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I Want to Break Free: Confinement and Liberation in Plath’s Colossus Poems

September 17, 2018 by Michael O'Malley Leave a Comment

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In Sylvia Plath’s The Colossus and Other Poems, one of the most prevalent motifs is

the speaker’s feeling of confinement or suffocation. The majority of poems in this collection

depict the speaker resigning and accepting their state of imprisonment. Many scholars,

such as Maher A. Mahdi, find that Plath’s poetry reflects “a suppressed state that inspires

a fervent desire for freedom” (Mahdi 95). However, as both a contradictory person and

poet, Plath’s poetry contains many contradictions, including a tension between notions of

entrapment and liberation. Many of the Colossus poems involve the speaker being held

captive by some person or force, and in some the captivity is desired or even self-imposed.

In a few rare and outstanding exceptions, such as “Mushrooms,” the speaker(s) instead

struggles to break free from imprisonment and experience freedom. As Jacqueline Rose

writes in “The Haunting of Sylvia Plath,” “Plath is not consistent… She writes at the point

of tension…without resolution or dissipation of what produces the clash between the two”

(10). This tension between conflicting desires certainly exists within The Colossus as we see

the speaker sometimes choosing her own confinement but at other times trying desperately

to escape from restraints that have been placed upon her by an external force.

In many of the Colossus poems, the speaker either cannot or does not wish to escape

from her confinements. At the end of the title poem “The Colossus,” the speaker realizes

that she is trapped with the ruins of her father and condemned to take care of him for the

remainder of her life, for no one is coming to rescue her. She writes, “My hours are

married to shadow. / No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel / On the blank stones of

the landing” (lines 28-30). Joining her remaining hours to the imagery of a shadow evokes

a sense of doom, or fading out of light and consciousness, which is then echoed by her

complete resignation and loss of hope over ever having a means of escape. Here the speaker

seemingly has no way to break out of her imprisoned state, whereas in “Spinster” the

speaker willingly confines herself. In this poem she feels “afflicted” (line 7) by the “rank

wilderness” (line 10) of spring and by the unruliness and unpredictability of men, and so

“She withdrew neatly” (line 24). Instead of confronting the chaos of the world, she decides

to imprison herself so she cannot get out and the outside world cannot get in. In the final

stanza of the poem, Plath writes, “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” (lines 25-30). The speaker sets up these barricades

to protect herself against forces outside of her control. Even though her self-imposed

confinement shields her from the violent “threat” of negative forces such as men and

nature, she has also shielded herself from positive forces such as love. Thus the speaker’s

conflicting attitudes toward confinement and liberation become even more complicated by

her unsettling desire to detach herself from the world and spend her life in a near deathlike

state.

Although “Mushrooms” is also rife with tension, like much of Plath’s work, the

poem is an anomaly in the Colossus collection. “Mushrooms” first establishes itself as an

outlier because it takes the point of view of multiple speakers. The mushrooms come to

symbolize a greater entity than just one single person because the use of words like “our”

or “we” indicates that the speaker is not one person but a large group with a collective

voice. Due in part to the collective voice and in part to the descriptions of the mushrooms,

the speakers appear to be women. The mushrooms move “discreetly” and “quietly” (lines

2-3) and are “Earless and eyeless, // Perfectly voiceless” (lines 15-16). In the 1950s-60s, at

the time Plath was writing, women were expected to be quiet and submissive and were not

supposed to hear, see, or speak anything of import. Women were expected to “Diet on

water, / On crumbs of shadow, / Bland-mannered, asking // Little or nothing” (lines 19-22).

They had to live in the shadows cast by men and survive off whatever scraps of sustenance

were available after the men had taken their fill. Plath “recognized the social constructs of

the late fifties and early sixties through poems in which the female is secondary to the male

(Mahdi 95), and this is clearly depicted through these lines in “Mushrooms.” The

mushrooms ultimately proclaim to be “meek” in line 26 which correlates with lines 31-32:

“We shall by morning / Inherit the earth.” This alludes to the Biblical passage Matthew

5:5, which states, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Traditionally

women were considered the “meeker” sex, supporting the notion that the mushrooms

represent women. Although “Mushrooms” contains a great deal of imagery depicting the

meek and gentle nature of women, the mushrooms’ intent to “inherit the earth” hints that

the mushrooms, or women, are not content with their subservient position.

