreak” (Brink & Krog, 2007:70), which is a depiction of the poet’s brokenness (Van der Merwe, 1991). Ironically Jonker feels she needed to “stay in touch” with her mirror image, as she writes to Brink during her European visit: “There isn’t a mirror in my room and everyone finds it quite bothersome if you want to shower (There is a mirror in the shower in the kitchen). I find it rather necessary to stay in touch with my own body” (Van Wyk, 1999:67, transl. IB) – Winnicott would argue that this need arises from poor mothering during childhood, which is akin to Jonker’s constant wish for “proof” of the places she’d been to or the people she spoke with, e.g. photos or even (stolen) teaspoons, like a “pinch to see if you’re awake” (Van der Merwe, 2006:248).

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5. Plath’s mirrors

The following two poems will be discussed next: ?

???????????Mirror

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.

Whatever I see, I swallow immediately.

Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike

I am not cruel, only truthful –

The eye of a little god, four-cornered.

Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.

It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long

I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.

Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

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Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me.

Searching my reaches for what she really is.

Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.

I see her back, and reflect it faithfully

She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.

I am important to her. She comes and goes.

Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.

In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman

Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

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???????????Words

Axes

After whose stroke the wood rings,

And the echoes!

Echoes traveling

Off from the center like horses.

The sap

Wells like tears, like the

Water striving

To re-establish its mirror

Over the rock

That drops and turns,

A white skull,

Eaten by weedy greens.

Years later I

Encounter them on the road —

Words dry and riderless,

The indefatigable hoof-taps.

While

From the bottom of the pool, fixed stars

Govern a life.

Plath swings the reflection in “Words” (Plath, 1981:270) around, since the water is trying to recover its reflection (lines 8 and 9). The same thing happens in “Mirror” (Plath, 1981:173) where the mirror suddenly turns into a lake (line 10). Idiomatically one refers to a lake like a mirror and here it appears the other way around. She’s probably trying to gain some control over the mirror image, as indicated by the last two lines.

Who exactly is being reflected in line 10 of “Mirror” is a mystery. If you walk towards a mirror, you see yourself/the poet. But she sees her mother, or as Kloss (1987) states: “A mother does bend over her child, but at the same time it’s the mother who is the lake, water being the most common symbol of birth and life”. Should the lake as well as the woman refer to Auriela (Plath’s mother), the “I” of the poem disappears. The narrator doesn’t trust the mirror, or the moon (those liars, line 12). This is something which is emphasised by repetition in “The courage of shutting-up” (Plath, 1981:209), with echoes of Winnicott’s hypothesis:

???????????But how about the eyes, the eyes, the eyes?

???????????Mirrors can kill and talk, they are terrible rooms

???????????In which a torture goes on one can only watch.

???????????The face that lived in this mirror is the face of a dead man.

???????????Do not worry about the eyes —

Plath looks into the mirror and doesn’t only see her mother’s eyes, but also those of her dead father. Plath is the genetic product of both her father and her mother. She’s also been caught up in her parents’ psychological processes, which have harmed her.

An interesting comparison could be made here with Jonker’s use of “eyes” in the third stanza of “Die waarsegster” (The soothsayer) (Jonker, 1994:29). A translation of this poem does not appear in Black Butterflies, and I have translated the required lines as follows:

???????????Her eyes a deep pool freezing over

???????????my life taught and solid

This echoes the last lines of Plath’s “Mirror”, where a young woman drowns in the mirror, but it also implies that the eyes are mirrors. The gaze in the “The soothsayer” becomes dangerous (verse 9) – my translation:

???????????Her eyes are now a wild abyss

???????????devouring my life in foam and mist.

Once again the eyes dictate the poet’s fate (compare it to “Words”, fixed [reflected] stars / Govern a life). This creates a strong contrast to the child “subsiding slowly in a little pool” in Jonker’s “Puberty” (Brink & Krog, 2007:40).

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6. The poet reflects her own mother

A young woman does not appear where the woman drowned her, instead we see an old hag come forth, like a terrible fish. It could be that Plath realized her mother tried to live herself out in Plath’s life, and always wanted her to be a perfect little girl. Sadly, a miscarriage appears in the form of a fish, or according to “Words”, a white skull.

A young child drowns in the murky water of “Puberty”. Should this pond be interpreted to be symbolic of the mother, line 8 could be read as a kind of accusation:

???????????In that crude way you did not foretell

???????????that death or peril was drawing near

Death comes across as cruel in the contrast between the “crude way” and “subsiding slowly” (line 3). It seems to be the narrator’s only realization: Something has died, but she can’t be sure if it’s the child within her. Read against the background of the actual death of Jonker’s mother, is would be a reference to her.

The old woman in “Mirror” could be referring to the aging Plath, peering at herself in the mirror. With reference to Winnicott’s explanation, it could also be that Plath sees Aurielia in the mirror more and more. The Jungian archetypes of the wise old man and the great mother are important symbols in the sense that should they enter consciousness, the woman is released from her mother as the man is set free from his father. In this way a person discovers his/her own individuality (Degenaar, 1989).

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7. Conclusion

In their book L’Ecorce et le noyau (The husk and the seed), Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok suggest that there’s something called “cryptomnesia” (Rand, 1990). A part of the psyche where shameful experiences are preserved, may be referred to as a “crypta” or “tomb”. It makes the psychic content indescribable: “Abraham and Torok found that patients who were tormented by unspoken secrets manifested in their speech a particular form of evasion. These patients excluded from their speech linguistic elements that would reveal the secret’s contents” (ibid.).

The crux of the problem is that such “secrets” don’t have a linguistic equivalent, which is something that parallels Lacan’s explanation of psychic development, because it could have happened before the meaning of words was acquired. It’s a kind of reality that’s not preserved in the personal unconscious or consciousness (to use Jung’s terminology), but in a “crypt” between the two. “It is an enclave between the two [the dynamic Unconscious and the ego], a kind of artificial Unconscious, lodged in the very midst of the ego” (Abraham & Torok, 1990) – they’re using Sigmund Freud’s representation of the psyche. It forms part of the knowledge that cannot be accessed since it’s preverbal and as Winnicott says: “Threatens anxiety at possible loss and the infant’s sense of existence” (Chodorow, 1978:60).

Cameron quotes Jung in The Artist’s Way as follows: “When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate”. Jonker and Plath brought several unconscious images to the fore, but couldn’t relate to the core aspects there-of. Poetry in and of itself is not meant to convey meaning (Cloete et al., 1985:134) and is a useful linguistic instrument in which psychic entities reside. The psychic truth that’s not being expressed here, is that they couldn’t place their own identities. They searched for mirrors to reflect themselves, but the crypt remained empty for them. In the “words” of Cassatt’s painting: Jonker and Plath’s mothers didn’t turn the symbolic mirror towards the child, but onto themselves. The young poets grew up with a false sense of self. Their poetry was an effort to discover the self, but every poem merely expressed a part of what they wanted to say, in Lacan’s words: Even if someone looks at himself in the mirror, the reality is only partly visible (Lacan, 1977:72). Since the poets weren’t able to confirm their own existence/identity, they constantly had questions about life and their poems didn’t offer them the answers they needed. They were only able to express the same trauma repeatedly using different images and understand it fractionally.

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