{"id":77,"date":"2023-05-03T08:12:48","date_gmt":"2023-05-03T12:12:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/the-plath-conservatory\/?p=77"},"modified":"2023-09-05T08:10:45","modified_gmt":"2023-09-05T12:10:45","slug":"orchids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/the-plath-conservatory\/orchids\/","title":{"rendered":"Orchids"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Literary Contexts for Sylvia Plath’s Use of Orchids<\/strong><\/h1>\n

By Sarah Kunkemueller (’23)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Content Warning: this post contains references to severe mental illness and sexual themes.<\/em><\/p>\n

In Sylvia Plath\u2019s poetry, the image of the orchid is traditionally seen as a metaphor for Assia Wevill, the woman with whom Plath\u2019s husband had an affair. Two of her most famous references to orchids come in poems written after her separation in 1962. Orchids derive their name from the Greek word \u03cc\u03c1\u03c7\u03b9\u03c2 (\u00f3rkhis<\/em>), meaning testicle, and their erotically-shaped bulbs make them easy to associate with adultery (Horvath 2021: 86). However, a broader literary context for orchids hints that perhaps Plath\u2019s use of the flowers had another dimension.<\/p>\n

In 19th century England, Victorian society was experiencing an \u201corchidmania,\u201d during which the exotic shape and properties of orchids had turned them into a luxury bloom. During this widespread obsession, evolutionary theory rose to prominence, inspiring fears that plants were more sentient and human than previously understood. Orchids, especially, seemed to be able to sense human honesty, and failed to propagate in the care of insincere botanists. Rising out of these fears was the Victorian genre of the monstrous plant, including the \u201cvampiric\u201d orchids of H.G. Wells and the creepy flowers of Theodore Roethke\u2019s poem \u201cOrchids\u201d (Chang 2019: 161). Orchids took on a bestial, wild association in Plath\u2019s 1961 poem \u201cThe Surgeon at 2 AM\u201d (Plath 2018: 170-1):<\/p>\n

Stenches and colors assail me.
\nThis is the lung-tree.
\nThe orchids are splendid. They spot and coil like snakes.
\nThe heart is a red-bell-bloom, in distress.
\nI am so small
\nIn comparison to these organs!
\nI worm and hack in a purple wilderness.<\/p>\n

These lines depict the orchid as an ailing organ, which writhes and rebels within the body. This poem, which depicts a surgeon replacing the natural landscape of their patient\u2019s body with \u201cpink plastic limb,\u201d is likely inspired by Plath\u2019s own experiences as a patient. After a suicide attempt, Plath experienced improperly administered electroshock therapy, which fundamentally altered her moods and left her as one of the \u201cgrey-faced\u201d patients that line the surgeon\u2019s halls in the poem, nameless and unhealed. This context implies that it is Plath\u2019s body on the table, and the orchid one of her organs. But unlike the concrete imagery of the lungs and the heart, the orchid represents an amorphous \u201cpurple wilderness.\u201d Here, the orchid is a monstrous invader within the body, but also takes the form of a crucial organ; it represents her mental illness.<\/p>\n

After Plath\u2019s separation, however, the orchidian monster began to shift shape in her poetry. The breakdown of her marriage severely affected Plath\u2019s mental health. Wevill appeared in many of her poems as an interloper, sometimes represented as an evil orchid, such as in the 1962 poem \u201cFever 103\u00b0\u201d (Plath 2018: 231):<\/p>\n

Hothouse baby in its crib,
\nThe ghastly orchid
\nHanging its hanging garden in the air,
\nDevilish leopard!
\nRadiation turned it white
\nAnd killed it in an hour.<\/p>\n

During this poem, inspired by a real fever of Plath\u2019s, her body is rapidly deteriorating. As her fever intensifies, she undergoes a series of rapid transformations\u2014as Plath critic Al Alvarez describes it,\u00a0 \u201cbaby becomes the orchid, the spotted orchid the leopard, the beast of prey the adultress; by which time the fever has become a kind of atomic radiation\u201d (Alvarez 1966: 70)\u2014with the orchid overwhelming her body before the nuclear devastation allows her, in the poem\u2019s second half, to reflect more clearly on her relationship with her husband. Wevill, as the \u201clecher\u2019s kiss\u201d which incited this illness, is represented through the menacing and erotic image of the orchid. Thus, Plath links her internal torment and Wevill\u2019s treachery together through this image. This is consistent with the final representation of the orchid, in the 1962 poem \u201cBurning the Letters\u201d (Plath 2018: 204-5):<\/p>\n

And a name with black edges
\nWilts at my foot,
\nSinuous orchis
\nIn a nest of root-hairs and boredom\u2013
\nPale eyes, patent leather gutturals!
\nWarm rain greases my hair, extinguishes nothing.<\/p>\n

In this excerpt, as Plath literally burns her husband\u2019s love poems and letters to Wevill, the flower\u2019s \u201croot hairs and boredom\u201d are an \u201cinvagination\u201d of Wevill\u2019s body (Bundtzen 1998: 447).\u00a0The use of \u201csinuous\u201d to describe the orchid implies sneakery and malice, but is also very similar to the\u00a0 \u201csinew\u201d of connective tissue, linking Plath\u2019s body to her husband\u2019s and his lover\u2019s. As she lights the letters, she destroys the physical evidence of their love, harming their romantic connection and improving her emotional state. As she gains control of their written history, she causes the orchid to wilt, representing a personal triumph over both the external and internal monsters the orchid represents.<\/p>\n

\n

Works Cited<\/b><\/p>\n

Alvarez, A. 1966. \u201cSylvia Plath.\u201d TriQuarterly<\/i> 7: 65\u201374.<\/p>\n

Bundtzen, Lynda K. 1998. \u201cPoetic Arson and Sylvia Plath\u2019s \u2018Burning the Letters.\u2019\u201d Contemporary Literature<\/i> 39 (3): 434\u201351.<\/p>\n

Chang, Elizabeth. 2019. \u201cThe Sentient Specimen Returns.\u201d In\u00a0Novel Cultivations: Plants in British Literature of the Global Nineteenth Century<\/em>. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press.<\/p>\n

Horvath, Brooke. 2021. \u201c\u2018Orchids\u2019: Undomesticating the Greenhouse.\u201d In A Field Guide to the Poetry of Theodore Roethke<\/em>. William Barillas, ed. Pp. 86-91. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, Swallow Press.<\/p>\n

Plath, Sylvia. 2018. The Collected Poems<\/em>. Reprint edition. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics.<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Literary Contexts for Sylvia Plath’s Use of Orchids By Sarah Kunkemueller (’23) Content Warning: this post contains references to severe mental illness and sexual themes. In Sylvia Plath\u2019s poetry, the image of the orchid is traditionally seen as a metaphor for Assia Wevill, the woman with whom Plath\u2019s husband had an affair. Two of her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1188,"featured_media":39,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/the-plath-conservatory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/the-plath-conservatory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/the-plath-conservatory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/the-plath-conservatory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1188"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/the-plath-conservatory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/the-plath-conservatory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":317,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/the-plath-conservatory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions\/317"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/the-plath-conservatory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/the-plath-conservatory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/the-plath-conservatory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/the-plath-conservatory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}