“My arguement is meant, rather, to suggest that the pervasiveness of an exaggerated and distorted rhetoric about these readers tells us far less about Plath's audience and the value or meanings of Plath's writing than about the patriarchal ideologies that enable the rhetoric and make us blind to its implications, ideologies that allow the very women readers who have bought Plath's books and propelled her success to be turned, ironically, into agents of harm”