Imprisonment and Escape in Sylvia Plath‟s Poetry

Christel C. Russman

A Thesis

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts in English

Department of English

Central Connecticut State University

New Britain, Connecticut

August 2004

Thesis Advisor

Dr. Susan Gilmore

Department of English

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 Table of Contents

Introduction......................................................................2

Chapter 1: Imprisonment.................................................13

Chapter 2: Attempting Escape........................................35

Chapter 3: Aggressive Escape........................................57

Conclusion......................................................................78

Bibliography..................................................................82

Biographical Statement.................................................85

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Introduction

The purpose of this thesis is to explore images of imprisonment and escape within

selected poems by Sylvia Plath. The causes of imprisonment are complex, and it is my

intention to relate imprisoning features in Plath‟s poetry to Plath‟s family, career, and

gender. Imprisoning features create a suppressed state that inspires a desire for escape,

which becomes evident in Plath‟s poetry as well. I will move through poems featuring

imprisonment, to speakers who attempt escape, ending with poems that exhibit a more

forceful attempt at escape from imprisoning features. Imprisonment and escape images

are engaging because they relate to Plath on a personal level, yet can also be conceived

on a universal level. Universal refers to the impact of Plath‟s poems on women in

general. Plath‟s personal life is consequential to my approach; however, I refuse to

become entangled in her periods of depression or suicide or in reductive readings of her

poems from this period. Instead I will concentrate on Plath‟s lifetime including the

people and events that impacted the themes of imprisonment and escape discovered

within her poetry. I will prove that Plath‟s personal messages often apply to a wide

female audience.

Many of Plath‟s poems employ a first person speaker or a voice that speaks as an

object or animal. Readers often assume a poem‟s speaker to be the poet‟s voice and this

assumption is usually incorrect. Poets have license to create personae that do not relate

to themselves; however, Plath is different because of her standing as a confessional poet.

I will assert Plath‟s presence within her poems based on biographical support; therefore I

will refer to the poems‟ speakers interchangeably as “speaker” or “Plath.” Plath‟s

journals and her husband, Ted Hughes, are two of the sources that document her poems‟

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inspiration as they relate to moments in her life. If a poem does not correspond to

biographical support, then I will discuss the poem‟s speaker using only general terms.

My use of a confessional approach encourages the interpretation of Plath‟s speakers as

herself. I will provide the primary features that characterize a confessional poet before

defining the attributes of and rationale for my focus on imprisonment and escape themes.

First I would like to acknowledge arguments against Plath‟s label as a

confessional poet. Critics‟ opposition to the confessional label is due to Plath‟s attempts

to distance herself from the personal through the use of outside images. Joan Bobbitt

claims that Plath‟s tone of “self-description is primarily clinical and analytical,” therefore

preventing the poet from employing a true confessional mode (311). Bobbit‟s version of

a confessional poet would, on the other hand, speak as him or herself to the reader

pragmatically to convey a personal event. Judith Kroll agrees with Bobbitt, acquiescing

that Plath does incorporate the personal, yet mutates it into something else: “In Plath the

personal concerns and everyday role are transmuted into something impersonal, by being

absorbed into a timeless mythic system” (2). Helen McNeil agrees, stating that Plath‟s

power is her poetic voice, which “lures the reader back to a hidden self while at the same

time addressing itself outwards through interpretable imagery” (472).

Despite these arguments, Plath is invariably included in studies of confessional

literature. According to Robert Phillips‟s book The Confessional Poets, “Each

[confessional] poem is in some way a declaration of dependence. Or of guilt. Or of

anguish and suffering. Thus, the writing of each such poem is an ego-centered, though

not an egocentric act; its goal is self-therapy and a certain purgation” (8). Phillips

remark proves that confessional poems serve many purposes. Plath‟s poems align to all

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of these criteria. Bobbit‟s claim regarding Plath‟s work as “clinical and analytical”

(311) therefore can agree with a confessional understanding of a poem‟s therapeutic

purpose. Many of Plath‟s poems have the ability to be traced back to a corresponding

source of despair in her life and result in her working through the upsetting event.

Plath‟s poetry allowed her to define personal conditions that disturbed her and to write

about them candidly. The personal conditions are her relationships with family; the

focus in this paper will be relationships between Plath and her father and Plath and her

husband for the ways in which father and husband are at times entwined.

The “mythic system” that Judith Kroll used to oppose Plath‟s standing as

confessional relates to Plath‟s poetry dealing with gender issues. In a 1962 interview,

Plath explained that she used real life within her words, but attempted to maneuver it to

embrace larger issues: “I think my poems come out of the sensuous and emotional

experiences I have...and one should be able to manipulate these experiences with an

informed and an intelligent mind” (Orr). Plath asserts the use of the personal but

confirms that it has been “manipulated.” The manipulation of events does not change

their derivation from a personal source. Phillips excuses such arguments in his

definition of confessional poetry. He explains that, “While a confessional poem is one

which mythologizes the poet‟s personal life, it has its elements of fancy like any other”

(11). Plath incorporates the “fanciful” tools of the confessional style, such as irony, a

common language and the successful use of the personal which, in instances such as

gender specific poems, “is expressed so intimately we can all identify and empathize”

(Phillips 17).

Finally arguments regarding Plath‟s use of imagery bear consideration. Another

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of McNeil‟s statements lends itself to a conclusion that supports the confessional.

McNeil lists the many voices discovered in Plath‟s poetry:

The bereaved and betrayed child..., the dutiful daughter, the young woman
caught in a classic double bind between a fifties model of
femininity and her conviction of artistic vocation...the
mythologizer of womanly archetypes, the exalted wife in a
marriage of true minds...all these speaking images are screens.
(472)

I maintain that Plath‟s images do not take away from her personal expression as a

confessional poet. People are not one dimensional. The variety of roles McNeil

presents substantiates my approach, which is that Plath‟s poetry assumes a voice

depending on the situation she is writing about. The images she incorporates link to her

life in some way. Fred Moramarco explained that the confessional mode “seemed a

literarily acceptable way to exorcise the demons that traumatize inner lives” (141).

Plath‟s use of outside agents to speak of her life is the foundation of my thesis. Plath

desired to experience different roles. She did not want to feel locked into the female

poet ideal associated with her era. Women poets were expected to either repress

emotion and sexuality (McNeil 473) or as Hughes‟s comment will later reveal, to be

highly emotional and ornate. In the video Voices and Visions, Sandra Gilbert shares

Plath‟s desire to work outside both of these expectations, revealing that Plath credits

Woolf for making her own work possible, but claims that she will do better than Woolf

did. I will say more about gender within the defining features of imprisonment. My

argument will clarify that Plath embraces the personal and does interpret these events

using thematic images within her poetry.

Imprisonment and escape are expressive of feelings that have been associated

with Plath by other writers as well as used by Plath herself. Imprisonment refers to

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being trapped, evoking feelings of powerlessness to change her surroundings. Perhaps

Plath‟s allusions to imprisonment began with the birth of her brother Warren, as she

stated, “I felt the wall of my skin: I am I. That stone is a stone. My beautiful fusion with

the things of the world was over” (Perloff 57). The “wall” of her skin suggests a barrier.

Her inability to “fuse” with nature or her surroundings reveals that her humanity impedes

her possibilities. Her statement indicates the transition away from the fantasy world of

early childhood. Warren‟s birth is also the first instance of Plath‟s feelings of rivalry as

Wagner-Martin‟s biography notes Plath feeling “rage at his invasion of her territory”

(21). At this point, Plath was required to share the attention with a male, leading to

gender differences that would become more pronounced as she grew.

The female gender is an imprisoning feature evident in Plath‟s poems. The

social atmosphere during Plath‟s adulthood was often limited for women. Middlebrook

accounts for the stereotypical mother portrayed on television shows during Plath‟s life.

The shows “deployed extreme stereotypes of the American Mom against whom men

struggled to maintain control and assert authority in the home...women farcically pushing

male dominance to the point of collapse, until put back in their place” (647). Shows

such as “I Love Lucy” and “The Honeymooners” allowed women some semblance of

control within the household until the women become involved in some disaster that

would require the husband to intervene. These episodes display women attempting to

fight against a subservient role before being returned to a submissive state. The poems

chosen for my first two chapters often follow this model, revealing a female who

struggles against a passive state only to be returned to it. Diane Wood Middlebrook‟s

essay “What Was Confessional Poetry?” describes Plath‟s ability to “evoke in [her]

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women-centered poems the definitive ways that gender difference shapes the social

experience of persons, and inescapably situates readers in a gendered position vis-a-vis

the poetic text” (635). Plath recognized the social constructs of the late fifties and early

sixties through poems in which the female is secondary to the male. Helen McNeil

validates the dilemma women writers faced in relation to Plath‟s Guest Editorship at

Mademoiselle stating, “Plath saw herself entering a society in which marriage and

childbearing were irreconcilable with a career. Yet she wanted both” (476). McNeil‟s

remark reveals Plath‟s determination to move beyond the expected lifestyle. A

retaliatory effect becomes apparent in poems such as her bee sequence, which depict a

microcosm in which the female is superior to the male bee. Imprisonment and escape

are evident in the tension between a subjugated female position and her attempts to free

herself from such constraints. Plath‟s poetry acts as an escape mechanism, allowing her

to portray society‟s notions, then attempting to break down such barriers. It is not only

the act of writing that allows the escape but also the devices Plath employs within the

poems that attempt to reconnect her with a world outside the prescribed domestic sphere.

Plath‟s family relations and career create the other sources of imprisonment

within her poems. It is important to address the relationship between Plath‟s family life

and her career. There are many commentaries on Plath‟s career progression, including

her formal choices. Her earlier poems are often traced back to influential poets, while

her later poems are considered to showcase Plath‟s true voice. Ann Sexton explained

that, “Those early poems were all in a cage (and not even her own cage at that)” (Sexton

177). Sexton‟s description of early Plath poems “in a cage” alludes to their limitations

of Plath‟s own voice. Sandra Gilbert agrees that Plath‟s use of strict form in earlier

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poems is dictated by choices such as counting syllables or using a villanelle or sonnet

format. Gilbert claims that Plath seems “confined or restrained by them,” yet they allow

her to move on to looser forms later in her writing career (Voices). Ted Hughes attests

that Plath‟s “real voice” surfaces in late autumn 1959. He claims that “at this time she

was concentratedly trying to break down the tyranny, the fixed focus, and public persona

which descriptive and discursive poems take as a norm” (qtd. in Perloff 65). Plath‟s

change in writing style adheres to a movement from imprisonment toward escape. It is

interesting that most poems with imprisoning features align themselves with what is

considered her earlier preference for structure. In contrast the escape poems tend to

display Plath‟s later uninhibited voice and freer form. The earlier poems I discuss are

not examples of Plath‟s villanelles or sonnets. Their form is Plath‟s own, which signals

an earlier move away from form than critics acknowledge. Plath‟s earlier poems utilize

patterns such as regular rhyme scheme to enhance a state of imprisonment. A regular

rhyme scheme is lacking in the later poems I will discuss.

Plath‟s acknowledgement as a poet heightened after she met and married fellow

poet Ted Hughes. In discussing Plath‟s career and its effect on imprisoning and

escaping images within her work, it will be important to note whether Hughes‟s presence

impacted the former and/or the latter within her poems. Several critics, such as Susan

Bassnet, Anna Tripp, and Janet Malcolm, argue that Plath demonstrated career envy

toward Hughes. I will utilize Susan Bassnet‟s book Sylvia Plath which accounts for

their relationship, including the career competition felt between the two and Plath‟s at

times difficult choice to live in England. According to Plath‟s journals, this experience

confronted her with a “continued discontent with the English weather, a recurring but

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significant problem” (Bassnet 19). Plath was ultimately an outsider while in England, a

prisoner in an unknown territory. These feelings of isolation impacted Plath‟s envy and

are witnessed within several of the poems I will discuss.

Part of Plath‟s movement toward more acclaimed works was the active assertion

of herself in her writing. I have shared her wish to have both career and family, and this

desire to live outside of social expectations applies to her writing as well. Plath‟s goal to

write in her own unique style conflicts with the consideration of a female poet‟s work as

either repressed or ornate. Plath admired primarily male authors or poets and attempted

to pave her way separately from other female writers. Her journal and writers such as

Gilbert and Gubar attest to Plath‟s desire to distinguish her standing as a female poet

apart from other female writers. In a letter to her mother, Plath noted the difference

between her poems and those of other female writers: “Ted says he never read poems by

a woman like mine; they are strong and full and rich--not quailing and whining like

Teasdale or simple lyrics like Millay” (244). Hughes‟s comment indicates the gendering

of certain qualities within poems and becomes an underhanded compliment. His

approval may have affected Plath‟s desire to break away from what Hughes and other

male poets considered women‟s writing. Despite this, Plath still wanted to fit in with

women socially, especially during her Smith years. Ronald Hayman‟s book shows

Plath‟s desire to conform: “At Smith, where she tried to dress like the other girls, her

conformism extended into relationships with boys. If you wanted--as she desperately

did want-- to be popular among the girls, it was essential to seem popular with boys”

(66-67). The conflict evident is that Plath desired to be womanly, yet aspired to write

otherwise. I will address this possibility further within my thesis. While Plath felt

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successful regarding her later poems, she also struggled with jealousy of the ease with

which men produced their works (Malcolm 86). Plath‟s combination of admiration and

jealousy of male success and power creates a tension between masculine and feminine

symbols in her poems. I will investigate gender images within the analysis of

imprisoned and escaped roles.

Escape becomes a factor when the poems‟ speakers attempt to break away from

imprisoning features. Their attempts are not always successful. The closing chapters

will reveal that the most effective attempts to escape are also the most brutal. I made my

choice to categorize poems in this manner based on one image‟s authority over the other

within each poem. For example, “The Zookeeper‟s Wife” shares a number of trapped

creatures, including the poem‟s speaker. By the poem‟s conclusion, the speaker shares

her desire to confront these confinements, determining this poem‟s placement in the

escape chapter. This one example does not imply that all poems beginning with

imprisonment result in escape or that an attempt at escape is always successful. My

thesis will examine Plath poems exhibiting both states to determine whether Plath

achieves a poetic escape (an ability to overcome oppressive/imprisoning factors through

poetic choices such as shifting a poem‟s speaker between object and subject positions,

among other tools). I will further define the poetic escape with Plath‟s formal choices

and personal struggles (including career and key relationships) as a guide. When

applicable, the poetic structure will be discussed as it confirms a sense of imprisonment

via a tightly structured format or escape with a freer verse that is not bound by rules of

form.

Finally, it is important to note that I will give special attention to poems having

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animal images. My exploration of animal imagery for the ways in which it connects to

imprisonment and escape is an innovative approach to Plath‟s poetry. Animals fit into

discussions of both states because they are subjected to people‟s force upon them such as

being hunted or caged, yet their natures are free. Hughes is known for frequent use of

animals in his poetry, and Plath‟s use of animals is often connected to Hughes‟s

influence. Plath realized the impact of using animals, as is evident in a letter to her

mother in which she wrote, “I cannot stop writing poems! They come better and better.

They come from the vocabulary of woods and animals and earth that Ted is teaching me”

(235). According to A. Alvarez in Voices and Visions, Plath acknowledges Hughes‟s

influence on her bee sequence, as she explained knowing more about her own past

through him. Plath‟s father had kept bees and Hughes‟s advice allowed Plath to see

these early events as poetic material. I will also discuss ways in which Plath‟s view of

animals differs from Hughes‟s in “The Rabbit Catcher,” a poem that contrasts Plath‟s

sympathy for animals with Hughes‟s comfort in their being hunted. Marjorie Perloff

explains a poetry of process which connects to Plath‟s use of animals, writing “Metaphor,

in such poetry, is accordingly not a way of describing or of evoking an observed world; it

is a „direct identification in which the poet himself is involved‟” (59). Plath becomes

part of the animal(s) within the poem to assert her own feelings of imprisonment and

potential power in relation to the issues of family, career, and gender.

