Sylvia Plath: Poems Summary and Analysis of "Daddy"

Summary
"Daddy," comprised of sixteen five-line stanzas, is a brutal and
venomous poem commonly understood to be about Plath's deceased
father, Otto Plath.

The speaker begins by saying that he "does not do anymore," and that
she feels like she has been a foot living in a black shoe for thirty
years, too timid to either breathe or sneeze. She insists that she needed
to kill him (she refers to him as "Daddy"), but that he died before she
had time. She describes him as heavy, like a "bag full of God,"
resembling a statue with one big gray toe and its head submerged in
the Atlantic Ocean. She remembers how she at one time prayed for
his return from death, and gives a German utterance of grief (which
translates literally to "Oh, you").

She knows he comes from a Polish town that was overrun by "wars,
wars, wars," but one of her Polack friends has told her that there are
several towns of that name. Therefore, she cannot uncover his
hometown, where he put his "foot" and "root."

She also discusses how she could never find a way to talk to him.
Even before she could speak, she thought every German was him, and
found the German language "obscene." In fact, she felt so distinct
from him that she believed herself a Jew being removed to a
concentration camp. She started to talk like a Jew and to feel like a
Jew in several different ways. She wonders in fact, whether she might
actually be a Jew, because of her similarity to a gypsy. To further
emphasize her fear and distance, she describes him as the Luftwaffe,
with a neat mustache and a bright blue Aryan eye. She calls him a
"Panzer-man," and says he is less like God then like the black
swastika through which nothing can pass. In her mind, "Every woman
adores a Fascist," and the "boot in the face" that comes with such a
man.
When she remembers Daddy, she thinks of him standing at the
blackboard, with a cleft chin instead of a cleft foot. However, this
transposition does not make him a devil. Instead, he is like the black
man who "Bit [her] pretty red heart in two." He died when she was
ten, and she tried to join him in death when she was twenty. When
that attempt failed, she was glued back together. At this point, she
realized her course - she made a model of Daddy and gave him both a
"Meinkampf look" and "a love of the rack and the screw." She
promises him that she is "finally through;" the telephone has been
taken off the hook, and the voices can no longer get through to her.

She considers that if she has killed one man, then she has in fact killed
two. Comparing him to a vampire, she remembers how he drank her
blood for a year, but then realizes the duration was closer to seven
years. She tells him he can lie back now. There is a stake in his heart,
and the villagers who despised him now celebrate his death by
dancing on his corpse. She concludes by announcing, "Daddy, Daddy,
you bastard, I'm through."

Analysis
"Daddy" is perhaps Sylvia Plath's best-known poem. It has elicited a
variety of distinct reactions, from feminist praise of its unadulterated
rage towards male dominance, to wariness at its usage of Holocaust
imagery. It has been reviewed and criticized by hundreds and
hundreds of scholars, and is upheld as one of the best examples of
confessional poetry.

It is certainly a difficult poem for some: its violent imagery,

invocation of Jewish suffering, and vitriolic tone can make it a
decidedly uncomfortable reading experience. Overall, the poem
relates Plath's journey of coming to terms with her father's looming
figure; he died when she was eight. She casts herself as a victim and
him as several figures, including a Nazi, vampire, devil, and finally,
as a resurrected figure her husband, whom she has also had to kill.

Though the final lines have a triumphant tone, it is unclear whether

she means she has gotten "through" to him in terms of
communication, or whether she is "through" thinking about him. Plath
explained the poem briefly in a BBC interview:

The poem is spoken by a girl with an Electra complex. The father

died while she thought he was God. Her case is complicated by the
fact that her father was also a Nazi and her mother very possibly part
Jewish. In the daughter the two strains marry and paralyze each other
–she has to act out the awful little allegory once over before she is
free of it.

In other words, contradiction is at the heart of the poem's meaning.

Neither its triumph nor its horror is to be taken as the sum total of her
intention. Instead, each element is contradicted by its opposite, which
explains how it shoulders so many distinct interpretations.

