11/10/13

Female Author

All day she plays at chess with the bones of the world:
Favored (while suddenly the rains begin
Beyond the window) she lies on cushions curled
And nibbles an occasional bonbon of sin.

Prim, pink-breasted, feminine, she nurses
Chocolate fancies in rose-papered rooms
Where polished higboys whisper creaking curses
And hothouse roses shed immortal blooms.

The garnets on her fingers twinkle quick
And blood reflects across the manuscript;
She muses on the odor, sweet and sick,
Of festering gardenias in a crypt,

And lost in subtle metaphor, retreats
From gray child faces crying in the streets.
                                                       -Sylvia Plath

   Sylvia Plath strikes again.  From the title itself, the reader can conclude that the poem is most likely going to be about a female.  A female author literally wrote the poem (Sylvia Plath), and a female is the main focus of the poem.  Words such as pink, feminine, rose-papered all relate to women.  However, this poem highlights the more feminine qualities of a woman, but pins a grim and creepy twist to the stereotypical characteristics.  The poem begins by saying that the woman plays chess with "bones of the world."  Would anyone normally think of a female playing chess with bones of the world? Nope not normally.  This could possibly mean that women actually run the world.  They watch over everyone, and once they are gone, they use their bones to play games.  Women take control and play games with the remains of the people they once knew.  She lays on her posh cushion and takes and "nibbles" on a sin.  Plath is highlighting the prim and proper qualities of a woman, but seems to be making fun of these qualities at the same time.  This woman is proper, yet she nibbles on sin.  In my opinion, he word "nibbles" in the sense to have a mocking tone.  The woman knows that she is expected to be dainty and clean, yet she mocks these expectation by taking small bites of a sin.  She commits these sins with a sly attitude.  She knows it is unexpected for her to sin, yet she does it anyway.  Oddly enough, I could not find the definition for a "higboy."  Urban dictionary gave me a glorious description, "some weird word used by Sylvia Plath in her poem 'Female Author.'"  Yes thank you for that fistful of knowledge.  Safe to say, I am not sure what this word means. The poem continues describing feminine qualities of a room, but then takes an eerie twist when it says "whisper creaking curses."  Could these curses be the curses a woman faces?  This woman is forced in to a life full of cushions, and pink things, and rose-papered rooms.  She is cursed with a prim and proper life, and the house she is in will not let her forget it.  Garnets are defined as deep red, precious stones.  There is an interesting connection between a red stone and the deep red color of blood.  She seems mesmerized by the blood and by the smell of the blood.  She seems more interested in the blood than the prim house around her.  The odor is "sweet and sick" which is contradictory.  The odor is similar to gardenias in a crypt.  The flowers are described in a grim way by relating them to flowers given to dead people resting in a crypt.  This woman seems to be related to death.  She hides from the "gray child faces" outside her house.  People who are dead are usually described as having a gray or white hue to their face.  This woman is surrounded by prim and proper, feminine things, yet she is also surrounded by death.  This poem could be mocking the prim and proper steryotypes that go along with being a woman by connecting them to qualities of death.