Margaret Dickie Uroff‟s book Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, dismisses Plath‟s

early animal poems as “weak” (9); however she does consider several of Plath‟s and

Hughes‟s poems as they relate to one another. One comparison she makes is between

Plath‟s “Mussel Hunter at Rock Harbor” and Hughes‟s “Relic” (10). “Mussel Hunter at

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Rock Harbor” is one of the poems included in my chapter titled “Attempted Escape.” I

will not compare the poem to Hughes‟s, but will discuss the poem‟s rendering of an

attempt at escape. This poem will demonstrate a desire to experience a masculine world.

An irony is that the animal in the poem that allows her such an experience is a dead crab.

According to James Booth‟s “Competing Pulses: Secular and Sacred in Hughes,

Larkin and Plath,” Plath employs animals as a metaphor for a voice of sexual jealousy. I

will utilize Booth‟s comments on Plath‟s aligning herself with animal as victim within

my chapter on imprisoning features. I will counter Booth‟s analysis with readings in

which Plath‟s animals may also be predatory/powerful and therefore capable of providing

their own escape. In my opinion, Plath‟s use of animals allows for a complex discussion

encompassing imprisonment and escape. Animals also allow Plath a mode to address

gender issues. I will also discuss how certain animal poems fit into Plath‟s earlier

writing style marking a sense of imprisonment. The animals in these poems are by

nature more passive or are depicted as dead. In contrast will be animals that symbolize

a sense of freedom because of their depiction as wild or predatory.

Plath‟s poetry narrates the personal and universal story of a woman who protests a

prescribed state and eventually accomplishes a release from suppression in both form and

function. Her ability to incorporate and to strengthen the animals‟ positions in her

poems articulates a return to the sense of fantasy and power she felt she had lost.

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Chapter 1- Imprisonment

The first set of poems that demonstrate imprisonment utilize prominent

relationships from Plath‟s life, specifically those with her husband and with her father.

Plath uses domestic imagery, such as teacups, and specific references to marriage to

highlight a marital relationship. I will discuss the marital relationships within her poems

as they connect to her own marriage. Plath‟s father‟s image is evident in several poems

as well. Animal imagery is included within some of the poems, which deepens the state

of imprisonment, as the animals are seen subjected to a stronger being within the poem.

In the following poems, the female gender is portrayed as weaker and there is no hope for

escape from prescribed roles of confinement.

An evident sense of imprisonment is found in “The Applicant,” which is a poem

that objectifies marriage. Imprisonment is a state Plath‟s earlier poems explore;

however, this poem is the one exception. “The Applicant” was written in 1962 and is

the latest poem in this chapter. The speaker addresses a male figure throughout the

poem and provides him with the qualities of his potential wife. Plath and speaker are

conflated in this poem as the position allows Plath to step outside of the marriage plot.

Her authoritative voice guides the poem with an understanding of a marriage as an

institution. The first two stanzas represent the male as the applicant and reveal that his

application is for a wife. Plath switches gender expectations at this point in the poem as

the male role has unexpected characteristics. The poem‟s speaker asks him:

First, are you our sort of person?

Do you wear

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 A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,

Stitches to show something‟s missing? No, no? Then

How can we give you a thing? (1-7)

The lines imply that the applicant is expected to be an incomplete man. Plath presents

false appendages to create an imperfect male. Her choice of “rubber breasts” seems

strange in connection with a male figure. Middlebrook‟s chapter “What Was

Confessional Poetry?” describes Plath as attempting “the construction of a poetics from

within the woman‟s position...it retrieves the female body, particularly the female breast,

from objectification by the male gaze...” (641). Plath succeeds by forcing the male to be

scrutinized in the beginning of this poem although his subjection will not last. The

poem continues, revealing the man‟s lack of false parts. He is depicted crying as he

exposes that his hand is empty. The man‟s tears are an odd attribute, as men are not

supposed to cry. Again, Plath is turning the tables on the male figure, causing him to be

at another‟s mercy. It is his empty hand that provokes the speaker to offer him a wife.

The wife in the poem will serve as his “last resort” (39) in order to be complete. At this

point in the poem, Plath turns attention to the female figure, who assumes a stereotypical

wife image. This potential wife is an automaton, living only to supply her husband‟s

needs. She is frequently referred to as “it,” most noticeably in the speaker‟s repeated

line directed toward the man, “Will you marry it?” Plath‟s repetition of this line

enforces the wife‟s non-identity and reveals her imprisonment in a scripted role. The

final line, “Will you marry it, marry it, marry it” is a question posed as a command. This

irony determines that the bride figure is doomed to this existence, without question. The

repetition of this phrase enforces this sense of enclosure throughout the poem.

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 Both groom and bride are naked when first introduced: the man is “stark naked”

(19), while the woman is “Naked as paper to start” (30). The man is immediately

dressed in a black suit that is “waterproof, shatterproof, proof / Against fire and bombs

through the roof” (23-24). The man‟s suit is armor like, as he will be the stronger of the

two. Once the man is dressed he is no longer vulnerable and resumes a dominant male‟s

features. Implicit in “fire and bombs” (24) is the reference to battle. Plath uses the war

motif within several of the poems that I will discuss. This poem‟s battle reference to the

London Blitz reminds readers of World War II‟s lasting impact. The battle image more

importantly represents a gender conflict within the poem. The continued use of “proof”

shields the husband figure, confirming his strength opposed to the woman‟s weakness.

Meanwhile, the bride‟s nudity is more fragile due to the comparison to paper. Using

paper is also a connection to Plath‟s role as writer. A sheet of blank paper signifies

creative frustration as it pertains to Plath‟s poetry. In this case, Plath speaks of the

subjection of female writers as her perspective splits between subject as speaker and

object as wife. She has authority as the poem‟s writer/speaker but loses her control as a

wife. We do not discover the bride‟s apparel because this is inconsequential. She will

be “A living doll” (33) operated by her owner/husband. The man will inscribe the naked

page that symbolizes the bride.

The groom is promised that his bride will “do whatever you tell it” (13), and is

portrayed as a cure for his ailments. Even upon his death, her purpose will be to mourn

his passing; “It is guaranteed / To thumb shut your eyes at the end / And dissolve of

sorrow” (15-17). The latter line also reveals that her life ends with his, suggesting her

pointlessness on her own. The poem confirms this with its next line; “We make new

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stock from the salt” (18). Another will replace her when her duties are over. The tears

in the poem distinguish between the male and female. Tears connected to the man create

discomfort as the speaker commands, “Stop crying” (8) before allowing him a wife. The

wife‟s tears are considered meaningless as “new stock” is made from the tear‟s salt. The

man‟s tears are unexpected causing an immediate change, while the woman‟s tears are

conventional and therefore recycled within the household‟s economy.

The poem allows Plath to discuss the stereotypical perception of a wife‟s

subservient role. Could this be read as Plath contemplating her own marriage? Her

beliefs on marriage were often split between longing for marriage and fear that it would

prevent her independence. These feelings were expressed in her journals at several

points. One entry in particular characterizes a woman such as the female in “The

Applicant.” It is prefaced by Plath pondering childhood innocence, including a belief in

fairytales and make-believe, which transitions to an understanding of “grown-up reality”

(35). This journal entry catalogues a number of these realities, including her

interpretation of a man‟ s view on women; Plath states how ironic it is: “to realize that

most American males worship woman as a sex machine with rounded breasts and a

convenient opening in the vagina, as a painted doll who shouldn‟t have a thought in her

pretty head other than cooking a steak dinner and comforting him in bed after a hard 9-5

day at a routine business job” (36). Plath of course desires a relationship that will allow

her the freedom to express her individuality. In the same journal entry, she wrote, “I

must have a legitimate field of my own, apart from his, which he must respect” (99). Of

course Plath‟s marriage did not fulfill her wish to possess her own field, being that she

and Hughes shared the same aspirations as writers. “The Applicant” was written in

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1962, which was a bittersweet year for Plath. The year marked the birth of son Nicholas,

as well as her knowledge of Hughes‟s infidelity. Plath‟s feelings of disheartenment

would have assisted her with this poem. Using her own crumbling marriage as a guide

she perceived phoniness within the institution of marriage as a whole.

Plath employs a domestic environment in many of her poems. Even the earlier

poem, “The Beast” (1959), part of the longer work “Poem for a Birthday,” reveals a

marriage resulting in imprisonment. The poem contains extensive animal imagery,

beginning, “He was bullman earlier, / King of the dish, my lucky animal” (1-2). His

achievements are odd; an example are the lines, “The sun sat in his armpit / Nothing went

moldy...” (4-5). As the first stanza progresses, she becomes more unsure of him, evident

by its final line, “I hardly knew him” (10). The shorter second stanza reveals his true

self. He has become “the bowel‟s familiar” (13) and is represented as a dog due to

phrases such as “Mumblepaws” (12), “Fido Littlesoul” (13), and “The dark‟s his bone. /

Call him any name, he‟ll come to it” (14-15). A dog is a common animal in comparison

to the first stanza‟s “bullman.” His power has been diminished, yet as the final stanza

reveals, she is stuck with him. In Chapters in a Mythology, Judith Kroll discusses the

poem as a “split between past and present” that contrasts “an initially idyllic past with a

present fall from grace” (97-98). Plath‟s experience with marriage transfers from an

ideal promise of happiness to a heartbreaking conclusion in both her life and in the poem.

Using this approach, Kroll asserts that Plath‟s beasts are the men in her life who

can not substitute for her lost father. Plath‟s fear that all men will abandon her as her

father had is a valid one. Plath‟s mother attests to this in the Voices and Visions video,

stating that Plath‟s “fear is what she loved would leave her.” The promise in the first

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stanza is replaced with the speaker‟s misery in the final stanza. The misery is not from

an inability to find a replacement father figure, but from a sense of inferiority or

powerlessness within the domestic setting:

Mud-sump, happy sty-face.

I‟ve married a cupboard of rubbish.
I bed in a fish puddle.
Down here the sky is always falling.
Hogwallow‟s at the window.
The star bugs won‟t save me this month.
I housekeep in Time‟s gut-end
Among emmets and mollusks,
Duchess of Nothing,
Hairtusk‟s bride. (17-26)

The first four lines reveal a sense of uncleanness and lowness, due to the “mud-sump”

and “sty-face,” which both seem appropriate dwellings for a pig. The next line

transitions to a “fish puddle,” another setting that is limited, showcasing subjectivity to a

powerful oppressor. A puddle is an enclosure in which there would seem no hope. If

the sun were to shine, then the puddle will dry up and leave the speaker homeless and

lifeless. Domestic forces are enforced by the “housekeep[ing] in Time‟s gut-end” (23).

This line reinforces limits on time, while the reference to “gut-end” reveals that time is

almost up. “Gut-end” may also refer to the setting as yet another small confinement.

The world described depicts dirty, enclosed places, in which the speaker is equivalent to a

“Duchess of Nothing” because she exudes useless power. While “The Applicant” uses

tears to enforce the differences between male and female, here the difference is evident

by their stations. The male is “King of the dish” (2), while the female is “Duchess of

Nothing” (25). Both have a sense of power due to their titles, yet it is a warped control

because a duchess ranks beneath his female counterpart, the queen, and their control is

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based in a peculiar setting. Her cohabitants are the emmets and mollusks or ants and

spineless sea creatures. She is the counterpart of these creatures. “The Beast” is a

poem allowing the trapped speaker no hope.

Plath‟s poems with animals often have a predator/prey relationship that suggests a

relationship between male/female. In “The Beast,” Plath places the female role as

alongside “emmets” or ants. The comparison between female and ant will be maintained

in “The Spider,” which places a spider as the forceful master over the ants, who appear to

have a mindless existence. The spider is masculine according to Plath‟s description;

she writes about the spider as a “Notable robber baron” (9) who is “Near his small

stonehenge above the ants‟ route” (11). Plath identifies Anansi as the spider‟s cousin in

the opening stanza. Anansi is a main character from folktales, having a mischievous and

somewhat greedy character. Plath ends the first stanza, remarking, “Yet of devils the

cleverest / to get your carousals told: / You spun the cosmic web: you squint from center

field” (5-7). Plath reveals her own cleverness here, as she seems to acknowledge the

male version of a spider story before addressing her own version.

Plath‟s tale reveals the spider to be ruler over an exact area, in which he catches

his prey with ease. He is the equivalent of a demigod as his web is full of captured ants

that border on the sacrificial. The ants are martyrs from which he derives great pleasure

as is evident in the following lines: “. . . from there chose / His next martyr to the gross

cause / Of concupiscence . . .” (25-27). Plath‟s use of “concupiscence” reveals a lustful

pleasure received by the spider‟s hunt. The spider‟s symbolic activity is the male hunt

for female prey; therefore Plath genders the ants as feminine to create a balance.

Meanwhile, the ants are steady in their work, yet are ignorant to their eventual demise

20
from the spider. The female does not realize that the male preys upon her. Plath writes

that the ants:

Persevered on a set course

No scruple could disrupt,
Obeying orders of instinct till swept
Off-stage and infamously wrapped
Up by a spry black deus
Ex machina. Nor did they seem deterred by this. (30-35)

The line “Obeying orders of instinct” (32) is an interesting choice as it can apply to the

human. Plath considered marriage often in her journals as an expectation or instinct.

As much as she feared what marriage might entail, she continued to deliberate about it

and to desire it. A journal entry dated March 6, 1956, a few months before marrying

Hughes, reveals this conflict. Plath wrote:

...this is what I was meant to make for a man, and to give him this colossal
reservoir of faith and love for him to swim in daily, and to give him
children; lots of them in great pain and pride. And I hated you most, in
my unreason, for making me woman, to want this, and making me your
woman alone... (221)

The comparison of spider to a “deus Ex machina” shows that the spider‟s role has roots

in Greek mythology and drama, as the phrase likens him to a deity brought in to diffuse a

difficult situation. There is irony because it coaxes the reader to consider the spider as

an aide to the ant when in fact the spider is destroying it. Comparing the husband to the

spider clarifies the comment on marriage. The husband is expected to assist his wife but

has the ability to cause her harm. While the spider in the poem is comparable to a deity

or god, the ants are seen as subject to the spider‟s hunger. The ants portray a continuing

cycle of imprisonment and death.

The poem “Pursuit” also describes a predator versus prey relationship. The

panther in the poem is the masculine figure in pursuit of a female who can not escape

21
from his advances. Margaret Uroff claims that the poem was inspired by Plath‟s first

meeting with Hughes. The poem‟s date is 1956, which is the year Plath and Hughes

married, affirming the connection to their early relationship. Uroff feels that Plath

desires to be controlled in this poem and that the poem expresses “sexual agony” (69-70).

The irony is that Plath does have control as the poem‟s creator, which sets up Plath‟s

position as similar to the interviewer in “The Applicant.” The speaker‟s point of view

aligns with subject and object. As subject the speaker is empowered by the chase

because she controls the panther‟s course. As object she surrenders control to the

power and hunger of her pursuer once she is captured.

The opening stanza outlines the savage nature of the panther, as “His greed has

set the woods aflame, / He prowls more lordly than the sun” (3-4). These lines showcase

his aggressive power, and the high stature with which Plath empowers his character.