This sense of contradiction is also apparent in the poem's rhyme

scheme and organization. It uses a sort of nursery rhyme, singsong
way of speaking. There are hard sounds, short lines, and repeated
rhymes (as in "Jew," "through," "do," and "you"). This establishes and
reinforces her status as a childish figure in relation to her authoritative
father. This relationship is also clear in the name she uses for him -
"Daddy"- and in her use of "oo" sounds and a childish cadence.
However, this childish rhythm also has an ironic, sinister feel, since
the chant-like, primitive quality can feel almost like a curse. One
critic wrote that the poem's "simplistic, insistent rhythm is one form
of control, the obsessive rhyming and repeated short phrases are
others, means by which she attempts to charm and hold off evil
spirits." In other words, the childish aspects have a crucial, protective
quality, rather than an innocent one.
"Daddy" can also be viewed as a poem about the individual trapped
between herself and society. Plath weaves together patriarchal figures
– a father, Nazis, a vampire, a husband – and then holds them all
accountable for history's horrors. Like "The Colossus," "Daddy"
imagines a larger-than-life patriarchal figure, but here the figure has a
distinctly social, political aspect. Even the vampire is discussed in
terms of its tyrannical sway over a village. In this interpretation, the
speaker comes to understand that she must kill the father figure in
order to break free of the limitations that it places upon her. In
particular, these limitations can be understood as patriarchal forces
that enforce a strict gender structure. It has the feel of an exorcism, an
act of purification. And yet the journey is not easy. She realizes what
she has to do, but it requires a sort of hysteria. In order to succeed, she
must have complete control, since she fears she will be destroyed
unless she totally annihilates her antagonist.

The question about the poem's confessional, autobiographical content

is also worth exploring. The poem does not exactly conform to Plath's
biography, and her above-cited explanation suggests it is a carefully-
constructed fiction. And yet its ambivalence towards male figures
does correspond to the time of its composition - she wrote it soon
after learning that her husband Ted Hughes had left her for another
woman. Further, the mention of a suicide attempt links the poem to
her life.

However, some critics have suggested that the poem is actually an

allegorical representation of her fears of creative paralysis, and her
attempt to slough off the "male muse." Stephen Gould Axelrod writes
that "at a basic level, 'Daddy' concerns its own violent, transgressive
birth as a text, its origin in a culture that regards it as illegitimate –a
judgment the speaker hurls back on the patriarch himself when she
labels him a bastard." The father is perceived as an object and as a
mythical figure (many of them, in fact), and never really attains any
real human dimensions. It is less a person than a stifling force that
puts its boot in her face to silence her. From this perspective, the
poem is inspired less by Hughes or Otto than by agony over creative
limitations in a male literary world. However, even this interpretation
begs something of an autobiographical interpretation, since both
Hughes and her father were representations of that world.

Plath's usage of Holocaust imagery has inspired a plethora of critical

attention. She was not Jewish but was in fact German, yet was
obsessed with Jewish history and culture. Several of her poems utilize
Holocaust themes and imagery, but this one features the most striking
and disturbing ones. She imagines herself being taken on a train to
"Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen," and starting to talk like a Jew and feel
like a Jew. She refers to her father as a "panzer-man," and notes his
Aryan looks and his "Luftwaffe" brutality. One of the leading articles
on this topic, written by Al Strangeways, concludes that Plath was
using her poetry to understand the connection between history and
myth, and to stress the voyeurism that is an implicit part of
remembering. Plath had studied the Holocaust in an academic context,
and felt a connection to it; she also felt like a victim, and wanted to
combine the personal and public in her work to cut through the
stagnant double-talk of Cold War America. She certainly uses
Holocaust imagery, but does so alongside other violent myths and
history, including those of Electra, vampirism, and voodoo.
Strangeways writes that, "the Holocaust assumed a mythic dimension
because of its extremity and the difficulty of understanding it in
human terms, due to the mechanical efficiency with which it was
carried out, and the inconceivably large number of victims." In other
words, its shocking content is not an accident, but is rather an attempt
to consider how the 20th century's great atrocity reflects and escalates
a certain human quality.

