The Maturation of a Maternal Bond in Morning Song Essay examples -- Mo

The Maturation of a Maternal Bond in Morning Song What is the only residue between the emotions of an ordinary smiling revolutionary mother in the 1960s and those of Sylvia Plath when she writes her melancholy Morning Song soon after her childs stock? While most new mothers pretended all was well, Plath published her true feelings. Simply because society held that all new mothers should be filled with immense joy after giving birth does not mean that they actually were. Plath had the courage to admit she was confused, and her poem, Morning Song, focuses on one womans mixed senses of apprehension and of awe upon the birth of her child which create two feelings of separation and affection that contend to determine the strength of her maternal bond. The first line of Plaths poem, Love set you going like a fat gilded watch, shows the emotional forces conflicting within the mothers mind. The fact that she chooses the word love rather than a more carnal image like sex shows that th e infant was conceived from an national bond and creates a positive connection between mother and child. Using simile, a fat gold watch, changes the impact of this line. While the word fat alludes to the fumbling nature of the infant, the word gold represents the child as precious and valued, and the word watch conjures to mind the seemingly endless task of raising a child. In her book The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir asserts that a whole complex of economical and sentimental considerations makes the baby seem either a hindrance or a jewel, exclusively Plaths fat gold watch suggests a newborn can be both (509). Detachment caused by the mothers sense of apprehension is evident as she says to her child, naked statu... ...h which she receives the babys cries suggests that she is touched by the babys humanity, its unique individuality. In Morning Song, the mothers bond to her infant strengthens as she tries to deny it. While attempting to prove that she has no connection to thi s new life, the bonds run undeniable as the infant opposes her with his or her clear vowels. This handful of notes is all that is needed to dispel all pretenses of indifference toward the child. As the cries rise like balloons so too, it seems, do the mothers spirits and attitude toward the new life she has brought into the world. Works Cited de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. New York McClelland and Stewart, 1953. Plath, Sylvia. Morning Song. Literature Reading, Reacting, Writing. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell, eds. 3rd ed. Orlando Harcourt, 1997. 690.