The female being chased is seen in an opposing nature, “Flayed by thorns I trek the rocks,

/ Haggard through the hot white noon” (9-10). While the panther is seen as graceful

during the chase, the female‟s state is growing more tired and beaten as the poem

progresses. She is not alone in this state, as Plath reveals other women who shared her

fate:

In the wake of this fierce cat,

Kindled like torches for his joy,
Charred and ravened women lie,
Become his starving body‟s bait. (21-24)

Plath uses these lines to speak of the previous women in Hughes‟s life. Plath‟s use of

“bait” suggests the ease with which he becomes seduced. These women have some

initial influence over his actions but he will leave them shattered. Her perception of

Hughes as ladies‟ man is inherent and is also evident in her short story “Stone Boy with

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Dolphin.” This story documents Plath and Hughes‟s first meeting at a party. In the

story Plath‟s proxy Dody harbors a certain fascination for Hughes‟s literary alter ego

Leonard. Dody‟s character is warned before the party that she should keep away from

Leonard as he is one of “the biggest seducers in Cambridge” (Johnny Panic 185). She

sees him at the party and he is with a woman, yet he approaches her anyway. Plath was

excited by him, but also scared by her emotions. In Voices and Visions, Sandra Gilbert

claimed that Plath saw all women as rivals to her relationship with Hughes. This

background knowledge confirms the mixture of emotions Plath portrays in the poem.

She is ragged and tired from running, yet says, “Appalled by secret want, I rush / From

such assault of radiance” (43-44). Her excitement both delights and repels her from its

source.

The consistent imagery reveals Plath‟s emphasis on entrapment. Her speaker‟s

control is almost nonexistent. At one point she attempts to placate the panther, but her

actions do not suffice:

I hurl my heart to halt his pace,

To quench his thirst I squander blood;
He eats, and still his need seeks food,
Compels a total sacrifice. (37-40)

The panther will only be satisfied by owning her entire being. She must be completely

possessed in order to fulfill his hunger. Her final actions within the poem reveal her

confining herself to escape him; however he continues to approach. The poem

concludes with his ascent to her self-imprisonment in “the tower of my fears” (45).

There is no hope for escape witnessed by the final lines, “The panther‟s tread is on the

stairs, / coming up and up the stairs” (49-50). The panther will continue his pursuit until

achieving the victory of capturing his prey at the female‟s expense.

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 While the preceding poems deal with marriage relationships, “The Colossus” has

been linked to Plath‟s husband and to her father. Susan Bassnet sees a comparison to

both male figures, claiming that Plath is “smaller than both” men, yet not “crushed by”

them (59, 62). Deryn Rees-Jones allots even more power to the female role, claiming

that the poem is “as much about the literal reconstruction of a feminine self as about the

physical reconstitution of the Father” (284). I feel that the poem has greater concern

with the father relationship, which I will prove using the poem‟s context. I also will

show that despite the reconstruction that occurs, there is still imprisonment and a sense of

hopelessness felt at the poem‟s completion. Plath attempts a similar reconstruction in

“Daddy” as I will demonstrate in my chapter on aggressive escape. This chapter will

prove that the more aggressive approach of killing her father‟s hold results in a release

from her father‟s imprisonment of her.

Plath was near age thirty at the time she wrote “The Colossus” in 1959, claiming

in the poem, “Thirty years now I have labored / To dredge the silt from your throat. / I am

none the wiser” (8-10). These lines do not address Hughes based on these lines because

she had only met him three years earlier. Kendall confirms my focus on Plath‟s father,

writing, “„The Colossus‟ presumes defeat in its ambition to communicate with the father”

(22). Also, the speaker refers to someone who is no longer living, unlike Hughes, who

was alive. A third confirmation is her specific reference to father in the following line,

“...O father, all by yourself / You are pithy and historical as the Roman Forum” (17-18).

The use of “pithy and historical” proves that the male figure is an important person from

the past, as “pithy” denotes strength and “historical” indicates the past. The speaker‟s

sense of futility when facing this father figure is apparent based on several lines. Lines

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8-10 show that even with thirty years of labor, there is no enlightenment for the poem‟s

speaker.

Plath again compares the female to an ant in this poem, “I crawl like an ant in

mourning” (12). The ant portrays a female identity in “The Beast” and “Spider.” Plath

characterizes the ants similarly in both poems showing the ant‟s industry in the face of a

masculine authoritative figure that is oblivious to the ant‟s attempts. Her life exists

tending to this giant statue, as she states, “My hours are married to shadow” (28). This

line reveals time‟s presence. The reference to marriage may deceive readers into seeing

the statue as husband. Based on the context of this poem, it is not a marriage of husband

and wife, but a reference to the commitment she makes to build this fatherly image.

Also negating a reading of this poem as a husband-wife marriage is that it is not marriage

to a person but to a shadow. A shadow may signify a ghost or a memory. In either

case, it is clear that she remains imprisoned in her attempts to escape the task of

constructing her father‟s image. As the first line stated, “I shall never get you put

together entirely.” The use of “never” is absolute and would not be accidental as Plath

designates careful word choices within her poems. Plath asserts the female entrapment

in this situation.

The organization of poems discussed thus far model imprisonment. All are

provided with an exact structure having a set number of lines within each stanza. A rigid

style exhibits imprisonment because the poem‟s composition does not allow a change in

format. In “The Applicant” there is an irregular rhyme scheme and the repetition of

words serve as enclosures within each stanza. Five of the seven stanzas include two

lines that end with identical words. This repetition creates a sense of sound circling

25
back, which hinders an escape. The form of “The Beast” reveals an enclosure that is

visual in nature. Its first and third stanzas contain ten lines which surrounds the middle

six-line stanza. “Pursuit” is even more structured based on its indentation patterns,

which can be seen in the following example:

Entering the tower of my fears,

I shut my doors on that dark guilt,
I bolt the door, each door I bolt.
Blood quickens, gonging in my ears: (45-48)

Each stanza separates every four lines by having the first and fourth lines at the margin,

seeming to enclose the second and third lines that are indented. This is an extreme case

in which even the printed text seems to be an enclosure. “Pursuit” also has a half-rhyme

scheme that mimics another enclosure in an abba pattern, evident by the ending word

pairs of fears/ears and guilt/bolt in the lines above. The poem‟s structure confirms the

feeling of being locked in. Sandra Gilbert accounts for the style of “The Colossus,”

remarking that it shows her work in strict form. She continues that this style “made

looser forms available later” (Voices). “Looser forms” refers to Plath‟s move away from

structured poems. As the poems begin to transition to modes of escape, there is also a

progression over the course of Plath‟s career, showcasing several of them to have a freer

sense of style. The freer sense of style is due to Plath‟s uninhibited voice. Tim Kendall

accounts for the transformation following The Colossus volume, stating:

Plath‟s choice of „The Colossus‟ as her title poem is fitting, not merely
because of its quality and subject matter, but because its interplay of
emotion and inhibition is symptomatic of the volume as a whole.
However, by the time The Colossus appeared, Plath had already dismissed
its achievement on the grounds of that inhibition. (23)

When critics speak of Plath‟s transformation as a poet, it is because of her increasing

ability to use more forceful language to convey her experiences. Hughes relays Plath‟s

26
belief that her poems before “The Stones” were “produced in the days before she became

herself” (“Notes” 192). “The Applicant” is the only poem in this chapter that occurs

after Plath‟s transition as a poet, which closely matches the subject matter of

imprisonment to the style of the poems thus far.

Plath used the relationships with her father and husband to explore imprisonment

in the poems discussed. Imprisonment is also imparted through images of sleeping and

dreaming. The forthcoming poems offer the presence of an escape from reality through

dreaming. The ability to dream allows a break from reality; however, a dream is limited

because it allows only a temporary relief from stresses of gender or relationships. The

dreamlike qualities provided by the moon, ghosts and wispiness tend to return to reality

making them unsuccessful attempts at escape.

Plath‟s use of dreaming is based on her own interest in the subject. Deryn

Rees-Jones provides background for Plath‟s interest in dreams:

Plath‟s anxiety about her desire to write and her need to circumvent
cultural constructions of femininity, and their translation into surrealist
practices, seems to emerge organically from an interest in dreams and
psychoanalysis, an interest that is clearly documented in her journals.
(281)

Rees-Jones reveals that Plath‟s interest in dreaming creates apprehension with her craft

and a desire to break down gender stereotypes. Female inferiority was discussed in the

preceding poems, and career competition was touched upon briefly in “The Applicant.”

Career competition will become even more of a focus in the forthcoming chapters. The

final chapter‟s poems “The Shrike” and “The Zookeeper‟s Wife” convey an inability to

dream in the manner of the male figure. In the poems I discuss here, the dreams that are

accomplished by the female are limited. I will critique the three poems as they align

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with the discussion of imprisonment through dreaming. I will determine that career and

gender inferiority are causes for imprisonment.

The poem “Hardcastle Crags” uses a third person narrator to recount a female

character‟s surreal escape from a town to a dream-like landscape that threatens a

complete loss of identity. The female character escapes from the town during night.

There is a repetition of “echoes” within the first two stanzas that establishes the silence of

the town during this time. The first use describes the sound of the girl‟s feet as she races

from the town, “Flintlike, her feet struck / Such a racket of echoes from the steely street”

(1-2). The second occurrence reiterates the sound of her departure as it reverberates off

the town‟s buildings, “A firework of echoes from wall / To wall of the dark, dwarfed

cottages / But the echoes died at her back...” (6-8). The girl seems the only life in the

poem, due to the hollow sensation created by the echoes surrounding her. When the

echoes die away as she leaves the town, it signifies her dream‟s beginning, but also a loss

of the life first exhibited.

The sleep is an empty one, as “...her eyes entertained no dream, / And the

sandman‟s dust / Lost lustre under her footsoles” (19-21). Her sleeping is void of a

colorful dream and therefore does not offer creative assistance. Fred Moramarco

comments, writing that the dream landscape is “decivilizing” and that it removes the girl

“from all traces of human consciousness and awareness” (144). While she offers the

night her life and heat, she is given nothing in return. Everything is closed off to her.

Plath includes a stanza to show that even the barn animals are indifferent to the girl‟s

presence. Plath‟s final stanza reveals that the girl needed to turn back to civilization

before completely losing herself in this other world:

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 Enough to snuff the quick
Of her small heat out, but before the weight
Of stones and hills of stones could break
Her down to mere quartz grit in that stony light
She turned back. (41-45)

These lines reveal that the girl‟s situation is hopeless. She began in an imprisoned state,

appearing alone and according to the above lines, having a “small heat.” Her dream

provided no escape and caused her return to her initial state of imprisonment.

Moramarco confirms that her need to turn back is “because it is the only alternative to the

indifference and awesome nothingness of the inanimate world” (145). Plath worried

about not finding creative material to use in her writing, and this poem aligns itself to

such a concern. In her journal, Plath confides: “What I fear worst is failure, and this is

stopping me from trying to write because then I don‟t have to blame failure on my

writing: it is a last ditch defense, not quite the last---the last is when the words dissolve

and the letters crawl away” (471). In this poem, the dream threatens to imprison Plath

and Plath‟s female character because nothing is discovered to assist her creative

endeavors. As much as Plath produces poems, she still encounters creative frustration,

thus embarking her on a cyclical path as she hunts for inspiration in an attempt to recreate

her successes in new ways.

A poem with similar tones is “The Ghost‟s Leavetaking.” This also imparts

issues of creative frustration and dreaming. A dream has potential to provide unique

writing material, but with awakening these ideas become flimsy and far-fetched. Plath

observes this dilemma, writing:

Enter the chilly no-man‟s land of about

Five o‟clock in the morning, the no-color void
Where the waking head rubbishes out the draggled lot

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 Of sulfurous dreamscapes and obscure lunar conundrums
Which seemed, when dreamed, to mean so profoundly much, (1-5).

The imagery is quite similar to the dream in “Hardcastle Crags.” Both include a hazy

quality and the moon‟s presence oversees each poem‟s events. The ghost of “The

Ghost‟s Leavetaking” applies to Plath‟s “...oracular ghost who dwindles on pin-legs” (9).

An oracle is synonymous with wisdom which supports the significance of a powerful

dream but because its position on “pin-legs” is tenuous, it loses authority upon

awakening. Its “pin legs” show its instability at waking, yet being a ghost prevented it

from concreteness in the first place. The ghost returns to its dream world upon waking.

Plath accounts for the fairy tale nature of this dreamland, writing,

To the cloud-cuckoo land of color wheels

And pristine alphabets and cows that moo

And moo as they jump over moons as new
As that crisp cusp to which you voyage now.
Hail and farewell. Hello, goodbye. O keeper
Of the profane grail, the dreaming skull. (35-40)

The visual of a cow jumping over the moon is a nursery rhyme, attesting to the sense of

make-believe and childhood to which the dream ghost returns. Plath repeats her greeting

and farewell in order to remark upon the almost instant arrival and departure of writing

material. An idea that initially is appealing can quickly become useless. The

“dreaming skull” is an image that will be revisited in “The Shrike” as a “skull‟s cage”

(12). The skull in this poem houses the “profane grail”(40). The grail may have two

meanings. The first is the cup used by Christ during the Last Supper. The other

meaning corresponds to the poem as it portends the reward from a prolonged endeavor

(American) in which case there is the potential to produce a creative work. Plath‟s

30
choice of the term “profane” establishes the grail‟s falseness and destroys the reward

from being authentic. These poems illustrate the tendency of a promising illusion‟s

ability to deceive.

Marjorie Perloff explains the style of “Hardcastle Crags” as typical of Plath‟s

third person narrative writing from the mid-fifties (63). “The Ghost‟s Leavetaking”

from about the same time, does not use the third person but features five-line stanzas as

does “Hardcastle Crags.” “Hardcastle Crags” is stylized, having an ababa half-rhyme

scheme. Perloff believes that the poem‟s “rather obtrusive sound patterns...draw undue

attention to themselves” (63). She discusses examples of alliteration, consonance and

internal rhyme within the first stanza. The sound patterns “draw attention to

themselves” (Perloff 63) which locks the poem‟s speaker inside the poem‟s events. This

state of enclosure is apparent in an example from the second stanza as well: “A firework

of echoes from wall / To wall of the dark, dwarfed cottages. / But the echoes died at her

back as the walls” (6-8). The repetition of “wall,” “echoes,” and the „d‟ sound enclose

the poem‟s speaker. The sounds refer to setting instead of the speaker, which removes

the poem‟s focus from the speaker‟s attempt to flee. At this point in Plath‟s career, there

is still the inhibited style that was identified earlier.

The sense of instability caused by the ghost‟s seemingly solid presence and

ethereal departure in “The Ghost‟s Leavetaking” is recreated in “I Am Vertical.” Anna

Tripp notices this disparity also, writing, “That which at first glance seems obvious and

natural suddenly flips over into the unexpected and uncanny” (256). Tripp uses this

theory to address the use of „I‟ within the poem. More will be said momentarily about

her approach as it relates to my own. “I Am Vertical” features a first person speaker

31
who wishes for an alternate persona. The attempt at escape is accomplished by the

speaker‟s imagining herself in an alternate role. The alternate roles used in this poem

are objects in nature. While the objects are living trees and flowers, they are not mobile

such as the animals that I will use in subsequent chapters. This limited movement

prevents Plath‟s speaker from a successful escape.

The most obvious approach is to read the poem as a desire for death. This

reading can be supported with several lines. The poem‟s first line is a continuation of its

title, stating, “But I would rather be horizontal” (1). The first stanza then addresses the

speaker‟s differences from trees or flowerbeds. In the second stanza, the speaker

discovers that lying down makes it possible to reach the states of the trees and flowers.

The lying down may relate to death in the following lines, “Sometimes I think that when

I am sleeping / I must most perfectly resemble them-- / Thoughts gone dim” (14-16).

