Motherhood in Plath’s writing

Sylvia Plath is one of the most influential poets in the XX century, most of her work
was published during the ’50s and 60’s, a time when poetry became really introspective
and intimate. Consequently, Plath’s poetry captures her pain making it a highly
confessional work and full of foreboding imagery in which darkness is echoed
throughout the whole collection. While it might be shocking in rage and trauma, her
work allows its readers to cast themselves as witnesses of Plath’s own pain.

Inside this ball of intimacy, she also expresses how it is to be a woman in her time,
bringing various themes revolving around the woman’s condition, where, in this case,
motherhood is well integrated. Consequently, we see in Plath’s poetry a lot of the
principles of the 60’s second wave of feminism, where we see more liberal feminism
focusing on themes of the woman sphere as the search of identity, sexuality, family, and
obviously motherhood, one of the most recurrent themes on Plath’s poetry.

Motherhood is one prominent theme in Plath’s writing, and it is relevant and important
mostly because of the way she expressed it. It was not common for a 50’s new mother
to express the negative side of motherhood, women were forced by the society’s norms
to romanticise this particular moment in their lives. But Plath, probably influenced both
by her mental state and her social panorama brings to her work the mixed feelings of
this experience as a mother. In this essay, it will be analysed the point of view of the
poet about this topic throughout various poems: the many emotions, the various phases,
consequences, social expectations, and the introspective of the poetic self.

The best poem to introduce this theme is Three Women. Being one of the longest poems
by Plath, it was written as a dramatic piece where the poet, by using three different
female personas, explores, in a prismatic way, the different ways a woman can
experience motherhood. The First Voice represents probably the most positive
perspective, but with the inherent suffering of pregnancy. Consequently, although she
had difficulties during birth, which was hard and painful , she always looked forward to
having her baby, turning this suffering into something natural and needed to happen.
This duality is well represented by the line “I am calm. I am calm. It is the calm before
something awful” (Three Women, 92). This woman knows how hard the process can be
but the result for her is worth it, as she goes to the end of the poem with a happy
closure- motherhood is seen as a sacrifice that ends up as a miracle, almost heroic:
“Can nothingness be so prodigal?

Here is my son.

His wide eye is that general, flat blue.

He is turning to me like a little, blind, bright plant.” (Three Women, 231-234)

This perspective is explored in many other poems by Plath, especially in Heavy Woman.

This poem is written in a calm setting, as the First Voice felt in Three Women. Using an
external observer, pregnancy and motherhood are represented here in an idealised
manner: "beautifully smug / As Venus,". But using unreal figures to represent these
pregnant women, Plath suggests some irony, as this “perfection” is impossible to obtain,
even though this is what society expects these women to be. With this, Plath brings the
perspective that pregnancy cannot be perfect as society idealises. As the First Voice
represents- pregnancy and motherhood cannot exist without suffering.

Another poem that might be relevant in this perspective is Child. It is when the First
Voice sees her child that she enters in a kind of contemplation of the baby, and the
happiest and positive tone is brought to the poem. This kind of setting is similar to what
we see in Child. Here we have a mother contemplating her child and despite starting
with a brighten mood filled with happiness and hope- “Your clear eye is the one
absolutely beautiful thing./ I want to fill it with colour and ducks” (Child, verses 1,2)-
the poem switches this mood to a darkest one towards to the end of this piece where we
can sense the fears and anxieties of this new mother: “Not this troublous/ Wringing of
hands, this dark/ Ceiling without a star.” (Child, verses 10-12), proving once again this
duality of emotions and thoughts a woman has as a mother.

Returning to the Three Women, by analysing the Third Voice a completely different
perspective on motherhood is represented. She is a pregnant woman that does not look
forward to having her baby and ends up giving it to adoption. This conflict between
these two kinds of points of view (from the First Voice to the Third Voice) is well
represented in the poem Morning Song. In this piece there is a mother having a conflict
between her maternal instincts, and what she really wants. Although she does not want
anything related to the child, she always ends up spending the night by its side. This
maternal side of the mother is obviously represented in Three Women by the First
Voice, but just like the Third Voice, this mother wishes she could escape from this
responsibility. Despite loving this child, this woman feels distance and darkness in their
bound. But the Third Voice brings another conflict that could have been so relatable to
the women to that time, and even to the women of our time, and it is the way that
having a child might make women give up on their vocations- the Third Voice decides
to give her baby to adoption especially because she wants to keep on with her studies.
Probably Plath herself felt that as she became a mother, she could not dedicate herself to
her work as she did before.

With this, it is possible to see motherhood in Plath’s work being explored as an inner
dialogue, like the voices in Three Women Plath in other poems brings the conflict as
something within her, and as it happens with her it can be universal- motherhood is not
only associated with love as a society in that time thought, it is a multitude of emotions,
that women feel in their own way, and here we have the opportunity to enter in Plath’s
inner world and explore the ways she herself experienced it. As a confessional writer,
she brings her own conflict, her own feelings, here it is her mind, her own motherhood
represented by poetic imagery. In addition to these perspectives, the Second Voice
brings a completely different one- miscarriage, infertility. This woman fails to conceive
the child, and in fact, it does not seem to be the first time it happens: “I have had my
chances. I have tried and tried. /I have stitched life into me like a rare organ,/ And
walked carefully, precariously, like something rare.” (Three Women, verses 71-73).

Various are the poems in Plath’s work that approach this theme, but personally, one that
might depict better the way a woman feels when she fails to conceive the child might be
Parliament Hill Fields. It was written in February of 1961, the same month Plath had a
miscarriage, and consequently, this results in one of the most personal pieces from
Plath.

