Abstract:

This study examines the similarities between two women, who lived in different periods and in different countries, in terms of their life and their art: Sylvia Plath and Nilgün Marmara. In this study, life stories of these two women, who had different backgrounds, have been presented. The common themes they employed in their poems are analyzed. In patriarchal societies, in which being a woman means being a good mother and wife, the problems that are emerged due to distinctness and creativity pushed the poetesses into a deep isolation and alienation. Marmara and Plath denied the identities and roles imposed upon to them by male dominated societies, and they trapped between social expectations, gender inequality and their own desires. Both Plath and Marmara who could not cope with the sense of being “other” chose to commit suicide to get rid of this desperate situation. They could not be understood by their counterparts due to intense images and feminine language they used in their poetry. Plath and Marmara put the concepts of death and suicide in the center of their lives and this study analyses their attempts to give meaning to their existences by ending their lives and its reflections on their art.

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