Often critics interpret the sleeping as death because of thoughts becoming dim. Anna

Tripp remarks that this signals the pulse slowing (255). The poem‟s speaker continues

remarking that lying down is most natural, and states that “And I shall be useful when I

lie down finally:” (19). The use of “finally” also makes death apparent, evoking images

of a final rest. Linda W. Wagner-Martin explains the poem as, “the theme of leaving the

hectic world of the living for the peaceful world of the dead” (Sylvia 183). There are

some problems with such a reading. One must recall that sleeping is an important

component in many of Plath‟s poems as addressed above. Sleeping allows a forum for

addressing issues of creativity and gender. With these motives in mind, it may not be

appropriate to equate sleeping as death.

Anna Tripp‟s article supports a feminist reading based on the condition of

32
focusing on the „I‟. She writes, “Once the reader begins to focus on the material status

of the „I‟, and thus on the subject as constructed and gendered within language, the

possibility of a feminist reading opens up” (261). Tripp reminds readers that the „I‟ is

offered fourteen times, including within the title, yet it never is assigned a gender in the

poem‟s context. She feels most will read the „I‟ as a female to represent Plath which she

feels may not be an accurate approach. I have proposed Plath as a confessional poet thus

far and continue to support this claim. The poem‟s subject adheres to Plath biography,

making it appropriate to connect the „I‟ to Plath. The affinity between Plath and the

poem‟s speaker can be proven for three reasons. First, there is the presence of dreaming,

one of Plath‟s tools that I have discussed. This poem has clear connections to gender,

which was one of the motives for using dreams. Second is Plath‟s noted desire to live

life through her surroundings, a desire to feel what others feel. Her journal portrays this

when Plath writes, “I want to live and feel all the shades, tones, and variations of mental

and physical experience possible in my life” (43). Plath tests her desire within this

poem. Third is the gender envy Plath experiences. The first stanza of the poem

supports the use of a female speaker. She is discontent with her life as it stands. She

desires the best of both the trees and flowers. Tripp questions assigning opposing

genders to these objects:

The first possible position or mode of existence is signified by the tree:

powerful and robustly erect, thrusting its root into the soil. The second is
signified by the flower bed or flower head: fragile and ornamental,
„painted‟ in order to attract admiration. Could these
alternative positions be read as polarized versions of masculinity and
femininity? (258)

The answer to this question is yes. Assigning gender roles to the trees and flowers adds

33
depth to the three points mentioned above. Plath already understands the nuances of

being a woman, yet she wants to enjoy the freedom men experience. Plath‟s journal

clarifies her gender envy, stating:

Being born a woman is my awful tragedy. From the moment I was

conceived I was doomed to sprout breasts and ovaries rather than penis
and scrotum; to have my whole circle of action, thought and feeling
rigidly circumscribed by my inescapable femininity. Yes, my consuming
desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars --
to be a part of a scene, anonomous, listening, recording -- all is
spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and
battery. (77)

The poem‟s tree indicates some of the masculine traits seen above. The tree‟s abilities

are “Sucking up minerals and motherly love” (3) and having immortality (8). The

erectness Tripp suggested is apparent. The comparison to a male is the tree‟s phallic

imagery, and its presiding over its area, taking in what is needed for survival.

Meanwhile, the flower‟s abilities are meant for decoration, “attracting my share of Ahs

and spectacularly painted” (6). The female “dares” (10) to be the center of attention for

its brief time before “unpetaling” (7). Plath‟s speaker deliberates the advantages

between each role, deciding that having contact with both is most desirable. The poem‟s

final line states the ultimate desire at this point of compromise, “Then the trees may touch

me for once, and the flowers have time for me” (20). The poem‟s structure is rhymed

couplets within its two ten-line stanzas which maintains the steady flow of the poem,

therefore preventing a break away from the expected style. Dreaming and pondering

nature may provide a mode for escaping reality, yet the imprisoning features are still

present despite these attempts because a resolution is not discovered.

The poems in this chapter allowed Plath an exploration of expected male and

34
female roles, but also allowed her to reconstruct them through alternate images, such as

animals and nature. Plath‟s personal life is entwined within the subject matter of these

poems but they are indecisive in their attempts at exploration and therefore limit an

opportunity for escape from prescribed roles.

35
Chapter 2- Attempting Escape

The poems in this section continue to incorporate oppressed subjects. A

difference from the previous set is their enhanced attempts to break from constraints.

Animal usage is more significant in the poems I will discuss in the next two chapters.

Marjorie Perloff explains that, “human beings are, in themselves, simply things... such

things can be transcended either in the joy or in the suffering that results when man

identifies imaginatively with the life of animals, of plants, or of inanimate objects” (57).

Plath uses many animals to highlight a projected transfer of power in the following

poems.

Plath‟s “The Rabbit Catcher” is a poem of a speaker attempting escape from a

powerful opponent. Evidence supports that Plath wrote this poem to reveal a glimpse of

her relationship with husband Ted Hughes. James Booth claims that the poem was

written as a commentary on their marriage, which Hughes responded to with a poem of

the same title in 1998. Of course Hughes‟s response is much belated to the day‟s actual

events; however, his poem still sheds some clarity on the events in Plath‟s poem. Plath‟s

poem was written in May 1962, which was four months after the birth of son Nicholas,

and two months before learning of Hughes‟s infidelity. The inclusion of birth images

and feelings of trepidation with Hughes in the poem make sense considering the timeline.

Booth explains, “On the personal level they enact the ongoing quarrel of their marriage.

On the level of poetics they parody each other‟s poetic modes” (19).

Booth‟s latter statement may be true to some extent in Plath‟s earlier works. As

discussed, Plath did respect Hughes‟s advice and used his ideas in her own poetry. The

36
animals included in her poems may be due to his influence. The difference is their

approach to such subject matter, which becomes quite clear when observing these two

poems that share the same titles. There are critics who consider Plath‟s style as more

advanced than Hughes‟s. In his article “Fame Envy” Richard Katrovas assesses

Hughes‟s Birthday Letters. Katrovas states that “no matter how many acclaimed books

he‟d published, how many honors he‟d garner, he would never, could never extricate

himself from the role history had already determined is his; the mere foil to true genius,

or its wicked catalyst” (124). Keeping Hughes‟s own possible envy in mind will prevent

my focus from getting too bogged down by the details in his own “The Rabbit Catcher.”

Comparing their poetic modes is not this paper‟s focus. Instead it is beneficial to use

Hughes‟s poem to further enhance the discussion of Plath‟s poem, which provides

credibility to my reading of symbols of entrapment.

The poem‟s title provokes the question of who is the chaser and who is the rabbit.

Plath identified with many of the animals she chose for her poetry, and this poem is no

exception. In this poem Plath identifies with the rabbit, who is subjected to outside force

and entrapment. Plath begins the poem with the sensation of powerlessness, writing, “It

was a place of force-- / The wind gagging my mouth with my own blown hair, / Tearing

off my voice,...” (1-3). The setting itself has animosity as it appears to capture her

voice, which also signifies a limit to creativity or self-expression. Plath often struggled

with writing material, which is a fact expressed in her journals and in selected poems.

One example is an entry dated March 4, 1957 when Plath writes regarding novel

endeavors, “But I feel now, again, that I can never write a good story or a good poem.

Much less bad ones. All is static” (273). Frustration with creative inspiration is a

37
concern Plath hints at often within her poems. Hughes‟s poem confirms the emotional

state conveyed in Plath‟s “The Rabbit Catcher.” He recounts that they had been

quarreling when Plath decided to bring the children with her to this “gorse cliff” (31).

Hughes had joined the excursion also, although uninvited.

The speaker flees from the oppressive force in her poem, stating, “There was

only one place to get to” (11). This path leads her to snares that are compared to birth

pains, “And the snares almost effaced themselves- / Zeros, shutting on nothing, / Set

close like birth pangs” (14-16). It seems that the one path she must take leads to capture.

This creates the sense of futility felt by the soon to be imprisoned character. Equating

the snares to birth pains alludes to the first domestic image in her poem. It may

symbolize birth‟s connection to a form of domestic entrapment. Hughes‟s version also

recalls finding snares. He writes about Plath‟s actions upon this discovery:

...Without a word
You tore it up and threw it into the trees.
I was aghast. Faithful
To my country gods -- I saw
The sanctity of a trapline desecrated.
You saw blunt fingers, blood in the cuticles,
Clamped round a blue mug... (46-52)

Hughes sees the practical side of catching a rabbit and sides with the hunter, while Plath

experiences the pain awaiting the unsuspecting rabbit. Hughes also distinguishes

between their native countries in his possessive phrase, “my country gods” (49). She

attempts to free the rabbit before it can become imprisoned.

While there is evidence of birth contractions in Plath‟s final lines there is also

repetition of circularity. In addition to the “zeros” from the quotation above, there is “a

hole in the hot day” (18), the shape of the “hands round a tea mug, dull, blunt, / Ringing

38
the white china” (22-23), and the “mind like a ring” (28). All the circles are empty in

keeping with the initial zero, confirming the futile escape of the rabbit. The hands

around a tea mug provide the poem with another domestic component in addition to birth.

Jacqueline Rose explains that the use of domestic images is a moment of gendering,

“where violence closes in on the paraphernalia of everyday life” (139). Hughes‟s

version debases the inclusion of the cup in the lines above. His perception is that Plath

was acting out from a personal distress, writing that her anguish had nothing to do with

rabbits. He felt she had discovered something else in the snares, “Had you caught

something in me, / Nocturnal and unknown to me? Or was it / Your doomed self, your

tortured, crying, / Suffocating self?...” (69-72). Hughes‟s version of suffocation may

play off Plath‟s final use of a ring. Plath‟s “ring” is seen in the following line as

“Sliding shut on some quick thing” (29) turning it into something more than an empty

circle. This ring may be a noose as this finality is felt in Plath‟s last line, “The

constriction killing me also” (30). It may also refer to the marriage band, due to line

twenty-six, which states, “And we, too, had a relationship-”, in this case relating the

poem to the human connection of husband and wife. Booth manages to combine both of

these impressions, stating that Plath felt Hughes took “sexual pleasure in throttling

animals, and also, metaphorically herself” (22).

At this point, the poem appears a sour take on marriage; however, the adventure

may have also held appeal for Plath. The second stanza discusses tasting “the malignity

of the gorse” (6), which equates it as a malicious offering. The gorse is unsavory, yet is

described with purpose:

Its black spikes,

The extreme unction of its yellow candle-flowers.

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 They had efficiency, a great beauty,
And were extravagant, like torture. (7-10)

Combined with the harshness of the gorse is the soothing nature of the flowers. Plath

equates torture to extravagance and beauty, marking the poem‟s conflict. The poem

shows discomfort and the feeling of being trapped, yet it also seems to embrace the

entrapment to some degree. Rose suggests that “Plath writes herself into the place of the

rabbit catcher, [and] does to the reader what the poem describes as being done to her”

(138). Plath strives for some way to make an uncomfortable situation endurable

indicating the poem‟s attempt at escape.

The attempted transition from imprisonment to escape is evident in “Blue Moles,”

which begins with Plath pondering two dead moles. According to Hughes, “Blue

Moles” stems from life together, recording “two dead moles we found in the grounds at

Yaddo” (“Notes” 191). Plath turns this event into a poem that allows the speaker to

identify with the moles, an escape from her own body to test their version of life.

The first half of the poem depicts the moles as they were seen that day, victims of

some misfortune. The poem begins objectively, as the sighting is remarked upon in a

descriptive manner. The first half of the poem sets the scene. Plath describes the place

as unlikely for danger, as the area has “no sinister spaces” (13). The serenity of the

setting belies what had occurred, making it “Difficult to imagine how fury struck- /

Dissolved now, smoke of an old war” (17-18). Plath also remarks on the fact that

there are two moles, writing, “The second carcass makes a duel of the affair” (8). The

battle image is evident in both of these quotations and is used again to transition to the

poem‟s second half, as Plath writes, “Nightly the battle-shouts start up / In the ear of the

veteran, and again / I enter the soft pelt of the mole” (19-21). The idea of a battle signals

40
that there is discord in the face of serenity. The nightly battle is interesting in the realm

of Plath‟s poetry as many of the poems in the forthcoming chapter contain settings at

nighttime that also show conflict. Daytime opposes night‟s disorder as witnessed in this

poem. It allows a rest from combat. Plath used the word “again” in response to

entering the mole, which shows that this is not the first time. This does not portend that

Plath regularly encountered dead moles, but rather that she has already employed escape

mechanisms within her writing. Perhaps her experience makes her the “veteran” in the

above lines. The other tactic is that the “veteran” represents the male authority figure

she attempts to leave behind.

The transition between the first and second half of the poem also marks the

difference between the speaker as onlooker and as participant in the poem‟s events.

Perloff discusses Plath‟s use of „I‟ within this poem, stating that “the „I‟ is squarely at the

center” (65). I agree that Plath‟s persona is asserted at this point of the poem, as the

opening shows her as observer, while the ending reveals Plath sharing identity with the

moles. Anna Tripp would remind us that the „I‟ is not necessarily Plath herself: “The „I‟

on the page gains a certain opacity which effectively prevents it from functioning as a

window on to Sylvia Plath‟s personality and preoccupations” (256). I introduced my

thesis revealing Plath‟s desire to try on different characters and also the connection

between her poems and her actual life. This poem does correspond to an actual event in

her life and I will consider the „I‟ of this poem as Plath with the understanding that it may

be her attempt to speak as a different persona within this poem. This poem displays

escape from oneself through animal identification.

The second part of the poem allows her to escape underground to experience the

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mole‟s easeful existence in solitude and darkness. Plath moves through the earth as a

mole, concentrating in her final stanza on their eating habits. The eating habits of the

moles are much different than animals portrayed in the final chapter such as the shrike or

the eel, which are more vicious. Plath describes the mole‟s eating as continuous, yet

unsatisfying:

Delving for the appendages

Of beetles, sweetbreads, shards--to be eaten
Over and over. And still the heaven
Of final surfeit is just as far
From the door as ever. What happens between us
Happens in darkness, vanishes
Easy and often as each breath. (30-36)

It is underground that she finds an escape; however, we remember that this is a limited

escape because of the moles‟ potential subjection to outside forces. The final lines

represent the surreal quality of this relationship, as it is compared to breath that the moles

lack. A connection with these animals is possible, but it does not allow for a lasting

escape. The moles represent alternate bodies, yet they are bodies without life suggesting

that Plath‟s movement may only be from one imprisoning setting to another. Perloff

confirms this view, explaining that the mole‟s journey is futile and so is hers (65).

“Mussel Hunter at Rock Harbor” has many characteristics similar to “Blue

Moles.” It is another poem inspired by an actual event, in this case, written during a

summer in Cape Cod. The poem‟s first three stanzas depict the setting. Plath evokes

the time of day, which is early morning, and the sights and smells of the ocean at low

tide. She refers to herself as the crabs might envision her as a “Two-legged

mussel-picker” (66). Though the poem is about picking mussels, it veers to Plath‟s

observations and identification with the crabs in the same area. The first sighting of the

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crabs has battle images as well, reminiscent of the moles‟ unknown territory. Plath

writes about the crabs‟ appearance comparing them to “Knights” (28) that were

“Camouflaged in mottled mail / Of browns and greens. Each wore one / Claw swollen

to a shield...” (31-33). The crabs appear as soldiers which assigns them a masculine

gender. As Plath describes the crabs she admits that she can‟t know them, saying “...I /

stood shut out, for once, for all” (51-52). This point in the poem shows the speaker

entrapped in her world, as she is unable to discover escape through animal identification.

