NOTES
Sylvia Plath was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1932. She was an intelligent child
who had her first poem published when she was only eight. She displayed a marked
degree of sensitivity but sought perfection in all that she did.
Her father, a college professor and an expert on bees, died of an illness when Sylvia
was still young. He apparently thought it was cancer but in reality it was a curable form
of diabetes. His untimely death appears to have scarred the young child's sensitive
mind.
She entered Smith College on a scholarship in 1950 and, while there, wrote some 400
poems. During her first year at the college, however, she attempted suicide through
an overdose of sleeping pills.
She graduated from Smith College summa cum laude in 1955 and thereupon
won a Fulbright scholarship to study at Cambridge University in England. While there,
she married the English poet, Ted Hughes.
Their marriage, however, would last a mere ten years before Sylvia found herself
divorced. She was alone once more, but now in a small London flat, poor and with two
children to look after.
This was a foreign existence to one who had always been accustomed to the comforts
of middle-class life.
The winter of 1962-3 was one of the coldest, during which time the poet was continually
ill with flu. She learnt first hand much about the harshness of life. She nevertheless
worked furiously in the very early mornings while the children slept, producing a poem
virtually every day.
Towards the end of that winter, in February 1963, she committed suicide by gassing
herself in her kitchen. She was then only 30 years of age.
She had not yet won the recognition she so richly deserved as a poet. Like so many
great artists, fame would follow only after her death.
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1.
Comment on the sustained image which the poet uses throughout the
poem. (4)
[Need help?]
2.
"They grew their toes and fingers well enough,
Their little foreheads bulged with concentration.
If they missed out on walking about like people
It wasn't for any lack of mother-love."
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Explain carefully what point the poet is making in these rather graphic
lines. (4)
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3.
"O I cannot explain what happened to them!
They are proper in shape and number and every part.
They sit so nicely in the pickling fluid!"
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What point is the poet making here? (4)
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Comment on the sarcasm in her words, "They sit so nicely in the pickling
fluid!" (4)
[Need help?]
4.
"And still the lungs won't fill and the heart won't start."
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What on earth does Sylvia Plath mean by
this? (4)
[Need help?]
5.
"It would be better if they were alive, and that's what they were," says the
poet.
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What does the poet mean? (4)
[Need help?]
6.
"But they are dead, and their mother near dead with distraction,
And they stupidly stare and do not speak of her."
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The poet makes a bitter comment about the reality of poetry with these words. What
is this reality? (4)
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7.
Sylvia Plath has been described as adolescent and immature in writing this poem.
Would you agree? (6)
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