Melmcguinness's Stage 6 English Blog

Module C: Conflicting Perspectives

Perspective denotes a way of viewing the world, and significantly influences the ways in which responders are positioned with regard to events, personalities or situations. Throughout his anthology Birthday Letters, which is an address to his dead wife Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes develops a perspective which cultivates the sympathy of the responder. Conflicting perspectives are evident in the interplay between memory and hindsight, the opposing personas of Hughes and Plath, and the inconsistency between appearance and reality. The form and content of this anthology is indicative of Hughes’ attempt to publicly impose his perspective upon his relationship with Plath; a perspective which is largely unchallengeable in Plath’s absence. Although the title ‘Birthday Letters’ has positive connotations and implies a level of intimacy as well as truth, in actuality the anthology is motivated by, and is a deeply subjective exploration of, death. Inherent within each of the poems is a tone of helplessness, sometimes of regret, which serves to minimise Hughes’ role in the events surrounding Plath’s suicide.

The conflicting perspectives which arise from Hughes’ dual roles as composer and persona in Birthday Letters are reflected in the interplay between memory and hindsight. In “Fulbright Scholars” this interplay manifests itself in the tension created by the poem’s opening with, and the repeated juxtaposition of, rhetorical questioning with answers, for instance where he asks “Were you among them? I studied it…”. This questioning and speculative tone gives the impression that Hughes’ perspective is truthful, when in reality his reconstruction of the event is affected by his knowledge of the future. Memories are informed and given significance by hindsight, as when in “The Shot” Hughes reflects on how “Vague as mist, I did not even know / I had been hit”. The use of the past tense in “The Shot” further emphasises Hughes’ dual motives, as he seeks to address Plath while deflecting criticism of his unfaithfulness to her.

While within the poems Hughes is reflecting on past events and personalities, as composer he reflects on what he has since learned of Plath. He notes in “Fulbright Scholars” her “VeronicaLakebang. Not what it hid” and in “Your Paris” reflects on how “You gave me no hint…you expected / The final face-to-face revelation”. In hindsight, Hughes realises that his vision ofParisas “The capital of the…old nightmare” was in effect a metaphor for Plath’s tortured state of mind. However, at the time he could not possibly have been aware that “What walked beside me was flayed”. Similarly, in “The Shot”, Hughes realises that Plath’s “sob-sodden Kleenex / And your Saturday night panics” were symptomatic of the mental illness which he later realised she suffered from. Thus within the poems, conflict exists between Hughes’ perspective of Plath at the beginning of their relationship, and what he later came to realise was her true nature.

Within and among the poems, the conflicting perspectives of the personas of Hughes and Plath are highlighted by the juxtaposition of the personal pronouns “you” and “I”. When referring to himself in “Fulbright Scholars”, Hughes’s tone suggests innocence and neutrality. The tension between the personal pronouns when he recalls how “I noticed you…I weighed you up” is indicative of the conflict which exists both within and between the works of Hughes and Plath. In “The Shot”, Hughes highlights his inability to save Plath, hypothesising that “In my position, the right witchdoctor / Might have caught you…”, and characterises himself as an ashamed victim when he admits that “I managed / A wisp of your hair…” Hughes claims to have been similarly helpless in “Your Paris”, portraying himself as insignificant to Plath, synonymous with “Roofs, a traffic bollard, a bottle, me”. The power of this simple language reverberates through the responder as a representation of Hughes’ hurt.

Hughes’ perspective of Plath is a negative one, and he characterises her as both superficial with “Your lingo / Always like an emergency burn-off” and self-destructive as a “trajectory perfect” bullet. Hughes accusingly refers to Plath as “you”, and utilises high modality language such as “exaggerated” in “Fulbright Scholars” to convey the negative aspects of her character. In “The Shot”, Hughes constructs an image of Plath as irrational and destructive, accusingly asserting that “Your worship needed a god / Where it lacked one, it found one”. The conflict between the personal pronouns is perhaps most overt in “Your Paris”, where he juxtaposes the concepts of “Your Paris” and “My Paris” to highlight the conflicting perspectives inherent within their relationship and Plath’s character. In allowing “your” to dominate the poem, Hughes is perhaps suggesting that Plath monopolised both their Parisian holiday and their relationship. However, through so harshly describing Plath, Hughes to a certain extent alienates the responder. The utilisation of contrasting personal pronouns conveys the alienation between Plath’s and Hughes’ perspectives, while enforcing his own.

Throughout Birthday Letters Hughes explores the conflict between appearance and reality, holding that his own perspective reflects reality while Plath’s was a superficial construction. He overvalues his own perspective, and his anger at being initially unaware of Plath’s depression is conveyed through the use of sarcasm when he comments that her hair “would appear blonde”. The supposedly superficial nature of Plath is emphasised by her “exaggerated American / Grin for the cameras, the judges, the strangers, the frighteners”. Similarly, in “Your Paris” Plath’s bubbly, almost frenzied façade is portrayed through the simile “Your lingo / Always like an emergency burn-off…Protected you / And yourParis”. Hughes’ and Plath’s differing perspectives ofParis act as an extended metaphor, with her “American”Paris symbolising her outward persona. This is reflected in “The Shot” where Plath attempts to hide the reality of her condition from the outside world “under your hair done this way and done that way”.

Through his poems, Hughes asserts that he had no comprehension of the fear and depression which pervaded Plath’s character. In “Fulbright Scholars” the photograph reflects how appearance does not necessarily reflect truth. Hughes attempts to position the responder to his perspective and evoke a sense of sympathy when he asks if the Fulbright Scholars were “With their luggage? It seems unlikely”. By extension, “it seems unlikely” that he could have discerned the true nature of what Plath carried with her. In “The Shot”, the imagery of the “gold-jacketed, solid silver / Nickel-tipped” bullet as a metaphor for Plath’s destructive nature compliments the biblical allusion to “the first fresh peach I had ever tasted peach”. Both convey destruction and loss of innocence. In “Your Paris”, Hughes recounts how Plath’s “gushy burblings” were filled “with conjectural, hopelessly wrong meanings”, reflecting his inability to understand Plath’s perspective or her troubled character.

Conflicting perspectives are inherent both within and among the poems of Birthday Letters, as Hughes reflects on his highly controversial relationship with Plath. Highly defensive and accusatory, his position is made more influential by the fact that the deceased Plath is unable to refute his perspective. His ‘letters’ to her are all the more powerful for their poetic form, which allows them to portray nuanced layers of meaning and emotion in such a way that the responder finds Hughes’ philandering less appalling and Plath’s actions all the more so. Integral to Hughes’ portrayal of his perspective is his narratorial voice, which both conveys and elicits an emotional response to the conflict that exists within and between the poems, and within and between Hughes and Plath.

	melmcguinness on Ted Hughes~ “Your Paris…
	Karen on Ted Hughes~ “Your Paris…
	freight and volume g… on “Fulbright Scholars…
	Sally on Module C Birthday Letters: Wri…
	melmcguinness on Ted Hughes~ “Your Paris…

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