Sylvia Plath - Face Lift

This change is so dramatic that it constrains her to remain for five days in her hospital bed. Additionally this rejuvenation is not all smooth as she hides herself, possibly because of honour, but also because she undergoes uncomfortable experiences such as her stitches tautening when she grins. This suggests that she deeply wanted this change as she was willing to go through this situation. During this process she rids herself of her old age by having “the years drain[...] into [her] pillow” (18). But this renewal process is not exactly an appropriation of new life; it should rather be seen as Plath intends it, a mechanism in which this woman “[grows] backward”(21). In fact this process seems to be more of a shedding process as “Skin doesn't have roots, it peels away easy as paper.”(20), so this woman is only distancing herself from her old body. This physical change is closely related to a mental one, meaning that Plath parallel the physical with the spiritual. Indeed the woman, now in a twenty-year-old body (“broody and in long skirts”-22), relives her young years spent with her husband. Yet these memories do not seem clearly authentic, they have an artificial aspect due to the presence of a dead and stuffed poodle (23). This may mean that the woman cannot truly retrieve her past despite undergoing surgery, thus implying that Plath may want to convey that the physical world is not as hard-linked to the spiritual one as a first interpretation may suggest. In fact it contrasts between reality and the expectations of the speaker.

By choosing references to Cleopatra and her husband Plath tells us that this woman may have undergone surgery so as to identify with these references, which are representation, at least in this poem, of the life of an ideal woman – beautiful and married. In other words the pressure of society, though there is no direct mention of it, would have led her to make this choice. This interpretation is supported by the fact that these are themes commonly addressed by Plath.

Despite the fact that we find little evidence that the new body that this woman has is not as exotic as the one she dreamt of having we can still say that she is proud of it. Indeed she now concentrates on throwing the old body away to distance herself from it. The first indication of her doing so is that she refers to her former body as “she” (25) and not as I, meaning that it is an entity which is no longer allowed to be associated with her. The reason for this detachment are clearly outlined by her expression of disgust as she recounts herself watching her “old sock-face”(27) grow older slowly over time in the mirror. This attention to age and reflection has the same attributes that Plath addressed in Mirror. Indeed this fear of old age is made evident by the speaker violently declaring “let her die there”(29) which felicitates the imprisoning her old self in a laboratory jar. Yet she is reminded that she has not completely managed to get rid of this body, indeed it will “wither” from a distance “for the next fifty years” (29), it will even tease her by “Nodding and rocking and fingering her thin hair.”(30), serving as a way to remind the speaker that her old self is well alive. As such the only enemy that she has not managed to escape is time.

Plath then returns to the result of the operation by having the woman say “I wake swaddled in gauze,/Pink and smooth as a baby.”(31-32), presenting us with an image of a white cocoon (gauze). Instead of ending the poem, this has the effect of bringing us back to the beginning with the same image of a cocoon being used:” Whipping off your silk scarf, exhibiting the tight white/Mummy-cloths” (2-3). This effect supports the need that the woman displays to return to the beginning (“growing backwards”-21), this effect also being achieved by her reference to babies.

What this poem then conveys is the path taken by a woman to escape old age by keeping her beauty intact, while also displaying a physical obsession of self.