‘A Pink Wool Knitted Dress’ by Ted Hughes

Intro and background

Published in ‘Birthday Letters’ (1998)

In a letter to Plath biographer, Anne Stevenson, a ‘simple wish to recapture for myself, if I can, the privacy of my own conclusions about Sylvia, and to remove the contaminations of everyone else’s.’

Wedding day

Themes = (awestruck) love, inferiority, the fantastic

Foreshadowing, structure, juxtaposition, syntax

Inferiority and being in awe

Inferiority, poles apart..creatively..social class..culture?

-’not quite the Frog Prince. Maybe the Swineherd/Stealing this daughter’s pedigree dreams..’ (12-13)

-’St George of the Chimney Sweeps’ (23)

-’I had not even confided my theft of you/To a closest friend’ (32-33)

o Awestruck love

-’You were transfigured. So slender and new..a nodding spray of wet lilac..you were an ocean depth/Brimming with God..I stood subjected..’ (penultimate stanza)

Foreshadowing, pre-ordained, destiny

Poem written 30 years after Plath’s death – influence of hindsight

-’before anything had smudged anything’ (2)

‘rain’, ‘black’, ‘thrice-dyed black, exhausted/Just hanging onto itself’ (stanza 2)

‘My wedding, like Nature, wanted to hide.’ (18)

‘Wrestling to contain your flames..their tear-flames..shaken in a dice-cup..’ (last stanza)

Fantasy and riches

Jewels and precious stones a common motif in Hughes’ work together with fantastical otherworldly elements

-’Frog Prince’, ‘Swineherd’ (12)

-’it had better be Westminster Abbey’ (20)

‘the heavens open/And how riches, ready to drop upon us..spellbound future.’ (penultimate stanza)

-’your eye-pupils – great cut jewels..truly like big jewels’ (last stanza)

Structure and juxtaposition

Structure = begins and end with the visual imagery of Plath in this pink wool knitted dress (1st and last stanza).

Then juxtaposes this with the image of himself, his ‘umbrella’, ‘drab’ tie, ‘exhausted’ jacket (2nd stanza)

Then contining the juxtaposition between him and their lofty ambitions (‘Westminster Abbey’, 4th stanza)

Contrast continues – then onto penultimate stanza with her obvious joy and emotion vs his ‘standing subjected’ (focus is on her)

Ends poem with the image of her in the dress again, in the ‘chancel’ (50), ‘wrestling’ with her ‘flames’ and holding up her cup of tears to him (offering? Cry for help? Vows of marriage?)

Syntax and end-stopping

Frequent use of end-stopping apart from final stanza

Symbolic, representational of their tumultuous relationship of their courtship, marriage, entire relationship

Also reflective of Hughes’ retrospective

SourcesBere, Carol. "Carol Bere: "'Owning the Facts of His Life': Ted Hughes's The Birthday Letters"" Earth-Moon: Information about Ted Hughes: "'Owning the Facts of His Life'" The Literary Review, 1998. Web. 25 Aug. 2014.

 

Delightly, D. "Book Me…." Book Me. N.p., 18 Mar. 2011. Web. 25 Aug. 2014.

 

Pollitt, Katha. "Peering into the Bell Jar." New York Times 1 Mar. 1998: n. pag. 1. 1 Mar. 1998. Web.