Spinster, followed by questions

Here's Sylvia Plath's poem "Spinster" again.

For the blog, read and work this poem. With your comments, engage in a discussion of the overall symbolism of the poem as well as the imagery and figurative language the poet uses.

Just in case, I'm appending the text questions as a sort of guide to analysis. THEY ARE NOT HOMEWORK!!!! Just blog in the good old-fashioned way…

Spinster

Now this particular girl
During a ceremonious April walk
With her latest suitor
Found herself, of a sudden, intolerably struck
By the birds' irregular babel
And the leaves' litter.

By this tumult afflicted, she
Observed her lover's gestures unbalance the air,
His gait stray uneven
Through a rank wilderness of fern and flower.
She judged petals in disarray,
The whole season, sloven.

How she longed for winter then! ——
Scrupulously austere in its order
Of white and black
Ice and rock, each sentiment within border,
And heart's frosty discipline
Exact as a snowflake.

But here —— a burgeoning
Unruly enough to pitch her five queenly wits
Into vulgar motley ——
A treason not to be borne. Let idiots
Reel giddy in bedlam spring:
She withdrew neatly.

And round her house she set
Such a barricade of barb and check
Against mutinous weather
As no mere insurgent man could hope to break
With curse, fist, threat
Or love, either.

— Sylvia Plath

The five wits: the five senses; also, sometimes, the five qualities or faculties: common wit, imagination, fantasy, estimation, and memory.

Questions for study—

1. What are the various meanings of the word “spinster?” How does it work as a title to this poem?

2. Explore the multiple denotations and/or connotations attached to these words: particular, ceremonious, suitor, struck, litter, rank, sloven, austere, motley.

3. Compare the poet’s choice of these words to possible synonyms: racket or turmoil rather than tumult; hubbub rather than babel; flourishing rather than burgeoning; rebellious rather than insurgent; spike rather than barb; disobedient rather than mutinous.

4. What sort of pattern, if any, do you perceive in this poem? Is it as pronounced as in “Pathedy of Manners”? Is it unpredictable or erratic? Is there a rhyme scheme?

5. What, expressed in one or two sentences, is this poem about? What are the various meanings of the word “spinster?” How does it work as a title to this poem?

6. Explore the multiple denotations and/or connotations attached to these words: particular, ceremonious, suitor, struck, litter, rank, sloven, austere, motley.

7. Compare the poet’s choice of these words to possible synonyms: racket or turmoil rather than tumult; hubbub rather than babel; flourishing rather than burgeoning; rebellious rather than insurgent; spike rather than barb; disobedient rather than mutinous.

8. What sort of pattern, if any, do you perceive in this poem? Is it as pronounced as in “Pathedy of Manners”? Is it unpredictable or erratic? Is there a rhyme scheme?

9. What, expressed in one or two sentences, is this poem about?