‘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 dicecup..’ (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
Sources
Bere, 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.