The reason for her initial detachment may be gender related because of their comparison

to “knights”. A similar journey of animal identification as in “Blue Moles” does not

occur until she sees a dead crab.

It is clear from Plath‟s writing that she felt respect for this lone crab, which died

away from “His world of mud” (71). As in “Blue Moles,” she imagines what may have

caused his death. She feels it must have been valiant due to her characterization of his

face as “A samurai death mask...” (80). While other crabs die in the sea, eventually

becoming part of the ocean, “...this relic saved / Face, to face the bald-faced sun” (90-91).

Using face three times in the final line marks the impact this crab had upon Plath, while

the changing meaning of “face” represents the change she accomplishes in the poem.

Where she had at first been unable to identify with the crabs‟ actions, this corpse allowed

her the possibility of escaping into their world, if only for a brief moment. The fact that

both the moles and the crab Plath identified with were dead confirms that these attempts

at escape are unsuccessful.

These three poems share careful structure. “The Rabbit Catcher” includes six

five-lined stanzas. “Blue Moles” contains four stanzas with nine lines in each. “Mussel

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Hunter at Rock Harbor” has thirteen seven-line stanzas. There is an irregular rhyme

scheme in these poems. Hughes commented on Plath‟s use of “syllabics” in “Mussel

Hunter,” stating that it “was one of her first poems in syllabics, which were her first step,

technically, in her self-exploration. She was a lucky fisherman” (“Notes” 189). Indeed,

each line in the poem contains exactly seven syllables. Hughes‟s comment attributes

Plath‟s endeavor with syllabics to “luck” instead of cleverness; perhaps he uses this word

in reference to her choice of seven as a lucky number, while thirteen is used to suggest

either good or bad luck. This poem was written before “Blue Moles” which lacks such

syllabics. A structured line format represents the limitations Plath was expressing within

these poems. It is significant that the most structured of these poems is also the earliest

of the set.

Plath‟s bee poems incorporate elements of animal imprisonment introduced

within poems such as “Pursuit” and “Spider” from the previous chapter. These poems

epitomize the connection between animal and human entrapment. At times both figures

(animal/human) are trapped within the poem, while in some instances one or the other is

trapped. There is an additional element present in these poems of Plath toying with

gender issues through the queen bee‟s role. In entomology, the queen bee is considered

“a perfect female” and “can start a new hive independently” (Kroll 149). The queen

bee‟s job “entails the destruction of male bees, the drones,” while the drudges are the

“imperfect females who work without thinking...represent[ing] the rejected, slavish role”

(Kroll 149). The latter bee position represents a female such as in “The Applicant,” one

who lives to serve others. Plath gives special attention to the queen bee in this sequence

of poems, revealing an affinity for the queen‟s independence over the typical female bee.

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 Plath had knowledge of beekeeping because of her father‟s influence. He kept

bees and also wrote about them. Hughes accounts for the first of her bee poems, “The

Beekeeper‟s Daughter,” which he explains is “one of a group of poems that she wrote at

this time about her father. Besides being a general biologist and botanist, he was a

specialist in bees, and wrote a book titled Bumblebees and Their Ways (“Notes” 190). It

is probable that Plath read this book and used the information to assist her writing. It is

also beneficial to keep in mind that Plath had respect for the ability to keep bees. In her

short story, “Among the Bumblebees,” she provides an account of her own family. In

the story, her father is seen as indestructible and the young daughter (Plath) is in awe of

her father‟s fearlessness in his handling of bees. In the final line of this story, the

reverence Plath felt for her father is apparent: “She did not know then that in all the rest

of her life there would be no one to walk with her, like him, proud and arrogant among

the bumblebees” (Johnny Panic 327). It is noteworthy that she eventually transfers

herself into the role of beekeeper in her poems because it is an attempt to be in a position

of similar strength and authority.

A set of five bee poems in particular warrants discussion in their relevance to

imprisonment and escape. These poems were written during the course of one week,

attesting to the importance of Plath‟s personal attention and involvement in the poems.

The order of the poems has significance, which will be evident by the last two poems. I

will discuss each of the five bee poems in the order they were written, beginning with

“The Bee Meeting.” This poem replicates an actual event that was written in Plath‟s

journal, dated June 7, 1962. The entry is titled “Charlie Pollard and the Beekeeper.”

The poem begins with Plath meeting a group of villagers, namely “The rector, the

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midwife, the sexton, the agent for bees” (3). The speaker‟s role at this point in the poem

is vulnerable and insufficient, much as how Plath felt on this actual day, as she wrote in

her journal, “We felt very new & shy,” and “I felt barer & barer” (656-657). The others

are preparing to approach the bees in a relaxed, confident manner, as they pull out the

proper equipment. In the meantime, the poem‟s speaker feels uncomfortable, saying, “I

am nude as a chicken neck, does nobody love me?” (7).

The villagers begin to merge into one collective group, as they don their identical

gear. Power versus powerlessness continues to be enforced, as the villagers are

compared to “knights in visors / Breastplates of cheesecloth knotted under the armpits”

(14-15). The use of “knights” again alludes to a masculine authority. They are in

control as they lead the speaker away. In Plath‟s journal, she discusses the moment of

putting on hats, commenting on its ceremonial quality, and also denoting her disparity

during the event:

The donning of the hats had been an odd ceremony. Their ugliness &
anonymity very compelling, as if we were all party to a rite. They were
brown or grey or faded green felt mostly, but there was one white straw
boater with a ribbon. All faces, shaded, became alike. (658)

The group‟s anonymity suggests the absence of gender based differences in power over

the bees, which allows everyone equality except for Plath‟s ongoing lack of control in the

situation. Plath has been dressed by them and hopes “They will not smell my fear, my

fear, my fear” (11). The repetition of fear clarifies the speaker‟s uncertainty of both the

villagers and of meeting the bees. As the group moves toward the hive, a transition

begins as the speaker feels “they are making me one of them” (23). Being made into one

of them carries two meanings; one is that she is gaining the confidence and power of the

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group and therefore breaking from her state of vulnerability. The opposing approach

would be that she is losing her own identity by turning into them. Plath‟s

corresponding journal entry reveals that she gains some confidence; however she is the

one who stands out in the “white straw boater” in the above passage, which maintains her

status as an outsider. The villagers are manipulating her involvement in this situation.

The last part of the poem shifts attention to the hive. The villagers use smoke to

clear the hives‟ cells. The hive itself represents a cage, but it is one of comfort, as Plath

explains that, “The white hive is snug as a virgin” (35). The hive assumes a female

gender that is being overtaken by the “knights” or villagers. The villagers have brought

discord to the hive and are upsetting the bees‟ natural order. The villagers‟ actions

violate the snug virginity of the hive. While Plath shows the bees‟ discord, she also

asserts the role of the speaker, who is seen trying to distinguish herself from the villagers‟

actions. Plath conveys her initial trepidation with the bees: “If I stand very still, they

will think I am cow-parsley, / A gullible head untouched by their animosity” (40-41).

Plath uses the actual, in that cow-parsley was added into the journal entry as a “noticed”

item within the setting. According to Plath‟s journal, the search for the new queen bees

(still in cells) would prevent them from killing the old queen, who would be left in the

original hive. The new queens would be transplanted in order to begin a new hive.

While the villagers search for the existing queen bee, the speaker begins to tune herself

into the queen bee‟s psyche.

She pictures what the queen bee may be doing inside the hive. She imagines the

queen‟s cleverness. By the last stanza, the speaker seems to deliberate as the queen bee

herself. The final stanza shows this unity:

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 I am exhausted, I am exhausted----
Pillar of white in a blackout of knives.
I am the magician‟s girl who does not flinch.
The villagers are untying their disguises, they are shaking hands.
Whose is that long white box in the grove, what have they accomplished,
why am I cold. (52-56)

In the lines above, Plath is the figure in white among the others. The connection to a

“magician‟s girl” signifies her poker face, an ability to observe amazing activities without

reacting. Kroll remarked that “The Bee Meeting” and “Stings” (the third poem for

discussion), “begin with a search for a queen bee and end with the disclosure of a

mysterious sympathetic identification between the speaker and the queen” (139). Her

comment affirms that there is identification between the two; however it is not

mysterious. Both speaker and queen bee would be exhausted, the speaker because of

enduring an emotional situation where she was not in control, and the queen for much the

same reason, in addition to being “old, old, old” (45). By aligning herself with the queen

bee, there is an attempt to separate herself from the villagers‟ domination; however,

because the queen bee is subject to their actions as well, there is no release. This futility

is sensed by the “long white box,” another enclosure. In Plath‟s journal, the conclusion

to this event is unclear. The poem ends when a man points, saying, “She‟s in that one”

(658); however, it is never revealed whether the old queen was discovered or not. The

queen may still be inside the hive or may have evaded capture. The final line of the

poem shares the vagueness of the journal. It is a question posed as a statement,

revealing that she will receive no answers and that she will remain in the powerless

position where she started the poem. The speaker is similar to the queen bee in that both

have power that is manipulated by outside forces.

“The Arrival of the Bee Box” opens with another imprisoning feature, the box

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containing the bees. The box is compared to a coffin, with the exception of the life

stored within it. Plath wrote, “I ordered this, this clean wood box /. . . I would say it was

the coffin of a midget / Or a square baby / Were there not such a din in it” (1,3-5). In

this poem, the speaker is in contrast to the bees as she is free and in control; the opening

line stresses that she ordered the box. Despite her freedom, she is still apprehensive

because of the bees‟ restricted threat. Feldman accounts for the bees‟ representation of a

little world comprised of mostly females. They require care, yet are dangerous (Feldman

195). Plath confirms their threat, writing, “The box is locked, it is dangerous” (6). The

box is a true prison as it lacks windows or an exit.

The speaker imagines herself as prison keeper to prisoners that are compared to

a “Roman mob” (19). Eventually she refers to them as “a box of maniacs” (23). She

realizes that she controls whether the bees are sent back or left unfed. As the poem

progresses she begins to rationalize away her fear of the bees‟ freedom. Plath writes, “I

wonder if they would forget me / If I just undid the locks and stood back and turned into

a tree” (27-28). Inherent throughout the poem is Plath‟s personification of the bees.

She allows them to feel directed anger at their keeper and seems to desire being on their

good side. The same was conveyed in the previous poem. By the poem‟s conclusion,

she has reached her decision:

I am no source of honey
So why should they turn on me?
Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free.

The box is only temporary. (33-36)

Her role has changed from prison keeper to a merciful God, or perhaps she accounts for

the melding of these roles. The final line may be an affirmation both for the bees and for

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herself. She will not need to endure the noise and anxiety of containing these creatures

for long. Her power has increased with the changing of roles. This may comment on

the ability to escape from imprisoning features on more than one level, as she speaks of

both herself and the bees.

There are three participants in “Stings,” which, much like “The Bee Meeting,”

revolves around a search for the queen bee. The poem begins with the speaker and “man

in white” (2) working together with clean cells. The two are “bare-handed” which is

stressed twice within the first two lines. There is a vulnerability here, similar to the

introduction of “The Bee Meeting” when the speaker wore only a “sleeveless summery

dress” (4). The second stanza reintroduces the familiar domestic teacup from “The

Rabbit Catcher.” Plath compares the clean cells that she and the male companion

manipulate to teacups:

Eight combs of yellow cups,

And the hive itself a teacup,
White with pink flowers on it,
With excessive love I enameled it
Thinking „sweetness, sweetness‟. (7-11)

Earlier Jacqueline Rose was cited for her explanation of domestic images as a moment of

gendering, “where violence closes in on the paraphernalia of everyday life” (139). Here

the “excessive love” portrayed in Plath‟s lines disagrees with violence. Yet, there is a

subtle hint at dissension because of these competing images. The poem‟s participants

become Plath and Hughes because of the domestic allusion and its correlation to their

married life. Painting the hive is an autobiographical moment recalled by Hughes in his

poem “The Bee God.” He wrote, “I scoured the old hive, you painted it, / White, with

crimson hearts and flowers, and bluebirds” (3-4). In his poem, he recalls the strong

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connection Plath felt toward her father by keeping bees, comparing it to a resurrection.

Hughes‟s “The Bee God” supports her father‟s presence: “When you wanted bees I never

dreamed / It meant your Daddy had come up out of the well” (1-2). Plath‟s knowledge

and affinity for beekeeping was empowering to her and provided closeness to her father.

As the poem continues, the speaker begins to wonder about the queen bee‟s

condition, providing two possible perceptions of the queen. The first is an old queen,

whom Plath describes, “Her wings torn shawls, her long body / Rubbed of its plush---- /

Poor and bare and unqueenly and even shameful” (17-19). The tattered appearance of

the queen is a fact of her aging. Plath‟s father observed that a young queen‟s “wings

[are] not yet torn by the long foraging flights which they will be obliged to take later”

(Bumblebees 7). A bee‟s plush is the bees‟ coating, which provides its colorful

appearance. With age, the plush diminishes as the bees use their middle legs to rub off

pollen that dries onto them over time (Bumblebees 21). Despite the tattered condition of

the queen, this is still considered better than being a drudge. At this point, Plath allows

the speaker and queen to mesh, so that the speaker‟s lines become the queen‟s voice.

She states, “I stand in a column / Of winged, unmiraculous women, / Honey-drudgers. / I

am no drudge” (20-23). Despite her age, she distinguishes herself from the other bees,

as Plath has distinguished herself in her journals from other female poets.

The power is disrupted and shifts back to the speaker due to an unrelated male

presence, “A third person is watching. / He has nothing to do with the bee-seller or me”

(38-39). This presence is ghostlike because of the rapid entry and departure of his visit.

His arrival appropriates the power she was feeling in the previous stanza, having stated,

“I am in control” (32). The final lines that describe him allude to his death: “The bees

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found him out / Molding onto his lips like lies, / Complicating his features” (48-50). His

memory is a blur; Plath portrays a man with a face covered in bees. Their presence on

his lips seems to mask his voice and his appearance. This man may symbolize her

father; however line thirty-nine expressed that he had nothing to do with her. Perhaps

she suggests that a male presence has power to make her lose control. Hughes‟s would

establish the figure as her father‟s presence. Nevertheless, if the figure is not meant to

be her father, he may represent a distraction, a male figure attempting to derail her from

her search for queenliness.

The search for the queen bee continues, but it is also a search for something more;

Plath writes, “...I / Have a self to recover, a queen” (51-52). The search for the queen is

the speaker‟s own personal quest for a powerful identity. Discovering the queen in the

final stanza reveals her greatness, as she flies “More terrible than she ever was, red / Scar

in the sky, red comet” (56-58). While Charlie Pollard had shown an Italian red-gold

queen to Plath according to her journal, there are no red queen bees referenced in her

father‟s book. The color is symbolic. Attributing the color red to the queen is a clear

contrast to the whiteness throughout the poem. While the whiteness alluded to the

vulnerability of the speaker at the beginning of the poem, the red reveals the speaker‟s

change because of the queen‟s impact. Kroll remarks that “The color of the queen bee‟s

„lion-red body‟ signifies recovery of the true self” (151). White has further meaning in

the context of Plath‟s Charlie Pollard entry that recounts a woman‟s noticing that bees

“don‟t seem to like white” (657). Kroll explains that “the speaker achieves the rebirth

denied her in its companion poem „The Bee Meeting‟” (148).

The poem concludes with the vision of the imprisoning hive, seen as “The

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mausoleum, the wax house” (60). The hive‟s similarity to a coffin is apparent, as a

mausoleum is a house of death. Wax is a common covering bees use to protect their

hive from the elements. Also, bee larvae are enclosed in a “waxen envelope”

(Bumblebees 70). In both cases the wax functions as an extra enclosure meant to protect

the larvae until they are prepared for liberation. The wax covers larvae and is therefore a

promise of newness and life in opposition to the death associated with “mausoleum” (60).

The final stanza displays the queen‟s escape: “Now she is flying / More terrible than she

ever was...” (56-57). The queen and the speaker have broken away from the confining

elements, resulting in a successful escape from imprisonment.

“The Swarm” is distinctive from the other four bee poems in this set. Plath is

absent as a participant in the poem. It is male dominated within a set of poems that so

far have attempted domination by females. Female bees are not presented in the poem;

rather the swarm depicts the drones. This poem narrates a Napoleonic battle, evident by

the second stanza, “It is you the knives are out for / At Waterloo, Waterloo, Napoleon, /

The hump of Elba on your short back” (6-8). A brief historical review reveals that Plath

carefully chose Napoleon to be the male figure named in this poem. According to Tim

Kendall‟s book, Plath had been working on a review “of Hubert Cole‟s Josephine, a

biography of Napoleon‟s wife, for the New Statesman” (143). In her reading, she would

have discovered that Napoleon was a beekeeper. According to Linda Wagner‟s article

“Plath on Napoleon,” Plath‟s review focuses on “Josephine‟s devotion to her husband,

even as he plans to divorce her and force her to Navarre” (6). Plath fuses Napoleon as

beekeeper and husband in “The Swarm.”

Additional background on Napoleon is important to grasp the poem‟s key

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components. Before Waterloo, Napoleon had been forced to Elba in order to stop his

rule over France. He left Elba in less than a year when he learned of France‟s weakness

under the guidance of the new king. Plath‟s “hump of Elba” serves to remind him that

his rule had already been invalidated once. Plath confirms both the bees and Napoleon‟s

final defeat with her second mention of Elba, “The last badge of victory! / The swarm is

knocked into a cocked straw hat. / Elba, Elba, bleb on the sea!” (41-43). Napoleon

resumed his rule over France, and the ongoing war against Britain and Prussia culminated

at Waterloo. Napoleon was defeated in this final battle and was exiled to the island of

St. Helena.

There are multiple readings of “The Swarm.” One unites the Waterloo battle

with an event in “our town” (1). The town event includes the beekeeper, or “man with

gray hands” (33) who is trying to “entice the bees back to the ground” (Kendall 143-44).

Kendall interprets that these two events merge by the poem‟s final line, which state, “O

Europe! O ton of honey!” Much as Napoleon‟s army is defeated at Waterloo, the bees

are defeated to enter their “new mausoleum” (49), a symbol of death Plath has used

before. Susan Bassnet suggests a connection between Napoleon and Plath‟s husband

(138-9). Wagner sees Napoleon as connected to husband and bees, writing, “In Plath‟s

creating metaphor of the ignoble husband as Napoleon, she finds another way to vanquish

him because in this poem he is compared to the bees, who are superior” (6). Wagner‟s

approach has credence based on Plath‟s reading and review of Josephine, which

discusses issues of marriage and family. While both readings are logical, it is more

likely that Napoleon represents the male figures that Plath‟s women have been subjugated

to and are now free from. With the defeat of the males, the female bees have free reign,

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which leads to the final poem in Plath‟s bee sequence.

The poem “Wintering” gathers speaker and bees into a common prison. This

poem marks the period of hibernation, thus showing the completion of the bees‟ active

cycle. There are only female bees that reach this stage, usually the young queens.

Plath‟s father‟s book contains a chapter on hibernation, which clarifies many points in

this poem. He explained that his attempts to “winter” young queens were unsuccessful

in an environment that replicated their natural hibernation (95). Rather, most of the

chapter is dedicated to showing the bees‟ hibernation place to be underground near their

hive (93). Plath‟s poem appears to place the speaker and the bees in a large hive, due to

the line stating, “Wintering in a dark without window / At the heart of the house” (6-7).

“The Arrival of the Bee Box” has a similar prison, with no windows or doors. Plath‟s

use of “house” is unclear as to whether the poem‟s hive is within an actual house or is an

underground home. There is no air in this common room, and Plath describes the place

as dungeon-like, “Black asininity. Decay. / Possession. / It is they who own me”

(17-19). The image of being underground has precedence because of the blackness

which may allude to lack of light or the color of the soil. Decay is associated with those

buried, in this case the poem‟s speaker. While Plath dominates over or has equality with

the bees in the preceding poems, the roles are reversed in this poem. The speaker admits

to lacking control over the bees she keeps. The bees have become the owner

“possessing and speaking through the poet” (Kendall 145). Plath reveals the power of

the female gender in the bee realm in several lines:

The bees are all women,

Maids and the long royal lady.
They have got rid of the men,
The blunt, clumsy stumblers, the boors.

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 Winter is for women---- (38-42)

The bee world serves as a microcosm that opposes the world Plath was accustomed to.

In this world the women are the dominant gender. They use the male bees when they are

needed and are rid of them when that time is over. Women are able to claim this season

as their own. Plath realizes the imperfections of this world are that the bees are still

imprisoned because of their subjection to outside forces, as they are numb in this state.

Plath shows their inactivity during this time, writing, “Her body a bulb in the cold and too

dumb to think” (45). An inability to think implies a challenge to creative endeavors or a

period of writer‟s block. The poem concludes with hope, as the final line states, “The

bees are flying. They taste the spring.” There is a period of uncertainty; however, they

still have a glimpse of life once the seasons change.

The bee poems all have five-line stanzas, but these are not strictly adhered to in

each of the poems. For example, “The Bee Meeting‟s” first and last stanzas have six

lines and “The Arrival of the Bee Box‟s” final stanza has only one line. The shifts in

structure reveal that Plath was breaking from confined structures during the time she was

writing these poems. The order of Plath‟s bee poems is significant. An interesting use

of punctuation displays a shift from apprehension to certainty. “The Bee Meeting”

utilizes question marks eleven times to reveal a sense of uncertainty within the female

speaker. In contrast, “The Swarm‟s” male presence is asserted with seventeen uses of an

exclamation point. “The Swarm,” a poem engaged with battle and male domination and

defeat, needed to occur before the female gender could become superior in “Wintering.”

The poems also move through a bee‟s life cycle, beginning with summer and ending in

winter. The bee poems allowed Plath to test the ability for escape through animal

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identification. She used her experience with and education in bees to assist her creation

of a selection of poems that characterized a bee‟s life cycle. Plath was able to associate

with the queen bee in an attempt to feel powerful. Despite the power that was felt, she

still recognized that a complete escape was lacking due to an incomplete freedom, which

leads to my final chapter. These poems include female figures that attempt escape in a

hostile manner.

Chapter 3: Aggressive Escape

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 This last set of poems contain speakers that utilize aggressive attacks in order to

usurp power and gain freedom. Not all of these attacks are successful, although they

reveal Plath‟s building confidence in her craft. The following poems lack the typical

female that appears to be trodden upon.

Plath‟s “Daddy” epitomizes a forceful escape from imprisoning features. This

poem is exemplary of a confessional poem as Plath documents feelings deriving from her

father‟s death and provides a timeline of events up to her present age. The feelings

expressed are personal and daring in their use of Nazi imagery, including naming

concentration camps. In this poem, the imprisonment translates to subjection to her

father‟s image. According to the poem, Plath lost her father when she was ten years old

(57). There is disparity in that the poem documents loss of her father at ten although her

actual age was eight. Perhaps Plath chose a different age to create a separate poetic

persona. Using this idea suggests an attempted escape from the actual. Of course, her

reason may have been a poetic choice. The poem‟s first stanza cited thirty years, and

she may have desired another even, rounded number. Either way, it is clear that she

reveals a certain freedom with the detail she incorporates.

Some critics comment that Plath‟s father passed before she exited the Electra

stage and its perception of her father as god-like. Deryn Rees-Jones confirms that

Plath‟s use of Electra is “charged” (286). This point is debatable and can be argued for

either side. The Electra stage is similar to the Oedipal complex young boys would have;

the typical ages are between four and five years old. In brief, the complex generates the

child‟s attraction to the opposite sex parent while feeling envious of the same sex parent.

Plath was eight when her father passed and most likely would have already exited this

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stage. Plath read several of Freud‟s works and was familiar with the phrase, using it in

some of her poetry, such as “Electra on Azalea Path.” At times her remarks detect some

traces of Electra. A journal entry comments, “Ted, insofar as he is a male presence is a

substitute for my father: but in no other way. Images of his faithlessness with women

echo my fear of my father‟s relation with my mother and Lady Death” (447). Her fear

of her father‟s relation with her mother seems an odd statement; however, the statement

reveals her fear of being abandoned by others. It is more probable that she played with

the Electra idea rather than actually diagnosing herself with the complex.

The poem begins by placing the speaker in her confined state. Plath wrote:

You do not do, you do not do

Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. (1-5)

These lines reveal the familiar states of fear and trepidation shared by the imprisoned

women in the previous poems discussed as well as upcoming poems. The reference to

“thirty years” may account for Plath‟s age at the time of writing this poem. In this case,

feelings of anxiety in her father‟s presence were established before his death. A glimpse

of the Electra complex is apparent in the next lines, which state, “Daddy, I have had to

kill you. / You died before I had time” (6-7). Of course this is a figurative killing, a

changing of perception of her father on a romantic level to her father as human. Her

mother shared that Plath had prayed every night prior to his death. According to Plath‟s

mother, interviewed in the Voices and Visions video, Plath stated, “I‟ll never speak to

God again” when hearing about her father‟s death. This comment reveals his death‟s

impact, which created feelings of confusion, anger and betrayal, almost turning his image

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and God‟s into something evil; an example is the Nazi figure alluded to later in the poem.

Plath documented this point in her life as the time when she stopped believing in magic

(Voices). Plath‟s naive perception, including her ability to manipulate changes, shifts

due to death‟s harsh reality.

Plath writes about her attempts to know her father, yet there is lack of voice,

another recurring motif. The poem contains several lines that exhibit speechlessness:

I never could talk to you.

The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.

Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak. (24-28)

Initially, the lack of voice stems from Plath‟s inability to find her father‟s town of origin.

Her helplessness at not placing him results in the imprisoning images of the “barb wire

snare,” revealing that this is a painful imprisonment. The comparison to the

concentration camps appears at this stage, and this section has elicited many critical

responses. Criticisms are often negative because of Plath‟s purported pretense for

imagining the imprisonment of the Jewish people as similar to her own. A recent

example is Seamus Heaney‟s comment:

A poem like „Daddy,‟ however brilliant a tour de force it can be

acknowledged to be, and however its violence and vindictiveness can be
understood or excused in light of the poet‟s parental and marital relations,
remain, nevertheless, so entangled in biographical circumstances, and
rampages so permissively in the history of other people‟s sorrows that it
simply overdraws its rights to our sympathy. (qtd. in Malcolm 64)

One can only guess the reason Plath chose the concentration camp images, “A Jew to

Dachau, Aushcwitz, Belsen” (33), along with the others in this poem. I feel that Plath

made her choice carefully. She is evoking images of horrible travesty and in doing so is

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drawing readers into her own description of pain and subjection. Oppression is not just

Plath‟s to encounter but that of all women. The poem confirms a universality with the

line, “Every woman adores a Fascist” (48). It is almost as though women can not help

their attraction to this dominant male figure. She is speaking out about a much larger

topic in this poem. At the personal level, Plath needed to consider her father a Nazi in

order to exorcise his hold on her memory. A Nazi figure served these purposes because

she could feel hatred toward it and destroy it. The dispute as to the appropriateness of

these images will continue, but the ongoing argument serves another motive behind her

choice. Every time someone reads “Daddy,” they will need to encounter the horrific

events depicted, which prevents the diminishment of suffering as history progresses.

Plath was quite aware of written material standing as a testimony to someone‟s life.

Plath‟s escape from her father‟s hold is achieved through a physical replica of

him. Plath wrote, “I made a model of you, / A man in black with a Meinkampf look /

And a love of the rack and the screw. / And I said I do, I do” (64-67). Plath maintains

the Nazi figure that is intent on bringing pain, as evidenced by the allusion to “the rack

and the screw.” The person being described is her husband, to whom she had said “I

do.” In “Daddy,” Plath also uses the vampire image to describe her father/husband,

writing, “The vampire who said he was you, / And drank my blood for a year, / Seven

years, if you want to know” (72-74). There is a note of cynicism here because of Plath‟s

learning of Hughes‟s infidelity within the year that this poem was written. It would have

been about seven years of marriage at the poem‟s creation. Plath‟s familiar feelings of

abandonment, as experienced after her father‟s death, would be present in this situation,

and account for her linking these two men in her life. Judith Kroll explains that, “In her

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attempt to free herself -- to cure the paralysis, to be reborn -- she symbolically reenacted

the drama of victim and torturer by marrying her father in the form of another Nazi, who

also „drank my blood‟ and then abandoned her, and whom she finally destroys along with

her father” (116-17). Plath‟s journal attests to the blending of father and husband: “I

identify him [Hughes] with my father at certain times, and these times take on great

importance” (447). Plath‟s same entry refers to the vampire image, which is Freudian,

“the „vampire‟ metaphor Freud uses, „draining the ego‟” (447), which Plath uses in her

poetry. Overcoming dominant male figures is a struggle shared by women in general.

In the Voices and Visions video, Margaret Shook discusses the relevance of the women‟s

movement. She feels that Plath is “trying to make a new mythology of women”

(Voices). Kroll and Shook both make valid points. Plath includes the personal,

realizing that it is symbolic of the plight other women encounter.

Plath kills her father‟s hold on her in the poem‟s last two stanzas, maintaining the

vampire figure in her method for killing him. She writes, “There‟s a stake in your fat

black heart” (76). Again, the need to see him as evil or beastly was necessary to

successfully expel his hold on her. The choice of a vampire is interesting because of its

mythology. A vampire never dies and sucks the life out of people for its sustenance,

which accounts for her lifetime of burden from this beast. The use of the stake as a

murder device is the common tool used to kill vampires, and Plath supports this myth to

achieve her own freedom.

Plath‟s style in this poem is strong and assured. Her stanzas are five lines each.

The rhyme scheme is irregular, yet Plath consistently uses the „oo‟ sound which links the

poem‟s many stanzas together. The sounds are often words in repetition, such as “you,”

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which ends a line sixteen times throughout the poem, three of these being in the final

stanza. This emphasizes a turn from Plath‟s use of “I,” often given attention by Plath

critics. Using “you” places the focus in another direction and allows Plath an escape

from patriarchy.

This poem differs from those in previous chapters because Plath does achieve an

escape; however, it is achieved through drastic measures. “Rejecting her previous role

as mourner, she emerges as a heroine who escapes from the devil...” (Kroll 117).

Perceiving Plath as a “heroine” allows us satisfaction in that she has achieved the goals of

her personal struggles. Her combat with the personal extends to the universal as well, as

Sandra Gilbert confirms, “he [her father] is a vehicle to think of the world” (Voices). In

this poem, Plath and women claim the victory.

As witnessed through earlier discussion, Plath‟s use of animals conveys

imprisonment and allows the potential for escape. Animal usage allows such disparity

because animals are at the mercy of their environment, yet their wild natures permit them

a freedom unattainable by humans. In this section I will discuss poems in which the

animals portray a more aggressive role against an oppressive factor. Plath employs

animals that attain a sense of power due to their abilities to fight against oppressors.

There is a similar sentiment as that achieved within “Daddy,” in which drastic measures

are necessary to evoke change.

In “The Shrike,” the animal observed is a predatory bird that reacts violently

against her abandonment. This poem is contemporary with “The Applicant.” While

other poems in this chapter represent Plath‟s later works, “The Shrike” is one of Plath‟s

earlier works composed in 1956, yet it belongs here because of its violent revolt against

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oppression. An understanding of the shrike is pivotal to comprehend the poem‟s

complexity. Margaret Uroff‟s book suggests Plath‟s use of the shrike was feasibly a

researched choice. Plath was reading about “fiddler crabs, meteorites, animals, birds,

wildflowers, and the submarine life of Rachel Carson‟s Sea Around Us” (Uroff 100). A

shrike is a carnivorous bird of the Laniidae family. It is known to impale its prey on

thorns or barbs of wire fencing. It would be logical to compare a shrike to other raptors,

calling to mind images of an owl or vulture. The shrike‟s comparable appearance to a

robin and its notability as a songbird belies its nickname of “butcher bird” (Elphick 399).

Plath‟s choice of a shrike may have deeper meaning when taking into account its rather

pleasant appearance, in contrast to its violent nature. Plath may have chosen the shrike

with this complexity in mind.

Plath begins the poem by placing the wife and husband in a domestic setting.

She wrote, “When night comes black / Such royal dreams beckon this man / As lift him

apart / From his earth-wife‟s side” (1-4). The setting is a typical marriage scene of

husband and wife having retired to bed. There are several possibilities embedded in

these opening lines. They could refer to the literal episode of a husband falling asleep

before his wife, leaving her awake with her thoughts. It could be a creative dilemma as

the husband is able to reach a state of “royal dreams” that the wife cannot reach. Finally,

this can be a more general episode, foreshadowing the potential for the husband‟s

physical abandonment or deception of his wife.

All of these feelings result in the wife‟s feelings of resentment:

While she, envious bride,

Cannot follow after, but lies
With her blank brown eyes starved wide,
Twisting curses in the tangled sheet

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 With taloned fingers. (7-10)

Whether she is frustrated by insomnia, jealous of his ability to enter a creative zone, or

enraged by his ease to depart from her, her anger begins to transform her into something

inhuman. The wife becomes entwined with the predatory nature of the bird. Her

“blank brown eyes” lack identity. One pictures the emotionless gaze of a bird. Her

emotions at this point have no outlet as she is seen, “Shaking in her skull‟s cage” (12).

The image of the “cage” is an indicator of her imprisonment in contrast to her husband‟s

freedom. Plath‟s indication of a skull as cage also leans toward the reading of her

creativity being limited, as the mind is prevented from leaving its confinement.

The possibility of Plath using the poem to discuss creative envy is quite

reasonable and warrants further discussion. A similar scene is evident in Plath‟s short

story “The Wishing Box,” which was written within the same year as “The Shrike”

(1956). In the story, the wife Agnes suffers silently while listening to husband Harold

recount his vivid dreams. Meanwhile, Agnes‟s dreams are lackluster, as she revealed

with the line, “Her dreams-- few and far between as they were-- sounded so prosaic, so

tedious, in comparison with the royal baroque splendor of Harold‟s” (215). Her

preoccupation with „out-dreaming‟ Harold creates insomnia. In this scene, Plath

employs a clear connection to the bird image from “The Shrike‟s” lines quoted above,

writing, “she would lie stiff, twisting her fingers like nervous talons in the sheets, long

after Harold was breathing peacefully, evenly, in the midst of some rare, wonderful

adventure” (219). Plath voices frustration that is both personal and professional. Her

frustration impacts Plath‟s feelings about husband, Ted Hughes. Plath‟s sense of

creative imprisonment often manifests itself in her poetry that is set during night, and

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seems more profound when compared to her husband‟s apparent ease to create new

material. Another specific reference from “The Wishing Box” that links to Plath‟s life is

Harold‟s most recurrent dreams of a fox and a pike. The fox is an animal with

connection to Hughes, therefore reinforcing his correlation to the character. Hughes had

been offered an orphaned baby fox. He was forced to decline the offer because he had

young children in the house (Booth 15). Booth comments that, “The human baby and

the baby animal seem involved in a strange contest for his affection” (15). It is as

though he was choosing between freedom and domesticity. This was a moment that

Plath remembers in her writing and that later impacted him enough to use in his Birthday

Letter’s poem “Epiphany.”

Returning to “The Shrike” reveals the poem‟s progression. The wife becomes

less human and more animal as signaled by her “taloned fingers” (11). Becoming

animal allows her rage an outlet. It permits her to express her anger in an unfettered

manner through her desires to attack and to eat. Her eyes are “starved” (9), revealing a

basic need. Images of hunger are strong throughout the remainder of the poem, evident

through word choices such as “hungered” (15), “peck,” “eat” (18), and “suck out” (22).

Hunger is synonymous with desire. The wife‟s envy portrays Plath‟s desire to achieve

the dreams of her mate. This is supported when she, “Leans to peck open those locked

lids, to eat / Crown, palace, all / That nightlong stole her mate” (18-20). These lines

reveal her eating that which “stole her mate.” If this is creativity, she is usurping it as

her own. The use of “truant” in the final lines speaks of his inexcusable absence. Plath

concludes the poem writing, “with red beak / Spike and suck out/ Last blood-drop of that

truant heart” (22-23). The shrike has killed her mate in order to regain control of her

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own creativity. An actual shrike would not kill its mate. They are most often

monogamous; however, they tend to be solitary outside of breeding season (Elphick 399).

They are territorial, and in this case, the battle appears to be over territorial rights to the

creative world.

“The Wishing Box” has an alternate ending. In the short story, Agnes receives a

prescription for sleeping pills to combat her insomnia. When her husband arrives home,

he finds his wife dead on the couch, “Her tranquil features were set in a slight, secret

smile of triumph, as if, in some far country unattainable to mortal men, she were, at last,

waltzing with the dark, red-caped prince of her early dreams” (Johnny 220). While the

poem concludes with the husband‟s death, and the story finishes with the wife‟s death,

both share the death as a resolution. These are extreme measures used to combat

creative imprisonment.

The final debate would be whether Plath as speaker and the figures of the shrike

and Agnes have achieved freedom. The female essence aligned with violence is utilized

to achieve creativity, but does this allow the destruction of the skull as cage? It is

necessary to examine another poem to form a conclusion. “The Zookeeper‟s Wife” uses

similar components to those in “The Shrike.” The setting also depicts a husband and

wife in bed. While the husband sleeps, his wife remains awake. Plath shows that night

and darkness allow her deepest thoughts a chance to emerge. The poem‟s opening lines

state, “I can stay awake all night, if need be-- / cold as an eel, without eyelids” (1-2).

The opening line suggests control over her ability to stay awake, or a challenge, as

though she has a motive for staying awake. Another interpretation is that she is

resigning herself to this state. Plath‟s choice of animals to depict the female figure has

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moved from air to sea, bird to eel. The eel‟s lack of eyelids confirms the state of

insomnia and calls to mind the shrike‟s own penetrating stare.

There is a familiar sense of detachment and even ruthlessness in Plath‟s

descriptions. As above, there is a barbaric nature at stake, one that does not hesitate to

consume its own family. It is questionable whether an eel would eat its own in the wild.

An interesting fact that empowers the female speaker is that the female eel is larger than

the male. Plath concludes the first stanza speaking as the eel, “I am lungless / And ugly,

my belly a silk stocking / where the heads and tails of my sisters decompose” (5-7).

Plath discloses the eel‟s ugliness, its coldness, and its appetite. The hunger images are

reminiscent of the shrike, and Plath utilizes them through the first two stanzas of the

poem. They are also brutal in nature, as the “powerful juices” of the eel‟s digestive

system melt her food “like coins” (8). The eel‟s “spidery jaws” are aligned with its

stomach‟s contents, a “Guts bag would clack like a child‟s rattle, / Old grievances jostling

each other, so many loose teeth” (12-13). Despite the eel‟s full stomach, she is not

satisfied.

Plath introduces a husband who is ignorant of his wife‟s needs. She speaks

sarcastically of him throughout the remainder of the poem: “But what do you know about

that / My fat pork, my marrowy sweetheart, face-to-the-wall? / Some things of this world

are indigestible” (14-16). The latter line affirms her feelings of unrest and that despite

her full stomach, she is destined to remain unsatisfied. It is as though his presence is

“indigestible” because of his lack of understanding of her feelings. The description cites

fat and marrow, which are indigestible components as well.

Plath recollects the wife‟s initiation into her zookeeper husband‟s world.

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Understanding Plath‟s biography allows a clear connection between Plath and her own

husband, Ted Hughes. Hughes is noted for his poems dealing with animals. In a sense,

he was zookeeper over his own collection of animal poems. Plath implemented his

themes in her own animal poems. Uroff‟s book Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, discusses

Hughes‟s influence on Plath‟s writing, stating that, “The most obvious example is

Hughes‟s interest in animals which quickly inspired Plath to write several animal or

nature poems” (9). Each of the animals Plath outlines in this poem take on a grotesque

form, and are, for the most part, not typical zoo animals. Robert Phillips connects the

animals to the male, stating that they are “inseparable” (142). His statement is

reminiscent of Plath‟s “The Beast” in which the male was “king of the dish” (2) because

both display the husband as ruler over an unusual world. This world is equally bizarre.

It is a menagerie of the unusual: bats, armadillo, mice, snake, baboon, “bird-eating

spider” (30), rhinoceros, and snails. The constant throughout her account of animals is

their confinement. All animals are sequestered within their own spaces. These animals

are all part of a display yet are trapped. One example is, “The “bird-eating spider /

Clambering round its glass box like an eight-fingered hand” (30-31). The glass box

appears similar to Plath‟s idea of a “bell jar” in that the creature within works to escape to

a clearly visible freedom which remains unattainable. The wife in the poem feels that

she is in the same situation.

The speaker‟s realization that she has become one of her husband‟s possessions is

understood by the poem‟s conclusion and clarifies her connection to the eel. This fact is

the indigestible truth she faces. Her escape is not achieved within this poem; however,

her understanding of the entrapment is crucial to prevent her from being another animal

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in her husband‟s collection. The poem‟s final lines reveal her desire to fight these

animals and, ultimately, her husband. By fighting she receives no rest, “Nightly now I

flog apes owls bears sheep / Over their iron stile. And still don‟t sleep” (39-40).

Listing the animals without commas merges each into the other. All share the

commonality of being confined. It seems counterproductive for her to fight the animals

instead of their common oppressor but she has an allegiance to her husband.

The problem with turning on her husband is that she has assigned him

super-human traits, similar to the figure the speaker addresses in “Daddy.” Plath uses

Biblical images to describe their early relationship, and her entrance into his world:

You checked the diet charts and took me to play

With the boa constrictor in the Fellows‟ Garden.
I pretended I was the Tree of Knowledge.
I entered your bible, I boarded your ark” (25-28)

There is complexity in this short section. The wife‟s presence in her husband‟s garden

to play with a snake, evokes a comparison of her to Eve at the “Tree of Knowledge.”

The Tree of Knowledge is a complex symbol, denoting omniscience, but also temptation

because of its forbidden nature. The serpent is associated with the Tree because of its

tempting Eve. Perhaps Plath‟s choice of an eel in the poem‟s introduction is a mask for

the serpent‟s role. In a sense, the speaker‟s position began with her ignorance and

subdued power (as the Tree), but transformed to the trapped and devious nature of the eel

(serpent). A similar split occurs in “The Applicant” and “Pursuit.” This splits Plath‟s

identification between subject as the eel that is in control and object as Eve. The wife‟s

naïveté in “The Zookeeper‟s Wife” allowed her to feel much more aware of and

important to her husband than she actually was. She views him as a god, yet realizes she

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has not maintained an important status to him. As she boards his ark she becomes part

of his menagerie. Despite the wonders he has shown her, she also calls to mind images

that terrify her in the lines stating, “Tangled in the sweat-wet sheets / I remember the

bloodied chicks and the quartered rabbits” (23-24). These bloody images keep her

awake at night. The discussion of “The Rabbit Catcher” revealed Hughes‟s support of

hunting and Plath‟s dismay with it. These lines could refer to Hughes‟s or men‟s ability

to kill innocent animals. They depict Plath‟s alignment with the animals as a victim.

Her husband offers her multiple animal experiences, yet most border on the

grotesque. The grotesque is most evident in the final stanza:

Your two-horned rhinoceros opened a mouth

Dirty as a bootsole and big as a hospital sink
For my cube of sugar: its bog breath
Gloved my arm to the elbow.
The snails blew kisses like black apples. (34-38)

In this section, she is partially swallowed by the rhinoceros and receives kisses likened to

“black apples,” which is undesirable because of the significance of their rottenness.

Hughes‟s approach to animals may have felt something like what this poem describes in

its early stages. The wife may have felt trapped in an animal world that was unknown

and frightening. She is ensnared in his world and attempts to fight her way out, yet there

is no hope for rest witnessed by the final perfunctory sentence, “And still don‟t sleep”

(40).

Hughes affirms this possibility in his Birthday Letters poem “Error.” He opens

the poem, writing:

I brought you to Devon. I brought you into my dreamland.

I sleepwalked you
Into my land of totems. Never-never land:
The orchard in the West. (1-4)

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These lines align to the husband in “The Zookeeper‟s Wife,” seeming to be the husband‟s

perspective on their marriage if we had heard his thoughts in Plath‟s poem. He

acknowledges that he was in control of their setting, which he likened to his “dreamland,”

immediately creating a sense of loss for his wife who is removed from her own setting.

The image of the totem hints at the animal symbolism in store for her. The delusional

nature of the wife in Plath‟s poem, who started in his world with hopes of fitting in, is

consistent in Hughes‟s poem. He recognizes her initial attempts and gradual demise in

this powerless role:

And you stayed with me

Gallant and desperate and hopeful,
Listening for different gods, stripping off
Your American royalty, garment by garment_
Till you stepped out soul-naked and stricken
Into this cobbled, pictureless corridor
Aimed at a graveyard. (7-13)

Hughes‟s mention of a “pictureless corridor” calls Plath‟s creative frustrations to mind.

The limitation of ideas was as imprisoning to Plath as a “graveyard.”

“The Shrike” and “The Zookeeper‟s Wife” share graphic retaliatory images. In

“The Shrike” the speaker‟s creative competitor is eaten, which provides some relief from

her creative imprisonment. With the competition erased, she obtains freedom but it may

not last. Plath may have used the shrike on a deeper level. Her father‟s book refers to a

shrike to reveal its precision and voracity. He writes, “Hoffer tells of a shrike that

swooped down upon pinned specimens which he had drying out of doors, seized one of

the bumblebees, pin and all, and flew away with it” (63). The symbolism is undeniable.

While Plath‟s bee poems attempt escape and seek to enforce a female rule, the shrike

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usurps the bee‟s power with ease. While both are female, the shrike does not have the

potential for entrapment that the bees have. “The Zookeeper‟s Wife” recognizes the

female figure‟s entrapment and ponders escape. The poem begins and ends with the

wife‟s insomnia, reminding readers of the eel‟s brutal hunger at the poem‟s beginning.

Plath discovers that vicious maneuvers allow respite from entrapment.

An aggressive attack allowing escape leads to the most excessive mechanism of

escape, death. Death has been part of some of the poems so far, for example in the

conclusion of “The Wishing Box.” It becomes even more apparent in the poems “Ariel”

and “Totem.” Death in these poems allows both literal and figurative forms of escape.

In “Angst and Animism in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath” Marjorie Perloff states that “The

poem [“Ariel”] thus dramatizes what it is like to be taken completely out of one‟s self, to

transcend one‟s ego in a moment of animistic communion” (Perloff 67). In this respect,

it is not a physical death, but a figurative death of self that affords a subject‟s freedom.

It will become clear that this is the most effective type of escape because ties to the

imprisoning factors are removed completely.

