Tasha Eulberg

Longing for Winter: Reflections of Sylvia Plath’s Use of Winter Imagery Throughout Her Poems
Word Count: 681

Throughout her poems, Sylvia Plath utilizes vivid imagery to convey to the readers a sense of something beyond the flat lines of printed ink, to reach out from behind the page and subtly let the insinuations of her words escape. Death, bees, and Holocaust imagery are all well-known motifs of her work and are often inferred to relate to her own life: her father’s death, hr failed marriage, her suicide attempts, her self-realization. One, however, that is not as widely known, is the motif of images that indirectly shed light on Plath’s feminist ideals and her own life: the images of winter. In her poems “Spinster” and “Wintering”, Sylvia Plath uses images of winter to illuminate society’s double standard and its imposition on women in their search and desire for both independence and respect, and for families and meaningful relationships.

Imagine a winter landscape: barren, empty, dead, covered in frozen snow and impenetrable ice. Everything is exposed, plain and clear – easy to see. Plath paints a picture in “Spinster” of a young woman who, when betrayed by her lover, “withdrew neatly” from the chaos and disorder of relationships and love – “a rank wilderness of fern and flower…the whole season, sloven”. This girl, thusly injured, wishes for the “scrupulously austere…order of black and white”: for her own independence, for respite from reliance upon a man for support and societal approval. She imagines that without the complications of love and dependence in her life, her life will be easier and more enjoyable. Additionally, the idea of a winterland conjures images of emptiness or barrenness, a side effect of being a “spinster”. These sentiments of solidarity and stubborn independence are echoed in “Wintering” when, in describing the wine cellar – “the room [she] could never breathe in”, Plath describes marriage as an oppressive dark “without windows”. She says, “They have got rid of the men…Winter is for women”.

Despite the ferocity of the stormy independence in the winter, the seasons – like everything – ebb and flow and change. The woman begins to realize as “the cold [of winter] sets in” that to be alone is not always ideal: “[she tastes] for spring”, longing again for the interactions and companionship that they instinctually crave. And, like spring thaws the winter’s chill, the woman’s resentful and determined desire to be alone melts into something else: a desire for human companionship, for love, for a family. She comes to a fork in the road: should she surrender her newly-acquired independence for something that could easily give her just as much pain as pleasure? Or should she continue to live a life of solitude and loneliness, desiring love but never attaining it? If the first, they come to terms with societal restrictions and the drawbacks of their positions while embracing their new desire for relationships; however, even then there is no definite as to their happiness. “Will the gladiolas /succeed in banking their fires/to enter another year?” Will they be able to stand societal restrictions placed on them and retain who they are? If the woman chooses to remain ensconced in winter, then she must be alone forever while constantly desiring a family or love, even while wishing she wouldn’t, leading to a bitter and lonely life set by a “barricade of barb and check around her heart”.

Sylvia Plath’s use of winter imagery in “Spinster” and “Wintering” reveal her struggle and the struggle of women all over to find a happy medium in their lives. Plath struggled, especially after her separation from Ted Hughes, to maintain balance among motherhood, her family, and her own career as a writer. This motif illustrates how society has placed women in a position where there is no compromise between the chaotic disorder of spring – or marriage and motherhood – and the barren, lonely, “frosty discipline” of financial and social independence. It is reflective of the resulting resentment and the construction of “such a barricade” around their hearts that neither situation brings them happiness.