Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath’s poem, ‘Whiteness I Remember’, and Ted Hughes’s poem, ‘Sam’, are two poems which describe an experience of Plath’s when she was a student at Cambridge. She was out on her first ride when the horse she had hired the normally-placid Sam, bolted. Although Ted Hughes’s is describing the experience he uses insinuations throughout the poem to let out his perception of his marriage with Sylvia Plath, hence infuriating, the conflict in perspective between the two poems.

The ideas of ‘conflicting perspective’ suggest that the composers of the texts present an even-handed, unbiased attitude to the events, personalities or situations represented. Conflicting perspectives explore the subjective truth of the individual, which are shaped by the construction of a text by a biased composer. Each person’s version of the truth in events, personalities and situations differs, by viewing separate perspectives an understanding of the motives and purpose of the composer is formed. Sam’ is Hughes retrospective interpretation of an event in Plath’s life before she met him and which she had represented in the poem ‘Whiteness I remember’. Hughes’ poem itself contains what can be interpreted as conflicting perspectives of her personality and when read in conjunction with Whiteness I remember reveals interesting similarities and differences. Hughes seems to accept Plath’s account of the event ‘I can live Your incredulity, your certainty that this was it’ and he does adhere closely to her description of her experiences during the horse’s headlong flight to the stable.

However, the repetition of ‘You lost your stirrups’, ‘You lost your reins, you lost your seat’, combine to depict Plath as a terrified victim unable to control or take responsibility for the consequences of her own actions. In contrast Plath’s poem suggests she was exhilarated by the speed and danger and identified with what she represents as the horses’ rebellion against the ‘humdrum’ of suburbia.

In contrast Hughes accuses her of glamorising her loss of control. ‘It was grab his neck and adore him or free fall’. Once again the reader is arguably left with the impression that Hughes is still identifying with Sam and suggesting there are parallels between her relationship with him and the horse. As the stanza continues Hughes builds the momentum and pace with a series of commas as punctuation and an enjambment.

The choice of verb in ‘You slewed under his neck, an upside down jockey with nothing between you and the cataract of macadam’ creates an image of Plath unable to maintain a balance and in imminent danger of being smashed into the road by the horses hooves at high speed. The alliteration and the metaphor of the ‘horribly hard swift river’ in full flood combine with the’ propeller terror of his front legs’ and the onomatopoeia of ‘clangour of the iron shoes’ to transform the horse into an engine of destruction.

Tulips by Tulips, by Sylvia Plath seems to be a poetic expression of depression. The speaker who I assume is Plath is describing the psychological effects after a surgical procedure,which I feel is the time when sadly Plath miscarried her baby. The poem was written through her own view in a hospital room, where the reader is given an insight to the inner thoughts of a woman who has gone through a terrible ordeal, and the objects around her which influence her mentality. The poem follows Plath’s admission into hospital and the heart-rendering account of her attempt to recover.

There are nine stanzas in the poem, each with five lines, there is no evident rhyme pattern and there is little structure to the poem, although the lack of organization in each stanza seems to be a reflection of the confusion and the loss of control that Plath feels, the only structure shared between the stanzas is the abundance of punctuation, creating a slow rhythm throughout the poem, although Plath uses alliteration to increase fluency in parts of the poem, “plastic-pillowed”, “water went” and “light lies on white walls”.

Plaths tone is serene throughout the poem, however there is a sarcastic tone when she says “The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here”. The tone of the poem starts out as depressed and bleak then changes into more dynamic and hopeful and the imagery more surreal: “the mouth of some great African cat”. In the first two stanzas, Plath talks about the situation and her surroundings, whereas the rest of the stanzas reveal her feelings.

