The Disquieting Muses by Sylvia Plath
"The Disquieting Muses" is a poem by Sylvia Plath, written in 1957, that explores themes of alienation, otherness, and the complexities of the mother-daughter relationship. The poem draws inspiration from a surreal painting by Georgio de Chirico that features faceless dressmaker's dummies, evoking a sense of eeriness and distortion. This imagery aligns with the poem's exploration of women, inspiration, and the darker aspects of creativity. Structured in eight-line stanzas, Plath’s work employs a formal verse style with a consistent rhythmic pattern and rhyme.
In the poem, the speaker addresses her mother, who represents traditional artistic values and attempts to shield her daughter from irrational forces. However, the mother's efforts ultimately contribute to the daughter’s sense of exclusion and difference, as she cannot conform to societal expectations. The speaker reflects on her inability to join her peers, illustrating a profound sense of isolation. Ultimately, the poem concludes with the acknowledgment that the speaker's unique perspective, shaped by her mother's oversight, is both a gift and a burden. This duality highlights the complicated nature of artistic identity and the influence of maternal relationships in shaping one's creative path.
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The Disquieting Muses by Sylvia Plath
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1960 (collected in The Collected Poems, 1981)
Type of work: Poem
The Work
Written in 1957, when most of Plath’s work was still in formal verse, “The Disquieting Muses” is an unnerving explanation of alienation and otherness. The title, as Plath explained, refers to a painting by the artist Georgio de Chirico—a painting of three faceless dressmaker’s dummies with elongated heads who cast eerie shadows in a strange half-light. “The dummies suggest a twentieth century version of other sinister trios of women—the Three Fates, the witches in Macbeth, [Thomas] De Quincey’s sisters of madness,” she commented. The equation suggests that the poet associates women, distortions, inspiration, magic, and poetry.
The poem is written in eight-line stanzas containing roughly four stresses per line and some rhyme, notably rhyme of the fifth and seventh line in each stanza. The poem is addressed to “Mother,” who tried to teach her daughter a limited and accepted art, telling her stories of witches who “always/ Got baked into gingerbread” and praising her piano and ballet exercises. The mother, too, tried to teach her children how to keep irrational forces at bay, chanting at the hurricane winds that threatened to blow in the windows. The power of unreason is too strong, however; the art it engenders too compelling.
Like Plath’s other parent poems, this one blames the parent, at least in part, for the situation of the poet. Mother failed to invite some “illbred aunt” or “unsightly cousin” to her christening, thus provoking the anger of the uninvited. The daughter is thus set apart, unable to continue the mother-daughter tradition of benign, trivial art. She could not dance with the other schoolgirls in the “twinkle-dress” but “heavy-footed, stood aside/ In the shadow cast by my dismal-headed/ Godmothers, and you cried and cried.”
The conclusion of the poem indicates that the girl is still surrounded by her otherworldly company, the distorted muses, who are witches, fates, visitors from the world of madness. She indicates that she has learned not to betray her difference:
“No frown of mine/ Will betray the company I keep.” The surrealist painting is reminiscent of Salvador Dali’s deathscapes, although not so explicit as they in its message. The poem suggests that to be an artist is to look at eternities and infinities, and that this gift—in the speaker’s case, caused in part by her mother’s oversight—is a curse rather than a blessing.
Bibliography
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