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Spinster by Sylvia Plath

7/23/2008 4:05:08 PM
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Sylvia Plath Sylvia Plath
(1932 - 1963 / America)
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124 poems of Sylvia Plath

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Spinster
 
  Now this particular girl
During a ceremonious april walk
With her latest suitor
Found herself, of a sudden, intolerably struck
By the bird's irregular babel
And the leaves' litter.

By this tumult afflicted, she
Observed her lover's gestures unbalance the air,
His gait stray uneven
Through a rank wilderness of fern and flower;
She judged petals in disarray,
The whole season, sloven.

How she longed for winter then!-
Scrupulously austere in its order
Of white and black
Ice and rock; each sentiment within border,
And heart's frosty discipline
Exact as a snowflake.

But here - a burgeoning
Unruly enough to pitch her five queenly wits
Into vulgar motley-
A treason not to be borne; let idiots
Reel giddy in bedlam spring;
She withdrew neatly.

And round her house she set
Such a barricade of barb and check
Against mutinous weather
As no mere insurgent man could hope to break
With curse, fist, threat
Or love, either.

Sylvia Plath


Read poems about / on: april, weather, flower, girl, winter, spring, house, hope, heart

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Tiffanie Jones (4/26/2007 10:55:00 AM)
In this poem, Plath describes a girl who by her own choice decides not to marry and become a spinster. It starts out on a spring day as the girl and her suitor take a walk. She looks around her and decides that she does not like the spring weather. She longs for it to be winter. The spring season represents the blossoming disarray of love. The girl does not want to take the chance of love; she does not want the disorder it will bring to her life. Instead she longs for winter and the austere order that comes with it. She leaves the man and barricades herself in her home. The home represents her heart. Both are blocked off from intrusion, even if the intrusion is love. To me this is a sad way to live. I would much rather take my chances with love.
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