Richmal6/9/2023 While people become dependent on consumer goods, they develop a sense of disability which makes them rely on commodities – both inanimate and human – to make them whole and confer an identity on them. Consumerism affects not only economic behaviour but all aspects of human life: in interpersonal relationships, the consumerist attitude of the interchangeability of objects brings about the interchangeability of human beings. The dissociation of body parts are metaphors of the fragmentation of identity due to a perceived lack or disability: the learned helplessness of people in a consumer society is generated by a cycle of consumption in which people quickly obtain and discard commodities while their productive bodies – especially those of women – are also commodified. In Plath’s poetry, representations of the dissected human body proliferate: the body parts become objects interchangeable with commodities. This paper offers close textual readings of some of Plath’s late poems where images of the mutilated and objectified body convey the dehumanizing effect of consumerism, while objects assume an aura of perfection and completeness that humans can only aspire to.
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