The Manor Garden - Sylvia Plath

Question 1

Context

Answer 1

Went to upstate New York

Question 2

Subverts a comforting and beautiful image to one of death and decay

Answer 2

Title - pastoral celebration of rural retreat
“Incense of death. Your day approaches.”
“The pears fatten like little Buddhas”
Pastoral - revelatory encounter with nature

Question 3

“Nourishes these broken flutings, // These crowns of acanthus”

Answer 3

Decay - not Arcadian, DÉSUÉTUDE
Acanthus symbolises immortality and resurrection
Liminality between life and death
Confusion

Flutings - decorative stonework - ideas of decay built in images, inevitability of death

Question 4

“Some hard stars // Already yellow the heavens.”

Answer 4

In Plath’s perspective, the stars are cold, not beautiful

Yellow - losing purity, decay, image of desuetude
Gothic desuetude as she contemplates new life, she predicts death - inescapable
Starts and ends with death, cyclical

Question 5

Second stanza - “era of fished (…) the pig (…) the crow”

Answer 5

Animals reflected in Hughes’ writing
Hughes flashes through her consciousness through images of death

Question 6

What time is it set

Answer 6

Early autumn, late summer
- liminal, between life and death

Question 7

“The spider on its own string // crosses the lake”

Answer 7

Typology of crossing the lake - moving from life to death

Spider is a created crossing lake with thread - imagery of umbilical cord

Spider - suggests death, sinister

Question 8

“Era (…) centuries (…) history”

Answer 8

Lexical field of time
Baby is part of a bigger cycle
Natural and connected to the elements
Length of pregnancy