Year 12 IB Extended Essays 2017

attempts support the theory that Tulips 1 is an autobiographical account of Plath waking up in a

hospital bed after one of her failed attempts. The poem contains a reflective commentary on

both physical and emotional abuse, which a series of previously unpublished letters (that are

to be released in 2017) prove to have been a major issue in Plath’s marriage to Ted Hughes

(Sherwin, 2017). The poem refers to the way in which the vividness and colourful essence of

the tulips put her off and bother her with the opening line “the tulips are too excitable, it is

winter here”. Many people consider flowers to be beautiful – gestures of love - and it is an

uncommon opinion to oppose the receiving of flowers as the speaker does in stanza four stating

she “didn’t want any flowers”. The rejection of the flowers suggests that the speaker does not

want to feel the emotions of love and kindness or perhaps can’t - planting the seed and tone of

an unhappy, depressed speaker. Identifying the speaker as Plath, shows the way in which her

abusive relationship with Hughes is revealed in her letters, leading to a rejection of any type of

rapprochement or love from other human beings. The second line of the poem reveals an

inkling of the dull and hostile feeling of their relationship when she says, “Look how white

everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in”. The narrator here is commenting on the inadequacy

or blandness of their relationship where she feels oppressed and “snowed-in”; a metaphor for

her trapped and frozen state of mind and the doomed relationship.

The constant repetition of the description of the hospital room in its bleakness , sterility,

emptiness and comparing it against winter, and snow, depict the sensation that she is trapped

and in a state of stasis. The blank surroundings contrast with the tulips themselves: bright

colours of black, green, red and white. The contrasting colours represent the processes of

Plath’s life. She first mentions the white tulip; bleak and detached – then a menagerie of

colours, rapidly intense, then back to the peaceful white. The aura of the room, lets her become

‘nothing’, which she yearns for, calling it peaceful and free as she has become nothing. Her