Winter Trees: November 26th 1962

  • Title – “Winter” reinforces her loneliness, despair and pessimistic outlook symbolised by winter.
  • Written after her break up with Hughes. She seems to be jealous of the tress and their ignorance of female subjects. She dislikes and distrusts women.
  • This poem could be explaining her loneliness and loss of freedom, and her wish to be emotionless (she is envious of the trees).
  • In the poem, Plath seems to be cursing her own womanhood, whilst being envious of the Winter Trees themselves. They grow memories \'ring on ring\' together, and know neither \'abortions nor bitchery\', and are \'truer than women\'. This seems to be in reference to Assia Wevill, the woman whom Plath\'s husband, Ted Hughes left her for.

Stanza One

The first stanza has a calm and detached mood.

  • “Wet dawn inks” are doing their blue dissolve: setting the scene. The poem is set in the morning and is “dissolving” into daytime. The trees emerge from the fog and are compared to a blurred drawing. The dissolving ink in the first line also supports the idea of a bad experience. Idea of tears or rain dissolving an image that wants to be forgotten.
  • “blotter” used to absorb excess ink- the trees are absorbing the darkness from the sky.
  • “seem” is she looking a picture or her life?
  • “ring on ring”- connotations of “ring” - years / time passing / of marriage / of immediate comparison with ink and water seeping into blotting paper in circular patterns. Yearly rings of a tree, each a reminder of the years it has been alive, holding on to its memories and its history. Idea of ancient trees enduring through time. Rings symbolise years and years passing by, and to the observer of this sketch, memories that have also taken place at each year. In the last two lines, it talks about rings, like circles. A marriage is supposed to last forever, never ending..that is what the ring for marriage symbolises as well.
  • “weddings” her disappointed relationship with Hughes.

Stanza Two

This stanza takes on more of an aggressive tone and she personifies the trees. The observer is envious of the trees. We are brought into the human domain of memories, relationships between people, values and morality. Memories, rings, weddings, abortions, bitchery--these words hint at a miniature narrative of past love and union, contrasted with ugly losses and failures. The speaker's muted despair has turned into disgust at the very idea of human femaleness.

  • “abortions and bitchery” reference to her own marriage. She is jealous of the trees and their easy lives. Her marriage was marred by both. She is said to have had an abortion in 1956 while she was still attempting to keep her marriage a secret. Her husband left her for another woman, hence the “bitchery”.
  • “Truer than women” she does not trust women after being betrayed by the woman who stole her husband.
  • “They seed so effortlessly” she envies their ability to procreate/ recreate themselves so simply without bother or effort- it seems to come naturally. This also alludes to her own miscarriage and her inability to keep a child.
  • “Tasting the winds” gives off the idea of freedom. She is personifying the trees to show how she wishes for such freedoms
  • “Footless, waist deep in history” they stay still and everything comes to them. They grow from the ground and she envies their past. They don’t need anyone for anything.
  • The constancy of the trees together with their independence and self-sufficiency is admired by the poet.

Stanza Three

The trees have become symbols of ideal humanity: at the same time as they partake of the solidity and security of elemental earthliness, they achieve spirituality.In a last transformation, the trees take on the appearance of the grieving mother of another god. The final lines of the poem express the speaker's anguished cry lamenting her inability to partake of the perfection and pity of nature. Being a woman she appeals to a Mother Goddess for a 'clue,' but no sounds or sights in nature bring her relief.

  • “full of wings, otherworldliness” They seem to be from another world and hold some kind of magic. Stoic. “full of wings” - imagery full of birds, but connotations of freedom and independence.
  • “Leda” in Greek mythology Leda, who was loved by Zeus, was raped by him when he visited her in the form of a swan. She also had relations with her husband the same night and bore Zeus’ children and as well as her husband’s. Could be used to show the resentment she feels towards the pain of women. Hughes? The using of women for own purposes? Visited by a god, these Ledas share in the sacred, but being Ledas they also know suffering.
  • “Pietas”; a picture of virgin mary holding the dead baby Jesus in her lap or arms/ Roman virtue of duty and devotion-the duties of women.
  • Her question goes unanswered.

Stanza Four

“the shadows of ringdoves chanting but easing nothing.”- she sees beauty and splendour but it doesn’t make things any easier.

There is no way to erase or ease pain- trees and poet have been victims of assaults- mental and physical. The idea of damaged goods.