Analyzing Sylvia Plath's Writing Style through Her Poem, Mirror

Sylvia Plath's unique literary style has been appreciated more and more since her death by suicide in 1963. She has been hailed as a kind of "archangel of confessional poetry" (Drennan 1184), and her poetry has been described as being "at once confessional, lyrical, and symbolic" (Hinkle 920). The styling that has led to the continuity of her art and its relevance to society can be attributed to many factors and techniques common among her poetry and prose, namely her unique uses of rhythm and meter, her prevailing themes of feminist criticism, her use of the technique of "doubling," and her unique approach to characterization. Plath's poem "Mirror" is a work typical of her writing style in these regards.

Sylvia Plath's approach to rhythm and meter in her poetry was all her own. Her earlier poems were composed slowly and with great care, while her later poems were written at a greater and increasing speed. The older poems follow, for the most part, a rhythm and meter that is a sort of "finger - count," with each line of each stanza set to a rigid standard of syllables (Wakeman 1144). An example of this is in her poem "Full Fathom Five," where each of the fifteen stanzas follow a scheme of three lines each, the first line having seven syllables, the second having nine syllables, and the third having five (Plath 46 - 48). Her newer poems however, fall into a less rigid set of standards, and are composed of a rhythm and meter that is more of an "ear - count," as Plath would speak the poems as she wrote them "out loud as they came in the urgent and accelerating rhythms of her own voice" (Wakeman 1144). Since Plath would speak these poems in "her own voice" as she wrote them, the poems' rhythm and meter cannot be considered anything less than unique.

The poem "Mirror" falls into the category of the newer, less rigid poems composed by Plath. Though the poem is composed of two stanzas, each of nine lines and nine sentences, the words themselves and the lines they compose follow no set boundaries in terms of similarity in the number of syllables. In speaking of this type of rhythm and meter in Plath's poetry, John Wakeman, editor of World Authors:1950 - 1970, says, "This jaunty control...elevates [Plath's poetry] into authentic statements of a specifically contemporary era of suffering" (1144). This "suffering" that is authenticated is hinted at in "Mirror" in the last two lines, which state: "In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman / Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish" ("Mirror" 633).

Many of Plath's works contain prevailing themes of feminist criticism, and "Mirror" is no exception. Maria B. Hinkle, of the University of Delaware, writes in the Research Guide to Biography and Criticism that Sylvia Plath's poetry, while increasingly becoming the focus of multiple poetic categories, "...continues to be valuable for feminist criticism" (920). In "Mirror" for instance, we find a poem of two stanzas where the entire second stanza preoccupies itself with a woman and her relationship to her mirror, which we come to see is really the woman's relationship to the view of herself. The middle section of this stanza, lines 14 and 15, display this best: "She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands. / I am important to her" ("Mirror" 633). In saying the mirror is "important to her," we can see how much the woman in this poem cares about the way she looks. This is expounded upon with the preceding lines regarding the woman's "tears" and the "agitation of her hands" upon looking into the mirror. This idea of an emphasis being placed on how a woman looks is an idea that was not new when Plath took to writing this poem, and which is still a potent issue facing women today. This poem is a written criticism of that idea. The idea is explored further in the last two lines, where 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" ("Mirror" 633). The woman in the poem is no longer a young, beautiful woman; she is aging, and in the woman's eyes that is a "terrible" thing.

Of all of the poetic techniques that Plath uses in her poetry, one of the most potent is her use of what William Ryland Drennan calls "doubling." In his article on Plath's work in Popular World Fiction: 1900 - Present, Drennan states that Plath's works' "...most-discussed technique is its 'doubling,' its use of polarities - like the negative and positive poles of electricity - to shed light on characters and events" (1187). In "Mirror" this technique is expressed in multiple ways. In the first place you have two stanzas of equal length. In the first stanza the speaker is a mirror, and in the second the speaker says, "Now I am a lake." Again, in the first stanza the mirror refers to itself as being "silver and exact," and then in lines 6 and 7 says, "Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall. / It is pink, with speckles." So you have the doubles of mirror and "lake," and also of "silver and exact" and "pink with speckles." You also have the double that comes from the first stanza, line 4, where the mirror says, "Whatever I see I swallow immediately / Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike," compared with the second stanza line 15, where the mirror (lake) says of the woman, "I am important to her." So the double there is the mirror who is "unmisted by love or dislike" versus the woman, who sees the mirror as "important to her."

