Plath - Wuthering Heights Flashcards
Context
The poem ‘Wuthering Heights’ was written after a walk with her daughter on the moors in England.
Apparently, Plath had returned to visit her in-laws (Hughes’ parents) thus the poem conveys a tone of not fitting into human company.
Plath lived in Yorkshire for a time during her marriage to Ted Hughes.
Plath had her final resting place in West Yorkshire, Heptonstall.
Plath suffered from depression and suicidal thoughts for the majority of her life.
‘ringing me [her] like faggots, tilted and disparate.’
The speaker uses seemingly paradoxical imagery in order to represent their troubled mind.
The speaker likens the image of the sun setting on the horizon to a bundle of sticks who glow as singeing faggo*s.
This likens the large image of the horizons to the small image of sticks, portraying the speaker’s depressed mind as they belittle the magnificence of their surroundings. ‘There is no life higher than the grass tops:’ the speaker creates boundaries to the vastness of life.
This also embodies perhaps how the speaker feels that the environment is personally and singlehandedly against her as the image of the horizons is a huge one while the image of the faggo*s is tiny.
Moreover, the use of the verb ‘disparate’ is significant because it echoes despair.
‘the wind pours by like destiny.’
The use of this simile suggest entrapment - the speaker has not chosen to feel this way and it has not been decided by her, instead by the higher powers of nature which governs her actions as a greater force.
The use of the noun ‘pours’ in significant because it likens the wind to water, suggesting how the power of the wind as a driving force against her will is something which she feel physically.
You could argue that the wind is an extended metaphor for Plath’s depression and suicidal thoughts which she claims she can feel ‘trying to funnel my heat away.’
This presents the speaker as passive while the wind is the active force.
Furthermore, ‘heat’ represents her life, suggesting that the wind and the landscape are draining the life out of the speaker.
‘But they only dissolve and dissolve like a series of promises, as I step forward.’
The repetition of the verb ‘dissolve’ enhances the bitterness of the speaker, they are actively trying to escape, but these efforts prove futile.
Furthermore, a ‘dissolution’ is a gradual conversion, rather than something which is an instant change, and this is illustrated through the use of repetition which drags the line out.
The use of enjambment serves as proof of the possibility between the horizon and promises, however, this turns out to be false, to the speaker’s dismay.
Some critics have argued that this reference to ‘promises’ is actually a reference to her marriage to Ted Hughes who was unable to keep his wedding vows, embarking on an affair with Assia Wevill.
‘The sky leans on me, me, the one upright.’ [structure]
The speaker possesses a paranoid sense that the whole environment is personally or singlehandedly against her and this can be seen through the repetition of the pronoun ‘me.’
Moreover, the isolated word ‘me’ mirrors how the speaker feels isolated, alone and vulnerable in the world of wider elements.