Indeed, it is hard to imagine that any of Sylvia Plath's poems could

leave the reader unmoved. "Daddy" is evidence of her profound
talent, part of which rested in her unabashed confrontation with her
personal history and the traumas of the age in which she lived. That
she could write a poem that encompasses both the personal and
historical is clear in "Daddy."

Sylvia Plath: Poems Summary and Analysis of "Ariel"

Summary
"Ariel" depicts a woman riding her horse in the countryside, at the
very break of dawn. It details the ecstasy and personal transformation
that occurs through the experience.

The poem begins with complete immobility in the darkness, while the
rider waits on the horse. There is then a change – the intangible blue
of hills and distances come into being. The rider is "God's lioness;"
she experiences the sensation of becoming one with her horse in a
powerful entangling of knees and heels. The plowed field on which
she rides soon splits and vanishes behind her, remaining elusive like
the brown neck of her steed that she "cannot catch."

As she rides, the narrator observes black berries "cast[ing] dark

hooks," and a profusion of shadows. There is "something else" that
forcefully pulls her through the air as she rides, its strength described
as thighs, hair, and her heels, which flake from the force of the ride.

She compares herself to Lady Godiva, who rode naked upon her
horse. In the midst of the ride, she can slough off things of no
consequence –"dead hands, dead stringencies." She views herself as
the foam on wheat, as a sparkling of light on the ocean. She discerns a
child's cry through a wall, but ignores it.

The rider is now a potent arrow, as well as dew that "flies suicidal."
She has been subsumed into both the horse and the ride as she propels
herself forward into the rising sun, which is depicted as a powerful
red Eye.
Analysis
"Ariel"'s short length and seeming simplicity – a woman rides her
horse through the countryside at dawn – is belied by the incredible
amount of critical attention and praise that the poem has received
since its publication in 1965. It is considered one of Plath's most
accomplished and enigmatic poems, for it explores far more than a
simple daybreak ride. It must be noted that this poem provides the
title for her collection Ariel, selected after she rejected the title
"Daddy." The poem justifies its centrality through a use of dazzling
imagery, vivid emotional resonance, historical and biblical allusions,
and a breathtaking sense of movement. Critics tend to discuss the
poem as explorations of several different subjects, including: poetic
creativity; sexuality; Judaism; animism; suicide and death; self-
realization and self-transformation; and mysticism.

To begin with, the name Ariel refers to three different things: Sylvia
Plath's own horse, which she loved to ride; the androgynous sprite
from Shakespeare's play The Tempest; and Jerusalem, which was also
called Ariel in the Old Testament. Critics who discuss Shakespeare's
Ariel tend to read Plath's poem as an exploration of poetic creativity
and process. Shakespeare's Ariel embodies this power, and Plath may
be attempting to fashion a metaphor for the process of writing a poem.
The poet begins in darkness, but is then hauled along by the
inspiration of poetic language. The poem begins in passivity, but
moves into one of control and power. The critic Susan van Dyne notes
how the poet's self-transformation is manifest in her use of complete
sentences, which begins midway through the poem. She becomes both
male and female, horse and rider, poet and creative force, arrow and
target. She is not merely a captive of the creative drive, but its agent.

In regards to the biblical allusion of Jerusalem, it is no doubt a

product of Plath's fascination – nay, obsession – with Judaism and the
Jews. "Ariel" translates to "lion of God" from Hebrew, and Plath
refers to herself as "God's lioness" in line 4. Critics have observed a
recurrent motif in Plath's poetry wherein she associates horses with
religious ecstasy. Riding seemed to be a way to achieve this
transcendence. William V. Davis sees Plath as wanting to
communicate this private, ecstatic, and nearly-unknowable experience
to the reader. He considers the rhyming scheme of the last line –"Eye,
the cauldron of morning" – and sees it as tying together the personal
activity of riding a horse, the communal connotations of the Hebrew
race and its suffering, and the cauldron, which is a way to "[mix] all
of the foregoing elements together into a kind of melting pot of
emotion, history, and personal involvement." She does not mean to
declare herself an inhabitant of Jerusalem, but as one connected to it
through greater, transcendental forces.

