405:?" Helle continues this by commenting on how Plath "uses housewifery to normalise kitchen craziness" and, alongside many other critics, notes that "The Applicant" mocks the sanctity of marriage and the gender stereotypes of a traditional marriage/household. However, unlike other critics, Helle notes that Plath uses "The Applicant" to place the males in the traditionally female role of the typical housewife, and "while Plath effects a change-about in the housewife's form, she alters the eligible man's gender. The applicant-groom takes on the female functionality through appliance shopping".
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her expectations and disillusionment with marriage." Moreover, Houston commented on "The
Applicant" treating marriage as a social construct that dehumanises those within the marriage, as they lose who they were as an individual and become a reflection of the person they are married to. Houston explicitly states that "if a woman chooses to live in the state of marriage then she will become what she has married, that is, an otherwise intelligent woman will become a lesser being. A married woman gives up her independence in favour of her husband’s wishes."
331:, the language of the Anglican wedding ceremony, the institution of marriage, and, by extension, the biblical texts on which the idealised cultural model of Anglican marriage is based." Freeman has furthered this by noting that “will you marry it” is repeated three times throughout the poem, which “directly invokes the church banns, announced in the parish three times before a wedding to ask ‘if there is any just cause why these two should not be joined in holy matrimony.'” Freeman has further interpreted this poem as a "
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qualities that would otherwise give them substance. Poems such as "Morning Song" detail Plath's struggle with motherhood and how, because of the social pressure to instantly love your child and neglect to acknowledge illnesses such as postpartum depression, she struggled with motherhood. Wagner-Martin comments that "Plath made a self-conscious decision to study women. Her critique of the
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Critic Linda Wagner-Martin comments that "The
Applicant" shows Plath breaking away from the social expectations of poetry, in particular female poets, and alongside poems such as "Purdah" and "Lady Lazarus", "The Applicant" shows "the persona moving from her conventional state of social acceptance to
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Manuela
Moreira denotes that Plath employs the idea of gender stereotypes through the ambiguity of the genders of the "product" and "applicant". Though it is not specifically mentioned initially that the product is the woman, using phrases such as "To bring teacups and roll away headaches" alludes to
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that a woman was nothing more than a product to ‘fix’ a man. Plath continues this metaphor throughout, emphasising that the woman is a powerless thing that is provided to the male with no choice in the matter, reflecting Plath’s isolation and feelings of being trapped in her relationship with Hughes.
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Critic
Barbara Hardy comments on the style of writing that Plath utilises in "the applicant' and notes the “unfailing grim humour” that Plath uses to comment on the hegemony of society and how she uses this humour as an attempt to dismantle the social expectations of the time. Hardy also states that
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for their husbands." This condemnation of the role of women is what
Houston believes to be Plath's strongest quality in her writings, as she highlights the inequities in society with her own experiences of married life, noting that "Plath structured her metaphors and imagery in order to demonstrate
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of the gender stereotypes in a conventional marriage stating that "the transgression of gender roles takes place, since the woman who had remained invisible, will accomplish the task of filling in the man’s empty head." Moreira also interprets the applicant as a comment on the body of a woman, more
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space, and bride in the marriage rite space. The addressee is the child, customer, applicant, and groom in the four respective spaces." However, Freeman notes that there is a slip in the "blend" of the possible interpretations with that of the speaker as there could be links to a "father" figure in
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both the public and private spheres. "Daddy" was written a day after "The
Applicant" and Plath exploited the social hegemony by bringing the private sphere into the public sector and Wagner-Martin notes that ""Daddy" is the answer to the obsequious, fawning voice that wants a job, that wants to be
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Plath is known for her comments on the gender stereotypes and her condemnation of these stereotypes within married life. Linda Wagner-Martin comments that Plath often criticised the hegemony to only see women as mothers and motherly beings rather than focussing on the work they produced and other
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loyalty and their subservience to men can be shown as developing continuously." Moreover, Plath also wrote poems on the false ways that women maintained their beauty in "Face Lift" and "The Rival". The role of gender was a commonality in Plath's writings; often her poems contained an indictment
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Carol
Margaret Houston has interpreted "The Applicant" as a comment on the role of women in society as well as the role of women in the private sphere of society. Houston notes that "“The Applicant” alerts women to the pitfalls of marriage and the way women are expected to provide all manner of
