Hughes vs Plath: Draft Version
I am going to analyse one poem by Sylvia Path, written in 1962, one year
before she committed suicide, she was damaged about the infidelities of her
husband and because he has left her for another woman. At this time she and her
husband had two child, one daughter with two years and a son who was born this
year. The poem is called Years, and I think that this
title refers to the years she passed suffering her husband’s infidelities. She
passed a lot of years with a depression. Ten years before her suicide, she
tried a first suicide attempt. This poem is from her collection The
Collected Poems, published and written in 1962. The other poem I am
going to analyse is by Sylvia’s husband, the also poet Ted Hughes. His poem is
called The Minotaur and is from his volume Birthday Letters,
published and written in 1998. Each year after his first wife’s death, he wrote
her a poem for her birthday. He felt ( and the feminist movement felt too) he
was the responsible of his wife’s death, because he left her. I have looked for
the word “ Minotaur” at The Collins English Dictionary, 21st
Edition and I have found this definition: from the Greek mythology, a
monster with the head of a bull and the body of a man. It was kept in the
labyrinth in Crete, feeding on human flesh, until destroyed by Theseus. I
think that the poet felt like a monster, specially as this monster, he feeds
with his wife’s pain, and now he feels he must be kept in an avoided site,
until he will die.
I think it is better to analyse in
first place Sylvia’s poem, because it explains why her husband felt
responsible. Years is divided into 6 paragraphs; the four first
ones have 5 verses each one; paragraph 5 has three verses and the last one has
two verses ( if we put together the two last paragraph we have a poem with 5
paragraphs of 5 verses each one). During all the poem Sylvia talks about her
mental illness, she wants to die, but now she has two babies, and they make her
happy. In the first paragraph she talks about her child as good thoughts that
enter in her mind, and these thoughts are compared with animals. I think that
she wants to compare the enter of her child, as the enter of an animal in your
life, animals do not know why they are in your life, but they are there, and
they make you happy. But she is so depressed that her child will not make her
happy. In the second paragraph she talks directly to God and she says she is
not like Him. He is in Heaven for Eternity, he is surrounded by stars that
bright, but she does not like this. She does not want to be in this Eternity,
it bores her. I think she says that because in Christian religion, when a
person commits suicide goes to Hell, and he/ she spends condemned all Eternity.
If Sylvia tried a suicide attempt in 1953, and probably she already thought to commit
suicide while she was writing this poem, she would know she would be condemned.
Because this, she says that Heaven bores her, because she would never go there.
In paragraph three she tells us that her love will live more than her soul. She
will ever love her child, and probably she will ever love her husband too, but
she is so injured that her soul is already death. In verses 14 and 15 she talks
about the seven Apocalypse riders, who went on their horses, and they gave
Death, they show the end of life. I think that Sylvia knows she is going to
die, and because this she says she is hearing the hooves of the seven horses.
In paragraph 4 I think Sylvia thinks that her husband’s infidelity is like a
tiger, it seem very exciting at the very beginning, but it can injure someone.
This injuring knocks her door and it provokes the suffering of the poet, as
Christ suffered in the Cross. In paragraph 5 the poet refers to her husband and
his new love. They make Sylvia to bleed, as if God would make judgment. But she
knows they are not worried about her pain. The poem was written one year before
her death. In the last paragraph the poet thinks that the horses leave her now,
and her hope to continue living starts another time
The poem by Hughes is divided into 6 paragraphs
of four verses each one. In the first one he compares his form of acting with
his wife, with an old heirloom that has already cracks. In the second paragraph
he says that he has tormented his wife and because that she is “ demented”. For
this their child will be traumatized. He make so damage to his wife that she
committed suicide putting her head in a gas oven, and their child grew without
a mother. In the third paragraph he tells us that he has destroyed his wife’s
mind as he would made kindling her life. She gave shape her destruction to in
her poems, but then, in real life, she tried to hide, and he thought she was
calmed. In paragraph number 5 he tells us that because his wife committed
suicide, their child are ever remembering this fact. Her decision ended with
the problem of their broken marriage, but their child became traumatized. In
the last paragraph Hughes talks to his wife and tells her that her mother lost
her husband and her daughter, and he says her that she would not have given her
mother this pain ( the pain of losing a young daughter). Her corpse will rest
with her father’s one.
In conclusion I think that Sylvia shows
perfectly her pain, she wanted to show clear that she was suffered during her
life, and although her child gave her a little bite of hope, she was so injured
that she did not want to continue with life. Her husband’s poem shows his
feeling of culpability, but I think too that he wanted to seem innocent, as if
he did not know he was damaging his wife, and because that, I think he was
criticized by the feminist movement, because he only thought in himself and his
lovers, and he did not never thought in his wife’s feelings. We must take into
account that his second wife died as the first one, and also killed the daughter
she had with the poet. These two suicides show the egoism of Ted Hughes.
