Sylvia Plath 'Morning Song' Analysis of the Poem
‘Morning Song’ by Sylvia Plath reflects a journey of a mother, perhaps Plath’s journey to motherhood and how her life has changed after giving birth to her child. In Sylvia Plath ‘Morning Song’ analysis paper this poem is reviewed. The poem shows a pre-existing bond between the mother and the child. Even though it contains moments of insecurity, it is warm and tender. ‘Morning Song’ is quite different from Plath’s other poems about parental relationships in the collection, as the poem ‘Daddy’ is despairing and vengeful. Many of the poems, show family relationships in a decidedly unromantic and disturbing style.
The speaker struggles with a loss of identity, which is evidently clear in the title, ‘Morning Song,’ This is ironic as the whole rhythm of the poem is not song-like but sounds disjointed. This may reflect how the speaker is confused about the way to be with a baby, she has been put in a position that she is uncomfortable in as she needs to follow society’s expectations of being a woman. However, the title is also a pun, as ‘Morning’ sounds like mourning, suggesting this poem is about Plath grieving the death of her identity. As she struggles with her new identity of being a mother, she is ‘cow-heavy’, highlighting she is mentally but also physically different, from her former life.
A recurring theme in the collection, ‘Ariel’, is the tension between being a poet and being a wife and a mother. This can be shown in Plath's last poem in the collection, ‘Words’, where she mentions that using words may be free, but the poet who creates them is not. The poem ‘Words’ uses the idea of echoes, ‘After whose stroke the wood ring, And the echoes!’ which is similar in ‘Morning Song’, as Plath mentions ‘our voices echo’. Both poems suggest the narrator has a lack of freedom, as the echoes show the repletion of the constant reminder that Plath cannot get her identity back, thus displaying the outcome of motherhood is endless.
In the poem, Plath reflects the initial difficulties and confusion of being a mother. The line breaks seem to follow regular patterns of speech and this perhaps shows how new and strange the ‘Song' is. This idea is reinforced with the lack of form, which might again be a way to indicate that new experiences require new forms. Similarly, in the third stanza, the speaker starts to show her feelings of fear, and can be perceived as a turning point for the narrator, as she declares that she is “no more the baby’s mother” which shows how she feels regarding the child after the birth, perhaps she feels she just need to feed her and is simply a biological mother for the baby. Despite the value that was placed on the child when noted as ‘gold’ and as the first word of the poem is ‘love’ which foregrounds the idea that the speaker already has an unconditional love for her child. The simple fact that ‘I am no more your mother’ stands out due to enjambment. As the first line in the stanza suggests the feeling that a mother is becoming detached from her child. That she says this while addressing her child with the personal pronoun ‘your’ suggests an awareness of her approaching irrelevance as her child makes its way and grows up. This establishes youth, time and transience as themes in this poem, this idea is reinforced in the first line as the child is described as a watch. It might suggest that after giving birth and becoming a mother, the speaker feels that her life now has to revolve around the baby.
Throughout the collection, Plath uses figurative language to portray parental relationships, perhaps to show how difficult it is to express your emotions, thus highlighting the complexity of the relationships. In ‘Morning Song’, Plath compares the speaker to inhuman objects. The poem opens with a direct and warm statement, describing her child as a ‘fat gold watch’. The adjective ‘gold’ suggests the baby is precious and valuable, However, the comparison to a ‘fat gold watch’ indicates that the child is an intricate mechanism. Also describing the child to the watch is impersonal, as one can leave the watch and let it continue to work ,unlike a parental relationship which needs both parties to engage with love. The comparisons in the poem might reflect how strange and new the experiences of motherhood are, which differs from the expectations, often portrayed in advertisements of how easy and natural it is to be a mother. Yet the first metaphor has a subtle indication that the child has great value to the mother, despite the mother not feeling as maternal as she will in later verses. While the emotions might take time to reveal themselves, the love clearly exists somewhere under the surface.
In the second stanza, the baby is described as a ‘New statue, In a drafty museum.’ Once again, the speaker cannot help, but stare at the child as a statue and therefore, communication does not occur. The imagery highlights the feelings of alienation and strangeness in this new situation, as she does not know what to do with the baby, other than to watch intently, her new exhibit with everyone, perhaps society. Moreover, this metaphor suggests the desire to keep the baby alone in a museum, so she can never leave, thus highlighting how the speaker loves the baby, that she can not let go, but she struggles to show her love. The poem ends with a simile rather than a metaphor, thus highlighting the change of attitude as the speaker now, does not say the baby is an object, but rather being open to the fact the baby is ‘like’ something, showing the speaker is accepting that the baby is human which highlights a change in the speaker. ‘The clear vowels rise like balloons.’ This is the first time in the poem that the baby's sounds have been described as conscious verbal productions. It suggests that the speaker might have shifted her perspective, the baby's not just a creature in the world. It is human and the sounds from the baby is not a “bald cry” any longer but rather “a handful of notes.”
Furthermore, Plath also presents motherhood as a reminder of her mortality; she wants to avoid personal attachment in order to avoid thoughts of death. The reference to ‘the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow ‘Effacement at the wind’s hand’ could indicate that the narrator sees herself, on some level, in the child. Moreover, the imagery used of the cloud represents the temporary nature of youth, perhaps its inevitable decay and disappearance, or the time that the mother has to spend with her aging child. The mother values her child but sees the baby as her own death and decay and realises she will be outlived. The verb ‘distills’ suggests that the mother hopes to pass the best of her on to her child while she still can, to pass upon her wisdom before he grows up. The mother is aware that, even from the moment the baby is conceived, her time to be its mother is ticking away, and worries that not only she will eventually fade from existence, but her memory too. That this will occur at the wind’s hand heightens her insecurity. Nature, symbolised by the wind, is the sole actor in deciding when her time is up, making it even more precious, therefore on might suggest that this is a key moment in the poem, the speaker begins to realise she should show her love rather than stare at the child like a statue. Plath often uses natural imagery to portray different challenges in familial relationships. as the poem. For instance, in ‘The Moon and the Yew Tree’ an extended metaphor comparing her mother to the moon and her father to a yew tree is used to explore their conflict.
Last but not least, the tone of the poem is unemotional; Plath uses words that do not conjure a particularly emotional response, and thus she seems to be removed from the event, the birth of a baby, that would typically be expressed in more emotional terms. However in the last two stanzas she begins to open her feelings, similar to the poem ‘Daddy’, as both are confessional poem. Therefore, superficially, motherhood in ‘Morning song’, depicts the parental awe in the presence of a newborn, however at the loss of anxiety regarding her own mortality and the loss of identity.