The most symbolic item in the poem is the tulips, their colour is the first contrast brought to light, they are red and they clash with the white room, they drink in her oxygen and fill the room with life, she describes how nice it had been before the tulips came in and robbed her peaceful isolation. Their redness reminded her of her wound and the tulips lightly breathing through their white swaddling reminds her of the baby she has lost. In the end the flowers win and begin to overtake the dull whiteness that Plath once found so peaceful. the walls, also, seem to be warming themselves. Another contrast to the red tulips is Plath’s use of white as a symbol. The imagery described in the first two stanzas is all white, meaning the absence of colour, which is figurative for the lack of life. “How white everything is”, “white walls”, “white lids”, “white caps”, she is propped between the white pillow and the white sheet, white is clean and pure and the contrast between the white, sterile surroundings and the red of the tulips is too distracting.

Plath uses colour imagery to manifest the themes of life, the red of the tulips is symbolic for life, the colour of blood, and tulips are associated with spring which is a contrast to the winter outside. It is customary to send flowers to a funeral or when somebody dies, they symbolise a tribute to the life of the one who has died, “I didn’t want flowers” she did not want to be reminded that her baby would never have a life for her to pay tribute to, the tulips were an intrusion on her grief and since they were given as a loving gesture, she looks at them in contempt. “Nobody watched me before, now I am watched. ”

Plath includes several references to water, “my body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water tends to the pebbles it must run over. ” “Water went. ” “The way a river snags and eddies. ” The water is symbolic of the tears she has shed over her loss. The interactions between Plath and the nurses are portrayed as cold and impersonal, they do not regard her as an individual, her body is compared to a “pebble”, an inanimate object with no identity. There is no communication between the nurses and Plath, they simply deliver her medication: “they bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep”, they come to relieve her pain.

She seems to relate most things back to her illness, using similes to compare her overnight case to a black pill box. “They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations”, this could be an indication of what depression does to a person, it robs them of joy In life that comes from loving associations. Even her own family are a cruel reminder of what she has lost: “My husband and child smiling out of the family photo; Their smilies catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks. ” although Plath has no desire for life it is her family and the tulips that are keeping her from letting go, retaining her from sinking.

She wants to be free to just be, but the tulips remind her that she has people who love and need her Electroshock treatment, recovery from a suicide attempt and miscarriage were only a few of the times Sylvia Plath was hospitalised. Plath was diagnosed with a combination of severe depression, acute insomnia and bipolar disorder (Griffin) the time she spent in hospital and her mental illness are reflected in her poetry. Plath’s description of the hospital setting may be a reflection of her own experiences when hospitalised, this would explain why she is so detached from the medical staff.

The entire point of the poem is simply how these flowers show her that she can never truly be free from her pain, There will always be something there to remind her of it, sadly we all know the outcome of Sylvia Plaths life and how sad it seems today that Sylvia Plath had to face her mental illness at a time when no one knew the truth about how to treat it. This poem reflects the same depth, grief and creativity that was expressed within the life of Sylvia Plath, and because of her beautiful mind we are left with the gifts she left behind, and Tulips is one of them.

In ’s poem the Sow, the fascinated narrator describes his encounter with his neighbors pig for the first time. Sylvia Plath uses diction and allusions to describe the sow from the narrator’s perspective. The poem also features an attitude shift towards the pig from this mysterious prize to this disappointing pig. The poem starts off with an aura of mystery. She describes the neighbor’s behavior using words and phrases like “shrewd secret” and “impounded from public stare. You can tell that the neighbor is trying to hide his ribbon winning pig from the public and that he is very proud of his pig. The narrator is very curious as to what this ribbon winning pig looks like. He is so curious to the point that he is commended to find his way through the “lantern-lit maze of barns” to see this pig. When he sees the pig for the first time the mood of the poem shifts. When he sees the pig for the first time he, it’s not what he had expected.

He says “this was no rose-and-larkspurred china” which implies the imperfections he finds with the pig. As he begins to describe the pig, his tone changes from wonder to pity for the pig. He describes the pig as a “Brobdingnag bulk” to describe how big this pig is by comparing it to the giants that live in Jonathan Swifts book Gulliver’s Travels. He sees this pig as this fat pig that can barely move, and is slowly rotting away, “on that black compost, fat-rutted eyes dream filled”.

