Preview

Before You Were Mine Sylvia Plath

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
538 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Before You Were Mine Sylvia Plath
Compare how Duffy & Plath present “Family relationships” in “Ariel & Mean Time”
Carol Ann Duffy and Sylvia Plath have written aboutfamily relationships in a positive view as well as in a negative way too, in poems Medusa and Before you were mine, whether it’s about in favour or against family Love and relationships. In this extract there are four poems written by Carol Ann Duffy and Sylvia Plath. Which are, “Brothers” and “Lady Lazarus” including “Medusa” and “Before You Were Mine”. All four poems discuss the issue of family love and relationships well, from two different points of views and thoughts about families. Sylvia has written “Medusa” which creates a negative feeling as soon as it starts. Whereas Duffy has written “Before You Were Mine” and this poem describes the thoughts of a daughter when she is thinking and looking back at her mother’s youth.
…show more content…

“Off that land spit” gives a feeling as if the speaker is spitting at us, shows Plath’s feelings about being a daughter of such woman who Plath does not get along with a lot. “Did I escape, I wonder?” and how she feels about whether she would ever be able to get rid of this blood relationship with her mother. As she is fully ashamed to be her mother’s daughter, she wonders would she ever get escaped from this feeling of being trapped with her mothers’ blood in her. “Old barnacled umbilicus, Atlantic cable”, emphasizes the connection, the umbilicus cord, which connects mother and the baby together before a baby is

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The poem “Before You Were Mine” by Carol Ann Duffy, focuses on the fact that 10 years before she was born her mum was a carefree, fun loving character. Who would hang about with her friends and how Duffy almost feels guilty for coming along and making her mother make the decision to let go of the life with her friends for a more grown up existence. Where as in “Mother Any Distance” by Simon Armitage, Armitage is saying about how his mother has to loosen the apron strings and let her son fly the nest to have the lifestyle a person of his age needs. However the poem itself focuses on how he needs to be let go but still will always need his mum, no matter how old he is. It shows how leaving his mum is a daunting thing and how she has been an integral part of his whole life.…

    • 1478 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Gwen Harwood’s poetry focuses on the concepts of loss and consolation, which, through her exploration of universal themes and deft use of poetic and literary techniques, has continued to engage readers over the ages. My understanding of her poems resonates with these ideas about them, as does it the notion that Harwood’s poetry examines ideas of the growth towards maturity, understanding and wisdom, and the connection this shares with the conventional images of youth and age. The poems “Father and Child” and “Mother Who Gave Me Life” are prime examples of these core ideas being conveyed explicitly through Harwood’s language, context and construction of poems.…

    • 933 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Imagine being abused, hit, yelled at, and left alone without the most important feeling of love. Growing up without a shoulder to cry on or a hand to hold. How would these actions sculpt you as an individual? Would they compel you to do the same actions to your own loved ones, or show them love and compassion, which your life had lacked? Poets tend to write pieces of literature as reflections back on their personal lives, describing situations that stay afloat in their heads. Sharon Olds’ happened to be one of these poets, who expressed her upsetting past relationship with her father and current relationships with her children through these works of art. In Olds’ first poems, she…

    • 1602 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘Medusa’ and Robert Browning’s ‘My Last Duchess’ are two entirely different poems in many respects. Written in entirely different eras, some would say that they are as opposite as poetry could be. However, their central characters have some remarkable similarities that strike a chord with the reader and represent a common theme.…

    • 2124 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Gwen Harwood Essay Example

    • 1185 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Opportunities for an individual to develop understanding of themselves stem from the experiences attained on their journey through life. The elements which contribute to life are explored throughout Gwen Harwood’s poems, At Mornington and Mother Who Gave Me Life, where the recollection of various events are presented as influences on the individual’s perception of the continuity of life. Both poems examine the connections between people and death in relation to personal connections with the persona’s father or mother. By encompassing aspects of human nature and life’s journey, Harwood addresses memories and relationships which contribute to one’s awareness of life.…

    • 1185 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Sylvia Plath’s poem “Mirror” and Gwen Harwood’s poem “In the Park” explore the concept of loss diversely. Plath’s poem surrounds the distress regarding the inevitability of aging and its impact while Harwood’s poem explores how the truth cannot be hidden when faced with motherhood.…

    • 382 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Sylvia Plath, an extremely influential and beloved female poet who lived in the mid-20th century, was the author of numerous poems as well as the semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar. Her work, especially that of her adult life, heavily reflects the darkness and depression that she dealt with. Plath, born in October of 1932, began writing at a very young age. Her first published work, titled simply “Poem”, was published before she had even turned ten. Plath wrote many short stories during her early years, and she even won several writing competitions. One of these was a fiction contest that earned her a position as guest editor at Mademoiselle…

    • 1079 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Margaret not only writes novels but also expresses her feelings and views through poems. Most of her poems reflect a lot of dismay and loss, which is connected to the death of her father and “the realization of her mortality” ("Margaret Atwood," Poetry Foundation).…

    • 1190 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    In your response you should refer to at least two poems from the “Birthday Letters” Anthology and the ONE related text, “Sylvia.”…

    • 1375 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    ‘Valentine’ is a controversial love poem written by Carol Ann Duffy. Throughout the poem the poetess compares love to an onion and she does that by using a variety of techniques such as imagery, symbolism, word choice and structure. All these techniques justify why Valentine is an unusual love-poem as they help the poet express her different point of view. Overall, the poem is unusual as its title mistakenly leads the reader into thinking that the poem will be typical. I felt deeply moved by the poem’s s ability to arise thoughtfulness and reflexion in the reader.…

    • 1336 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Gwen Harwood’s mournful laments Mother Who Gave Me Life and Father and Child explore the challenging ideas of nostalgia and mortality to provide valued texts.…

    • 770 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The poems of Theatre by Kate Llewellyn and Even If You Weren’t My Father by Camillo Sbarbaro express the different life experiences of individuals. The aspects of family, love and memory can be viewed in both positive and negative lights through these poems. By using a range of different experiences felt by the poet the audience can become connected to them by human experience.…

    • 802 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Poems Essay

    • 616 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In “Beauty”, another poem set in a bitter yet sweet tone, the author writes from perspective of a sister of a once beautiful young lady.…

    • 616 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Cut by Sylvia Plath

    • 1652 Words
    • 7 Pages

    The context in which the poem is taking place is in England, isolated away from all her family and friends, during the 1950's where Plath was the victim of a male-orientated sexist society and her poetry a choreography of female wounds. Values portrayed through "Cut" are Plath's life of hardships from separation, divorce and as a single mother and poet. Through the remarkable consistent images that all "flow" from her very ordinary "accident" it is evident that this poem showcases a history of bloodshed through war, death, injury and maiming in the Western world and Plath's family history…

    • 1652 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Write a close analysis of 40 lines of poetry by Carol Ann Duffy and discuss how far these lines reflect her view on love as presented in “The Worlds Wife”…

    • 1603 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays