Year 12 IB Extended Essays 2017

Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath was born on October 27 th 1932 and grew up in Boston, Massachusetts

(Biography.com Editors, 2017). Plath’s childhood was spent coping with the effects of the

Great Depression. The United States responded to the Great Depression (GD) as well as to the

chaos of WW2 by looking to the past. During the 1950s the country became more socially

conservative relying on concepts such as the Judeo-Christian God, traditional family roles and

the re-establishment of a strict patriarchy to restore order to society after the turmoil of the

Great Depression (Lambert, 2010). Strong women such as Plath went unrecognized and

uncelebrated; as society returned to the stereotypical gender roles with men in the dominating

role of the provider. Not only was Plath trivialized and objectified for much of her life, she also

suffered hardship in terms of her family life. Her troubling life led to illnesses, that resulted in

her death in 1963 at age 30 (Poetry Foundation, 2017). Despite the tragedy in the decline of

her life and mental state, it fused her writing and some of her most famous works. Her personal

tragedy and experiences that flooded into her writing, makes her recognized as one of the

world’s most famous confessional poets (Poetry Foundation, 2017).

Plath’s poem Tulips 1 (1961), tackles the complex issue and illness of depression. The poem is

about a person, who receives a bouquet of flowers, specifically tulips, after waking up in

hospital following a procedure. The deeper connotative meaning of the poem unveils a woman,

who feels trapped “snowed-in” shackled to a relationship that she resents and despises. We can

assume that the individual is a female with the mention of “my husband”. Also, the speaker

calls herself “a nun” portraying a lifestyle in which only women can partake. One can also

deduce using first person, “I” “me” and “my”, that the speaker of the poem is Plath herself.

Plath unsuccessfully attempted suicide twice in her life; once through an overdose of sleeping

pills and the second through a purposeful car accident (FamousAuthors.org, 2012). These