He also compares the pig to an “our marvel blazoned a knight, helmed, in cuirass, unhorsed and shredded in the grove of combat by a grisly-bristled boar”. He sees the fat of the pig as armor and its scars as to those of battle wounds. Sylvia Plath was able to show the different thoughts the narrator has of his neighbors pig. She is able to show us how the narrator thinks that this pig is this magnificent creature even though it’s not. Through diction, comparisons, and allusions Sylvia Plath is able to show us what the narrator is seeing and feeling though out the poem.

Chantal Chau Analysis of a Key Passage, Initiation by Sylvia Plath In Initiation by Sylvia Plath, the author suggests that conformity and having friends is a wonderful idea, yet the idea of having an individual identity and being an individual is stronger. In the excerpt, Millicent is slowly realizing that conforming and being a part of a sorority is not as exciting as it sounds, and being an individual offers more opportunities to become a unique person. Millicent is an average girl who no one really notices, when one day, a sorority group decides to allow her to join, but she must past their initiation test first.

At first, Millicent is ecstatic, and proud that she can finally be a part of society, but slowing, and in the beginning of the excerpt, Millicent finds that being an individual can offer more. As she is talking to Liane Morris, another sorority contestant, she finds that in the sorority “they have a meeting once a week… each girl takes turns entertaining at her house… ”, and how this is not all as exciting as she imagined. Millicent’s desire to know what the group does reflects the idea of hesitation, and how Millicent is now wondering if she really wants to be a part of this group.

As she considers both sides of her decision to join, she realizes that joining the sorority would simply allow her to approach Herb, a male student she likes. Her thought “would he ask her out (if he ever did) just for herself, no strings attached? ” bring the desire to be unique and original up and pushes past the need to be popular. Millicent is constantly considering the idea of not joining the sorority, and visualizing them as “pale grey-brown birds in a flock, one like the other, all exactly alike”. This analogy of conformity is very strong, because in a sorority, every girl is alike, with shallow personalities and beautiful exteriors.

The sparrows are described to be “chirping”, which brings the idea of being plain and restrained to the mind, because when birds are chirping, they are not expressing themselves; rather they are simply copying the other birds, with no desire to stand out from the rest. In Millicent’s mind, freedom and originality is described as “swooping carefree heather birds, they would go singing and cooing out across the great spaces of air, dipping and darting, strong and proud in their freedom and their sometime loneliness”. Heather irds are a mythological animal, meaning freedom has no defined description that originality does not exist in a solid form. They are described to be “swooping, carefree”, meaning there is no worry of being judged, and “dipping and darting, strong in their freedom” describes the happiness of a worry free life, where style and opinions are not judged or withheld, unlike the “chirping”, trapped, restrained sparrows which symbolize the sorority. Heather birds were “singing and cooing out across the great spaces of air”, showing that they could express their ideas and opinions without worry, though loneliness was a consequence.

In the excerpt, it was stated that the heather birds were “strong and proud in their freedom and their sometime loneliness”, meaning that there will always be unique people in the world Millicent can relate to, though at times the individuality will stand out, and she will be alone. Through this mental debate, Millicent learns discovers that she could enter her imaginary great hall through “her coronation as a princess labelling her conclusively as one of the select flock”, or use “other ways of getting into the great hall, blazing with lights, of people and life”.

When read closely, we can see that the mentions the sorority as a flock, demoting them to nothing but a group of beautiful shells with hollow insides, one alike the other. It is then that her decision to use “other ways” to enter this great hall, without being simply a hollow princes. Just before she is actually accepted into the sorority, the door to the basement opens, and the description of the “ray of light” that “sliced across the soft gloom of the basement room” shows the difference between identical, shallow girls and the deeper, unique members of the world.

