Winter Trees - Sylvia Plath

.../> 10 ‘The Colossus’ by Sylvia Plath.
11 ‘Crossing the Water’ by Sylvia Plath.

Finally, a comment on winter trees: this selection is excellent but should be read in conjunction with her other poems. There are lots of fabulous collections out there!
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Throughout much of her poetry, Plath uses very powerful images of women. Some critics have described these images as showing feminist influences in her work. In the poems ‘Ariel’, ‘The Applicant’, and ‘Lady Lazarus’, many of these examples can be found. Plath uses images such as ‘…a living …/ paper .../ doll…’ and a victimized Jew to describe women’s suppression under a society of male dominance and power. Combined with these images of women who are dominated and tortured by men, Plath uses images such as ‘…God’s lioness…’, Lady Godiva, who are powerful female illustrations of the female embodiment of power, strength and courage transcending torment and subjection under men to ‘…rise out of the ash…/ and… eat men like air’.

‘Ariel’ is a multi-layered poem and on a literal level, the poem is simply concerned with riding a horse. This is, however, a very powerful image representing the freedom and control of the rider. Ariel is also the Hebrew name of the lion of God. In the poem, the horse and rider are seen to represent ‘…God’s lioness…’. This is a good example of the female embodiment of power, courage and wisdom, an image that runs through much of Plath’s poetry. In another poem, ‘Purdah’ , Plath also uses the image of a lioness. The lioness is, once again, used as a symbol of female strength and courage that will be unleashed against the speakers bridegroom. The last two lines of the poem…

‘…The shriek in the bath
The cloak of holes.’

…also ‘carry connotations of other moments of female revenge – the murder of Marat in his bath by Charlotte Corday, the stabbing of Agamemnon by his wronged wife Clytemnestra.’

The poem also shares its title with Shakespeare’s Ariel from his play ‘The Tempest’. Ariel is a spirit of the air, having no bodily restraints, therefore representing freedom, and also having the power to influence nature. This image is important to the poem, because on another level ‘Ariel’ is concerned with gaining freedom of restraints. Another image within the poem that illustrates this is the ‘…White / Godiva…’ who is unpeeling ‘…dead hands, dead stringencies…’. The ‘Godiva Legend’ is well known in many forms, and they teach us that she rode through Coventry, on horseback, naked. She did this in response to her husband agreeing to lift the unfair taxes he had made, if she did so. In doing this, Lady Godiva breaks free of restrictions and becomes like Shakespeare’s Ariel who represents freedom of restraint and the power to influence.

Some critics have described Plath’s poem, ‘The Applicant’, as being ‘one of her most strongest, most bitterly feminist poems’ . This is, however, debateable. The speaker in the poem takes on the role of a ‘super-salesman’ aiming to sell a wife to the applicant. As the poem unfolds, it becomes apparent that the wife is solely an instrument for the husband’s use. The wife is once referred to as ‘…she…’, once as ‘…sweetie…’, but mainly as ‘…it…’. In naming the wife ‘…it…’, her identity is lost and the view of women portrayed is reduced to showing them as merely being functional for men’s benefit. This is emphasised further in the poem as the applicant is told that the wife will ‘…bring teacups and roll away headaches / and do whatever you tell it…’.

The wedding suit, ‘…Black and stiff…’, which is offered to the applicant can also be re-used as a funeral shroud and as the poem progresses it becomes an evident suggestion that the suit, the wife, and marriage itself are deadly conventions, all united and having the same qualities.

‘…waterproof, shatterproof, proof
Against fire and bombs through the roof…’

The wife represents ‘…a living …/ paper .../ doll…’ with no mind, will, or emotions of her own. ‘It’ simply functions for the man to ‘…bring teacups and roll away headaches…/ sew…/ cook…/ talk…’ and finally ‘…to thumb shut <his> eyes at the end / and dissolve of sorrow…’. In ‘Purdah’, the speaker is contained within the boundaries of her own consciousness and is reduced to an object: a statuette.

‘Jade –
Stone of the side,
The antagonized

Side of green Adam, I
Smile, cross-legged,
Enigmatical,

Shifting my clarities…’

The speaker recognises that she is her bridegroom’s possession, being denied the right to move or speak freely. In ‘The Applicant’, the wife is also said to increase in value the longer she is owned.

