Female identity in Sylvia Plath’s Ariel collection (first published in 1965) is a complex site of being and becoming within a 1950s culture of performance. From a twenty-first century perspective, this dissertation bridges traditional and contemporary readings of Plath and the Plath archive through a referencing of motifs such as celebrity, ‘the gaze’, ventriloquism and clothing. The inter-discursive approach used – literary, psychoanalytic, cultural – attempts to underline the ongoing significance of Plath’s place as a woman poet in literary studies. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2010.