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Hedges on the Post-War New England Landscape<\/h1>\nHedges on the Post-War New England Landscape<\/h1>\nBy Madyson Grant (’25)<\/strong><\/p>\n Sylvia Plath\u2019s works are often reduced to the framing of her own biography\u2014her dating life, her depression, her suicide. Plath\u2019s work is never offered the opportunity to breathe outside of that space; to be read as critique rather than confessional.\u00a0 \u201cThe Moon and the Yew Tree\u201d is a perfect example of this nearsighted reading of Plath\u2019s work. The yew tree, also known as a species from the genus Taxus<\/em>, from the family Taxaceae<\/em>, makes three named appearances in Plath\u2019s work. Each time, it is described in reference to her father and usually only thought to be a shallow metaphor\u2014a tree of darkness, looming just like her dad (e.g., see Manners 1996). Approaching Plath’s work through a botanical lens, as a plant commonly found in the tended Massachusetts and England landscapes she lived in, opens up new possibilities for literary criticism. The yew may not refer to her father so much as it does her 1950s horticultural contexts.<\/p>\n The yew presents a symbol of constraint for Plath. Growing up in Wellesley, Massachusetts in the 1940s and 50s, she occupied a post-World War II suburbia with limited botanical range. By that time, the 1942\u20131945 boom of the wartime victory gardens was on the decline. No longer were people intent on growing fruits and vegetables for the war effort, instead favoring heavily manicured lawns\u2014impenetrable, grass-filled expanses with little to no interspecies plant mingling (Berall 1966; see also Robbins 2007). The only diversity allowed among the suburban landscape was with flowering plants\u2014and even then, most homeowners stuck to the same formula\u2014dahlias, roses, and geraniums, to name a few (Morgan 2022).<\/p>\n Yews would\u2019ve been among this lineup\u2014not as flowering plants, considering that they are non-flowering gymnosperms\u2014but as hedges in place of the usual 1950s white picket fence. According to University of Missouri plant scientist David Trinklein, the tree best-suited to the New England landscape is an English\/Japanese yew cross, first cultivated in the early 1900s in Massachusetts by horticulturist T.D. Hatfield (Trinklein 2020). Plath grew up in Massachusetts as well, in the home state for the most commonly-known landscaping yew, and would\u2019ve seen many yew trees and hedges around her local Wellesley suburbs. Later in life, she also had some outside of her home in Devon, England, the place from which she produced her novel The Bell Jar<\/em> and some of her most noteworthy poem, including the aforementioned \u201cThe Moon and the Yew Tree.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s worth mentioning that the yew featured in her suburban landscape was used as a hedge rather than allowed to grow as a tree: a yew that is regulated and trimmed becomes a hedge. Morton Arboretum Plant Manager Julie Janoski describes how to prune yews in an interview on their horticultural history, \u201cYews can tolerate frequent shearing with an electric hedge trimmer or shears, making them useful for the geometric hedges that were common in landscape designs of a few decades ago\u201d (Botts 2020). She adds, \u201cThey will rebound and put on new growth after shearing, which many evergreens won\u2019t.\u201d The yew, a paragon of immortality\u2014tamed for the suburbs. It\u2019s a cruelty Plath would\u2019ve been aware of each time she returned to the image of the yew in her poetry.<\/p>\n In conversation with the yew tree, Plath\u2019s works become something larger than her father\u2014their critiques are not just relegated to the self\u2019s mourning, but rather also to the oppression of self-identity in post-World War II America, especially in the suburbs. Because of her awareness of both the history of yews and her life growing up with them nearby, she would\u2019ve understood how consistently a housewife must work to tamp down the wild ranging limbs of a yew tree, constantly set to grow past the limits of the hedge. As Janoski describes: \u201cAlthough yews can be sheared into boxy hedges or geometric shapes, it\u2019s not natural for them. Both the Japanese yew and the English yew will grow into trees 30 or 40 feet tall and wide if they get the chance.\u201d To be confined is unnatural\u2014and Plath, considering her feminist poetry of \u201cDaddy,\u201d \u201cLady Lazarus,\u201d \u201cAriel,\u201d and of course The Bell Jar<\/em>, would identify with this commonplace repression. In the end, the yew becomes not Plath\u2019s father, but Plath herself\u2014hemmed in yet immortal, constantly reaching to grow outside the bounds of the expectations placed upon her.<\/p>\n Works Cited<\/strong><\/p>\n Berrall, Julia S. 1966. The Garden: An Illustrated History<\/em>, New York: Viking Press.<\/p>\n Botts, Beth. 2020. \u201cYew Shrubs, Hardy and Attractive, Are the Stuff of Ancient Legends and a Great Addition to Midwest Yards.\u201d Chicago Tribune<\/em>, 19 Dec. 2020, https:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/lifestyles\/home-and-garden\/ct-home-garden-morton-1217-20201219-rjk2cdnchbci7cr5ttx5cirjsi-story.html. Accessed August 27, 2023.<\/p>\n Manners, Marilyn. 1996. \u201cThe Doxies of Daughterhood: Plath, Cixous, and the Father.\u201d\u00a0Comparative Literature<\/i> 48 (2): 150\u201371.<\/p>\n Morgan, Jenny. 2022. \u201cThe Age of the Atomic Garden: Trends That Shaped Gardens in the 1950s.\u201d North Shore Heritage Preservation Society. August 27, 2022. https:\/\/www.northshoreheritage.org\/blog\/2022\/8\/16\/the-age-of-the-atomic-garden-trends-that-shaped-gardens-in-the-1950s<\/a>. Accessed August 27, 2023.<\/p>\n Plath, Sylvia. 2005. The Bell Jar<\/i>. Princeton, NJ: Harper Perennial Modern Classics.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2014\u2014. 2018. The Collected Poems<\/i>. Reprint edition. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics.<\/p>\n Robbins, Paul. 2007. Lawn People: How Grasses, Weeds, and Chemicals Make Us Who We Are<\/i>. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.<\/p>\n
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