‘…paper to start

But in twenty-five years she’ll be silver,
In fifty, gold…’

Plath appears to be commenting on men’s expectations of women through this poem. She protests against and rejects the expectations that women should merely exist for the benefit of men, ‘…to bring teacups…’, to ‘…sew…’, to ‘…cook…’, ad to have no life, emotions, mind or will of their own. She comments with what appears to be an intense bitterness and contempt at how women are restrained by men and marriage. Plath does not show any sign of revenge or even escape for the female character in ‘The Applicant’, unlike the female embodiment of strength and revenge that is shown in ‘Ariel’ and ‘Purdah’.

The poem ‘Lady Lazarus’ is more concerned with a woman’s final triumph over men, whilst breaking free of her constraints in the process. The poem opens in a boastfully joyous and triumphant tone:

‘I have done it again,
One year in every ten
I manage it…’

The speaker is ‘…a smiling woman…’ who is ‘…only thirty…’. In the poem she aims ‘…to annihilate each decade…’ and in doing so she ‘…peel<s> off the napkin…’ and the ‘…dead hands, dead stringencies…’.
The speaker describes herself using a series of hyperboles such as a ‘…walking miracle…’, having ‘…nine times to die…’ and claiming that ‘…dying / is an art …/ I do it exceptionally well…’. Along with the self-parody of comparing her actions to the victimization of Jews under the Nazi regime, she defies ‘…the peanut crunching crowd…’ and their ‘…brute / amused shout: / ‘A miracle!’…’. What the crowd see as a return to health, the speaker sees as a return to the world of male dominance, power and savagery which drove her to suicide twice before. As she locates the victimizer outside herself in the ‘...doktor.../ <the> enemy...’ and also in ‘...God...’ and ‘...Lucifer...’ she gives them male personalities by calling them ‘...Herr Doktor.../ Herr Enemy.../ Herr God, Herr Lucifer...’. In doing this, the speaker not only gives them male personalities, but she unites them, good and evil, in their maleness. Also, through calling them ‘Herr’ they are given Teutonic characteristics. The poem portrays women as the Jews who are oppressed and tortured by the Nazi men. This is a theme developed elsewhere in Plath’s poetry. Such an example is her poem ‘Daddy’. The speaker had been rescued from death when, as she said, ‘...I only wanted / To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty...’. As a result, she does not welcome or thank her rescuers, but rather warns that as she has come back before, she will come back again ‘...out of the ash.../ and... eat men like air’.

This poem could be regarded as having feminist influences because the speaker shows how she is forced to continue being tortured and oppressed in the world of male regime which she is submerged in. Her response is that she will only die ‘...nine times...’ and then she will ‘...rise out of the ash...’ to reek her revenge on men. This is a very vivid image of image of the female embodiment of power and revenge which Sylvia Plath adopts in much of her poetry. She is fighting back against men who wrong women and against the ‘...the peanut crunching crowd...’ who stand by and allow it. In her poem ‘Purdah’, Plath develops the same theme of a woman who transcends her torment and subjection under men in order to take her revenge on them.

Plath shows ‘her hostility to and rejection of marriage and men. We find this hostility in ‘The Applicant’ with its venomous salesman’s patter, and in ‘Purdah’ where the ‘…small jewelled / Doll…’ of a man’s imagination becomes the lioness that fights her way out of the cage.’
Although some critics have commented that feminist thoughts and ideas have taken a place in Sylvia Plath’s work, this is debateable. There most certainly are very powerful images of the female embodiment of strength and power within many of her poems as well as the negative light she casts on men. However, poems such as ‘Kindness’, ‘Lesbos’ , ‘Spinster’ and ‘The Tour’ show she has equally as much contempt and bitterness for women as she does for men in other poems. Nonetheless, Plath can be a feminist despite her contempt for women and there are definite images which do have feminist connotations. However, it is debateable whether she herself was a feminist herself, although there are definite feminist influences within her work.

1 ‘Winter Trees’ by Sylvia Plath.
2 ‘Sylvia Plath’ by S. Bassnett. (Pg 114)
3 http://www.slflannery.freeserve.co.uk/godiva/index.html
4 ‘Sylvia Plath’ by S. Bassnett. (Pg 96)
5 ‘Sylvia Plath’ by S. Bassnett. (Pg 96)
6 From another poem: ‘Ariel’.
7 From another poem: ‘Tulips’.
8 ‘Sylvia Plath: Selected Poems’ by York Notes Pg 53
9 ‘Winter Trees’ by Sylvia Plath.
10 ‘The Colossus’ by Sylvia Plath.
11 ‘Crossing the Water’ by Sylvia Plath.

Finally, a comment on winter trees: this selection is excellent but should be read in conjunction with her other poems. There are lots of fabulous collections out there!
 

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