Metaphors by Sylvia Plath Not Bitter and Gloomy

Plath's Fun Riddle is the Best of Pregnancy Poems

Sep 25, 2009

The Plath suicide colors academics' appraisal of her work. Metaphors is not the bitter, gloomy view of pregnancy it is often painted. Rather, it is a fun pregnancy poem.

Sylvia Plath wrote this most exquisite short poem about pregnancy in 1959, the same year that she was pregnant with her first child Frieda. Given her sad history of depression, which resulted in her undergoing shock treatment at 20 years of age, attempting suicide at 21, and committing suicide at 31 in 1963, it is hardly surprising that academics look for and find a dark side to this poem, often seeing it as Plath herself speaking gloomily about her distaste for pregnancy and motherhood.

While this cannot be discounted out of hand, it is too often forgotten that Plath was, above all else, a great poet, capable of empathising with any point of view and projecting that perception through a persona. Thus, in her radio play, “Three Women” – really a long poem about three women in the labour ward – she speaks convincingly through three different persona: one a young student who has given her un-planned baby up for adoption; another a desperate woman who has just had yet another miscarriage; and the third, a happy mother delighted to be taking her new baby home.

Plath’s genius for metaphor is maintained throughout – the sterile, almost hostile hospital environment and the pain and inevitability of impending birth are evoked in excruciating vividness: it is arguably the closest a male reader will ever come to the experience of childbirth. Nevertheless, the unique emotions, attitudes and voices of each of the three women are clearly discernible. They all come from within Plath, are coloured by her own experiences, but they are most certainly not Sylvia Plath speaking for herself. They are beautifully executed personas. Consequently, there is ample room to argue that the voice who speaks in “Metaphors” is also Plath putting on a mask, seeing pregnancy through more universal eyes than her own.

Dispense with the image of the depressed and sometimes suicidal Plath as author and examine the poem for what it is – a woman’s eye view of pregnancy that is part fun and part profound. Many, and possibly most, women who have experienced pregnancy as stable, mentally healthy, happily expectant mums-to-be can identify with most of what the persona reveals about pregnancy – even those parts that are usually projected as Plath rebelling against this role that will leave her no time to be herself and to concentrate on writing.

What mother-to-be hasn’t occasionally laughed at herself for being ponderous and clumsy? Plath’s “a melon strolling on two tendrils” must get a wry nod of recognition from most expectant mums. Many women freely admit that by the ninth month they are sick of the discomfort, of being a walking incubator, “a mean, a stage, a cow in calf,” and just want to get it over with.

There is that air of anticipation for the “red fruit” of the womb, but surely it is not only Plath who experiences a twinge of resentment at the paradox that, while the woman does all the work, all attention is fixed on the baby. She is the “fat purse” while the new baby is the shiny “new-minted” money every one wants to pick up; the stereotypical husband anxious to beget a son can certainly make his wife feel like “”a mean” to an end, a prize cow whose only value is as a breeder.

Plath Suicide Mood Not Responsible for This Poem

Finally, must Sylvia Plath necessarily be accused of a deep resentment of motherhood because she concludes her poem: “I’ve eaten a bag of green apples,/ Boarded the train there’s no getting off?” Is that not representative of every expectant mother’s thoughts as the griping pangs of labour hit and she is rushed off to the labour ward? It need have no connection with Plath’s suicidal tendencies.

Some critics have taken these last lines as Plath expressing a pro-life attitude towards abortion. In truth, the entire poem draws a picture of the final month of pregnancy when abortion is no longer an option. It was never about “Will I or won’t I keep this baby?” The persona is already as big as “an elephant, a ponderous house.” The train she has boarded that “there’s no getting off” is the birth process, not pregnancy, as such. When “the baby’s on its way”, there’s no turning back. The birth process does not allow for decisions and choices.

The temptation to read a sadder, more bitter meaning into Plath’s words should be strongly resisted. It makes no sense to sing sad lyrics to frothy, light-hearted music. Plath has given the world a fun piece, a puzzle to entertain, by experimenting with the riddle-poem genre, one of the oldest poetic forms known – some have come down from Anglo-Saxon and Viking traditions. Plath plays pranks with words, dropping broad hints with the nine lines. There’s fun to be had here; let’s not quash it.

The copyright of the article Metaphors by Sylvia Plath Not Bitter and Gloomy in American Poetry is owned by James Parsons. Permission to republish Metaphors by Sylvia Plath Not Bitter and Gloomy in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.