The Mirror - by Sylvia Plath

 About the Author:

Sylvia Plath (1932 -1963) is a famous woman poet who talks about feminism and the psyche of women. Her father was a German and died when she was only nine. This had a great impact on her life both as a woman and as a poet. She studied at Cambridge and there she met and married a famous poet Ted Hughes in her 24. She gave two children to him and then got divorced from him due to her nervous tension. Soon after the divorce, she committed suicide in 1963. Among the important collections of her poetry books, “The Colossus” (1960), ‘Crossing the Water” (1960), and “Ariel” (1965) are worth mentioning.

The mirror, an image of the poet:

Sylvia Plath is a sensitive poet.  She holds that the great poet is absolutely impersonal, disinterested and dispassionate. He does not have any likes and dislikes. He merely reflects the society around him as it is. To convey this point Sylvia Plath uses the analogies of the mirror and the lake. The mirror reflects whatsoever and whomsoever is before it. It does not mix up anything of its own. Great poetry is similar to the mirror. It neither adds nor detracts anything. The great poet neither likes nor dislikes. He merely mirrors. Mostly the mirror reflects the speckles on the wall in front of it. The speckle is a symbol of the disfigurement and disintegration of modern society.

The pond, an image of the poet:

Sylvia Plath uses the analogy of the lake to describe the workings of the poetic mind. Like the mirror, lake water also reflects things as they are. A woman drowns her little girl and her old mother and finally herself in the lake. These tragic happenings stand for the large-scale destruction going on in modern society. The drowning of the little child betokens the wiping out of potentialities. The drowning of the old woman stands for the destructions of capabilities. The poem thus, presents a very bleak picture of modern life.