I Have Always Been Scared of You: Sylvia Plath, perpetrator trauma and threatening victims

Evil does not exist in isolation. For it to occur, one person must commit an act which is experienced by another person. This would suggest two distinct categories of person in relation to evil: perpetrator and victim. Sylvia Plath's poetry has often been interpreted in terms of accusations against the biographical figures in the poet's life or as a denunciation of patriarchal culture. What these readings have in common is that they situate Plath's speakers in the victim position. However, the boundaries between victim and perpetrator are frequently blurred. In Daddy, Plath's most (in)famous poem the speaker is both second-generation victim and perpetrator. The shame of the relationship to a Nazi perpetrator forms part of the speaker's definition of herself as a victim. In an earlier poem, The Thin People, Plath's portrayal of Nazism's victims is not unambiguous: far from feeling sympathy and pity for concentration camp survivors, her speaker reacts with a mixture of fear and disgust.