Essay On Mirror By Sylvia Plath
For far too long throughout history, women were considered “second-class” citizens, not gaining the same rights as men until 1972. While some women remained silent, many took to literature to express their feelings about society, specifically about the role of women and the expectations that they were expected to maintain. One such woman in Sylvia Plath, a famous American poet, whose poetry discussed femininity and what it means to be a woman. Plath’s poetry was greatly influenced by her father’s death, as well as how women were perceived during her life. Though her work has been labelled as difficult to digest and rather disturbing, her poetry challenged the world’s outlook on women. Sylvia Plath’s life, as well as the era that she grew up …show more content…
Throughout the first stanza, the narrator takes the appearance of a mirror, showing the woman, possibly Plath, her outwardly appearance. Because the mirror is mounted on a pink wall, one associates the mirror with a female. In the second stanza, the narrator transforms into a lake, which, in addition to showing the woman her reflection, displays her “fleeting youth”. Both the mirror and the lake portray reflections of the woman, but the lake is much harsher than the mirror. Possibly representing the pressure put on women by society, the lake offers a woman a glimpse into her inner self, in which she sees her “fleeting youth and eternal beauty”. Furthermore, the poem allows the reader to better comprehend the fragile nature of a woman’s confidence. Although the woman detests the truth that the lake displays, she ultimately acknowledges that her inner identity and beauty fail to line up with her own expectations. Plath wrote this poem, which targets the stress that woman place on their appearance, at the beginning of the second wave of the Feminist Movement. At the time, women were still expected to be stay at home mothers, as their only role was to provide for their children and keep the house orderly. Plath challenged the conventional expectations for women through her genius poetic
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