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Critics Tanu Gupta and Anju Sharma, like many other critics, have focused on Plath's indictment on the gender roles of the time and the social hegemony that surrounded this. Gupta and Sharma have detailed "The
Applicant" to be about the loss of the woman's true self as she had to give parts of
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Initially in “The
Applicant”, Plath comments on the idea that women are something to fix a man, asking the applicant what is wrong with them and how can they be fixed. This, is furthered as the personified “it” is presented as the solution. This is a direct condemnation of the social
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the private sphere of society as well as commenting on her direct condemnation of the stereotypes of the public sphere: "how far can one push the boundaries of personification, functionality, and gender roles in the postwar dream kitchen while maintaining its
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of society. Plath ridiculed the role of women in a conventional marriage, which is linked to her marriage to Ted Hughes. Plath and her then husband Ted Hughes were married between 1956-1962 and had two children together. Plath’s second pregnancy ended in a
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against gender norms, "this voice insults her with regularity: an empty head, a naked body, a scenario right out of the
Hallmark anniversary charts, this woman does not even merit the dignity of a feminine personal pronoun, instead, she is an “it”". The
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scenario between a speaker and an addressee about an object" where there is no one clear speaker/addressee as there is an ambiguity that pervades the poem: "The object is the treat in the infantilising space, product in the sales space, daughter in the
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toward men, marriage, and motherhood in , and the guilt she surely felt help to explain the degree to which her poems are associated with suffering. They reflect not only her perception of external reality, but they project her inner reality as well."
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a woman due to the notion that it was "part of a woman’s role to bring teacups and do whatever she was told, given her absence of agency, as demonstrated with the line “And do whatever you tell it.”" Moreira further interprets the applicant as an
224:, particularly in "The Stones" and "Medallion". Plath herself notes that these poems show that "the speaker has utterly lost her sense of identity and relationship to the world". This confessional style of writing is carried on to her writings of
220:". Not long after, Plath committed suicide by gas inhalation in her kitchen while her two children were sleeping. However, prior to writing 'The Applicant', Plath was notorious for her writings on a loss of identity and connection to the world in
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Plath is a confessional poet and has been heavily criticised on integrating the public and private spheres of society. Alongside "The Applicant", poems such as "Daddy" and "Lady Lazarus" are examples of how Plath used public
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in January 1962. In 1962, Plath discovered that Hughes was having an affair and moved herself and her two children into a Yeats flat in London. During this time she wrote "The Applicant" alongside other poems featured in
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of the private and public spheres of society. Gupta and Sharma's interpretation of "The Applicant" is that "women are imposed, hurt, made into puppets, hollow or blank with no identities or no wills. Plath’s
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Plath possesses a “rationally alert intelligence” within her style of writing and the content of her poetry, particularly in poems such as "Lady Lazarus", "Daddy" and "The Applicant".
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and details the loss of identity one feels when adhering to social expectations. The poem focuses on the role of women in a conventional marriage and Plath employs themes such as the
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her first collection of poetry, in October. Plath fell pregnant again, however had a miscarriage in February 1961. Plath later fell pregnant and gave birth to their son
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each of the scenarios but this connection is not "projected onto the speaker" to represent the lack of a relationship between Plath and her father.
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and Plath confessed that Hughes domestically abused her two days before the miscarriage. In 1962, it was discovered that Hughes was having an
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to be released as an objectified body." Moreira's interpretation is linked to Plath's feelings of entrapment within her relationship and society.
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the flourish of triumph, no matter how unconventional her behaviour has become." Wagner-Martin criticises that Plath uses "The Applicant" as an
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and it has been interpreted as a comment on her isolation within that relationship and the lack of power women held in her society.
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herself to fix her male partner. Gupta and Sharma, too, have commented that "The Applicant" makes a
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The Alvarez Generation: Thom Gunn, Geoffrey Hill, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and Peter Porter
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Emotional Intelligence in the Later Poetry of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton and Adrienne Rich
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against gender and this is a theme that is present in "The Applicant" and other works.