The ray of light that sliced across the room symbolized the epiphany she had, how she now knows that she cannot be a part of the “soft gloom of the basement room”, where everyone is the same, there is nothing special about anyone. As Millicent is leaving the basement, she hears the “song of the heather birds as they went wheeling and gliding against wide blue horizons through vast spaces of air, their wings flashing quick and purple in the bright sun” and in her final decision, her heart and soul joins the heather birds she has always been.

From the beginning, Millicent has always seem to have known that she could never be a shallow pretty girl; throughout the story, there are little clues of her reluctance to be part of the sorority, such as when she was talking to Lou, a member of the sorority, and discovering the many useless things the sorority does. But when she realizes she has more than just one option, Millicent suddenly becomes hopeful, and more positives changes arrive, such as “how she could still be friends with everybody”, how she can still be herself, while still being in a group. The group of original people.

Sylvia Plath Plath’s poetry depicts her quest for poetic inspiration and vision: In her early poems, like ‘Black Rook’, Plath sees inspiration as transcendent, something that would announce itself to her from the external world. Plath’s language implies that she awaits a visitation of beauty, like the Annunciation by the angel in the Bible. Plath longs for an occasional ‘portent’ or ‘back talk from the mute sky’. She doesn’t believe in religious epiphany; but she uses Christian language as an analogy to convey her longing.

Her longing is for even brief moments of revelation from things, nature or the universe: ‘As if a celestial burning took possession of the most obtuse objects now and then—Thus hallowing an interval otherwise inconsequent’. Throughout the poem ‘Black Rook’, Plath uses ‘fire’ and associated words as an analogy for poetic inspiration or vision. See the extended note on this point in Imagery below. In ‘Black Rook’, Plath is resigned to the fact that inspiration involves a ‘long wait’. The euphoria of inspiration is ‘rare, random’ and brief.

By the time Plath Wrote ‘Finisterre’ four years later, she had ceased to seek or discern enlightenment or any transcendent reality in nature and the universe: ‘Our Lady of the Shipwrecked … does not hear what the sailor or the peasant is saying – She is in love with the beautiful formlessness of the sea’ [Finisterre] . Instead, she discerns: ‘Black admonitory cliffs’ and ‘Souls, rolled in the doom-noise of the sea’. Plath’s perception of the world is therefore very bleak. In the poem ‘Mirror’, the poet’s quest for beauty and vision has turned inwards. She gazes inwards towards the self.

She seeks despairingly for enlightenment through self-examination. What she finds appals her: ‘A woman bends over me, searching my reaches for what she really is… tears and an agitation of hands’. In ‘Pheasant’, Plath declares her atheistic stance: ‘I am not mystical. It isn’t As if I thought it had a spirit. It is simply in its element. ’ However, Plath shows that not all her poems are bleak. She experiences the aesthetic beauty of nature. She enjoys the beauty of a natural creature in its environment: ‘It unclaps, brown as a leaf, and loud, Settles in the elm, and is easy. ’

In ‘Elm’ Plath probes her subconscious, and states she is saturated with self-knowledge. Plath experiences harrowing visions within the inner self. Plath invents a demon in her subconscious that gives her a very self-destructive vision: ‘I am incapable of more knowledge. What is this, this face So murderous in its strangle of branches? — Its snaky acids kiss. It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults That kill, that kill, that kill. ’ [Elm] In ‘Poppies in July’, Plath seems so emotionally exhausted that she has given up the rational pursuit of the truth or any kind of vision.