The allusion to Lady Godiva is an important one, as it suggests issues

of the feminine and the masculine. In the 11th century Anglo-Saxon
legend, Lady Godiva was the wife of an English lord who rode naked
through the streets in order to gain a remission from the heavy tax he
had placed upon his tenants. She had been frustrated with his
stubbornness and greed in the taxation matter, and continued to
demand that her husband ease the burden. He finally agreed to do so
if she would strip naked and ride her horse through the town. The
townspeople agreed to refrain from looking at her; only one man,
"Peeping Tom," did not keep his promise. Quite obviously, Plath
wishes to connect her ride through darkness to that of Lady Godiva.
The connection can be understood in terms of the privacy she enjoys
on her ride, or as suggestion that she rides for a greater cause than
simply her own pleasure. The allusion also resonates because of the
prevailing fascination western culture has with the forbidden figure of
the female nude and the problems of spectacle; Plath uses this image
to take control of her self-display, and does not mention any male
gaze at all. She embraces her ride and all of its evocations of power,
including sexual power, and is able to ignore even a child's cry that
"melts in the wall." On this ride, she can firmly declare her feminine
independence away from stifling patriarchal forces.

The poem is indeed full of sexual imagery. Some examples include:

lines 5 and 6 ("How one we grow,/Pivot of heels and knees!"); line 17
("thighs, hair"); and the imagery of the phallic arrow. All of these lend
credence to the claim that "Ariel" is an erotic poem. Plath is clearly
the female rider, but she identifies with the horse's masculinity.
Further, when she ignores the child's cry, she is refusing to accept the
traditionally female role of mother and care-giver. Shakespeare's Ariel
is an androgynous figure, and Plath's "Ariel" might also be statement
about how a female poet, when possessed by the poetic creative fury,
is not a female anymore – the genius transcends gender. The
transcendence is not a violent one, and is not aimed at destroying
men, however. Instead, it lies entirely outside of gender.

Finally, in critic Marjorie Perloff's discussion of animism and angst,

she claims Plath's poetry as representative of the ecstatic, oracular
poetic type, which centered upon self, thereby eschewing any sort of
narrative objectivity. Plath identifies with the animal kingdom to
express herself, depicting humans as lifeless and cold, and animals as
vibrant and alive. She wishes to lose her human identity and commit
to the instinct of animal, which rids her of any objectivity or
judgment. In "Ariel," she is "God's lioness" as she becomes one with
her force in a vivid trance. Perloff comments that "at its most intense,
life becomes death but it is a death that is desired: the 'Suicidal' leap
into the 'red / Eye' of the morning sun is not only violent but ecstatic."
Animism is a way to demonstrate how one is taken out of one's
quotidian life and one's self to achieve a state of transcendence and
communion.

If one is so inclined, one can even connect this interpretation to the

feminist and creative interpretations to suggest that Plath's ultimate
goal was to relate ecstatic frenzy - how we identify and understand the
frenzy ultimately reveals our own personality and interest.

Sylvia Plath: Poems Summary and Analysis of "Lady Lazarus"

Summary
"Lady Lazarus" is a poem commonly understood to be about
suicide. It is narrated by a woman, and mostly addressed to an
unspecified person.

The narrator begins by saying she has "done it again." Every ten
years, she manages to commit this unnamed act. She considers herself
a walking miracle with bright skin, her right foot a "paperweight," and
her face as fine and featureless as a "Jew linen". She address an
unspecified enemy, asking him to peel the napkin from her face, and
inquiring whether he is terrified by the features he sees there. She
assures him that her "sour breath" will vanish in a day.

She is certain that her flesh will soon be restored to her face after
having been sacrificed to the grave, and that she will then be a
smiling, 30 year-old woman. She will ultimately be able to die nine
times, like a cat, and has just completed her third death. She will die
once each decade. After each death, a "peanut-crunching crowd"
shoves in to see her body unwrapped. She addresses the crowd
directly, showing them she remains skin and bone, unchanged from
who she was before.

The first death occurred when she was ten, accidentally. The second
death was intentional - she did not mean to return from it. Instead, she
was as "shut as a seashell" until she was called back by people who
then picked the worms off her corpse. She does not specifically
identify how either death occurred.

