In ‘The Mirror’ the objects such as the mirror and the lake are speaking for Sylvia Plath in the sense of her emotions and feelings. In the first stanza the mirror is personified and given human characteristics, “Whatever I see I swallow immediately / Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.” The poet plays on the word “unmisted” to show that the mirror’s reflection is visually clear to one who looks into it, and also to restate that it offers a reflection that is truthful, even if the truth is painful. ‘‘I am not cruel, only truthful’’ this also shows personification because mirrors don’t judge in fact they are materialistic things. Sylvia Plath’s seems rather lonely because from the poem it seems as if the mirror is her only friend, because the mirror says "I have looked at it so long I think it is a part of my heart. [...] "Faces and darkness separate us over and over." What I think she is referring to here is the despair of loneliness and depression, of relationships come and gone, with no soul-satisfying true love.
This poem is constructed into 2 stanzas, there is no particular pattern, just that in the 1st stanza the mirror is speaking and in the 2nd stanza the lake is, both the stanzas have a total of nine lines each. I personally think that Plath has constructed the poem this way so the mirror and lake have an equal amount to say. "A woman bends over me. Searching my reaches for what she really is." I think the woman is Sylvia herself and she, is looking at her reflection in the water. She feels lost, she is empty, she has no satisfying love in her life, and perhaps she wasted her youth on a love that went nowhere. It is obvious that Sylvia is a woman of relationship however Melia differs to her in this way because she is a prostitute it doesn’t seem as if she has time for love, Melia doesn’t show much interest in relationships.
In ‘The Ruined Maid’ there are 2 speakers. One is Melia who is the prostitute in the poem and the other speaker is her friend who is overly excited at meeting her friend after all these years and telling her how lucky she is to live such a lavish lifestyle. Melia however is very sarcastic in her answers and doesn’t seem to care that her profession is seen as a social evil, which started in the late 1840s, when major news organisations, clergymen and single women became increasingly interested in , which came to be known as "The Great Social Evil."There are six stanzas and four lines in each stanza, Melia’s friend does most of the speaking and Melia constantly says the same thing at the end of every stanza which is that she is ‘ruined’. ‘‘O didn’t you know I’d been ruined?’ said she’’ Melia refers to herself as she as if she is talking about another person by saying ‘said she’, I think that this is because she thinks she has changed into someone else and that she does not feel like herself anymore. ‘‘Yes that’s how we dress when we’re ruined,’ said she’’. Melia repetitively says that she is ruined this gets the reader thinking of what may have happened to her and creates more of a mystery in the readers mind. The poem is structured like a conversation between two people, and not like a poem.
The poem ‘Mirror’ does not have any rhyme or rhythm to the poem it is a free verse poem on the other hand but it is very effective because of the strong words used throughout the poem and the use of personification also the symbolic meaning to some objects. "Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon. I see her back, and reflect it faithfully." To me candles signify romantic love and the moon represents promises, romance, dreaming of one's love, which can be a lie when the love you're dreaming of is unfortunate for you or not loving you in return. Candles and moon also signify the softening of one's aging appearance.
She is definitely ageing because at the end of the poem it says "In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish." Fish are predominantly, unattractive and ugly and aging can make a woman feel the same way. Her youth is passed and age is getting to her. "Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness." When one is depressed and unhappy with their life, one way to deal with the darkness is to just do what one must do every day, that is, you go through the motions, which is difficult when you've done nothing with your life but involve yourself in a series of unsuccessful loves, your age will rise toward you "like a terrible fish" and repel you, most certainly. It's a terrible feeling. "Faces and darkness separate us over and over." Here I believe Plath is describing transferring from one state to the other - darkness symbolizes her depression and faces are her demons that bring her into a state of insanity. This is reinforced in the second stanza: "she comes and goes.”
Although this poem does not contain any rhyme or rhythm the symbolic language is very successful throughout this poem because it gets the reading thinking. However ‘The Ruined Maid’ has a continuous rhyming pattern at the 1st and 2nd line of every stanza. ’’O Melia, my dear, this does everything crown! Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town?’’ this creates a good flow to the poem. The double voice is very contrapuntal as it makes the serious matter of prostitution sound light hearted. The rhyme of the poem helps create a mood and tone of the poem to be very conversational which is paradoxical against the topic of the poem. The simple absolute repetitive of the rhyme scheme mirrors the apparent lightness of tone that characteristics the exchange. This provides effective contrast to the creepy, unsettling possibilities that the reader might actually be imagining have happened to Melia. This poem also has a rhythm unlike ‘The Mirror’. In the last two lines, the interruption of the strict constant of the rhyme scheme gives the last line to the ruined maid; she addresses her questioner and judges her. The irony is that the tables are turned and from a critical/ shocked position, the first speaker is left to consider the doubtful but attractive benefits of the ruined maid's position.
There is a use of lots of images in ‘Mirror’ as Plath personifies the mirror in the 1st stanza and the lake in the 2nd stanza. It seems as if Sylvia values the mirror and gives the mirror a very high status. ‘‘The eye of a little god, four-cornered’’ this concludes that Sylvia looks up to the mirror like god. ‘‘I am not cruel, only truthful’’ this shows that the mirror is not judgmental, and she also obeys the mirror like god and seeks help from it. I personally feel that Sylvia is using the mirror to personify her in a sense of pain. If you throw a stone at a mirror it will break, this is exactly how Sylvia is feeling, she feels a lot of pain and breaks down just like a mirror, mirrors may also be symbolized because when mirrors break they bring 7 years of bad luck and misfortune.
In the 2nd stanza Sylvia looks at herself in the lake. "She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands." This concludes her depression because it says that she cries this is also symbolic because the lake is part of nature unlike the mirror and if you throw a stone in the lake it washes it away like wound and sorrows being washed away, lake is liquid almost like tears which shows emotions. In the 2nd stanza it gives the lake a character as Sylvia’s friend, ‘‘I am important to her. She comes and goes’’ this is exactly how the mirror was given this character in the previous stanza. The imagery is mainly symbolic however in ‘The Ruined Maid’ the imagery is mainly about Melia’s ‘rural farm girl’ life and her preferable bountiful lifestyle after she becomes a prostitute. "You left us in tatters, without shoes or socks, tired of digging potatoes, and spudding up docks’’ this shows Melia prefers her fulsome life after becoming a prostitute rather than being a farm girl. Images are characterized by their rural simplicity, ‘'hands like paws'’; and superstitious, uncivilized brutality: ‘'home life a hag-ridden dream’'. This effectively characterizes the life and people Melia has left but poses the question: is her new life any better?
Overall I think the main difference between both these poems and both the characters in both these poems are that Sylvia plath is insecure and has a very low self esteem and feels very low to herself and also feels that she has no talent in her, when in fact she is very talented and she is worried of what people may think of her. Sylvia also feels very lonely because she has no-one to love her. On the other hand ‘The Ruined Maid’ is the one with no talent but she is used to the idea of being a prostitute, and does not feel insecure about it, this is obvious because of the way she constantly repeats she’s ‘ruined’. Melia doesn’t seem to care of what people may think of her and she also doesn’t seem very concerned about relationships or neither she is in search of true love like Sylvia, she sees prostitution as her profession and turns to prostitution for independence and freedom. Both of the poems are about a status of a woman and how they see themselves.
By Atiya Choudhury
Year 11