Poem Summaries Flashcards
Miss Drake Proceeds to Supper
Miss Drake experiences illusions and hallucinations in hospital so she can enter the patient’s dining room (exploration of insanity and fear)
Spinster
Woman who rejects her suitors, instead entering into a life of isolation and independence from the world around her
Suicide off Egg Rock
Focuses on the thoughts of a man as he throws himself off the cliff to commit suicide
You’re
An expecting mother using metaphors to describe her excitement towards the unborn child, but her anxieties of entering motherhood.
Face Lift
Woman wanting to change her physical appearance to how she was in the past, using surgery to fit into society and avoid ageing process. This results in her being confused with time, body, and identity however.
Morning Song
Describes her positive relationship with her daughter Frieda (but also feels many different emotions as a new mother: joy, optimism, wistfulness, uncertainty)
Tulips
Speaker feels that the tulips are making her condition worse at hospital, causing her to feel many psychological thoughts surrounding what would happen around her
Wuthering Heights
Speaker is in the Yorkshire Moors, believing that all aspects of nature are against her
The Moon and the Yew Tree
Represents speaker’s dysfunctional relationship with family. The Moon is her mother, and the Yew Tree is her father
The Bee Meeting
A powerful and unsettling depiction of the narrator’s encounter with an oppressive force. Its exploration of female identity, societal conformity, and the darker aspects of human nature
Daddy
Portrays the negative and vulnerable relationship between the speaker and her father. She victimises herself as Jew to emphasise her isolation and portray how her father is associated with the Nazis.
Cut
Striking, overlapping metaphors suggest psychological tensions running deeper than ordinary response to a kitchen accident (refers to her injured thumb, but also signifies an emotional wound, or even foreshadow her future suicide)
Ariel
Describes the terror of a wild horseback ride and the mental and emotional transformation that the rider and the speaker go through as she faces death.
Words
The speaker feels not only can you be hurt physically, but also through words.
Edge
Plath’s last poem, reflecting her own view towards life, and takes a sinister approach to dead children (described as serpents, and are eventually dismissed at the end of the poem)