After all of the imagery Plath presents of being trapped or confined throughout The

Colossus, “Mushrooms” further presents itself as an anomaly in that the speakers actually

break free from their restraints. The mushrooms, appearing to symbolize women, seem

oppressed or restrained since they must physically “Take hold on the loam” (line 5) and

break through the earth to “Acquire the air” (line 6). Then their “Soft fists insist on /

Heaving the needles, / The leafy bedding, // Even the paving” (lines 10-13). Here the

mushrooms must use force and push their way through difficult obstacles such as pine

needles or pavement in order to surface, but they are capable of doing so because they are

“Nudgers and shovers” (line 28) by nature. They use their “hammers” and “rams” (line 14)

to break out of the confinement of the earth and acquire their freedom. This need to

overcome a state of oppression reflects Plath’s feelings as a woman and her “revolt against

and anger towards the clearly defined gender roles prevalent in the 1960s” (Mahdi 96). The

mushrooms describe themselves as being “shelves” (line 25) and “Tables” (line 26), placing

their oppression into a domestic context and further emphasizing that the restraints women

are trying to break out of are gender roles, which confine women to their homes where they

must serve their husbands and remain unseen and unheard by the world.

A major source of tension in “Mushrooms” thus arises from the conflict between the

gentle and meek nature of the mushrooms and their desire to revolt. As a result, their act of

breaking free from oppression is very peaceful, quiet, and subtle rather than aggressive or

violent. When the mushrooms break through the earth, they emerge “discreetly, / Very

quietly” (lines 2-3) and do so “Overnight” (line 1) in the dark so they cannot be seen. They

use their fists to punch through their restraints, but these fists are “Soft” (line 10). The

mushrooms are not overly pushy; rather, “The small grains make room” (line 9) for them

to gently “Widen the crannies, / Shoulder through holes” (lines 17-18). Their emergence

from an oppressed state is not a loud and angry event – it is a subtle, silent, and gradual

process. Grace Schulman describes the mushrooms as “a force that is energetic and

winning, but frightening and aggressive” (172), but this characterization does not seem

accurate. The mushrooms’ revolt is gentle, not “aggressive.” Furthermore, they are

“Nudgers and shovers” (line 28) who work gradually, so their force could be better

characterized as patient and determined than “energetic.” Describing the mushrooms as

“winning” and “frightening” does not seem totally inaccurate, but it is perhaps too early in

the lives of the mushrooms to describe them as such, assuming their movement perpetuates

beyond this poem. The mushrooms may one day become a frightening force winning their

battle, but for now it seems unlikely that others have even taken notice of them at all since

they move quietly, subtly, and in the dark. By the end of the poem, the mushrooms have

only barely begun their movement, as they say, “Our foot’s in the door” (line 33). These

juxtapositions Plath presents of the mushrooms being gentle yet angry and meek yet

revolutionary work quietly to generate the uneasy tension underlying this poem.

While the contradiction of the mushrooms’ nature and desire certainly creates

tension, the main source of unease in “Mushrooms” lies not within the poem itself, but in

what the poem foretells for the future. The meek mushrooms are mounting a peaceful and

subtle revolt, and yet their intention to “Inherit the earth” (line 32) hints at an underlying

vein of danger and empowerment that has only barely surfaced in Plath’s Colossus

collection. The notion of the mushrooms presenting a growing threat is further emphasized

by the sound and rhythm of the poem. Plath’s use of an “immediate diction” including

“strong active verbs, compression, and crowded lines with heavy stresses and tight

syllables” (Schulman 171) causes the poem to sound like a quiet chant or incantation. This

chanting seems to grow louder toward the end of “Mushrooms” when the speakers in their

collective voice proclaim, “So many of us! / So many of us!” (lines 23-24). The repetition of

exclamatory remarks emphasizing how many mushrooms are breaking free and preparing

to inherit the earth increases the threat they will one day present. Not only do the

mushrooms intend to break free from their imprisoned state, they intend to overturn

current systems and, eventually, take over the world. While Plath was determined “to move

beyond the expected lifestyle” for women, Mahdi notes that “a retaliatory effect becomes

apparent in many of her poems, which depict a world in which the female is superior to the

male, where the tension between a subjugated female position and her attempts to free

herself from such constraints is evident” (Mahdi 95). The desire to escape from one’s

restraints is already unusual within The Colossus, and the intention to go beyond escape

and invert the current, traditional structures further heightens the tension and uneasiness

of the poem.

