Corpse Bride

[curlgirl510]

In yoga today, as we were doing shivasana (the final resting pose), our instructor was directing our meditation (as usual) and telling us to concentrate on our breathing and feel the release.  She said this pose, also called corpse pose, was about giving up control.  She noted that it's called corpse pose because we are imitating corpses, the dead

Comments

[hunterxtc]

And I wondered if her death was her giving up control or her final attempt to gain control over life.

What's your take on the oft-mentioned theory that she really didn't want to take her life, that she was trying to stage the whole thing with the thought that someone would find her before she died? Given the power of the final Ariel poems, and the fact that she must have been putting some really nasty stuff in her journal (yes, thanks AGAIN Ted for destroying what she really felt about you at the end), I don't see how it could have been staged. Given her other attmepts at suicide (especially the "down in the basement" episode of her youth) I think she was just very tired of life and didn't really have anywhere to turn to.

I can never think about her death without thinking if she wondered at any time if it is true that poets never live until they die.

[curlgirl510]

I definitely think it's a possibility, given that her other suicide attempts were halted. And I am rereading the Anne Stevenson biography and she notes that some friends and family, after Plath's death, read the letters and phone calls as cries for help.

I'm not altogether sure but the one thing that does make me think maybe she might have wanted to be found was that she had children that she loved. I think that might be even more of a reason for her to stay alive.