The vampire's victim

The poem "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath is a dramatic and allegoric scene of suffering and turmoil endured by Plath's character while fighting against the destructive forces embodied in her vampire-father and vampire-husband. Axel catalogues the character as the replica of a person who suffered the Elektra complex: "Here is a poem spoken by a girl with an Elektra complex" (51). As the readers gradually move through the poetry, we feel the heroine intense, spiritual living. Also …

…is psychically finished, depleted" (Nance 129) but completely mature. Axelrod, Steven Gould. Sylvia Plath: The Wound and the Cure of Words. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1990. Broe,Mary Lynn. Protean Poetic: The Poetry of Sylvia Plath. Columbia, Missouri: P, 1980. Kroll, Judith. Chapter in a Mythology: The Poetry of Sylvia Plath. New York: Harper + Row, 1976. Plath, Sylvia. Daddy 1996. The Harbran Anthology of Literature. 3rd ed. Eds. Jon C. Statt, Raymond E. Jones, and Rich Bowers. Toronto: Nelson, 2002. 348-51.