19 pages • 38 minutes read
The Disquieting Muses
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Symbols & Motifs
The Green Balloon
The speaker describes the world their mother inhabits: “a green balloon bright with a million / Flowers and bluebirds that never were” (Line 43-44). Throughout the poem the character of the mother takes on a mythical quality, even in what we can assume is her real life. She makes up stories with happy endings, and teaches her children chants to keep the storms at bay. As the speaker grows up, they begin to understand the fragile world their mother has created around themselves. The use of green and “bluest air” (Line 42) bring to mind a globe or a map, as well as the impossible idyllicism of a clear summer’s day. The mother’s world is inhabited with impossible beautiful flowers and creatures brought in from a fairy tale world.
Although the speaker is describing the peace and beauty of this place, there is a cynicism here that wasn’t present in the earlier stanzas; this suggests the speaker is going through a period of disenchantment from their mother’s charms of protection and stories. The speaker describes their mother’s world as “a soap-bubble” (Line 47), suggesting a fragility. Were the speaker or their mother to move too quickly, to question it, the bubble would burst.
The mother calls out to their child to join them in the perfectly constructed world: “Come here!” (Line 47). At this moment the green balloon is drifting away from the speaker, putting more and more distance between the two characters. The reader understands that the speaker is making a choice to either close that distance and reunite with their mother, or lose her entirely. Instead of following, the speaker turns away and faces the figures that have haunted them since childhood. This is not a simple childhood argument but a conscious choice that cannot be undone, changing their relationship forever.
Light and Shadow
The poem uses repeated motifs and suggestions of light and shadow in contrast to create an effective juxtaposition of light and darkness in the speaker’s life. In the third stanza, the speaker’s family goes through a ferocious storm, during which they occupy themselves by chanting a charm to keep Thor’s fury at bay. Thor is, of course, deeply associated with storms and in particular with lightning; the storm itself is already a play of light and darkness, and the events of the scene contrast the hope of two brave children with the despair of the twelve broken windows.
In the following stanza, light and shadow become more concrete. The speaker’s schoolmates are “Blinking flashlights like fireflies / And singing the glowworm song” (Lines 26-27). Already we have three words associated with light, with one being a literal light source within the scene. The speaker, however, avoids the light, staying instead within the shadow of their faceless companions. As their mother cries in disappointment, the shadow grows even longer, overtaking the light. Finally, the stanza closes with “the lights went out” (Line 32). The scene, which opened with images of flashlights and fireflies and glowworms, closes in complete darkness.
Later, after the speaker has separated from their mother, light and shadow become indecipherable: “Day now, night now” (Line 49) the shadows cast by the three figures remain unchanging. The poet describes the “shadows long in the setting sun” (Line 53), although the sun is caught in stasis. It “never brightens or goes down” (Line 54), keeping the speaker forever caught in an unchanging moment between the light and the dark.
The Faceless Ladies
The three eponymous figures of the poem feature heavily throughout the speaker’s life, from birth until the present moment. Although Giorgio de Chirico’s painting was originally believed to portray two muses alongside the god Apollo—two women and a man—Sylvia Plath interprets the figures as three women. This may be because the image of three women is prevalent throughout cultural history, as seen in the three witches of Macbeth, the three fates of Greek mythology, and the archetype of three goddesses or three stages of a woman’s life. Plath describes the figures as she saw them in the painting: “With heads like darning-eggs” (Line 6) and “Mouthless, eyeless, with stitched bald head” (Line 16) but also brings her own perspective.
In Plath’s poem, the figures become symbols of the speaker’s mental illness, or “disquiet,” that has followed them all their life. In the opening stanza, they reference the curse of Sleeping Beauty—only instead of being cursed with a short life, they are cursed to be forever followed by three guardians, or “Godmothers” (Line 31). They are present at the speaker’s christening, during a childhood memory of a storm, and then in another memory of a school performance. Here in this fourth stanza, the speaker’s mother cries in disappointment and the shadows of the figures grow longer in response. The reader sees for the first time how the speaker’s actions and environment directly influence the faceless ladies.
The fifth stanza sees a turning point as the speaker turns away from their mother’s lessons and learns new skills “From muses unhired by you, dear mother” (Line 40). Here the speaker begins to find comfort in the figures, rather than fear. The idea continues through the next stanza as the speaker chooses their “traveling companions” (Line 48) instead of following their mother into her perfect world. By the time the poem reaches its close, the speaker’s life has been entwined with the constant presence of the faceless muses, their relationship unchanging. The reader understands that although the figures have not become a positive influence on the speaker’s life, the speaker has reached a point of acceptance and made peace with living in their shadow.
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By Sylvia Plath