The poem starts with the poetic self-observing a landscape, probably describing a park,
and by using imagery such as “faceless and pale”, “hands of an invalid” and “Now
silence after silence” she constructs a set of melancholy and sadness. And the feeling of
grief is well present in the whole poem- “Your absence is inconspicuous; / Nobody can
tell what I lack” (Parliament Hill Fields, verses 4 and 5). This feeling of emptiness is
often present in this kind of poem- the loss of the child, or even the loss of fertility is,
for these women, the loss of a part of their identity, without it they are not a whole.
Unfortunately, she knows that the world will not notice her pain, “The round sky goes
on minding its business”, similarly to the society that does not acknowledge this
woman’s pain.

However, the poetic self of this poem finds comfort in her other child and the poem gets
a more positive setting, “In your sister's birthday picture start to glow”, and echoes of
hope and happiness start to be part of this mother reality again.

Besides, turning back to Three Women, the Second Voice brings another issue
concerning the sphere of infertility which is unnatural of this infertility. From verses
147 to 153 there is a great depiction of this idea:

“I am accused. I dream of massacres.

I am a garden of black and red agonies. I drink them,
Hating myself, hating and fearing. And now the world conceives
Its end and runs toward it, arms held out in love.
It is a love of death that sickens everything.
A dead sun stains the newsprint. It is red.
I lose life after life. The dark earth drinks them.”

This woman sees herself as a garden that does not give any more colour, this black
represents death, the infertility of this piece of terrain, even the sun is dead.

This is also represented in the imagery of other poems such as Childless Woman and
The Munich Mannequins. For example, in Childless Woman the poem starts with a
strong stanza:

“The womb
Rattles its pod, the moon
Discharges itself from the tree with nowhere to go.”

Here we do not only have this unnature but also a deformation of the woman’s body-
the womb is like a dried plant, a knot, and the only thing that comes out from it is the
blood of the menstruation, representing the non-pregnancy, the inexistent fertilization of
the egg. This imagery brings the perception that as the woman fails to reproduce her
natural purpose does not exist like her body is useless without this capability, she is not
a complete woman without it, she has no future, only death awaits her: “My
funeral,/And this hill and this/ Gleaming with the mouths of corpses.”
On the other hand, The Munich Mannequins also represent this idea of the female
natural purpose of reproducing as the thing that makes women women but in kind of a
different way. She uses the imagery of inanimate objects like the mannequins to
represent the women who do not reproduce. Although they may look perfect and
beautiful, this beautification is only superficial, because, in reality, they are not real
women since they do not have children, they are not part of nature as she knows it-
“Perfection is terrible, it cannot have children”(1 st verse). This is also a consequence of
some women might feel after giving birth- their bodies are not as beautiful as they were
previously, their beauty was ripped by the act of giving birth, so when they compare
themselves to the idealised images of the models of that time, their self-love was shot at.
However, Plath in this poem brings the perspective that this is part of nature, it is
supposed for a body to be imperfect after giving birth, and perfection appears associated
with the infertility of the inanimate mannequins.

However, Barren Women, another infertility poem by Plath, approaches this theme
regarding the social expectations towards women. Here the woman is seen as an empty
museum and the children the statutes that make it a whole. With these statues- “mother
of a white Nike and several bald-eyed Apollos”. the public accepts her and embraces
her, her social purpose is filled. Without the capability of procreation, the woman is like
the empty museum which nobody visits.

Lastly, being motherhood, a completely female issue Plath brings to her poetry the
consequences of male domination over female bodies throughout various poems.
Starting with Three Women, it is possible to conclude, due to the imagery given, that the
Third Voice’s pregnancy is the result of rape:

And the great swan, with its terrible look,

Coming at me, like a castle, from the top of the river.

There is a snake in swans.

He glided by; his eye had a black meaning. (verses 50-53)

Here the male persona is associated with the horrendous, the one that takes from these
women- stolen freedom. In the case of this Third Voice, the suffering comes from a
pregnancy forced by a man, but even in the case of the other voices and perspectives of
other poems, suffering comes also from men, but more indirectly, it comes from a male
dominated society and its expectations. For example in The Munich Mannequins, she
expresses the “thick germans” and as she creates the imagery of a superficial world,
these German men are the inhabitants of this world, the creators, the ones who want
women to be perfect as mannequins. Even inside in such a female intimacy ball such as
motherhood, men are still oppressors and women the oppressed, even in the hospitals
they cannot escape from this domination. The act of giving birth, well represented by
the Third Voice, is a memory of this domination.

In conclusion, motherhood in Sylvia Plath’s poetry is brought as an inner conflict-

although it brings wonderers it can be desolating. The poetic self in these poems is
trapped in this obligation to be a mother, in The Morning Song as much she tries to run
from this new responsibility she is always attracted by her maternal instinct. And even
in the poem Child, where she depicts an admiration and contemplation of the child, she
cannot avoid feeling afraid and anxious. The multiple voices in Plath’s poetry always
associate motherhood with some kind of negative feeling, making it inherent to the
nature of being a woman: the woman suffers because the pregnancy itself is hard,
suffers because of the social demands towards the motherhood, suffers because does not
want to be a mother but cannot escape from her natural purpose and suffers because she
cannot conceive a child. This is why Plath’s work is so easy to read, it is always
relatable to all women- to discuss within ourselves about our motherhood is part of our
womanhood, whether we want to be mothers or not, whether we can be mothers or not,
thinking about it is part of our reality, our sphere. The multitude of Plath’s fears and
insecurities depicted in words is revolutionary because it erupts the idealised perception
of motherhood and normalises not being happy about it- it is ok if you cry, if sometimes
you hate your child, if you do not want to be a mother, it is all ok, all women have
doubts, even when society tried to hide this obscure but natural part within motherhood.

Bibliography:

Plath, S. (2015). Collected Poems (T. Hughes, Ed.). Faber & Faber.