She believes that "Dying / Is an art, like everything else," and that she
does it very well. Each time, "it feels real," and is easy for her. What
is difficult is the dramatic comeback, the return to the same place and
body, occurring as it does in broad daylight before a crowd's cry of "A
miracle!" She believes people should pay to view her scars, hear her
heart, or receive a word, touch, blood, hair or clothes from her.

In the final stanzas, she addresses the listener as "Herr Dockter" and
"Herr Enemy," sneering that she is his crowning achievement, a "pure
gold baby." She does not underestimate his concern, but is bothered
by how he picks through her ashes. She insists there is nothing there
but soap, a wedding ring, and a gold filling. She warns "Herr God,
Herr Lucifer" to beware of her because she is going to rise out of the
ash and "eat men like air."

Analysis
"Lady Lazarus" is a complicated, dark, and brutal poem originally
published in the collection Ariel. Plath composed the poem during her
most productive and fecund creative period. It is considered one of
Plath's best poems, and has been subject to a plethora of literary
criticism since its publication. It is commonly interpreted as an
expression of Plath's suicidal attempts and impulses. Its tone veers
between menacing and scathing, and it has drawn attention for its use
of Holocaust imagery, similar to "Daddy." The title is an allusion to
the Biblical character, Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead.

The standard interpretation of the poem suggests that it is about

multiple suicide attempts. The details can certainly be understood in
this framework. When the speaker says she "has done it again," she
means she has attempted suicide for the third time, after one
accidental attempt and one deliberate attempt in the past. Each
attempt occurred in a different decade, and she is now 30 years old.
Now that she has been pulled back to life from this most recent
attempt, her "sour breath / Will vanish in a day," and her flesh will
return to her bones. However, this recovery is presented as a failure,
whereas the suicide attempts are presented as accomplishments -
"Dying is an art" that she performs "exceptionally well." She seems to
believe she will reach a perfection through escaping her body.

By describing dying as an art, she includes a spectator to both her

deaths and resurrections. Because the death is a performance, it
necessarily requires others. In large part, she kills herself to punish
them for driving her to it. The eager "peanut-crunching crowd" is
invited but criticized for its voyeuristic impulse. The crowd could
certainly be understood to include the reader himself, since he reads
the poem to explore her dark impulses. She assumes that her voyeurs
are significantly invested - they would pay the "large charge" to see
her scars and heart.

However, she imbues this impulse with a harsh criticism by

comparing the crowd to the complacent Germans who stood aside
while the Jews were thrown into concentration camps. Further, the
crowd ultimately proves less an encouragement than a burden when
they also attend the resurrection. She despises this second part of the
process, and resents the presence of others at that time. Whether this
creates a vicious circle, in which that resentment is partially
responsible for the subsequent attempt, is implied but not explicitly
stated. Critic Robert Bagg explores the speaker's contradictory
feelings towards the crowd by writing that Plath "is not bound by any
metaphysical belief in the self's limitations. Instead of resisting the
self's antagonists she derives a tremendous thrill from throwing her
imagination into the act of self-obliteration." She can destroy her
body, but her imaginative self remains a performer, always aware of
the effect she has on others.
The poem can also be understood through a feminist lens, as a
demonstration of the female artist's struggle for autonomy in a
patriarchal society. Lynda K. Bundtzen writes that "the female
creation of a male-artist god is asserting independent creative
powers." From this perspective, "Lady Lazarus" is not merely a
confessional poem detailing depressive feelings, but is also a
statement on how the powerful male figure usurps Plath's creative
powers but is defeated by her rebirth. Though Lady Lazarus knows
that "Herr Doktor" will claim possession of her body and remains
after forcing her suicide, she equally believes she will rise and "eat
men like air." Her creative powers can be stifled momentarily, but
will always return stronger.

