Nitish Khazane

The Seasons of Plath

In ‘Wintering’ and ‘The Spinster,’ Sylvia uses the power and symbolism of weather and seasons to convey her mood. In the poems they are both compared through a single theme of cold and winter in general. They are both contrasted in the sense because ‘Wintering’ offers an ironic look in winter, whereas in ‘The Spinster’ it is more likeable when the speaker describes winter itself. These similarities and differences help compare and contrast imageries throughout Sylvia Plath’s poems.
In Wintering Plath uses a series of tantalizing clues that reinforces her message of using winter to tie in with her mood. “The cold sets in” (‘Wintering’ 158-159). This use of phrase helps create a stronger use for conveying mood, as it gives a visual sense of coldness or despair. It also gives the reader a clear connection of what Plath (as well as many other poets) wants to send to the public mind. She also uses “Winter is for women” (“Wintering” 158-159) to show how women feel cold and desolate in her time. A reader can connect that winter is a time of decay and death, and lays the credites for spring to regrow. In Plath’s use of winter, she indirectly proposes that women appreciate it, hence, appreciate death. Her overall comparison gives a deeper connotation in understanding how the poem uses imagery to give a better description. In “Black Rook in Rainy Weather” Plath tries to use phrases like “longed for winter then” (Black Rook in Rainy Weather” 19) and ‘hearts frosty discipline’ to form a connection of the beauty of winter and a beauty in death itself. In doing so Plath could compare the two poems together to draw up a point of familiarity and structure to her poem.
In contrast, “Wintering” plays a very ironic tone because it suggests that women would not stand for the same sense of familiarity and structure that was present in her poems. She states that “what will they taste of, the Christmas rose?/ They taste the spring.” (Wintering” 158-159) Sylvia conveys a new way of changing the topic, as she consistently writes of a uniform pattern of conformity to snow. In contrast in “Black Rook in Rainy Weather” Sylvia conveys a uniform sense of security in her oems, which rarely criticize her overall meaning of winter.
There are many similarities and differences which are conveyed throughout the poems and portrayed the entire literature either uniformity or with an ironic tone. In both poems Sylvia attempts to portray her mood throughout the overall piece and in conclusion she effectively conveyed her tone of the poem, as it effectively gave the reader a sense of emotion and a uniform method of understanding what Sylvia Plath was trying to convey.