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to gender norms. It was written a few days after Sylvia Plath’s decision to divorce
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of marriage through being structured with a "series of threes which invoke
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specifically, the missing body of the female as "the female body lives
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on October 11, 1962. It was first published on January 17, 1963 in
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727:"Transgressing Gender Normativity in Sylvia Plath's Ariel Poems"
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Wagner-Martin, Linda (1999). "Plath's Triumphant Women Poems".
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language" and it was this mixture of various opposites that
984:. Literary Lives. Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 119–132.
889:. Literary Lives. Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 106–118.
925:. Literary Lives. Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 95–105.
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Wagner-Martin, Linda (1999). "Plath's Poems about Women".
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poem that consists of 40 lines. The poem was written with
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that presented themselves within the public and private
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Margaret Freeman has interpreted "The Applicant" as an
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Newnham College, Cambridge, where Sylvia Plath studied
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Wagner-Martin, Linda (1999). "Getting Rid of Daddy".
441:; her critical consciousness of women’s emotional,
188:in London. Plath and Hughes had their first child,
381:of the female is a comment on society and Plath's
616:Wootten, William (June 1, 2015). "Sylvia Plath".
396:Anita Plath Helle comments on Plath's ability to
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620:. Liverpool University Press. pp. 101–128.
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793:Bloom's Modern Critical Views: Sylvia Plath
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296:
292:Assia Wevill
271:conventional
267:reprimanding
256:
240:
225:
222:The Colossus
221:
218:Lady Lazarus
205:
195:The Colossus
193:
165:
163:
160:Sylvia Plath
121:
117:Lady Lazarus
106:
100:
97:Sylvia Plath
93:confessional
88:
86:
31:Sylvia Plath
15:
1253:(2003 film)
676:January 30,
508:January 29,
416:ambivalence
284:miscarriage
232:Description
208:, such as "
130:, condemns
1278:1962 poems
1272:Categories
1237:Otto Plath
1227:(daughter)
1219:Ted Hughes
867:: 142–147.
484:References
403:legibility
387:discontent
374:indictment
347:indictment
263:condemning
243:free verse
158:See also:
140:Ted Hughes
136:conformity
1221:(husband)
671:0261-3077
644:243596172
570:146321251
562:0963-9470
477:exploited
473:energised
471:swirl of
465:holocaust
461:tragedies
338:betrothal
333:discourse
259:satirical
247:quintains
124:satirical
1245:(mother)
1239:(father)
469:rhythmic
447:economic
439:feminine
435:ideology
398:ridicule
360:remedies
325:Anglican
321:sanctity
300:hegemony
128:marriage
54:Language
1212:Related
437:of the
411:mockery
327:church
319:of the
317:mockery
216:" and "
182:England
164:Before
115:" and "
58:English
49:England
46:Country
38:Written
1250:Sylvia
1089:Tulips
996:
937:
901:
833:
799:
701:
669:
642:
632:
599:
568:
560:
443:erotic
428:Gender
288:affair
279:sphere
214:Tulips
1233:(son)
1149:Ariel
1110:Ennui
1075:Daddy
1068:Ariel
1060:Poems
640:S2CID
566:S2CID
329:banns
226:Ariel
210:Daddy
206:Ariel
166:Ariel
113:Daddy
108:Ariel
95:poet
64:Lines
994:ISBN
935:ISBN
899:ISBN
831:ISBN
797:ISBN
699:ISBN
678:2020
667:ISSN
630:ISBN
597:ISBN
558:ISSN
510:2020
445:and
269:the
261:and
212:", "
41:1962
986:doi
927:doi
891:doi
763:hdl
755:doi
622:doi
589:doi
550:doi
180:in
29:by
1274::
992:.
968:^
958:.
933:.
913:^
897:.
873:^
863:.
859:.
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735:^
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556:.
546:14
544:.
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518:^
500:.
67:40
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1045:e
1038:t
1031:v
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907:.
893::
865:3
839:.
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197:,
87:"
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