Even though the poem is positive to start with it quickly moves into a state of jealousy, ‘I’m no longer your mother.’ Here Plath accepts that the baby has all the attention now the baby is born, whereas when she was pregnant Plath was getting used to the idea of her getting all the attention and people caring for her.
Plath is very happy about her daughter’s birth and is rejoicing that she has entered the world but the people surrounding her are “staring round blankly at walls” This is negative as Plath wants everyone to be happy about the birth of her new daughter.
In the fourth stanza I get the impression that Plath’s life depends on this baby. All she can do is ‘awake to listen’ for the ‘moth breath’ of her baby. She lays awake, straining to hear the breath of her baby, if she can hear it then she’ll be able to sleep knowing that her baby is safe.
Plath loves the baby so much that it is a ‘new statue.’ The baby is like it is on a pedestal; it is worth worshipping, it is more important than anyone else. Also it is all she cares about and she is not worried about herself.
Her descriptions are similar to the ones that she uses in you’re. In both poems the descriptions are exact. In ‘Morning song’ she concentrates on the different noises the baby creates, it’s ‘bald cry’, the baby’s ‘moth breath’ and ‘your handful of notes.’ Her talking about her daughter in this way is positive. It seems that Plath enjoys every different sound that the baby makes and would do anything ho hear more.
In the poem, Plath reminds us that she doesn’t want her child to turn out like her, and that when she looks at her, she doesn’t see herself, she realises her child’s individuality. “Than the cloud that distils a mirror to reflect its own slow.” This is positive to see that Plath will do anything to give her baby a good future.
Even thought there are negatives views on pregnancy, she closes the poem with positive comments, “the clear vowels rise like balloons.” Here Plath uses assonance (‘oo’) to create the effect of the baby’s sounds.
‘You’re’ is a very positive outlook of pregnancy. This poem is constructed with many different metaphors describing the growing baby. By doing this Sylvia Plath is creating a visual picture of her un-born baby. All the images she creates are happy images of her child, and her excitement of bringing her baby into the world. The metaphors are very clear-cut and clever.
Sylvia Plath begins the poem by describing the baby’s ‘clownlike’ position. In the first stanza, Plath is already acting protective, “wrapped up in yourself like a spool.” The baby is curled up, tight and small. At the beginning of the second stanza, Plath describes a happy image of the baby being delivered by a stork.
From the second stanza we learn that Plath has only just become pregnant and is looking forward for he journey of pregnancy but she realises that it is “farther off than Australia.” She also is happy that she is pregnant, “right, like a well-done sum.”
Throughout the poem, Plath uses different metaphors to suggest the baby’s position at the time, in the first stanza it is ‘clownlike’, in the second stanza the baby is like ‘bent-backed atlas’ and also, “jumpy as a Mexican bean.” Plath’s positivity is reflected in her declaration that the child is secure and perfect.
Finally, Plath doesn’t want her child to follow the path that she has had to walk in. She wants it to have ‘a clean slate’ with individuality. In both poems she is protective of her child.
From both these poems I think that Sylvia Plath had a general happy outlook on motherhood. She is very protective over her child and seems to be very caring in leading her child the right way. I think her pregnancy was the best thing that happened to Plath and she was happy it happened to her as well. She creates many different images of her unborn baby, which are all positive and happy.
