A Birthday Present By Sylvia Plath Analysis
A Birthday Present was the first of about thirty poems written in September of 1962; about six months before Sylvia Plath committed suicide. The poem reeks of agony and desperation that the great woman poet was experiencing during the time when the poem was written.
In fact, Sylvia Plath seems to suggest that only redemption of sensitive women like her is in death achieved through suicide. Her conflicted relationship with authority figures like parents and husband was a constant source of torment and agony for her. This source is rooted in patriarchy that denies autonomy and agency to women. She feels unfulfilled in the matrix of social relationships: in the family, marriage and love. Arts offer a kind of space where she can verbalize her feelings and emotions on these issues. Plath raids her own life and comes up with recurring symbols and images to verbalize her views on society and relationships. For example, in her poem ‘Daddy’ she draws parallels between
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Whether Plath is speaking to God in "A Birthday Present" can be debated, since earlier in Plath 's life, she had sworn off God. Upon her father 's death, when she was only eight years old, she said to her mother, "I 'll never speak to God again" (Folsom). To me, it appears her life has come full circle. Now that she sees death upon her horizon, she has once again turned to God to take her, as He took her father. Other critics disagree about whom she is speaking to in this poem. Lynda Bundtzen believes she is speaking to herself. "It is as if she has two selves - a disembodied consciousness that thinks and observes and a two dimensional figure, a woman who performs her kitchen duties like a robot" (230). Bundtzen sees the poem as an internal dialogue between her two selves with her more daring and emotional side trying to convince her responsible maternal side to act out in a selfish way. By giving herself a birthday present, a selfish act, she would be freeing herself from life and the pain that comes
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