Sylvia Plath

Author of Child & Cut

Introduction
 Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer.
 Just after finishing her high school in 1950, She had her first national publication in
Christian Science Monitor.
 Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1932, October 27, where she joined Smith College and
graduated from Newnham College in Cambridge, England, she later married husband Ted
Hughes and they lived together in England.
 Sylvia Plath was one of the poets who leaded with the real life persona, which she proudly
carried in her literary work, although it may have been difficult for her to drabble in writing
confessionally, she moved forward with it. An example can be see in her works “Parliament
Hills Fields” the themes of this poem circles around the second miscarriage Sylvia Plath had.
 Sylvia Plath seems to be on the road to all-time feminist. Her works speaking for itself as
they spread an awareness of an individual remaining true to themselves and expressing
themselves in colours outside of society’s norms.
Cut’s Existence
 Cut was published and dedicated to Sylvia Plath’s nurse, Susan O’Neill Roe, who was an
astounding friend during Plath’s single motherhood era. Her mention is riveting as her
friendship is of the complete opposite to the theme of the work, but it is justified as the poem
can also be reviewed as a letter written to a friend, and finding partial relief of uncertain
settings in her life. It also eliminates loneliness as a personality trait critics acclaim Sylvia
Plath possesses.
 On the eve of March 21 in 2018, Bonhams held an auction of Plath’s personal items among
which were Plath’s copy of Irma S. Rombauer’s The Joy of Cooking, as remarkable of a poet
Sylvia Plath is, so is prominent her love of cooking. As a person who deeply resonates with
surroundings of their community, Plath was heavily influenced to write a piece on a tragedy
she faced while cooking which wasn’t easy for her considering it took Plath to recover from 2
surgeries regarding her thumb.
 Cut, the composition was a part of collection of poems, Ariel in 1962. She published it after
her marriage with Ted Hughes ended. The poem gives an aloof vibe to the dis-attachment
between the self and the presence, this aura was marked as a piece of intellectual challenge and
therefore, invited critics and readers all over the country to participate in this enigma.
Cut’s Existence: Contd..

 So it is with “Cut” that we allow ourselves, the audience to replenish the chance to
reconnoitre on the themes that the poem represents, the legacy of Sylvia Plath, herself left
behind. A glimpse of what made the poetess relate to ordinary topics so intensely and how
natural it is that the poem should exist in view of the fact that the poem represents a
method of escapism for the author while the subject remains the entirety of the daily
aspects of life.
 Some reviews have applauded the poem as a remarkable display of sharp intelligence with
a hint of amusing self-study, whilst some critics establish a different take on the hidden
agenda of the poem, how it’s birth was influenced by a various of emotions Sylvia Plath
encountered during the last years of her life i.e. her marriage ending, becoming a single
mother, battling mental health.
 Cut: An Innuendo
“What a thrill -
My thumb instead of an onion.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of hinge
Of skin,
A flap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.
Little pilgrim,
The Indian's axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls” – (allpoetry.com)
 “What a thrill..”- a non-alarming emergence is stated immediately with an inkling to
mockery on the course of events unfolding in front of the poetess as she makes herself busy
in mundane activities. The cut compares to the imagery shown by a pilgrim of having his
head scalped by a Native American.
 Cut: An Innuendo Contd..
“Straight from the heart.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pink fizz.  A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.
Whose side are they on?
O my
Homunculus, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to kill” –(allpoetry.com)
 The line “A million soldiers run/Redcoats, every one..” blood emanating from the cut, but
there is a hidden meaning behind it. It represents a battle being wrestled between the
narrator and her emotions.
 Cut: Conclusion
“The thin
Papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man -
The stain on your
Gauze Ku Klux Klan
Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes and when
The balled
Pulp of your heart
Confronts its small
Mill of silence
How you jump -
Trepanned veteran,
Dirty girl,
Thumb stump.” – (allpoetry.com)
 In the last stanza there are experiences associated to the male population in military settings.. “Kamikaze
man/Gauze Ku Klux Klan/Babushka….” The represent patriarchal thoughts and the atrocious activities they
participate in. “The stain on your…” such simple words explain us how America is one of the leading
organizations in the world to march towards war and gore.
Child By Sylvia Plath
Introduction / Theme
 Sylvia Plath in ‘Child’ delineates her love for her children through this poem and
converses about the bright full future she idealizes for them whilst addressing her maternal
and individual fears in the end of a twelve sentences, four-three line stanza poem.
 Plath wrote the work a year after her son’s birth, it was later published in 1971, after her
demise. She gave birth to two children named Frieda Hughes and Nicholas Hughes.
 The poem can be categorized as ‘short and sweet’ despite it’s dreary denouement, sets a
cheerful and hopeful mood for the children mentioned in the poem.
 Plath captures the delight expressions her children seem to carry with their mere presence
and sketches it astonishingly for the reader and uses literary devices such as metaphors to
explain the wonder surrounding them.
Child : Poem Analysis
“Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.
I want to fill it with color and ducks,
The zoo of the new” – (allpoetry.com)
 In the first stanza, the poet describes the innocence of her child and the wonder they carry
in their eyes, unafraid and unaware of adulthood. “The zoo of the new” in this paragraph
refers to the narrator’s wish for her children to have different opportunities in life than the
one Plath had. She claims she wants to be the one to bring anew a unique world Infront of
them that never diminishes the light shown in their eyes.