She longs for drugged relief, for a ‘colourless’ state: ‘Where are your opiates, your nauseous capsules’. In ‘Child’ Plath has lost the capacity to find beauty for herself: ‘this troublous Wringing of hands, this dark Ceiling without a star’ But she feels a desire to provide visions of wonder and beauty for her infant’s eye: ‘I want to fill it with color and ducks, The zoo of the new’ [Child] Plath explores her own depression. Plath is exhausted and aimless: ‘not seek any more in the desultory weather some design… this season of fatigue’ [Black Rook]

Plath predicts her own fading away, destruction or ‘effacement’: ‘I’m no more your mother than the cloud that distils a mirror to reflect its own slow effacement at the wind’s hand’ [Morning Song] Plath uses a bleak landscape to portray her own despair: ‘This was the land’s end: the last fingers, knuckled and rheumatic, Cramped on nothing. Black Admonitory cliffs, and the sea exploding With no bottom, or anything on the other side of it, Whitened by the faces of the drowned. Now it is only gloomy, a dump of rocks… Bay of the Dead’ [Finisterre] Plath reveals intense grief: When they free me, I am beaded with tears’ [Finisterre] Plath confesses her deep anguish: ‘She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands’ [Mirror] Plath is very self-critical: ‘I trespass stupidly. Let be, let be. ’ [Pheasant] Plath’s fears becomes ever more nightmarish: ‘I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me’ [Elm] Plath reveals that she is inflicting suffering on herself: ‘Is it for such I agitate my heart’ [Elm] Plath confesses the traumatic effect of electric-convulsive treatment: ‘I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.

Scorched to the root My red filaments burn and stand, a hand of wires’ [Elm] Plath confesses that isolation and lack of love haunt her: ‘I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps out Looking, with its hooks, for something to love’ [Elm] Plath reveals that she is becoming powerless to deal with her illness: ‘Its snaky acids kiss. It petrifies the will’ [Elm] Plath has moments when she longs to escape her mind through drugs: ‘Or your liquors seep to me, in this glass capsule, dulling and stilling’ [Poppies]

For many readers, the draw of Sylvia Plath’s poetry is distinctly linked to her life as well as the desire to end her life. As Robert Lowell states in the forward of Ariel, “This poetry and life are not a career; they tell that a life, even when disciplined, is simply not worth it” (xv). “A Birthday Present”, written by Plath in September of 1962 and hauntingly recorded in her own voice on audio in October of that same year, is just one of the many poems that comprise the collection titled Ariel.

Its allusion to suicide is unmistakable. Its main theme is the escape from a life that death provides. Plath’s life as well as her desire to end it is well documented, primarily because she has chosen to record her tormented existence in her prose and poetry. M. D. Uroff states, “ she put the speaker herself at the center of her poems in such a way as to make her psychological vulnerability and shame an embodiment of her civilization we should reconsider the nature of the speaker in Plath’s poems, her relationship to the poet, and the extent to which the poems are confessional” (104).

The novel, The Bell Jar, chronicles her college years and first attempt at suicide, and her poetry, primarily in the collection in Ariel, provides glimpses into her state of mind. She interjects herself into her work so deeply that it is unmistakable that the speaker in the poetry is Plath herself. With that firmly in mind, explicating this poem becomes a quest into the months that preceded her taking her own life on February 11th, 1963. A symbol used in the poem “A Birthday Present” is the veil: The veil and what it may conceal is a theme that permeates the poem in multiple forms.

Inline 1 when the speaker says, “What is this, behind this veil, is it ugly, is it beautiful? ” The speaker continues in the successive lines to question not only what it is but for whom it is for. Inline 16, “Now there are veils, shimmering like curtains” and in lines 17 and 18 veils are compared to the light translucent material that covered the kitchen window as well as the misty air in January one would imagine she saw from her flat in England. And once again in lines 55-57 when she says “Only let down the veil, the veil, the veil.

If it were death I would admire the deep gravity of it, its timeless eyes. ” Here she wants to let down the veil and face it head-on, and in the case of death, embrace it. This is certainly not the first time that the speaker has entertained the notion of ending her life. The speaker mentions inline 13 and 14 that she does not want a present as she is only alive by accident and in line 15, “I would have killed myself gladly that time any possible way. ” Plath herself had a botched suicide attempt in her past that she used as a plot point in her novel, The Bell Jar.

