Plath vs Hughes

Representations are interpretations of an idea or concept in the real world. It is not reality itself, but statements about it that are constructed from personal ideas, values and beliefs.   Representation is closely linked to the concept of perspective, as an individual point of view which shows a personal representation of an event, situation or personality. One person’s perspective will never be the same as anothers, thus when examining texts about famous personalities such as such as that of Sylvia Plath, we must remember that these texts are actually impressions shaped by the composer’s subjective version of reality. The poem ‘Fulbright Scholars’ by Ted Hughes and Gordon Lameyer’s photograph of Sylvia Plath, offer different representations to their responders. Ted Hughes refers to Plath in all but two of   the eighty-eight poems he wrote called “Birthday Letters,”   written by Hughes more than twenty years after Plaths death. Hughes describe it, as “a gathering of the occasions on which I tried to open a direct, private, inner contact with my first wife, not thinking to make a poem, thinking mainly to evoke her presence to myself and to feel her there listening.”
Lameyer on the other hand, captured Plath’s outer facade. The photograph was taken two months after her second serious suicide attempt in 1955, before she ventured to Cambridge and met Hughes. Being a photograph, it offers a very limited version of the life of Plath; the image portrays her as a confident, happy and stable person. Indeed there is a sense of irony when looking at this photo in comparison to Hughes’ poem “Fulbright Scholars” which offers an insight into Plath on a deeper level as a woman with many insecurities and anxieties. In Lameyer’s photograph of Plath, she is the salient image that dominates the photo. From this text, a reader can draw a conclusion that she is conscious of her appearance. For example, here Plath has a direct gaze with the viewer that is intense and seductive, while...