The poem can also be understood in a larger context, as a comment on

the relationship between poet and audience in a society that, as
Pamela Annas claims, has separated creativity and consumption. The
crowd views Lady Lazarus/the poet/Plath as an object, and therefore
does not recognize her as a human being. Plath reflects this through
her multiple references to body parts separated from the whole. From
this interpretation, Lady Lazarus's suicide then becomes "an assertion
of wholeness, an act of self-definition, and a last desperate act of
contempt toward the peanut-crunching crowd." The only way she can
keep herself intact is to destroy herself, and she does this rather than
be turned into commodities. Though "Herr Docktor" will peruse her
remains for commodities, she will not have been defeated because of
her final act.

As has often been the case in Plath's poems, the Holocaust imagery
has drawn much attention from critics and readers. It is quite profuse
in this poem. Lady Lazarus addresses a man as "Herr Dokter," "Herr
Enemy," "Herr God," and "Herr Lucifer." She describes her face as a
"Nazi lampshade" and as a"Jew linen." As previously described, one
effect of these allusions is to implicate the reader, make him or her
complicit in passive voyeurism by comparing him or her to the
Germans who ignored the Holocaust. However, they also serve to
establish the horrific atmosphere than be understood as patriarchy, as
a society of consumers, or as simply cruel humans. No matter how
one interprets the crowd in the poem, they complicate the poem's
meaning so that it is a sophisticated exploration of the responsibility
we have for each other's unhappiness, rather than simply a dire,
depressive suicide note.

Death
Death is an ever-present reality in Plath's poetry, and manifests in
several different ways.

One common theme is the void left by her father's death. In "Full
Fathom Five," she speaks of his death and burial, mourning that she is
forever exiled. In "The Colossus," she tries in vain to put him back
together again and make him speak. In "Daddy," she goes further in
claiming that she wants to kill him herself, finally exorcising his
vicious hold over her mind and her work.

Death is also dealt with in terms of suicide, which eerily corresponds

to her own suicide attempts and eventual death by suicide. In "Lady
Lazarus," she claims that she has mastered the art of dying after trying
to kill herself multiple times. She sneers that everyone is used to
crowding in and watching her self-destruct. Suicide, though, is
presented as a desirable alternative in many of these works. The
poems suggest it would release her from the difficulties of life, and
bring her transcendence wherein her mind could free itself from its
corporeal cage. This desire is exhilaratingly expressed in "Ariel," and
bleakly and resignedly expressed in "Edge." Death is an immensely
vivid aspect of Plath's work, both in metaphorical and literal
representations.

Victimization
Plath felt like a victim to the men in her life, including her father, her
husband, and the great male-dominated literary world. Her poetry can
often be understood as response to these feelings of victimization, and
many of the poems with a male figure can be interpreted as referring
to any or all of these male forces in her life.

In regards to her father, she realized she could never escape his
terrible hold over her; she expressed her sense of victimhood in "The
Colossus" and "Daddy," using powerful metaphors and comparisons
to limn a man who figured heavily in her psyche.

Her husband also victimized her through the power he exerted as a

man, both by assuming he should have the literary career and through
his infidelity. Plath felt relegated to a subordinate, "feminine" position
which stripped from her any autonomy or power. Her poems from the
"Colossus" era express her frustration over the strictures under which
she operated. For instance, "A Life" evokes a menacing and bleak
future for Plath. However, in her later poems, she seems finally able
to transcend her status as victim by fully embracing her creative gifts
("Ariel"), metaphorically killing her father ("Daddy"), and committing
suicide ("Lady Lazarus", "Edge").

Patriarchy
Plath lived and worked in 1950s/1960s England and America,
societies characterized by very strict gender norms. Women were
expected to remain safely ensconced in the house, with motherhood as
their ultimate joy and goal. Women who ventured into the arts found
it difficult to attain much attention for their work, and were often
subject to marginalization and disdain. Plath explored and challenged
this reductionist tendency through her work, offering poems of
intense vitality and stunning language. She depicted the bleakness of
the domestic scene, the disappointment of pregnancy, the despair over
her husband's infidelity, her tortured relationship with her father, and
her attempts to find her own creative voice amidst the crushing weight
of patriarchy. She shied away from using genteel language and
avoided writing only of traditionally "female" topics. Most
impressively, the work remains poetic and artistic - rather than
political - because of her willing to admit ambivalence over all these
expectations, admitting that both perspectives can prove a trap.

