The Disquieting Muses

One of my favorite poems by Plath is "The Disquieting Muses." I think what really draws me to it is how it maps out the relationship she had with her mother and draws the reader in with such vivid imagery--as well as actual memories of her childhood.

Mother, mother, what illbred aunt

Or what disfigured and unsightly

Cousin did you so unwisely keep

Unasked to my christening, that she

Sent these ladies in her stead

With heads like darning-eggs to nod

And nod and nod at the food and head

And at the left side of my crib?

Mother, who made to order stories

of Mixie Blackshort the heroic bear,

Mother, whose witches always, always

Got baked into gingerbread, I wonder

Whether you saw them, whether you said

Words to rid me of those three ladies

Nodding by night around my bed,

Mouthless, eyeless, with stitched bald head.

In the hurricane, when father's twelve

Study windows bellied in

Like bubbles about to break, you fed

My brother and me cookies and Ovaltine

And helped the two of us to choir:

"Thor is angry: boom boom boom!

Thor is angry: we don't care!"

But those ladies broke the panes.

The beginning of the poem is just beautiful. The imagery of her childhood that it sets up is magnificent because it gives readers a true insight into Plath's upbringing. Not only that, but Mixie Blackshort is actually from a group of short stories that her mother published, which she told that Plath and her brother when they were kids. 

But the greatest part of this, is the repetitive idea of her mother trying to protect her, trying to shield her from the evil of the world. From the ladies nodding at the side of her crib, to baking the witches always into gingerbread, and giving them Ovaltine and having them sing songs about Thor during a storm, it shows Plath's mother as a mom who just wants to shield her children from the "bad" in our world.

And the "bad" in this poem is represented by the three Fates. The picture to the left might be a silly example (it's the three Fates from the Disney movie "Hercules"), but the concept is still the same. These are the three ladies who decide who to kill by cutting a person's "life string." Those three ladies nodding by night around my bed. Mouthless, eyeless, with stitched bald head. Not only does this description show them as horrifying and sinister, but it shows how the "bad" in our world, like death, is always "looming by night around [our] bed[s]."

When on tiptoe the schoolgirls danced,

Blinking flashlights like fireflies

And singing the glowworm song, I could

Not lift a foot in the twinkle-dress

But, heavy-footed, stood aside

In the shadow cast by my dismal-headed

Godmothers, and you cried and cried:

And the shadow stretched, the lights went out.

Mother, you sent me to piano lessons 

And praised my arabesques and trills

Although each teacher found my touch

Oddly wooden in spite of scales

And the hours of practicing, my ear

Tone-deaf and yes, unteachable.

I learned, I learned, I learned elsewhere,

From muses unhired by you, dear mother.

This set of stanzas continues the idea of a mother wanting to shield her daughter from the pain and evil of the world, but it switches it to a more dismal tone--showing how, even though she's trying, she can't shield Plath from everything of the world. Plath is held down by the darkness of the world (as it shows in her writing) with how she could not lift a foot ... heavy-footed. And that even though her mother tried to teach her, she found education elsewhere, from muses unhired by her mother--the Fates and the "evils" of the world that her mom tried to shield her from. 

I woke one day to see you, mother,

Floating above me in bluest air

On a green balloon bright with a million

Flowers and bluebirds that never were

Never, never, found anywhere.

But the little planet bobbed away

Like a soap-bubble as you called: Come here!

And I faced my traveling companions.

Day now, night now, at head, side, feet,

They stand their vigil in gowns of stone,

Faces blank as the day I was born,

Their shadows long in the setting sun

That never brightens or goes down.

And this is the kingdom you bore me to,

Mother, mother. But no frown of mine

Will betray the company I keep.

Adding an even more sad tone to the piece, these last two stanzas show how her mother came to her with a last-stitch attempt to get her to stay on the "good" side of things, with bluest air on a  green balloon bright," but Plath explains how these things "never were. Never, never, found anywhere." This, in turn, leads to how when her mother finally asked her to "Come here!", over to the world of happiness and fairytales that she wanted to believe, it forced her to own up to her traveling companions, the Fates and the "other-side" of life, the darker side. 

Now, she explains, the Fates stand their vigil at all times a day, around every part of her. This is where we realize that Plath has accepted that her life and muses are darker than most--especially of what her mother wanted of her--but that she has come to accept it as her path, and them as the company she keeps.