{"id":2112,"date":"2021-12-11T14:51:06","date_gmt":"2021-12-11T19:51:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/?p=2112"},"modified":"2021-12-15T17:02:25","modified_gmt":"2021-12-15T22:02:25","slug":"arraignment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/ryan\/arraignment\/","title":{"rendered":"Arraignment"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Robin Morgan’s “Arraignment” as it was published in 1972 in The Feminist Art Journal.<\/p><\/div>\n

Robin Morgan\u2019s \u201cArraignment\u201d was originally published in her book <\/span>Monster <\/span><\/i>in November 1972. Morgan wrote the poem in response to the death of the well-known feminist poet Sylvia Plath. Plath committed suicide in 1963. Her suicide occurred after a lifetime of mental health struggles and also, importantly, after her husband, Ted Hughes, left her for another woman. \u201cArraignment\u201d became a symbol for the feminist movement, republished in periodicals all over the country.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Morgan\u2019s poem is an accusation. The poem\u2019s title refers to charges being read to a defendant in court. In the first stanza of the poem, it becomes very clear what these charges are. Morgan states \u201cI accuse \/ Ted Hughes \/ of \u2026 the murder of Sylvia Plath,\u201d and later \u201creal blood on real hands,\u201d leaving no room for question about who she feels is to blame for Plath\u2019s death (Morgan 4). Morgan also makes sure to emphasize within this first stanza that she feels Hughes\u2019 role in Plath\u2019s death has been covered up to a certain degree. She states that Hughes\u2019 \u201cmurder\u201d is something that \u201cthe entire British and American \/ literary and critical establishment \/ has been at great lengths to deny\u201d (Morgan 4). This inclusion is pertinent because it shows how Morgan\u2019s choice to write about Hughes in a negative light is going against popular media at the time; she is choosing to call out a man to whom the rest of the world appears to have turned a blind eye. Morgan\u2019s choice to speak out when no one else did highlights her direct approach to attacking the issue of domestic violence.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

An important clarification is that Morgan is not accusing Hughes of physically murdering Plath. Plath\u2019s death by suicide occurred after she had separated from Hughes; she had physically moved apartments away from him with her two children and was alone when she ultimately ended her life. Rather, Morgan implies that Hughes\u2019 abuse throughout their marriage contributed to Plath\u2019s mental illness and eventual suicide. In her second stanza, she makes this explicitly clear, proclaiming \u201cnot that it isn\u2019t enough to condemn him \/ of mind-rape and body-rape\u201d (Morgan 4). Here, Morgan alludes to both physical and emotional assaults on Plath by Hughes. She insinuates that even if Plath had not killed herself, Hughes would be a villain solely for his behavior in their marriage. The Guardian published an article in 2017 supporting Morgan\u2019s claims of Hughes\u2019 abuse; the article brings to light recently found letters between Plath and her therapist in which she states that Hughes beat her before she miscarried their child and \u201cwanted her dead\u201d (Kean). The context of Morgan\u2019s argument running parallel to Plath\u2019s is important because it gives more validity to \u201cArraignment\u201d in that Morgan is not speaking for Plath so much as amplifying statements Plath already made. Thus, a big part of Morgan\u2019s role in pushing back against domestic violence is through a type of elevation of female victims\u2019 voices and a refusal to be intimidated by the fact that no one else seemed to be speaking up for Plath.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

A photo of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. This image is from the Boston Globe article “The Last Days of Sylvia Plath.”<\/p><\/div>\n

