This poem is a compilation of Sylvia Plath’s innermost feelings of the time Essay Example

individual in society is prevalent throughout the poem as well as the spinster's yearning for order and discipline.The pitch of the vowel sounds is also of importance, as the placement of rhyme schemes relative to the meanings of words and stanzas, the flow of the words to corroborate the connotations of words with their flow; all of these devices blend to provide the reader with a consistent image of a woman consciously shunning a life of pleasure and male company in favor of a world of order and seclusion. Plath's "Spinster" is not forced onto the path to spinsterhood by circumstance, but rather by the attitude she displays towards the courtship process.The protagonist of "Spinster" is a girl who rejects the offering of the world and her "latest suitor" (3).

This suitor, seeking her affections, takes her on an attempt at a romantic hike through a wood. However, the girl does not describe it as such, but rather as "a ceremonious April walk" (2). The significance of the word ceremonious is to reiterate the fact that this occasion is a ritual and instead of pleasure, it has become an obligation. The girl instead of being enchanted by the intoxicating beauty of nature "finds herself.

.. intolerably struck / By the birds' irregular babel / And the leaves litter" (4-6).These nuances already show that her paradigm has been distorted, as the songs of the birds are merely unmelodious, and the blossoms of trees look like trash among the branches. All around, she finds fault in the flora, terming the surroundings "a rank wilderness" (10).

The budding flowers, so often evoked by poets as paragons of beauty and

new life, are condemned by the girl for "she judged their petals in disarray" (11). She appreciates nothing else of the blooming life around her either, calling it "a burgeoning / Unruly enough to pitch her five queenly wits / Into vulgar motley" (19-21).To the girl, spring is nothing but a rebellious uprising against her senses. In all, she finds the springtime an entirely unsatisfactory environment, judging "The whole season, sloven" (12). The girl can find no satisfaction in the spring, and withdraws from it entirely, finally banishing it with queen-like authority to the realm of simpletons.

The suitor's frolicking attempts at winning her affections are subject to the same cold, detached judgments, for to her, his dances are "gestures" that "imbalance the air" (8). His gaiety is to her, merely foolishness, and has no place in her world.In addition to the disarray of nature, she sees all these aspects and characteristics mirrored in her suitor. As critic John M.

Gambert said "All of the suitor's - and the rest of the world's - efforts at wooing the girl with mirth and beauty fail, and only affirm his position as the object of her indifference. " We see that instead of the delights that romance and life in general have to offer, the girl in "Spinster" chooses to focus and glorify the structured and emotionless tranquility of the winter months and a life lived alone.In the midst of her springtime stroll, she rather ironically daydreams of ice and snow, for "she longed for winter then" (14); in sharp contrast to the state of the spring season that she finds herself in. The speaker's word choice

is seen to be describing the girl's thoughts of winter, in contrast to the disapproving diction of disarray seen elsewhere, regarding the spring and the suitor.

The girl sees winter as a dignified, almost royal time, "Scrupulously austere in its order / Of white and black" (14-15). The boundless displays of life that she found improper in the spring are absent in her thoughts of winter.Winter, to her, is in perfect order saying "each sentiment within border" and her surroundings are "Exact as a snowflake" (18). These conditions are ideal to the girl; they do not overwhelm her, and this agrees with her "heart's frosty discipline" (17). Thus, she secludes herself from the emotional world, setting a "barricade of barb and check / Against mutinous weather" (26-7) around her house. This defense is intended for the suitor and those who, would come with similar intentions, as well as the deceitful spring.

Any advances made will be met by coldness of the girl's winter-loving personality, for she has steeled herself behind a wall "As no mere insurgent man could hope to break / with curse, fist, threat / or love either" (20-30). The cold, reclusive existence is the preferable one for the girl, so she insinuates herself from both the weather and other people. While the word choice itself provides the reader with strong clues into the meaning of the poem, it is the flow and sound of the spoken words that solidify the arguments of the speaker.The girls differing opinions of the two contrasted seasons are made apparent by the disparate use of rhyme and rhythm. In the stanzas describing the girl's observations of spring, there

is no discernable constant meter, and the sparse rhythm that does exist is off-rhyme. In the first stanza, for example, when the initial mood of the walk with the suitor is set the lines do not flow smoothly into one another.

The first line does establish a somewhat regular rhythm, but it then goes on to be abandoned for another in the second line, and then is completely lost in the last two.The last line is especially cacophonous, (harsh-sounding) requiring two distinct pauses at the commas. The "rank wilderness" (10) a difficult line to say mirrors the difficulty of the girl to enjoy the spring. These patterns of off-rhyme and difficult mish-mashed meters prevail wherever the speaker is elaborating on the disorganized nature of spring, lending rhythmic credence to the girl's viewpoint.

By lending an attentive ear to these acoustical aspects of the poem, the speaker supplements the abstract meanings of the words with their physical realities.This amalgamation of diction, rhythm, and rhyme unifies the poem in its objective to present the speaker's perception that the only tolerable life is a wintry and solitary one. In summation, just by looking at the poem, one can see the true spinster that lies embedded within this woman by just simply examining the words that she associates with love. And it is within these last three stanzas in the poem, one can see the true nature of what life this woman is destined to live; one of spinsterhood. We, the reader, are left with the statement: "As no mere insurgent man could hope to break, with curse, fist, threat or love, either. "