Another double in line 15 is where it says of the woman, "She comes and goes." She "comes." She "goes." That is another double. Again in the first stanza the mirror states, "I am not cruel, only truthful," and in the second stanza, line 12, refers to the candles and the moon as "liars." It says, "Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon." So the double here is compounded - you have the truthful mirror versus the lying candles and moon, and you have the act of turning. When the woman faces the mirror she faces truth, when she turns to the candles or the moon she faces "those liars." Of all the doubles in this poem, probably the most explicit is found in the last two lines of the poem, where 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." Here the double is between a drowned young girl and an old woman, who "rises toward here day after day, like a terrible fish" (Plath 633).

The final factor to discuss in terms of the common elements of literary style in Plath's works is her unique approach to characterization. Drennan states, "One of the great virtues of [Plath's work] lies in Plath's ability to limn her characters in a few well-chosen and immediate words, an accomplishment one critic has likened to 'a series of snapshots taken at high noon'" (1186). This ability is one easily seen in "Mirror," where there are only 18 lines and thus, necessarily, the proper words must be chosen to make the best use of what limited space there is for characterization. The poem is narrated by the mirror, and since the only other character is the woman and there is no dialogue, the characterization of the woman must be taken from the few lines we have describing her actions. These lines are the "snapshots" of which Drennan's critic speaks of. One such snapshot is line 14, which says the woman, "...rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands." Another is line 16, which says, "Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness." These words are few, but from them we get a picture of the woman that helps us to understand what the author is trying to say. From the first quotation we see that the woman looks into the mirror and she cries and wrings her hands. From the second we see that the woman looks into the mirror everyday. Line 15 says the woman "comes and goes." The most potent snapshot we get of characterization is once again in those last two key lines: "In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman / Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish" ("Mirror" 633). We can see from these last lines alone the passing of time for the aging woman. When she started looking into the mirror she was a young girl. As she started growing up, the young girl was "drowned," and now as a woman she is aging into an old woman. She is getting older and older, and through the phrase "an old woman / Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish," we come to understand that the she does not view this as a positive thing.

As most authors whose work stands the test of time, Sylvia Plath has a unique literary style that is a common thread throughout the majority of her lasting work. Through her unique uses of rhythm and meter, her prevailing themes of feminist criticism, her use of the technique of "doubling," and through her unique approach to characterization, Sylvia Plath's poem "Mirror" is no exception to the body of her work that remains a relevant part of our literary heritage today.

Works Cited

Drennan, William Ryland. "Sylvia Plath: 1932 - 1963." Popular World Fiction: 1900 - Present. 4 vols. Ed. Walton Beacham and Suzanne Niemeyer. Washington, D. C.: Beacham Publishing, 1987. 1184 - 1190.

Hinkle, Maria B. "Sylvia Plath: 1932 - 1963." Research Guide to Biography and Criticism. 2 vols. Ed. Walton Beacham. Washington, D.C.: Research Publishing, 1985. 918 - 921.

Plath, Sylvia. "Full Fathom Five." The Colossus and Other Poems. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967. 46 - 48.

Plath, Sylvia. "Mirror." Literature: Approaches to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. 6^th ed. Ed. Robert DiYanni. New York: McGraw - Hill, 2004. 633.

Wakeman, John. "Sylvia Plath." World Authors: 1950 - 1970. New York: The H. W. Wilson Company, 1975. 1143 - 1145.