In the final poem of the Colossus collection, “The Stones,” the speaker emerges from

her confinement in the hospital, but unlike “Mushrooms” in which this freedom was

evidently desired, the speaker’s attitude towards being freed from her restraints remains

ambiguous. The speaker is confined for much of the poem, as she has “entered / The

stomach of indifference, the wordless cupboard” (lines 5-6) and describes how “The food

tubes embrace me” (line 19) and “My swaddled legs and arms smell sweet as rubber” (line

34). Words such as “cupboard,” “embrace,” and “swaddled” evoke imagery of the

speaker’s enclosure. It seems as though she is being fixed or reshaped into a new and

improved being, since she lies “on a great anvil” in “the city where men are mended” (lines

1-2). While the speaker seems to be currently encased in “darkness” (line 18), she can “see

the light” (line 22), which suggests that she is currently in confinement (most likely within a

hospital) for the purpose of being mended, but will soon be released back into the world

and regain her life and freedom. However, the speaker does not seem to desire this

freedom. In the last stanza she says, “My mendings itch. There is nothing to do. / I shall be

good as new” (lines 44-45). Some critics read this last line as hopeful, believing that “‘The

Stones’ is a poem of hard praise for life” and that the final line represents Plath’s “solemn

promise” to embrace her passion for life (Schulman 176-7). I am not in full agreement with

Schulman’s belief, as I find the conclusion of “The Stones” to represent the tension

characteristic in Plath’s poems rather than an optimistic look toward the future. The

speaker does seem to be looking away from darkness and toward the light of her future,

but not without some fear and uncertainty. She finds her “mendings” and the new form she

is taking to be quite uncomfortable, but unfortunately there is “nothing to do” to relieve

this discomfort. Plath thus generates extreme tension in “The Stones” between the

speaker’s choice to proceed with her life while simultaneously missing and perhaps longing

for the comfort of the darkness.

Each poem within The Colossus certainly contains its own conflicts and dilemmas,

but viewing the collection as a whole and attempting to reconcile all the conflicting voices

and desires only heightens the uneasy tension that perpetuates beyond the pages. For much

of The Colossus we see a speaker who is comfortable with her confines, or who has at least

resigned and accepted her restraints. While the ambiguity of the ending of the “The

Stones” allows the collection to end on a slightly more positive note (despite her

reservations, the speaker is at least preparing to face the world), I still find “Mushrooms”

to be the strongest source of lingering tension. As discussed previously, Grace Schulman

believes that the mushrooms are “frightening,” but their intention to invisibly gain power

and eventually inherit the earth makes it seem more accurate to say that the mushrooms

will be frightening. What makes the mushrooms such an unnerving force is that they are

and will continue to be sweet, docile, and unthreatening – until it is too late. Mahdi

describes how Plath blends “passive inactivity with devouring hostility” in another one of

her early poems, which “presages the vengeful uprising of ‘Lady Lazarus’ and ‘Daddy’

[from Ariel] while maintaining the innocent, expressionless appearance of paper, stone,

mannequin, or doll” (Mahdi 98). Just as paper, stone, or mannequin exhibits a white

facelessness, similar to Plath’s “disquieting muses,” so the mushrooms move “Whitely”

(line 2). In this poem, they appear innocent in their white meekness, and yet they

foreshadow the “vengeful uprising” that will occur when they inherit the earth.

“Mushrooms” is set apart from other Colossus poems for a number of reasons and thus

seems ahead of its time, as if it is truly presaging Plath’s future Ariel poems which feature

“an explosively liberated poetic voice” (Parker 53). “Mushrooms” is a veiled threat – a

prediction of the hostility, defiance, and liberation to come, almost lost under its disguise of

meek, innocent mushrooms – and this is precisely what creates so much tension and unease

in both the poem and in the Colossus collection as a whole.

 

paigewyant_headshot

Paige Wyant graduated from the University of Southern California in 2017 with a B.A. in English literature and a minor in Culture, Media and Entertainment. She currently works as an associate editor for The Mighty, a digital health community created to empower and connect people facing health conditions and disabilities. Paige is passionate about helping others share their stories and using writing as an instrument to spark both personal and social change.

Works Cited

Mahdi, Maher A. “From a Victim of the Feminine Mystique to a Heroine of Feminist

Deconstruction: Revisiting Selected Poems of Sylvia Plath.” European Scientific

Journal 10.32 (2014)ProQuest. Web.

Parker, James. “Why Sylvia Plath Still Haunts American Culture.” The Atlantic. Atlantic

Media Company, June 2013. Web.

Plath, Sylvia. The Colossus and Other Poems. New York: Vintage International, 1998.

Print.

Rose, Jacqueline. “Introduction.” Introduction. The Haunting of Sylvia Plath. Cambridge,

MA: Harvard UP, 1992. 1-10. Print.

Schulman, Grace. “Sylvia Plath and Yaddo.” Ariel Ascending: Writings About Sylvia

Plath. Ed. Paul Alexander. New York: Harper & Row, 1985. 165-77. Print.


Michael O'Malley

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