The meaning of the word “Ariel” adds depth to its discussion. Judith Kroll

discusses the word‟s biblical connotations, writing that the name Ariel refers to “fiery

sacrifice, purification, and transcendence” (180). The derivation of the word Ariel also

has biblical origins, as the name may be either “„lion (lioness) of God‟ or „altar [hearth]

of God‟” (qtd. in Kroll 180). Whether Plath chose this as the title for this particular

poem or as the title for the entire selection based on Biblical premises is debatable. The

derivation described, whether intentionally or not, lends itself to Plath‟s life during the

time of this poem in late October of 1962.

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 Plath had written “Ariel” shortly after learning of Hughes‟s extramarital relations.

Plath had feared losing Hughes to another woman and her fear had been realized. Her

poetry allowed her to express the range of emotions she was enduring. Another

connection to Plath‟s personal life is provided by Hughes‟s “Notes on the Chronological

Order of Sylvia Plath‟s Poems.” Plath rode a horse, also named Ariel. She had one

experience in which she was knocked to an upside down position, clinging desperately to

the reins as the horse continued sprinting. The horse raced with her on it this way until

reaching its stable (Hughes 194). Hughes used this experience in his Birthday Letters

poem titled “Sam,” remarking on Plath‟s tenacity to hold on; however, he also shares in

“Sam‟s” final stanza his dismay that she could not hold on this way for him:

When I jumped a fence you strangled me

One giddy moment, then fell off,
Flung yourself off and under my feet to trip me
And tripped me and lay dead. Over in a flash. (31-34)

Time of day becomes a presence as the poem‟s first line places us at night: “Stasis

in darkness.” We could compare this with the preceding poems‟ also beginning at night.

The difference is that there is restlessness in the other poems, which contrasts to the

“Stasis” or stillness at this poem‟s onset. It stands in opposition to forthcoming release

within the poem. Plath closes the poem, as horse and rider race “Into the red / Eye, the

cauldron of morning” (30-31). The speaker has reached morning in a victorious manner.

There is a definite feeling of accomplishment attained within these lines. This

establishes the poem‟s time frame as the period of dark into dawn which suggests

enlightenment.

There is a sense of freedom throughout the poem, as within the first stanzas of

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“Ariel,” Plath creates a melding of horse and rider, writing, “God‟s lioness, / How one we

grow” (4-5). The comparison of the horse to “God‟s lioness” reveals a powerful

female figure and also provides credence to Plath‟s knowledge of Ariel‟s biblical

significance. As the rider and horse become one, the rider attains the horse‟s formidable

features. They have the ability to move quickly together as one. Plath chose to

structure the poem in short, three line stanzas, containing a random rhyme scheme. Her

poetic choices for the poem match the freedom and quick movement of its subject.

Alvarez discusses her style in Voices and Visions, remarking on Plath‟s disciplined yet

free, intricate and ingenious use of wording. He feels that every choice in the poem

matters, maintaining its structure, but also alludes to its freedom, saying it “just go[es]...a

release from all troubles” (Voices).

The strength and freedom of the rider are supported within other stanzas. The

seventh stanza compares the rider to another strong female figure, Lady Godiva: “White /

Godiva, I unpeel- / Dead hands, dead stringencies” (19-21). Godiva becomes legendary

by standing up to her husband‟s desire to raise taxes by riding through the town naked on

a horse. Plath‟s line also allows a woman to stand up for herself. In this state she is

able to peel off the factors which had oppressed her, a figurative nudity. The speed and

surety of her movements are compared to an arrow in the poem‟s final stanzas:

And I
Am the arrow,

The dew that flies

Suicidal, at one with the drive
Into the red

Eye, the cauldron of morning. (26-31)

While the final lines use the word “suicidal,” it is not to imply a physical taking of one‟s

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life, but rather to affirm the transformation into another identity. This change allowed

the female subject a boldness and freedom to face the unknown.

Plath‟s “Ariel” allows her to reclaim control and to redirect that moment in time.

Returning to Perloff‟s quotation from above, which spoke of the speaker transcending her

physical self, combined with the liberation displayed throughout the poem, reveals that

Plath successfully finds freedom within “Ariel.” Plath used her writing to achieve a

sense of power where there had been powerlessness.

The poem “Totem,” which is one of Plath‟s last poems from 1963, provides

similar features of a successful escape as in “Ariel.” The poems my first chapter

addresses are characteristic of a style Plath herself considers inhibited; Plath dismissed

Colossus poems as inhibited (Kendall 23) and she felt that poems before “The Stones”

(late 1959) were “produced in the days before she became herself” (“Notes” 92). The

poems‟ styles in this final chapter are the antithesis of earlier poems‟ styles. First is the

assured movement evident through this poem‟s poetic structure which features two lined,

unrhymed stanzas. “Totem‟”s quick certainty speaks through the poem: “The engine is

killing the track, the track is silver, / It stretches into the distance. It will be eaten

nevertheless” (1-2). There are no questions in these lines, but only solid statements

provided in quick succession. This poem is much more graphic than “Ariel.” The

spiritual nature of “Ariel” is replaced by actual death. In this poem, it is the literal death

that presides over the poem and ultimately every life. It is, in essence, one true escape.

Plath offers many unpleasant scenarios, reminding readers that death is inevitable.

Tim Kendall provides a comparison, stating, “„Totem‟ portrays a hallucinatory world

where, like Plath‟s religious explorations in Ariel, everything preys or is preyed upon”

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(204). Some of the images that haunted Plath in earlier poems, such as “The

Zookeeper‟s Wife,” resurface here. One example is the “quartered rabbits” (24) which

appear in this poem‟s sixth and seventh stanzas, “In the bowl the hare is aborted, / Its

baby head out of the way, embalmed in spice, / Flayed of fur and humanity” (11-13).

These lines conflate birth and death in a way that is indicative of a life cycle. Only two

lines later, Plath introduces biblical imagery: “Let us eat it like Christ. / These are the

people that were important” (15-16). She refers to the Last Supper, reminding us that

even Christ needed to experience death. Another familiar feature is the spider, an animal

seen in the zookeeper‟s collection. “Totem”‟s “Spider” is not observed as contained.

Rather, Plath shows the spider as predator, writing, “I am mad, calls the spider, waving

its many arms. / And in truth it is terrible, / Multiplied in the eyes of the flies” (28-30).

These lines show that every living creature has something to fear yet is also fearsome. I

agree with Uroff‟s comment that the spider is “clearly associated with death” (111).

This spider portends death as did the masculine spider within the poem “Spider” from my

first chapter. A difference between the two spiders is found within Kendall‟s remark on

the latter‟s “freakish” appearance, having arms instead of legs (204). Turning the spider

into something grotesque makes it much more fearful and strange. The spider is only

one small example of death in the poem.

Plath conveys her confidence to discuss death through the poem‟s images, which

continue to cycle back to the ultimate conclusion of death. An early journal entry

contains similar clarity. The entry is one in which Plath contemplates death, remarking,

“Black is sleep; black is a fainting spell; and black is death, with no light, no waking”

(45). The conclusive tone from her journal entry is found within this poem with an

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additional sense of wisdom. The final line reads, “Death with its many sticks”(34)

indicating that death is unique and universal. A poem such as “Blue Moles” offers a

glimpse at death through only one perspective while this poem embraces its pertinence to

anyone or anything regardless of the power exerted by that individual. Everyone will

experience death differently.

The poems in this section contain more graphic images, and this approach was

necessary to achieve the escape Plath desired. Power is achieved by the female in the

final two poems by stripping away gender stereotypes. Death is an equalizer because it

is not gender specific.

Conclusion

The complexity of Plath‟s poetry allows her readers to approach her poems in a

number of ways. I discussed twenty-two poems as they coincide with themes of

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imprisonment and escape. I used a few highly recognized poems such as “The

Colossus,” “Daddy” and “Ariel”; however, my choices also included a majority of poems

that are less known, and/or that contain animals and dreaming. It is important to disclose

that many other poems that I did not discuss but that deserve recognition lend themselves

to these same themes. One such poem is “Lady Lazarus,” which is well known and is

often cited by critics because of its references to suicide. This poem‟s placement would

be in the aggressive escape chapter because despite references to suicide, the speaker‟s

voice is challenging and in charge of the poem‟s direction. The female voice that ends

the poem suggests power even after death as she rises “Out of the ash” (82). The last

line reveals: “And I eat men like air” (84) which is similar to “The Shrike‟s” appetite.

This poem is quite personal because of the number of biographical references. It also

contains common elements found in the other poems I have discussed. Some similarities

are the profound sense of the personal through the repetition of „I,‟ a reference to Nazis,

other repetitive phrases/words and domestic images such as a “gold baby” (69) and a

“wedding ring” (77). These familiar elements were only one of the methods Plath used

to enhance the sensations of imprisonment and escape. In addition to these images were

choices of form, animal usage and of course, Plath‟s use of a confessional style to debate

gender issues.

In each chapter I‟ve included a section in which I shared the formal choices in

the poems. A summary of these findings reveals that poems in my “Imprisonment”

chapter have the most instances of regular rhyme scheme and structures that at times

duplicate the sense of enclosure within the poem‟s context. The poems considered in my

final chapter on “Escape” reflect an obvious shift as rhyme schemes and imprisoning

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structures grow less pervasive. Word choice also signifies a freer sense of style because

the final poems I‟ve discussed use fewer words in a more authoritative manner to express

the poem‟s contents. Plath‟s poems have been analyzed by critics such as Sandra

Gilbert, among others, as breaking free from a structured earlier style to a freer, truer

sense of self. With the exception of “The Applicant” and “The Shrike,” I have shown

that the structure of Plath‟s poems move chronologically and formally from an

imprisoned to a freer state and that their contents are aligned with this transition. Also

present within each chapter were poems in which Plath manipulated the speaker‟s role

between subject and object. Examples were in “The Applicant,” “Pursuit,” “The Rabbit

Catcher” and “The Zookeeper‟s Wife.” This split allowed Plath the ability to move

outside of herself, enabling a figurative escape in which she was able to experience

different roles without being restricted to a particular one.

One of the forums employed to experience different roles was Plath‟s

implementation of animals that I have highlighted within this thesis. Using animals

allowed Plath to personify personal feelings, but also gave her a chance to speak of larger

issues. Plath‟s choices were never accidental. The progression of animals in these

chapters adhere to their states of imprisonment or escape. The first chapter‟s poems

contained ants that were industrious as well as mechanical. An ant is low on the food

chain. Animals from the second chapter were rabbit, moles, crabs and bees. These

animals are somewhat higher on a food chain than ants. By the end of the second

chapter, the bees began to exhibit a more pronounced attempt at escape through Plath‟s

emphasis on female superiority. The final chapter‟s animals consisted of the shrike, an

eel and horse. The shrike and eel are the most ferocious of the animals Plath employs

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and depicts destroying a male figure. The horse in “Ariel” allows the female rider to

escape all cumbersome features. There is an obvious transition from weaker to stronger

animals.

The poems discussed in this thesis reveal Plath‟s personal movement from

imprisonment to escape. Plath was a confessional poet. Each poem included in my

thesis links back to a moment in her life that inspired poetic representation. The people

in Plath‟s life attested to these connections and were themselves part of her poems. This

is not to say that Plath‟s collective works should be seen as a stylized diary. Plath‟s

poems allowed her creative expression that freed her from being herself through the

methods described. Plath‟s purposes within my analysis of imprisonment and escape

reveal her poetry‟s therapeutic nature. The poems I first discussed emphasized feelings

of vulnerability and frustration with gender and husband/father relationships and

progressed to feelings of confidence and power within these situations. Perhaps critics

believing Plath‟s later poems were her best sensed her growing confidence in the spheres

of gender and relationship. This growing confidence manifests itself in Plath‟s ability to

move outside of structured forms.

Plath‟s repetitive battle motifs of knights and war seem quite applicable to support

my discovery. Plath definitely had imprisoning forces to confront. These were the

expectations to be a proper wife, daughter and female writer. Plath‟s personality could

not allow her to meekly accept the norm. She always realized that she wanted to

accomplish more as she verifies in a journal entry:

I have the quiet righteous malice of one with better poems than other
women‟s reputations have been made by . . . I plot, calculate: twenty
poems now my nucleus. Thirty more in a bigger, freer, tougher voice:
work on rhythms mostly, for freedom, yet sung, delectability of speaking

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 as in succulent chicken. No coyness, archaic cutie tricks. (315)

It is for this reason that her poetry provided a means to combat these imprisoning

features. In essence, imprisonment was the enemy against which Plath fought, and her

poems depict battles, some lost and some won.

Bibliography

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“The Battle of Waterloo.” Online posting. British Broadcasting Corp.

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Becker, Jillian. Giving Up: The Last Days of Sylvia Plath. New York: St. Martin‟s

Press, 2002.

Bobbitt, Joan. “Lowell and Plath: Objectivity and the Confessional Mode.” Arizona

Quarterly 33 (1977): 311-18.

Booth, James. “Competing Pulses: Secular and Sacred in Hughes, Larkin and Plath.”

Critical Survey 12.3 (2000): 3-26.

Elphick, Chris, John B. Dunning, and David Allen Sibley, eds. The Sibley Guide to Bird

Life and Behavior. New York: Knopf, 2001.

Feldman, Irving. “The Religion of One.” Critical Heritage. Ed. Linda W. Wagner.

New York: Routledge, 1988. 195.

“Grail.” The American Heritage Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1985.

Hayman, Ronald. The Death and Life of Sylvia Plath. New York: Birch Lane, 1991.

Hughes, Ted. Birthday Letters. New York: Farrar, 1998.

---. “Notes on the Chronological Order of Sylvia Plath‟s Poems.” Triquarterly 7 (Fall

1966): 39-64.1

Katrovas, Richard. “Fame Envy.” Denver Quarterly 34.4 (Winter 2000): 124-30.

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1
My thesis cites pagination from a reprinted source.

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“Marine Eels.” Online posting. 22 July 2004. Exotic Tropicals. <http://animal-

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McNeil, Helen. “Sylvia Plath.” Voices and Visions: The Poet in America. Ed. Helen

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Middlebrook, Diane Wood. “What Was Confessional Poetry?” The Columbia History of

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Moramarco, Fred. “„Burned-Up Intensity‟: The Suicidal Poetry of Sylvia Plath.”

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Phillips, Robert. The Confessional Poets. Illinois: Southern Illinois UP, 1973.

Plath, Otto Emil. Bumblebees and Their Ways. New York: Macmillan, 1934.

Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. New York: HarperPerennial, 1999.

---. The Collected Poems. New York: Harper, 1992.

---. Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams. New York: Harper, 2000.

---. Letters Home. Ed. Aurelia Plath. New York: Harper, 1975.

Rose, Jacqueline. The Haunting of Sylvia Plath. Massachusetts: Harvard UP, 1992.

Rees-Jones, Deryn. “Liberty Belles and Founding Fathers: Sylvia Plath‟s „The

Colossus‟.” Women: A Cultural Review 12.3 (Winter 2001): 276-291.

Sexton, Ann. “The barfly ought to sing.” The Art of Sylvia Plath. Ed. Charles

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Newman. Indiana UP, 1970. 174-81.

Tripp, Anna. “Saying „I‟: Sylvia Plath as Tragic Author or Feminist Text?” Women: A

Cultural Review 5.3 (Winter 1994): 253-63.

Uroff, Margaret Dickie. Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Chicago: Illinois UP, 1980.

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---. Sylvia Plath: A Biography. New York: Simon, 1987.

Biographical Statement

Christel Cocchiola Russman completed her B.A. in English and Elementary Education at

Elms College in Chicopee, Massachusetts. She is currently a fourth grade teacher in

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Bristol. She anticipates a transition to the middle school or high school level in order to

devote her instruction to English.

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