“Whose name you meditate —

April snowdrop, Indian pipe,
Little” – (allpoetry.com)
 The poetess uses floral components that represent sweetness and a different life, as plants
and flowers propose a sense of purpose and hope. Sylvia Plath expresses her wish that her
children are always surrounded with them.
Child : Poem Analysis Contd..
“Stalk without wrinkle,
Pool in which images
Should be grand and classical” – (allpoetry.com)
 In this stanza, the poetess mentions that her desire for the world to be perfect for her
children is due to the fact that her children are already quintessential, so the need for an
existence of a perfect world is hurried. It should hold remarkable properties, “should be
grand and classical”. The viewing world the author belongs in to be the target audience.
“Not this troublous
Wringing of hands, this dark
Ceiling without a star.” – (allpoetry.com)
 In the fourth and final stanza, the narrator seems to take a sharp turn on reality she resides
in, and interlinks the hopelessness and the anxiety she feels about her life with that of what
could have been her child’s but is not. Despite the negative ending, she doesn’t want a
disease filled life, and to eliminate despair “ceiling without a star” touches on the limited
chances the author has in her life.
Hughes children responsible of Plath’s estate.

 For decades, after the death of Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes managed the Plath estate. His
demeaned way of re-publishing and assorting Plath’s work suitable to his liking outraged
critics and Plath’s devoted readers. He claims he was “omit[ing]….more personally
aggressive poems”. (qtd. in Plath CP 15) or the journal entries seem to have been
demolished or misplaced “regarded forgetfulness as an essential part of survival”.
 It deems an astonishing fact that Frieda Hughes, daughter of Sylvia and Ted to play an
unimpeachable role in censorship of Plath’s work.
 According to Mick Brown when he interviewed Freida Hughes in June of 2001, “she has
carefully avoided becoming embroiled in the fierce discourse about her parents’ marriage –
the elevation of her mother to feminist martyr, the demonisation of her father as callous,
insensitive uber-male . . . she has never contributed to any books about her parents, nor
does she intend to”(2001). Her actions have been affirmative in micromanaging Plath’s
work over the years.
Frieda Hughes and her choices implementing the literature
community
 Not only does Frieda immerse herself to manage in re-presenting her mother’s work, she
also seems to utilize ‘the family member card’ when promoting her own work, which
ironically deducts that the subject of the work is related to her mother, Sylvia Plath.
 She justifies her attitude in essence to ostiary is her establishment of confines from the
literature world. Her hypocrisy is duly noted when “…she accepted an 80,000 grant to
write the ‘life story’ of 45….” (Moses 2003) The work includes poems on each year of her
life, In the poem she claims to have broken her silence on all the drama happenings in her
life, her relationship with her parents and their marriage.
 It is conspiring that she capitalizes, thus far, writing on her step mother after the demise of
Ted Hughes. She expresses her ardour on matters she does not want media light on. It
seems to have proved as a smart financial move.
 Freida Hughes : A Discrepancy
 Frieda’s lack of compatibility “on behalf” of her mother’s work revokes a myriad of
conflict on her authenticity and integrity. As Kate Moses claims “[s]ince taking on the
responsibility of active control of her mother’s literary estate . . . Frieda Hughes has done a
single-handedly remarkable job of further muddying the Plath waters while protesting
against public intrusion into her “personal” history at the same time”(2003) This
predicament leaves devoted readers of Sylvia Plath roadless, stifled.
 Examples of Freida choosing to not involve in the scriptwriting of the autobiographical
movie Sylvia (2003) seem to leave a lot of critics in the literature community shocked,
followed by the re-release of Ariel in 2004. Sylvia, the movie focused more on the
cinematic visions instead of what attributes the Poetess had in real life.
“When there are so few stories dedicated to female creativity and pathos, you resent this one
all the more for mishandling what might have been.”
Felicia Feaster (Creative Loafing)
References
 Brown, Mick. “Poetic Justice.” June 16, 2001. Telegraph: Arts. February 11, 2002.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2001/06/16/bafrie16.xml.
 Hughes, Frieda. “Foreword.” Ariel: The Restored Edition. New York: HarperCollins, 2004.
 45. New York: HarperCollins, 2006.
 Moses, Kate. “Whose Plath is it anyway?” October 17, 2003. Salon.com. April 1, 2008.
http://dir.salon.com/story/books/feature/2003/10/17/plath/index.html.
 Frieda Hughes and a Contemporary Reading of Sylvia Plath by Kara Kilfoil
 Child by Sylvia Plath (allpoetry.com)
https://allpoetry.com/poem/8498433-Child-by-Sylvia-Plath
 Cut by Sylvia Plath (allpoetry.com) https://allpoetry.com/poem/8498445-Cut-by-Sylvia-Plath
 Alb, Miz. "Child by Sylvia Plath". Poem Analysis,
https://poemanalysis.com/sylvia-plath/child/. Accessed 17 January 2022.