Flowers are emblematic of relationships. As they are given out on joyous occasions (marriages, birthdays) as well as on sad occasions(at the hospital, death).They reflect very poignantly the power of relations. It has both its positives as well as negatives. Sylvia Plath in “Tulips” portrays how she wanted to divorce herself permanently from her worldly associations as she was caught in an emotional rollercoaster ride. This explains her repeated attempts at suicide. The prescribed poem has been stated by critics, to be penned in the hospital after a typical suicide attempt. Tulips in the poem stand for “feigned empathy”. The poet Ted Hughes states that the poem was written when Sylvia Plath had suffered miscarriage and had to be hospitalized for appendectomy in March of 1961. This, he explains, is the reason for the recurring references to birth and death.

“The tulips are too excitable” asserts the poetess, as it brings with it the uncertainty of relationships. It is winter in her life, as there is gloom and frostiness all around. Though it is snowed-in, the atmosphere is peaceful as it is surrounded by white. The speaker claims that she has nothing to do with any sort of turmoil/(explosions) outside, or the hassle of relationships. The speaker lived in a world that had seen two World Wars. The identity of people were therefore deeply entangled with war or politics. She declares that she was free of all these worldly associations. She has handed over her name and clothes to the nurses. Her history has been given to the anesthetist; as the anesthetist has relieved her of her current and past pains/worries. Her physical being has been surrendered to the doctors. The colour ‘white’ brings in connotations of purity far removed from all adulteration. There is a pun in the line: the light lies on these white walls.” The reference is to the light lying on the wall, and lying as opposed to telling the truth. For the speaker, there is no ray of hope in her life: this is why the light lies.

Employing a striking simile, the poetess likens her head propped up between the pillow and the sheet-cuff to an eye between two white lids that refuses to shut. Charles Molesworth states, in “Tulips,” “the imagery of forced seeing, of vision itself as the source of the exacerbated sensibility, assaults us everywhere.” The ‘pupil’ is expected to embrace everything within its reach. The nurses as they pass, do not pose as a hindrance. They appear as harmless and uniform as gulls that pass “inland in their white caps”. With their standardized dressing, and their immunity to experience , one could not discern how many they were. They are therefore reduced to statistics and defined utilizing collective attributes like the ‘uniform’ and ‘sea gulls’. Eileen M. Aird asserts:“The renunciation of individuality also includes the reduction of others to a depersonalized level, so that they make no claims on her and she is aware of making none on them; consequently she sees the nurses hurrying about the ward like “a flock of gulls flying inland.” The speaker seems to be content with these predictable surroundings than having to deal with an unforeseeable present.

Her body is likened to a pebble, harmless and smooth. They treat it just as fragilely as water smoothes over pebbles. She appears to be static as opposed to the inanimate element water that is kinetic. They benumb her with their bright needles rendering her immune to any sort of pain. In such a context, Plath has lost herself- her real being in association to others. In such a state, the baggage (of relationships) causes her to be sicker. Her “patent leather overnight case” is “like a black pillbox.” She was constantly under medication. She looks at her husband and children smiling out of the photo. However, the smile of her kids brings pangs to her heart, like hooks that caught on to her. Jeannine Dobbs states:”Her freedom is both wonderful and terrible because the price is so high. The woman must give up her man and her child that hook onto her, as well as her things, her possessions. And the ultimate price–and reward–is death.”

Over the past few days she has let a few things slip: The weight of the huge cargo boat of thirty years of her life carrying with it things both wanted and unwanted. The hospital-staff have swabbed her clear of emotional associations, just as they swab a glass clear of stains. She is now like a newborn baby without prior experiences. This is why she identifies with the vulnerable baby “Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley. The string of objects in the poem functions as an objective correlative of her domestic experience:” I watched my tea set, my bureaus of linen, my books.” She perceives herself as an object in water ,as an object immersed in water becomes weightless. As she is now devoid of all mundane connections, animate or animate; she now views herself in this state of purity as a nun. Richard Grey says:“Everything that gives her identity, that imprisons her in existence, has been surrendered; and she sinks into a condition of utter emptiness, openness that is associated at certain times here with immersion in water — a return to the foetal state and the matrix of being.”
The poetess claims that she did not want any flowers to bring along with it the load of misery or euphoria. She wants to surrender herself to death (her hands turned up).She prefers to rest in a blank state where the peacefulness bedazzles her. The vacuity also represents her nihilistic thought process. The privacy of the hospital room does not make any demands on her other than to part away with her name (individuality) for a name tag; and the jewelry she wore. The dead too seemed to feed on this nullity, like shutting their mouths onto a communion tablet. The image of the ‘communion tablet’ evokes purity.

As the poetess lay in the four walls of her hospital room faraway from worldly hassles, the tulips find their way in. In her void state with white dominating the room, the colour of the blood-red tulips comes across as an intruder. ‘Red’ also connotes danger and passion. Her privacy is disturbed with sentiment from outside in the form of the tulips. The swaddling of the tulips comes across like those of an awful baby. The redness of the tulips only communicates with the wounds of the speaker. They interact through the common medium ‘red’. They tease her through their subtlety. They weigh her down like “red lead sinkers”. The colour ‘red’ also signifies danger. ’Lead’ is a poisonous metal and its use is quite suggestive.
Nobody had watched her before, but now she was under constant scrutiny. The tulips turned to her, and the window was behind her. Both the tulip and the window were passages to the outside world. The line “where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins” depicts the thinning of her ray of hope. This streak of light can be likened to Kamala Das’s ‘Sunshine Cat’. She views herself as a ”flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow.” She seems to have no existence of her own as she is caught between Time and relationships. They eat up all her energy, she has no individuality (face) and has lost the fullness of womanhood (flat).

Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips,
And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself.
The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.
The air was calm enough before they came, but now the tulips made a lot of noise. The air-eddies surrounded them like a river would. Employing picturesque imagery she describes the pandemonium the tulips created:
Before they came the air was calm enough,
Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss.
Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.
Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river
Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine.
They concentrate my attention, that was happy
Playing and resting without committing itself.

The last line also makes an allusion to Ted Hughes who toyed with the poetess’ feelings after having an extra marital affair with Assia Wevill. The walls that were hitherto cold seemed to be warming themselves with the passion of the tulips. This passion is represented by the colour ‘red’ and the heat that they generated. This is why the speaker refers to the flowers as “dangerous animals.” They should be imprisoned, according to Plath, for their unwarranted intrusion.

The Tulips are as feral and alien to the serene atmosphere as some great African cat. She is aware of her heart that connects with the flowers involuntarily as it closes and opens up:”Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.” The concept of salt enforces the idea of salt being rubbed on her wounds. The idea of personal acquaintances poisons her very being and pollutes the ambiance now. Constantly under medication, for Sylvia Plath, health was a remote possibility, as distant as an exotic country namely ‘Health’. In “Tulips” Sylvia Plath attempts to attain tranquility through alienation -she attempts to come close to death by distancing herself from energy, emotion and experience.

© Rukhaya MK 2012

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