Biographer Caitriona O ‘Reilly chronicles the incident in 1953 after Plath finished a guest editorship at Mademoiselle in New York City. After prescription sleeping pills and Electroconvulsive therapy to combat depression, Plath attempted suicide through an overdose of sleeping pills (356). The accident, as the speaker refers to it, directly relates to the fact that she was found alive and nursed back to health: at least physically. There is also an aspect of what is expected from the society of the speaker of the poem.

Women in the 1950’s were expected to get married and procreate, not getting seriously interested in education and careers. These things would prevent a woman from leading a happy and normal feminine life (Bennett 103). Bennett also speaks of this, “Like most women in the 1950s… Sylvia Plath appears to have accepted the basic assumptions of this doctrine or ideology even though she knew that in many respects they ran counter to the springs of her own nature” (103). This certainly flew in the face of what Sylvia Plath was about.

The speaker in the poem seems to lament this in lines 7 and 8, “Measuring the flour, cutting off the surplus, / adhering to rules, to rules, to rules. ” Likewise, “Is this one for the annunciation? / My God, what a laugh” (9-10). Certainly, the ideals of society put forth in these lines, a woman’s place is in the kitchen and the comparison to the virgin birth of Christ, are an impossibility for an educated and tormented Plath. The speaker seems to have no other choice than ending the suffering.

In the poem, there is a conflict concerning the end of the speaker’s life. In lines 21-26 the speaker is in essence asking for the relief of death and references the religious theme of the last supper inline 26, “Let us eat our last supper at it, like a hospital plate. ” Line 27-29 states the problem with the present that is wanted, “I know why you will not give it to me, / You are terrified/ the world will go up in a shriek, and your head with it,”.

The speaker continues to lobby for relief, “I will only take it and go quietly. You will not even hear me open it, no paper crackle, / No falling ribbons, no scream at the end. / I do not think you credit me with this discretion” (Lines 33-36). The shame attached to suicide is overwhelming, not necessarily for the victim but those left to deal with societal pressures associated with it. The speaker seems to take this into account as she contemplates the act; it is more important than those left behind are unscathed than the torture that the speaker is going through. Discretion is more important than directly confronting the underlying problems.

Finally, the speaker appeals to the giver’s sense of duty when she describes how her death has been occurring incrementally but not nearly as quickly as she would like. The use of words like motes (small particles, like the dust particles that can be seen floating in the sunlight) and carbon monoxide (deadly despite being undetectable by smell or sight) described as sweetly breathable in the lines 37-43 are used to show how the speaker has suffered for years from invisible or nearly invisible things for quite a long time: “To you, they are only transparencies, clear air,” (Line 37).

Let it not come by word of mouth, I should be sixty/ By the time the whole of it was delivered, and to numb to use it” (Lines 53-54). The speaker is frustrated by the gift bearer insistence that death comes slowly; the speaker cannot wait that long. “A Birthday Present” essentially reads like a suicide note trying to reassure those left behind that death is really a grand relief. Lowell elegantly sums it up: Suicide, father-hatred, self-loathing—nothing is too much for the macabre gaiety of her control.

Yet it is too much; her art’s immortality is life’s degradation. The surprise, the shimmering, unwrapped birthday present, the transcendence “into the red-eye, the cauldron of the morning,” and the lover, who are always waiting for her, are death, her own abrupt and defiant death (Forward xiv). Defiant in death as she was in life, one can only hope that Plath has found what she was missing.

