This poem is a compilation of Sylvia Plath's innermost feelings of the time. "Spinster" was written in the same year the poet married.

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This poem is a compilation of Sylvia Plath’s innermost feelings of the time. “Spinster” was written in the same year the poet married.

A spinster, by definition, is a woman past the usual marrying age or considered unlikely to marry because she lacks the qualities men desire in their partners. One could characterize a spinster as an ‘old maid’, a woman doomed to loneliness by chance and prejudices. The girl who is the focus and protagonist of Sylvia Plath’s “Spinster” is not given to expressions of joy and mirth, nor to enjoying nature during the blossoming season that the poem is set in. We can see that in fact, “this particular girl” (1) appreciates nothing about the aspects of the world commonly associated with life and happiness. This “particular girl” is not undesirable, by society’s quintessential standards as she is not sinfully ugly, however she does isolate herself by shunning the norms and expectations of a societal courtship. She does express displeasure with the onerous enthusiasms of spring and her company. In reality, she longs for the dignity and cold order that comes from winter and solitude. Love in essence is effervescent, never stagnant and can never be controlled. Therefore, the romantic bond between the spinster and her suitor could never materialize. We have noticed that throughout “Spinster”, Sylvia Plath chooses the speaker’s words carefully, with poignancy in its placing. She does this in order to reveal a girl who willingly fades into the life of a spinster, rather than fight against it, as most women would do. The spinster Sylvia Plath portrays in this poem is a multifaceted character whose depth is revealed to the readers as the poem progresses through the innuendoes and nuances Plath is able to illustrate. A tone of depression, isolation and paralysis of the individual in society is prevalent throughout the poem as well as the spinster’s yearning for order and discipline. This can be seen by the desolation of winter vis-à-vis the flourishing of springtime. The pitch of the vowel sounds is also of importance, as the placement of rhyme schemes relative to the meanings of words and stanzas, the flow of the words to corroborate the connotations of words with their flow; all of these devices blend to provide the reader with a consistent image of a woman consciously shunning a life of pleasure and male company in favor of a world of order and seclusion. Plath’s “Spinster” is not forced onto the path to spinsterhood by circumstance, but rather by the attitude she displays towards the courtship process.

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The protagonist of “Spinster” is a girl who rejects the offering of the world and her “latest suitor” (3). This suitor, seeking her affections, takes her on an attempt at a romantic hike through a wood. However, the girl does not describe it as such, but rather as “a ceremonious April walk” (2). The significance of the word ceremonious is to reiterate the fact that this occasion is a ritual and instead of pleasure, it has become an obligation. The girl instead of being enchanted by the intoxicating beauty of nature “finds herself…intolerably struck / By the birds’ irregular babel / ...

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