Poetry Explication: Sylvia Plath's "Morning Song"

Flat Song

In her short poem "Morning Song," Sylvia Plath utilizes many strong images to convey disillusionment with her role as mother. Her metaphors are unusual and often difficult to understand, adding to a confused sense of discontent, here aimed at maternity. Through line-by-line analysis as well as all-inclusive looks at the poem as a whole, we shall attempt to take this idea further, picking out evidence and examples of this disquieting sentiment from Plath's work. Let us pay special attention to the images Plath paints, and examine our own emotional and psychological response as readers. We can then stand back and take in the poem in its entirety, seeing the ways in which the poet has connected her ideas, as well as commenting on some of the technical aspects of the disjointed poem. In short, our study will look at the ways in which Sylvia Plath uses her poem's imagery and structure to express her unconventional feelings on the topic of motherhood.

In a brief reading of this poem, we may not know what to make of the references to a watch, a cloud, a cat, but certain other words stand out. We recognize the words midwife, cry, nakedness, and mother. These words trace a pattern through the work, and we find the motif of motherhood prevalent. While it is always unwise to leap to conclusions about a poet's intentions, we can be assured that Plath is not here speaking in merely figurative terms. "The midwife slapped your footsoles..." says line 2; later we see mention of "your arrival," i.e. birth. In line 7 the author denies being "your mother" and in the fifth stanza describes waking from bed to attend a crying baby:

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral

In my Victorian nightgown.

Your mouth opens clean as a cat's...

We see then that Plath is not merely invoking the imagery of motherhood, but is speaking of it in its plainest sense. From this brief run-through we decide that we can safely proceed with this poem while keeping in mind that its language is that of maternity. "Morning Song" is saturated with references to motherhood, and its very title suggests sunrise and new birth; these warm ideas will stand in contrast to the insensitive way in which Plath deals with her topic. Just as maternity is commonly viewed as pleasant and rewarding, unsuspecting readers may now create the same expectations for this poem; they will be disappointed.

In taking a closer look at the poem, we see that the first line reads, "Love set you going like a fat gold watch." Remembering the theme of motherhood, we find it not unlikely that this line refers to a newborn child who is being compared, oddly, to a pocketwatch. The watch is fat and gold, implying abundance, but is of course inanimate. The implication that an act of love -- leading to childbirth -- is comparable to the winding of a watch is perhaps a troubling one. The watch is cold and lifeless, granted animation only through another. It also makes us think of the passing of time, as it ticks on and on. Like a child, it is given life: this is its beginning; then comes time and aging. Absent are the happy feelings we generally associate with childbirth, absent is mention of the child's father, absent is any reference to holding the newborn baby. The child was simply given a starting point, like a watch, and now begins ticking slowly, steadily, monotonously along.

Over the next two lines Plath writes that "your bald cry / Took its place among the elements." Possibly the most noteworthy word in this excerpt is "bald," for it is a most unconventional adjective to be utilized in the describing of a sound. It may be referring also to the baby, presumably with little or no hair, who is doing the crying. If this is the case, the cry of the child is considered to be the child itself, which implies that Plath is unable to draw distinctions between the actual baby and the noise it makes. Her role as mother is defined not by her baby, but by her baby's cries. She feels little connection to the life she has brought into the world. This is evidenced too by the fact that the baby is never named and, indeed, we never learn its gender.

If indeed the word is being used to describe the noise itself, rather than the child, it should be noted that the cry sounds naked or hollow. The baby's voice is described as neither musical nor grating, but "bald": it lacks that which could give it personality, which could make it whole. It is also interesting that the child's cry takes its place "among the elements," making it simply another part of the natural world, comparable to fire and wind.

The second stanza speaks of a museum:

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.

In a drafty museum, your nakedness

Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

Here the baby is called a statue: it is exciting, it is "new," but it is just something to look at. Anyone who has been to a museum knows the surreal feeling they can instill, at once comforting and eerie, because they are timeless. They are immense. This stanza shows an infant as the new attraction in a "drafty museum" where "voices echo." We are troubled by this, as the helpless child seems out of place. It has been put into an enormous and never-ending realm: perhaps, symbolically, earth itself. Despite the baby's apparent value as a "new statue," it is granted no special privilege, admired simply as a new addition to an old collection. Plath, in this stanza, makes no distinction between herself -- as mother -- and the other onlookers. She is merely another visitor, looking on "blankly as walls."

The third stanza is one run-on sentence, casual in its tone but confusing to understand.

I'm no more your mother

Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow

Effacement at the wind's hand.

As earlier, Plath invokes the elements. She says that her baby is nothing more than a reflection of herself, just as a still body of water reflects the movement of the clouds. Once again Plath distances herself from the child, denying her own motherhood and saying that she and her child are both merely elements of nature. Even while denying her baby though, Plath expresses neither hatred nor anger; she looks on, as if confused, at the child that would call her "mother."

Lines 10 and 11 speak of the child's "moth-breath" which lands on "pink roses": beautiful images of a sleeping baby; the imagery we expect to find in a poem about motherhood. We are rapidly learning, however, that traditional thoughts on motherhood do not hold true in this poem, and those peaceful lines are drawn into sharp contrast with the next stanza, which was quoted at an earlier point in our study:

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral

In my Victorian nightgown.

Your mouth opens clean as a cat's...

There is nothing beautiful about this image, and the mother's ridiculous nightgown seems a corruption of the pink roses from the previous stanza. She expresses neither delight with her child nor anger at being awakened, but only exhaustion. As with so many other parts of the poem, there is a lack of any true emotion; this goes back to the idea of disillusionment with motherhood: the supposed peak of feminine achievement. Plath does not esteem it highly, and shows not only a lack of love, but also the weariness imposed upon those who fall into this role.

At the end of the poem, Plath says "now you try / Your handful of notes;" and concludes in line 18 that "The clear vowels rise like balloons." To compare a child's voice to a balloon tells us nothing as to what sound the baby is actually making, only that the noise is swollen while at the same time empty of any true substance. The child could be laughing or weeping; it makes no difference to Plath. Once again the baby is being objectified: it is hardly a living thing, and its sounds are devoid of meaning.

The very construct of "Morning Song" lacks any rhyme scheme, any real order, and includes a slew of broken and incomplete sentences. The title offers hope, but is as misleading as motherhood itself. Many of the lines end with negative or dull sounding words, such as "cry," "statue," or "slow." The poem is not what you would call unpredictable, but neither does in follow any set standards. This serves to shows readers the impassionate, senseless feeling that Plath is attempting to convey, using not only words and metaphors but the actual construct of her work. The poet's voice is casual but never friendly, and an ordinarily celebratory event -- that of childbirth -- has become joyless and lost all meaning.

Throughout the poem, with metaphors like the watch, the statue, and the elements, the child has lost its humanity. The poem gives a sense of tedious monotony, containing much time but little action; much aging but little feeling. Above all, we have seen the amount of distance Sylvia Plath puts between herself and her offspring; in her mind, there appears to be no real attachment between mother and child. The whole thing is a ruse: a hoax. If maternity is a woman's highest ambition, Plath says, then it is a sorry one indeed.