Neel Suthar

Sylvia Plath: Nature
In many of her poems, Sylvia Plath uses a wide variety of different types of imagery. In “two sisters of Persephone” and “spinster” we see images of nature in these poems and they tend to be descriptions of people or other objects. There are specific images in these poems that gives the audience visual pictures of the poem that she is writing.
In the poem “two sisters of Persephone” are many different meanings to the image nature. Plath uses these nature images to show both descriptions of people and also references to sexual themes. In the poem “spinster” Plath uses different meanings to her nature imagery, she uses they imagery to show other meaning in which case some are similar while others are different.
In both poems, the audience would see that they both have the same nature imagery, only with different meanings. In the poem “two sisters of Persephone”, Plath uses nature imagery to show images of people’s body feature s, while also using them as a reference to sex. In the poem “spinster” Plath uses nature imagery to describe her relationship with her husband Ted Hughes, she uses them negatively like “And heart’s frosty discipline” to show how much her husband really actually likes her.
In contrast to both of these poems, they both use multiple nature images in every stanza of each poem, this load of nature imagery helps Sylvia Plath convey to her audience about the cycles of nature. These cycles that she uses in her poems describe seasons or the current weather that she is feeling. For instance, in “two sisters of Persephone” we see that Sylvia Plath says “red silk flare…petaled blood…sun’s blade…green alter” to show the images of the season spring. Spring is a time when everything such as plants and tree are growing fast, in stanza five she describes somebody having sex outside while she sits inside doing nothing. In that stanza what Sylvia Plath is trying to convey to the audience is that spring is a time of rebirth as plants make flowers and animals and humans make offspring. While in Spinster Sylvia Plath conveys to the audience that is poem takes place in the transfer of winter into spring, Plath says “april walk” then “ice and rock” and the back to “bedlam spring”. Sylvia Plath uses both winter and spring nature imagery to show the transition from winter to spring. In an analytical view, this may seem as a point where Sylvia Plath is transitioning from sadness to happiness.
As we can see images of nature in these poems, they tend to be descriptions of people or other objects. There are specific images in these poems that gives the audience visual pictures of the poem that she is writing.