This study analyzes the meaning of Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath’s suffering and death as poetic resources through irony. In their own ages, Dickinson and Plath were placed under double binds of patriarchism and the pursuit of identity as both women and poets. The restriction and dilemma in male-oriented cultures confined women and required them to be obeyed. Under the frame of the conventional society and culture, Dickinson and Plath suffered from mental anguish caused by social suppression or loss of self. Because Dickinson and Plath were precursors of the modern mind and a naturally gifted poets, they could not put up with or accept this old social norm.
The conflicts experienced by Dickinson and Plath in their ages created suffering. The only way to break down the old conventions and get eternity and new identity was to be released from the world by death. Their deaths were not the antisocial actions nor rejections of life, but the methods to gain freedom of the writing and thought, or the only passage to true life. Their lives in suffering and death seemed miserable in appearance, but Dickinson and Plath found the real values of lives by experiencing them. Suffering is the price of joy, and death is the deliberate choice for an eternal life or new identity.
Dickinson and Plath describe their suffering and death in paradoxical terms. They develop them as necessary factors to coexist with the ultimate happiness. If the price is not paid, it is impossible to get anything. Dickinson and Plath stress even the worst things have their own roles. To change negative things into positive things is their greatness. They made suffering their poetic power, and death the space for the poetic creativity. The innovation of their lives and poetry was accomplished not by gain but loss, not by triumph but defeat. There was death in life, and life in death. Dickinson and Plath wrote many poems praising the paradoxical pleasure and life by pain and death.