Nature
Images and allusions to nature permeate Plath's poetry. She often
evokes the sea and the fields to great effect. The sea is usually
associated with her father; it is powerful, unpredictable, mesmerizing,
and dangerous. In "Full Fathom Five," her father is depicted as a sea
god. An image of the sea is also used in "Contusion," there suggesting
a terrible sense of loss and loneliness.

She also pulled from her personal life, writing of horse-riding on the
English fields, in "Sheep in Fog" and "Ariel." In these cases, she uses
the activity to suggest an otherworldly, mystical arena in which
creative thought or unfettered emotion can be expressed.

Nature is also manifested in the bright red tulips which jolt the listless
Plath from her post-operation stupor, insisting that she return to the
world of the living. Here, nature is a provoker, an instigator - it does
not want her to give up. Nature is a ubiquitous theme in Plath's work;
it is a potent force that is sometimes unpredictable, but usually works
to encourage her creative output.
The self
Plath has often been grouped into the confessional movement of
poetry. One of the reasons for this classification is that she wrote
extensively of her own life, her own thoughts, her own worries. Any
great artist both creates his or her art and is created by it, and Plath
was always endeavoring to know herself better through her writing.
She tried to come to terms with her personal demons, and tried to
work through her problematic relationships. For instance, she tried to
understand her ambivalence about motherhood, and tried to vent her
rage at her failed marriage.

However, her exploration of herself can also be understood as an

exploration of the idea of the self, as it stands opposed to society as a
whole and to other people, whom she did not particularly like. Joyce
Carol Oates wrote that even Plath's children seemed to be merely the
objects of her perception, rather than subjective extensions of herself.
The specifics of Plath's work were drawn from her life, but
endeavored to transcend those to ask more universal questions. Most
infamously, Plath imagined her self as a Jew, another wounded and
persecuted victim. She also tried to engage with the idea of self in
terms of the mind and body dialectic. "Edge" and "Sheep in Fog"
explore her desire to leave the earthly life, but express some
ambivalence about what is to come after. "Ariel" suggests it is glory
and oneness with nature, but the other two poems do not seem to
know what will happen to the mind/soul once the body is eradicated.
This conflict - between the self and the world outside - can be used to
understand almost all of Plath's poems.

The Body
Many of Plath's poems deal with the body, in terms of motherhood,
wounds, operations, and death.
In "Metaphors," she describes how her body does not feel like it is her
own; she is simply a "means" towards delivering a child. In "Tulips"
and "A Life," the body has undergone an operation. With the surgery
comes an excising of emotion, attachment, connection, and
responsibility. The physical cut has resulted in an emotional severing,
which is a relief to the depressed woman. "Cut" depicts the thrill Plath
feels on almost cutting her own thumb off. It is suggested that she
feels more alive as she contemplates her nearly-decapitated thumb,
and watches the blood pool on the floor. "Contusion" takes things
further - she has received a bruise for some reason, but unlike in
"Cut," where she eventually seems to grow uneasy with the wound,
she seems to welcome the physical pain, since the bruise suggests an
imminent end to her suffering. Suicide, the most profound and
dramatic thing one can do to one's own body, is also central to many
of her poems.

Overall, it is clear that Plath was constantly discerning the

relationship between mind and body, and was fascinated with the
implications of bodily pain.

Motherhood
Motherhood is a major theme in Plath's work. She was profoundly
ambivalent about this prescribed role for women, writing in
"Metaphors" about how she felt insignificant as a pregnant woman, a
mere "means" to an end. She lamented how grotesque she looked, and
expressed her resignation over a perceived lack of options. However,
in "Child," she delights in her child's perception of and engagement
with the world. Of course, "Child" ends with the suggestions that she
knows her child will someday see the harsh reality of life. Plath did
not want her children to be contaminated by her own despair. This
fear may also have manifested itself in her last poem, "Edge," in
which some critics have discerned a desire to kill her children and
take them with her far from the terrors of life. Other poems in her
oeuvre express the same tension. Overall, Plath clearly loved her
children, but was not completely content in either pregnancy or
motherhood.