One of the greatest women poets ever breathed in the Earth, Sylvia Plath was a class apart in her works, both in poetry and novels. The poem, “Edge” was written by her only before six days of her suicide and it can also be placed in the genre of confessional poetry that she perfected. The signs of melancholy lurk large in the poem and many scholars believe that it even deals with the question of motherhood which she failed to deliver to her kids.
The poem “Edge” is from her first collection of poems “Arial”, though it was one of her last composed poems. As it is one of her last composed poems, there are a lot of discussions surrounding the influences of her near imminent death on the sad melancholic tone of the poem and is it is probable that the poem reflects that her wish to live has ceased as she composed the poem. The use of metaphor is one of the most popular discussing points while one talks about her poems.
In the following part of our discussion, we will look at the poem. The poem as a part of the confessional poetry is melancholic and the reflective amount of metaphors in the poem is mind-blowing. In the twenty lines of the poem, there are more or less six vivid metaphors and these only point at her range of imaginary artistry. The subject of the poem, the Woman, is compared with a Greek statue, as an example of perfect and supreme beauty. The descriptions of her garments also further reinforce the image. Though she is perfect in the sense of appearance, she is melancholic and sad in the questions of children and all the other aspects of her life.
Here in the poem, the woman laments about the dead child, and she does not show any warm affection towards the dead children! This may not be a reference to her children, but here the reader can clearly understand that psychologically while writing the poem, she was on the verge of a mental breakdown where she had nothing left to look forward to. Here, even critics say that the poem reinforces Sylvia’s idea of motherhood as “biological entrapment”. The sense of loss in a woman’s life is one of the recurring themes in her poems and this is clear in this poem. In this poem, she is withdrawing herself from the external World, maybe she is preparing herself to embrace the cold depth of death.
The parasitic imagery of her children may be depressing, but we can also sense a notion of fulfillment as well in the poem (lines 6-7) in the idea of having children. We can say that like most of the poems of Sylvia Plath, the poem has melancholy written all over it, but it also still talks of hope, which may be the last and the brightest light in her poems as it was composed just before her suicide.
In the final analysis, the poem can be a valuable case study in the psychology of women. The overall qualities of wording, construction, and phrasing of sentences sometimes make it prosaic, but the essential economy of the poem is something worth mentioning. Different literary forms like metaphor and metonymy can be seen in the poem throughout. And the poem, as the critics say, is easily termed as the swan song of the great Modern era poet.