Because I'm tired of Humpty Dumpty

Two Sisters of Persephone

Two girls there are : within the house
One sits; the other, without.
Daylong a duet of shade and light
Plays between these.

In her dark wainscoted room
The first works problems on
A mathematical machine.
Dry ticks mark time

As she calculates each sum.
At this barren enterprise
Rat-shrewd go her squint eyes,
Root-pale her meager frame.

Bronzed as earth, the second lies,
Hearing ticks blown gold
Like pollen on bright air. Lulled
Near a bed of poppies,

She sees how their red silk flare
Of petaled blood
Burns open to the sun's blade.
On that green alter

Freely become sun's bride, the latter
Grows quick with seed.
Grass-couched in her labor's pride,
She bears a king. Turned bitter

And sallow as any lemon,
The other, wry virgin to the last,
Goes graveward with flesh laid waste,
Worm-husbanded, yet no woman.

Sylvia Plath

We were given that project on allusions, so I might as well write about a poem with some inkling of allusion (sorry if this ruins someone’s project, but I doubt it will). Everyone knows the story of Persephone—that she was kidnapped by Hades and taken to the Underworld, that her mother Demeter caused the weather to go insane with her worry, that Hades tricked Persephone into eating six pomegranate seeds, that Persephone then must forever spend six months in the Underworld and six months with Demeter, thus the seasons—so I’m just going to pick this poem apart.

To Start: Persephone had no sisters. If you can disprove me, go ahead.

Facts about Plath: Extremely bi-polar, death by carbon-monoxide poisoning after sticking her head in an oven

The first thing I noticed about the poem was the most basic play between light and dark, “Daylong between a duet of shade and light.” At first I assumed this poem was about seasonal weather patterns, but then I soon realized that is not it at all. One sister “works problems on A mathematical machine,” an abacus perhaps? She is keeping track of time, dry ticks of time, she is wasting away slowly…death seems imminent. The second hears the same ticks “blown gold.” Life bursts into color, “like pollen on bright air.” Spring is here at last! “She sees how their red silk flare/Of petaled blood/
Burns open to the sun's blade./On that green alter” This is a rather elegant innuendo…

That same innuendo is confirmed when you read further, “Freely become sun's bride, the latter/Grows quick with seed./Grass-couched in her labor's pride,/She bears a king.” So we see spring and birth and happiness. Then back to the other sister who becomes, “worm-husbanded.” Yes, yes, this screams Persephone because of the weather. But that isn’t what Plath is saying at all; weathermen write about the weather, not poets. I think what Plath did here was use a basic metaphor for seasons to convey her own conflicting viewpoints on life, maybe due to her insanity. Part of her wastes away until the other part comes out to play, and the cycle starts again. the allusion to Persephone must have been to Persephone's two personalities--the one taken to the Underworld and the one that returns home again. I can only conclude that Plath suffered from that same double lifestyle.