Linda Tannous

The Story of a Princess: Sylvia Plath
Fairy Tales are stories that have come to enchant the lives of society as an outlet of self-expression for many children alike as they are captivated in a false sense of reality. Similarly, Sylvia Plath uses fairy tales as a way to express her complex feelings about her life in her poetry. Sylvia Plath utilizes imagery of fairy tales to emphasize the theme of her life through the idea of being trapped and needing to be rescued, her relationship with the men, and breaking away.
Sylvia Plath feels trapped in a way, and doesn’t know how to escape, much like the girl in Rumpelstiltskin. In “Two Sisters of Persephone”, she says “In her dark wainscoted room/ The fist works problems on a mathematical machine”(5, 6, 7). Plath alludes to the story of a young lady who is trapped in a dark cellar and forced to spin straw. By comparing herself to this girl, Plath expresses that she feels as though she has nowhere to go and she is stuck living a life that she doesn’t want. It the poem “Two Sisters of Persephone”, she expresses two ways of living life. One being the one she has, and the other the one she wishes she had. But making this switch is not easy because she finds flaws with both of these paths of life. Sylvia Plath also makes a reference to being trapped in her poem, “The Arrival of the Bee Box”. This is not only a reference to girl locked in a dungeon in Rumplestiltskin, but it also alludes to Cinderella. Cinderella’s stepmother locks her in a room to keep her from meeting the prince and all she can see is just a little bit through the key-hole in the door. Plath references this when she says “There is only a little grid, no exit/ I put my eye to the grid”(The Arrival of the Bee Box 11).
Because she is trapped, Sylvia Plath needs to be saved just like every other fairy tale that she alludes to. She has such a great image of the kind of father she wishes she had, and she really wants to be real even though it can’t. She discusses this situation she has with her father and uses the word “gobbledygoo”. She says, “I have always been scared of you/ with your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo“( Daddy 41,42). By using the word “gobbledygoo”, Plath is alluding to a scene in Cinderella when the fairy godmother comes to her rescue and uses a similar phrase “Bippety- Boppety- Boo”. Plath is comparing the father she wishes he was, to the fairy god mother in Cinderella. In her poem “Disquieting Muses”, Plath also makes another reference to fairy god mothers. “heavy footed stood aside/ in the shadow cast by my dismal headed/ godmother”(29, 30). This poem alludes to the fairy tale when the parents of a new born baby, forget to invite the old, ornery, most powerful fairy to the baby’s christening. In retribution, the fairy curses the child. Sylvia Plath later asks her mother which relative she kept from her christening because she feels as though she is cursed. Her mother tells her that she is living in a world of fairy tales and she tries to keep her form the ugliness and unhappiness of life.
Sylvia Plath makes it clear through her poetry that she needs to be rescued as a princess, but she is looking for this figure in the wrong people. Her father, is clearly not there to save her as she wishes and she can’t restore the relationship she had with him. She makes an allusion to this in her next poem by referencing Humpty Dumpty. She says, “I shall never get you put together entirely” in The Colossus (1). Because she can’t find her savior in her father, she then looks for her knight in shining armor, her husband, Ted Hughes, but again is failed to be rescued. She makes a reference to this in her poem “Morning Song”, by alluding to the story of Snow White. In the fairy tale, the evil queen stands in front of her magic mirror every morning asking who the fairest person in town is. In the poem, Plath says “The cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow effacement”(Morning Song 8,9). So this evil queen is slowly not becoming the fairest, as snow white takes her place. In “Mirror”, she says, “In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me and old woman/ rises toward her day after day”( Mirror 17,18). This relates back to her life in that she is worried that she is no longer the most important person in Hughes life. She feels as if she is being pushed aside for someone better. Plath’s feeling of insignificance, are also expressed in her poem, “Daddy”. She says “Black shoe in which I have lived like a foot” (2-5). She is making an allusion to the story about a little old lady who lived in a shoe and had a lot of kids. This lady had so many children that each child was almost insignificant and lost their sense of individuality and feels trapped and this is how Plath feels.
Sylvia Plath wants to break away from the person she is and she talks about how she is sick of her ways in her poem “Spinster”. She refers to herself as “Ariel”, who is from the story of “The Little Mermaid” and wants to go out and explore life above sea, but is restricted by her father, just like herself. She also makes a reference to becoming someone else when she says “Pivot of heels and knees”, which can be linked back to when Cinderella is dancing with the prince she is not recognized to be the same person (Ariel 6). Plath also experiences a change or a “pivot” in direction both literally and metaphorically. But because this was a mere “pivot” and not an entire step to change, Plath was still not satisfied with where she was and felt the need to end her life. In Two Sisters of Persophone, Plath writes “Dry ticks mark time”. This is an allusion to both Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast because they are both in a time crunch. This relates to Plath’s life because it is a representation of the cruel hand of fate and how she is going to commit suicide and her time is running out but nobody else knows just like the fairy tale characters.
By relating her life to fairy tale stories, Plath is able to simplify her situation to make it more understandable. Because fairy tales are directed at children, by alluding to them for emphasis of her theme, she is able to widen the audience of her poetry. She is also able to lighten the serious tone of her poetry by discussing her feeling of being trapped, her relationship with men, and breaking away through suicide by using light-hearted fairy tales.