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Sylvia Plath - Tulips

            Sylvia Plath's poem "Tulips" is an interplay between the need for peace and an ascent to wellness. It tells a story from the perspective of a female persona. and it is in this voice that we read what her societal expectations are and what the female persona actually wants; and what she wants is in stark contrast to what society is willing to hand over. "Tulips," also addresses the political climate of the time when Plath wrote this poem. Women were supposed to stay within expected guidelines, such as house wife and mother, and the political difficulties for women were that women did not even have equal rights yet. The feminist movement was just coming to the forefront.
             In can certainly be said that when Plath had pen in hand, she was both a woman and writer ahead of her time. She had a feminist leitmotif to her poetry and her poem, "Tulip" is written from the point of view as if the speaker has seen events which have already happened. The speaker desires objectivity from within her subjective thoughts. The speaker seeks to break out of the busyness of the world and its expectations and withdraw into her cocoon of silence and peacefulness (lines 29-32).
             She is torn between being an artist and being a woman. She moves between the two worlds with some difficulties; not really fitting fully in either world. She wants to lose her baggage and obligations of her life: her husband and child (Line 18). She wants to be anesthetized from the harsh realities of the dogmatic principles that she cannot leave at this time of her life. Her voice was not only singular; she was inclusive of all the women who were like her persona, trapped within society and its rules. .
             Plath's work utilizes a form of narrative poetry, telling a story and it is written with seven lines in each stanza. The poem relies heavily on imagery by using the senses to create the world through the words. In her poem there is a battle between being a female and becoming a desexualized persona (Line 28).


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1. Sylvia Plath's- Tulips

... the poem Tulips by Sylvia Plath, the author seems desperately searching for peace and tranquility, and instead finds everything she despises, symbolized by the tulips she received as a get well present. The hospital setting, in which she is nobody, provides a place where she can learn peacefulness, lying by myself quietly, as Plath explains in ... all the cares of the world outside, all the baggage she carries in relation to her family. Then she receives the tulips, which contrast with the white so much that Plath says they hurt me in line 36. The passage continues in this vein, relating...

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2. Tulips by Sylvia Plath

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The poem "Lady Lazarus" written by Plath is a poem boasting of the poet's ability to survive accidents and suicide attempts. It combines the biblical story of Lazarus with horrifying images of the Nazi concentration camps. The poem is one of 28 stanzas of 3 lines each. Its opening is done in a casual tone and gives off an ironic sense of achievement as the poet comes back triumphant over her ability to survive death. Plath sees herself as "a sort of walking miracle", drawing parallel with Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead in the Bible, John 11. Plath sees herself as the female Lazarus,...

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