Nikola D. Dosev

“Tulips…like Dangerous animals”: The truth about flowers in Plath’s poetry

Flowers have been a symbol of love and care throughout human history. They are an expression of emotion and an image of good intention. It has been such a part of the everyday life flowers have created a stereotype for themselves, and that is good, harmless, and never hurting gifts. However, this stereotype is argued and shown to us by Plath in a different prospective.
In “Tulips” and “Two sisters of Persephone” Sylvia Plath uses flowers to convey purity, infancy and innocence, sometimes in ironic or sarcastic manner, in order to represent the true nature of flowers and their effect.
The gift of flowers has always been a great gesture in its gentle and loving manner. Representing good feelings and emotions flower’ infancy and innocence are undoubtfull. As images In Plath’s poetry they tend to represent the same stereotypical feelings as the reader would imagine. However, behind this façade, hides a grotesque and painful image.
The images of flowers Sylvia Plath presents are very beautiful and colorful at first. “Lulled near a bed of poppies,”(Two sisters of Persephone 15-16). This quote gives the reader an image of color and beauty, undisturbed. Its true meaning, however, represents sex and pain, and later on continues on to becoming suffering. In this idea, flowers lead to painful things, colorful and “happy” at first they become a burden to the confused recipient. Through this idea Plath conveys the shallowness of flowers in their role to lull a person, and later on hurt this individual. She expands more on this idea of fake purity in “Tulips” where she states “The tulips are too red, they hurt me”(“Tulips” 36). In her words, she emphasizes on their brightness, which by stereotype, shows emotion and care. However, instead those features are the ones making her sick and uncomfortable, by pressuring her into fake emotion.
Plath also conveys flowers’ fake nature in cynically conveying their innocence. “The Tulips are too excitable”(Tulips 1). Like children, they are over energized, almost too full of joy to be real. Behind their innocent nature they could really hurt a person. As a child ruins peace and quite, so do the tulips and flowers as a whole. “, it is winter here, Look how white everything is, how quiet” (“Tulips” 2).Often enough, the flower brings unwanted emotion, ruining inner peace, distorting reality and imagination and create problems for the person they are supposed to lull “near a bed of poppies”.
Flowers often get too aggressive in Plath’s poetry. In “Two sisters of Persephone” the author uses “petalled blood”, expressing violence and pain. This image shows the true collors of what flowers are, which is an expression of emotion. However this emotion is often very aggressive and hurts the recipient, in this case Plath. In “Tulips” she compares the flowers to dangerous animals. This shows us that the flowers are the ones tormenting her peace; they are the ones that should be blamed for all the pain. They become very aggressive in their intension to provide closeness. Therefore, her conclusion is they should be “behind bars”, in jail, somewhere far away where they cannot hurt her. Plath decides she can live without them in peace and quiet, which she strives for. Flowers are forcing their presence with their bright colors and invasive emotions.
The reader’s conception of flowers truly changes after evaluating the imagery of flowers in the two poems “Tulips” and “Two sisters of Persephone” Flowers are not as innocent and pure as they seem to be at first look. Instead they present pushy and hurtful emotions and their forced purity and innocence creating an idea of a fake and painful image in Plath’s poetry.