Shannon Tang

An Acorn Will Become a Tree; Plath’s Use of Plant Imagery
“We shall by morning/ Inherit the earth. / Our foot’s in the door.” (Mushrooms, 31-33). The poem about mushrooms is actually referring to women and what Plath felt was going to happen eventually for them. The topic of women is a major reoccurring theme in many of Sylvia Plath’s poetry. Being on of the few female poets during her time, Plath had to establish her own ways of portraying women’s feelings as well as her own. Sylvia Plath’s use of imagery in “Mushrooms” and “Stings” show women’s struggle for growth and equality.
One trait that both plants and humans share is growth. Plath uses this similarity to symbolize women’s need for individualism and identity. “What am I buying, wormy mahogany? / Is there any queen at all in it?” (Stings 14, 15) “Wormy mahogany” is a reference to bee boxes in which the queen bee remains. This metaphor is used to represent Plath in her own home. She has been trapped in an infested home for so long because of her marriage that she can only “Brood cells gray” meaning she can’t be a good mother anymore (Stings 12). Plath asks herself if there is a queen bee because she feels she has lost her place in her family; she has lost herself. However, at the end of the poem, Plath describes the empowerment of the queen bee and how she’ll take revenge on the one who hurt her. Plath uses fungi to represent women and an ongoing metaphor throughout the entire poem “Mushrooms” to relate the two. There is clear use of personification in lines 15 and 16; “Earless and eyeless, / Perfectly voiceless.” The second word of the 16th line gives a sense of being powerless or oppressed. As the poem progresses, Plath presents the mushrooms with a more confident persona with the last line
Another theme Plath presents through plant imagery is women’s desire for equality. In “Mushrooms,” the line “Nobody sees us” (7) shows the apparent situation of women who feel unappreciated to the eyes of society. No one recognizes women for what they do and how hard their lives are. By the last line, the mushrooms will get their right place in the world. Plath also shows resentment towards women whose main goal is to look for a man in life. “These women who only scurry, / Whose news is the open cherry, the open clover?”(29, 30) These women are bees searching for an open flower, or eligible man. The symbolism comes with the bee’s stinger because after they sting, they die. This relates to how after women get marries, Plath believes they become their husband’s and lose themselves. At the end of “Stings” the bee gets to fly “horribly” with power and independence to fight for herself. She is no longer constrained or under anyone, the empowered woman can make her own decisions just as any person no matter the gender.
When first reading through Plath’s poems, the reader often encounters very dark and somewhat disturbing syntax, however; that is not all that is in her poetry. In “Stings”, there are many words with unhappy and angry tones but eventually they add to the theme of feminism. “Stings” as well as “Mushrooms” share this common theme and Plath portrays that through small umbrella shaped fungi as well as other plants. By comparing women to plants, many similarities can be seen easily and quickly which helps the effectiveness of Sylvia Plath’s poetry.