Sylvia Plath’s Mad Girl’s Love Song: An Analysis of the Poem Plath’s poem Mad Girl’s Love Song is about a girl who has lost what seems to be the love her life, though it is ambiguous as to why he is not there with her. Was he killed in some war? Did he leave her for another? Or is there some untold circumstance that would call for his absence without return? At any rate, the fact that he is not with her has driven her to insanity and forced her to keep him alive in her mind to escape the pain of unfulfilled desire.
Medusa is told in the first person as a dramatic monologue by a woman who is insecure and worried that her husband is cheating on her. The poem begins: ‘A suspicion, a doubt, a jealousy’ and it is this jealousy which has turned the woman into a gorgon and now everything she looks at turns to stone. This feeling of doubt resonates throughout the poem, exemplified in the line, ‘but I know you’ll go, betray me, stray from home’. Unlike our feelings towards the traditional monstrous character, this poem evokes empathy for the character as she is clearly distressed and suffering. Especially when she reminisces in the final stanza about the time she was young and beautiful, illustrating her complete lack of confidence.
Budge Wilson’s “Lysandra’s Poem” demonstrated how adversity pushed Lysandra to become bitter and cynical, causing her to interpret experiences in a negative light. Budge Wilson depicts how Lysandra’s upbringing in an abusive household caused her bottle up her emotional turmoil. Lysandra’s response to conflict is demonstrated when the Elaine recounts, “If I were in the house at the time, we would race upstairs at the first hint of conflict, and I would watch this withdrawal… I sat on the bed hunched under an afghan while Lysandra read on, her lips in a thin, tight smile.” (126) The way they turned their noses at the first hint of conflict speaks to how Lysandra tried to ignore the problems in her home. However, we see that Lysandra tried to mask her true emotions when her father became abusive. The words “thin” and “tight” to describe her smile illustrated that Lysandra actually felt constricted and angry inside, despite pretending to be happy by putting on a smile.
In Act 3 scene 5 it could be argued that Juliet is failed by both her parents. Her mother, Lady Capulet, may have failed her in the sense that she does not understand Juliet or have any knowledge as to what is going on in her life. Juliet is crying because Romeo has been banished, yet Lady Capulet believes her to be crying over Tybalt’s death. Juliet cries that “no man like he doth grieve [her] heart”, referencing how upset she is that Romeo is no longer in Verona but Lady Capulet believes this to be “because the traitor murderer lives”. This illustrates how Lady Capulet is ignorant to the fact that her daughter is now married to Romeo, leading to her inability to understand the meaning behind what Juliet is saying.
Stephanie Bahniuk Feb. 16/2011 Tearing Away The Metaphors: An Analysis of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story of depression and madness intricately weaves subtle symbols and hidden details throughout a women’s personal story of frustration within herself and from external forces. Through the main character’s fascination with peculiar yellow wallpaper, her husband’s childish affection and forceful care, and the effects of the house and environment around her, an overwhelming sense of oppression and insanity is portrayed. The presentation of each of these elements allows the reader to interpret the text personally and connect to the struggle. The Yellow Wallpaper makes a prominent statement towards a women’s rights and personal freedoms as well as showing the progression of delirium through various harsh influences. The narrator’s obsession with the wallpaper that surrounds her bedroom begins merely as intrigue and climaxes to a point where reality and what she imagines within the wallpaper becomes blurred.
“Chuffing me off like a Jew / … to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen” describes her difficult and harsh life and the obstacles she had to face while living with her father. Even though her father and she did not have a good relationship, she still “[prayed] to recover [him]” showing her love for him and when she tried to commit suicide she thought she would get “back to [him]”. Further more, Sylvia Plath suffered from a syndrome called Electra complex, which is
The phrase ‘no sleep’ is a euphemism for death and suggests that she will pay for what she has done. This is similar to Farmers Bride as he is frustrated that she will not interact with him. This is shown when he says ‘three summers since I chose a maid’; this suggests that she has been avoiding him for the past three years, which is frustrating for him. The word ‘maid’ implies that she is still a virgin, suggesting that his frustration could also be sexual In Sister Maude italics are used to emphasise her hatred for her sister Maude. This is used in the last line of the poem ‘Bide you with death and sin’; this symbolised her outrage at her sister and her hope that she will pay by going to hell after death.
Madison Carroll Ms. Diana AP English Literature 1 November 2012 Assignment #3 Despairing Companionship “Modern Love,” a poetic sequence by George Meredith, describes a skeptical view regarding of modern love. Meredith’s devastating tone, complex similes and metaphors, and dark imagery convey a sad and regretful outlook on modern relationships. “Modern Love” is riddled with a tone of regret and heartache, making this modern love more like the opposite of love. The speaker says, “she wept with waking eyes” and her “strange low sobs” were “strangled mute.” The words describing this woman are full of grief, full of “vain regret.” Her husband is painfully aware of his wife’s sadness, through her reaction to “his hand’s light quiver by her head” and her sobs that were “dreadfully venomous to him.” The speaker’s worried tone shows that the husband wishes for his wife to be happy, but his actions of loving care and cautiousness do nothing to quell her tears. This view of modern love is hopeless, full of despair for both the man and his distraught wife.
Both Carol Ann Duffy and Dorothy Molloy convey a theme of loneliness through their characters of their poems. Carol who wrote 'Medusa' conveyed a message of how life has mistreated her and she is lonely due to in medusa's case having snake hair and turning people to stone and therefore she has enclosed her self within a cave, she conveys this message through a dramatic monologue. Dorothy who wrote 'Les Grands Seigneurs' had a message of how he distance her self from men and due to that she is is lonely but in the end gets married but has lost all authority as she is a female and in the past men had greater authority no matter what the status was of the female, she conveyed this through four stanzas and the the fourth stanza is the turning point where she has become married also she has written the poem in the past tense showing how she misses her old self and is lonely now even though she is married. I would also compare these poems to the world war one poet Siegfried Sassoon 'the soldier' as it also conveys a theme of loneliness. I will show how these two poets convey the theme of loneliness through their poems.
“Mad Girl’s Love Song” by Sylvia Plath dramatizes the clash between perception and reality in the mind of a speaker who has lost a love so vital to her world that she begins to question her own sanity. No formal setting is introduced, which supports a theme of mental instability as it can be inferred that the entire poem is taking place within the speaker’s mind as she struggles to determine the degree of validity that her memories of a past lover hold. The beginning stanza contains the two central ideas of the poem: perception and instability. The poem is a villanelle in iambic pentameter and these concepts are presented through the poem’s two refrains. The first refrain, “I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead”, both contrasts and shares parallel structure with the second line, “I lift my lids and all is born again” (1, 2).