Works Cited

• Bennett, Paula. My Life A Loaded Gun, Female Creativity and Feminist Poetics. Boston: Beacon Press, 1986. Lowell, Robert. “Foreword. ” Ariel. New York: First Perennial Classics, 1999. xiii-xvi. Print. O ‘Reilly, Caitriona. “Sylvia Plath. ” N. p. , n. d. Web. 10 Nov. 2011. ;lt;http://www. us. oup. com/us/pdf/americanlit/plath. pdf;gt;.
• Plath, Sylvia. “A Birthday Present. ” Ariel. New York: First Perennial Classics, 1999. 48-51. Print. Uroff, M. D.. “Sylvia Plath and Confessional Poetry: a Reconsideration. ” The Iowa Review 8. 1 (1977): 104-115. JStor. Web. 16 Nov. 2011. ;lt;http://www. jstor. org/stable/20158710;gt;.

The impact of dark poetry on the reader is made predominantly through correspondingly dark  language- this is a common view on the source of such kind of poetry’s effect. In this essay I wouldn’t like to argue this point of view but I would like to broaden  the understanding of dark poetry’s linguisic and semantic tools . I’m going to use two poems sharing a common symbol– “I am Mirror” by Claribel Alegria and “Mirror” by Sylvia Plath- to prove that they appeal to the reader not so much through explicit means like the choice of words but also implicitly.

I will expose the existence of two poles in each poem and stress an essential role,  which semantic oppositions like alive-dead, internal-external, body-soul, action-passivity, depth-surface, reflect- hurt,  human–mirror play. Besides, I will observe how the traditional motif of a mirror as a person’s of alter-ego is transformed in both poems into an effective  poetic tool, which ,on the one hand, forms a number of oppositions, and on the other hand, implies the idea of  pain reflection as pain replication and multiplication.

First, let us consider the poem “I am Mirror” by Claribel Alegria.. The mirror is a second self of the woman, the self that was born in the course of some immense suffering. It is a double-sided mirror. Her pain is reflected in the external world, and vice versa, the world’s pain is reflected in her soul.  But the pain is so enormous that the mirror switches on as a protection mechanism.  The mirror turns into a brilliant wall, which defends her from pain. Now she can see everything perfectly but she cannot perceive. To stress the state of hers the phrase “I don’t feel it” is repeated a number of times.

Like a silver screen, she scans what is going on around very accurately and impartially, “tanks that approach, raised bayonets, bodies that fall…children who run”. The intense external action is contrasted to the internal catalepsy). She wants to get back life because as she says “I hurt therefore I exist”.   Her ability to feel hurt is reduced to its physical aspect.  That is why she pinches and pricks herself.  Only through physical pain, she can bring back her ability to perceive world’s pain but only for a while. In a few moments, she turns back into the “blank mirror that nothing penetrates”. She is again a fleshless phantom protected from the pain by a brilliant wall. What is left is just “a vague memory of pain”. What is specific of the poem is that it does not reveal the pain itself but the pained mirrored, reflected, remembered. Pain sliding on the smooth hard surface.

Let us make these two mirrors reflect in each other by comparing the two poems.  As I have already said, Alegria has a kind of wall mirror, a luminous barrier to protect her from pain. It only reflects external world but nothing can penetrate the surface. It is devoid of depth, it is flat, two-sided but not two-dimensioned. On the contrary, Plath’s mirror’s feature is to swallow immediately whatever appears in it.  It has another dimension behind it. Depth, not surface is its main attribute. This depth is meant to search there and to be afraid of.   It is a lake where a terrible fish lives.

This fish is the woman’s frightening future. It is someone into whom she is going to turn in the course of time. In both poems mirror is impartial, it implies “female passivity, subjugation” (Freedman 1993). However, Plath’s mirror’s truthfulness is seen a kind of rebellion against what woman is seeking in it. In both cases, internal passivity is contrasted with external action. In Plath’s poem the concept of time is of great importance. It is another dimension but the surface and depth of the mirror.  The stillness of a mirror lake is contrasted with the running river of time.