Morgan goes on to accuse Hughes of not only crimes of domestic violence, causing Plath\u2019s death, but also \u201chiding of her most revealing indictments \/ against her jailor\u201d (Morgan 4). The inclusion of the word \u201cjailor\u201d in reference to Hughes refers to Plath\u2019s poem \u201cThe Jailor\u201d which discusses an abusive relationship through the metaphor of a prisoner and a jailor. Furthermore, after Plath\u2019s death, Hughes was given the rights to her work due to their still technical status as a married couple even though they had been separated. So, what Morgan is referring to in the quotation is that because Hughes had the rights to Plath\u2019s body of work, he also had the power to remove or refuse to publish certain aspects of it in a self-serving way. For example, according to Sady Doyle\u2019s in her book <\/span>Trainwreck<\/span><\/i> \u201cher journals were released\u2013but Hughes admitted to burning or losing the ones from the last months of her life and the edited ones were full of [OMISSION] marks\u201d (Doyle). So, Morgan is making the claim that the journals which Hughes admitted to destroying likely contained more evidence of his abuse. The line \u201cand making a mint by becoming her posthumous editor\u201d refers specifically to the omission marks aforementioned (Morgan 4). Morgan is portraying Hughes as not only an abuser but also someone who attempted to leech off of his victim after causing her death\u2013the ultimate villain. Through demonizing Hughes to the degree that she does, Morgan successfully fights back against a culture that previously failed to condemn domestic violence, a culture that assumes male superiority and turns a blind eye to injustices. She makes an example of Hughes through the statement that she will not allow his crimes to go unnoticed or unpunished.<\/span><\/p>\n

Morgan\u2019s poem does not focus solely on Plath, a very well-known figure, but also seeks to bring justice to Hughes\u2019 second wife, Assia Guttmin Wevil. She states \u201cand \/ if he\u2019s killed one wife \/ he\u2019s also killed two \/ the second, also, committed suicide\u201d (Morgan 4). Her choice to include Wevil\u2019s story makes her argument against Hughes more powerful because it highlights Hughes as a common denominator in two cases of extreme mental illness to the point of death. She sarcastically states \u201cwhat a coincidence,\u201d in reference to both of his wives committing suicide, underscoring her earlier assertions of Hughes as abusive by implying that these events could not be coincidental (Morgan 4).<\/span><\/p>\n

Morgan\u2019s poem was especially effective in outing Hughes as a villain because her poem was aggressive enough to cause him to sue her (Doyle). She anticipated this, ending her poem with \u201cin the meantime, Hughes \/ sue me,\u201d making the fact that Hughes actually did sue her almost comical; she anticipated his very move and therefore he essentially played into her hands (Morgan 4). Hughes sued in an attempt to not let the poem be seen but his choice had the opposite effect. Feminist periodicals all over the country started to publish the poem as a result because they felt that Hughes\u2019 attempt to cover it up was further evidence of the truth in the accusations of abuse it contains.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Morgan\u2019s bold choice to call out Hughes directly is symbolic of a larger statement. She refuses to allow victims of domestic violence to be ignored; in an originally somewhat solitary stance, she highlights the power of the individual voice. Morgan\u2019s poem began as her own statement on domestic violence and abuse and grew to become a part of the larger feminist movement.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sources:<\/span><\/p>\n

Doyle, Sady. <\/span>Trainwreck. <\/span><\/i>Melville House, 2016.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kean, Danuta. \u201cUnseen Sylvia Plath letters claim domestic abuse by Ted Hughes.\u201d <\/span>The Guardian, <\/span><\/i>2017. <\/span>https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/2017\/apr\/11\/unseen-sylvia-plath-letters-claim-domestic-abuse-by-ted-hughes<\/span><\/a>. Accessed December 2021.<\/span><\/p>\n

Morgan, Robin. \u201cArraignment III.\u201d <\/span>The Feminist Art Journal, <\/span><\/i>vol. 1, p. 4.<\/span><\/p>\n

Morgan, Robin. \u201cArraignment III.\u201d <\/span>The Spokeswoman, <\/span><\/i>vol. 3, p. 5<\/span><\/p>\n

Rollyson, Carl. \u201cThe Last Days of Sylvia Plath.\u201d <\/span>The Boston Globe, <\/span><\/i>2013. <\/span>https:\/\/www.bostonglobe.com\/magazine\/2013\/01\/20\/the-last-days-sylvia-plath\/Dlpv1hzF4OFO6gtxoGNG5I\/story.html<\/span><\/a>. Accessed December 2021.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Feminist Art Journal, <\/span><\/i>vol. 1, Issue 2, September 1972<\/span><\/p>\n

The Spokeswoman, <\/span><\/i>vol. 3, Issue 6, December 1972<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robin Morgan\u2019s \u201cArraignment\u201d was originally published in her book Monster in November 1972. Morgan wrote the poem in response to the death of the well-known feminist poet Sylvia Plath. Plath committed suicide in 1963. Her suicide occurred after a lifetime … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2656,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ryan"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2656"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2112"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3151,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2112\/revisions\/3151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}