Hughes and Plath

Discuss and Compare Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes and their poems in relation to Parenthood.
Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath are greatly renowned and intellectual poets. Their life together however was tragic and subsequently reflected in their poetry more often than not. Plath was a depressive and first attempted to commit suicide in 1953, but succeeded on February 11th 1963, after Ted Hughes’ infidelity, which has later been claimed by many feminist groups to be the cause of her death, leaving Hughes as a single parent to their two children Nicholas and Frieda Hughes. However, they also had one miscarriage in 1961. More tragedy and parenting occurred later on in Hughes life, when his second wife committed suicide and took their child of two years with her. Therefore, both had a great deal of emotion s and feelings to release, which they used poetry to convey, as a means of escapism, much like John Keats, another famous poet who was dying and trying through poetry to escape into a different reality. Both Hughes and Plath therefore enable a deepened insight into parenthood and the fears, animosities and issues surrounding it. Plath more so than Hughes writes about in her poetry,   yet likewise to all her poems it always seems to relate back to her own issues and traumas, whereas Hughes usually wrote about nature and feelings, but when he does write about parenthood it is in description of others around himself rather than his own self-importance.

Plath’s poem ‘Morning Song’ is one of the few poems dedicated to her children, although as remarked before, reverts back to her own issues once again. In this poem parenthood is related to by a Mother addressing and in awe of her new born child and coming to terms with the creation and the mixture of feelings that may occur when confronted with a new situation. She creates these visual images and penetrating emotions through a variety of colourful techniques. There is a clear stylistic structure to Plath’s poem which puts...