This river flowing through the woman transforms a young beautiful girl into a horrible fish. Hence, being a water creature, an old woman is claimed to belong to the river of time and eternity more than a young girl, still alien to it. Gradually, deep waters of time absorb a woman. A terrible fish is in fact a dead girl, who drowned in the lake of mirror. This is a kind of terrifying reincarnation a woman would prefer to ignore. That is why she turns to such “liars” as the moon and candles. Meanwhile, the mirror reflects her back faithfully.  She cannot see her back mirrored, and that is an important idea.  We cannot see our back, i.e. the opposite, dark side. What does it look like? Maybe it IS a monster fish? We are scared to death by our own monsters.

I would like to dwell on the language used in both poems and how it works toward a certain effect. What correlates with the image of a mirror in Plath’s poem is the use of visual language without any occurrence of audible one. Words like ‘darkness’, ‘pink with speckles’, ‘faces’, ‘flicker’ etc. create a visual picture. The opposition between the pink wall and the darkness is crucial to the poem. Black water has been always associated with hidden, subconscious, uncontrollable forces inside a personality. Hence, I can say that Plath’s mirror is not a medium between internal and external world, like Alegria’s one. It seems to be located within the human soul itself.

While in Plath’s poem the attention is drawn to the visual aspect, in Alegria’s one the emphasis, however strange it may seem, is on the physical aspect, on taction. Or rather it is on the ability or inability to perceive the world through touching it. That is why visual pictures, which take enough space of the poem, are deliberately detached and serve to stress the absence of the woman/mirror’s feeling behind them. The opposition is ‘reflect’ vs. ‘hurt’ That is why the dominating mood is the feeling of stifled pain. This context is suggested by the choice of words: prick, pinch; tortured, frightened, weeping, bleeding, stumbling, panic etc. On the otherpole of the opposition are words like ‘phantom’, ‘fleshless’, ‘vague’.

The poem’s inner plot is a transition from being a woman looking at her reflection into the mirror itself. Let’s read this passage at the beginning:

I pinch myself in the arm I don’t feel frightened I look at myself in the mirror she also pricks herself I begin to get dressed stumbling from the corners shouts like lightning bolts tortured eyes scurrying rats and teeth shoot forth although I feel nothing

Here is the starting point of this transition. Frightened by her lost ability to feel, she looks at herself in the mirror and sees a woman with tortured eyes and teeth shoot forth but she feels nothing because she turned into a mirror. This mirror woman leaves home and wanders through the streets reflecting horrible pictures of war. She hurts herself physically to turn back into a living person again but another terrifying scene prevents her from doing so – and she is a fleshless phantom again.

The same transition can be observed in Sylvia Plath’s poem, although it is proceeds according to a slightly different pattern. The woman is not replaced by a mirror but she is swallowed by it. Being swallowed, she acquires the attributes of the object, which swallowed her. But two mirrors go on existing simultaneously- a still and eternal one and a moving mortal one.  As I said before, it is running river reflected in a lake.

She comes and goes. Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness. In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish. This passage suggests how a recurrent action of everyday life is correlated with transcendental eternity.

The two poems share the ambivalence of the symbol of mirror. Let us turn to what William Freedman writes about the concept of the poem. “In this poem, the mirror is in effect looking into itself, for the image in the mirror is woman, the object that is itself more mirror than person. A woman will see herself both in and as a mirror. To look into the glass is to look for oneself inside or as reflected on the surface of the mirror and to seek or discover oneself in the person (or non-person) of the mirror… the poem becomes a mirror not of the world, but of other mirrors and of the process of mirroring. When living mirrors gaze into mirrors, as when language stares only at itself,only mirrors and mirroring will be visible… “The speaker sees herself “in” the mirror …in two senses: She is the fearful image in the depths beyond the glass and she is the mirror itself” ( Freedman1993).

Bibliography

Lye, John. 1996. Critical reading: a Guide https://brocku.ca/english/jlye/criticalreading.php

McManus,Barbara.1998. Readings and Assignments. http://www.cnr.edu/bmcmanus