Abstract:In this article, I contend that Plath’s Three Women (1962) stages a poetic commentary on the theory of natural childbirth pioneered by Dr. Grantly Dick Read and popularized during the mid-1950s in Great Britain and the United States as an alternative to the “Twilight Sleep.” Plath annotated Read’s bestseller Childbirth Without Fear (1959) and attended relaxation classes before the birth of her daughter Frieda; however, the long poem has yet to be read in terms of this medical intertext. As this article demonstrates, treating Plath’s poem alongside Read’s popular manual pushes us to consider poetry’s (generic) place in making legible psychologically complex embodied states. Although Read is not directly referenced, I argue that Three Women wrestles with the psychological implications of this obstetrician’s concept of the Fear-Tension-Pain Syndrome and the antenatal curriculum he developed to end such anxiety-produced suffering.

中文翻译：

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“没有比这更残忍的奇迹了”：普拉斯三个女人的Readian放松和母性代理

摘要：在这篇文章中，我认为 Plath 的《三个女人》（1962）对由 Grantly Dick Read 博士开创并于 1950 年代中期在英国和美国流行的自然分娩理论进行了诗意的评论，作为替代“暮光之眠”。普拉斯为雷德的畅销书《无所畏惧的分娩》（1959 年）做了注释，并在女儿弗里达出生前参加了放松课程；然而，就这种医学互文而言，这首长诗还有待阅读。正如本文所展示的，将普拉斯的诗与雷德的流行手册一起处理，促使我们考虑诗歌在使心理复杂的具体化状态变得清晰的（一般）位置。虽然 Read 没有直接引用，