In the poem “Tulips”, by Sylvia Plath, there is a woman that is placed in the hospital for a reason that is unknown to the reader. The poem has a meaning that is deeper than what you read. I personally read the poem three times before the layers started to unfold. Yet still, after these three readings there are still things that are unclear to me.
During my first reading of the poem it seemed to be very simple. I read the title of the poem and thought that it would probably be a joyous poem, since flowers are usually pleasant. I read through the poem so quickly that I did not realize that there was a woman laying in a hospital bed. Halfway through my first reading I realized that there must have been something that I missed during my reading because the speaker was not happy to be receiving flowers. The speakers states that
she “didn’t want any flowers, [she] only wanted to lie with [her] hands turned up and be utterly empty.” From this point on I realized that the flowers in this poem did not represent anything that was cheerful. It was almost as if the flowers were invading her space and weighing her down.
I later learned that Sylvia Plath wrote this poem after she went through a miscarriage. This made the poem easier to understand. She does not want to see her family because she is afraid that she let them down by losing their child. Generally people bring you flowers or some sort of gift after you have a child, so this is why the tulips are also depressing to her. I realize that I could read this poem many more times and still find something entriguing every time I read it.
It was in my second reading that I realized the speaker was in a h
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