The Disquieting Muses

“The Disquieting Muses” begins with a repetition: “Mother, mother” (Line 1), which immediately sets up the conversational, confessional quality of the poem. It also draws attention right from the opening to its central theme. The opening line acts as a parallel to another of Sylvia Plath’s confessional poems, “Daddy.” This poem was written around the same time and has aspects in common with “The Disquieting Muses”; however, in an interesting reversal, the double repetition “Daddy, daddy” in that one comes at the very last line of the poem. Here, it is the very first line.

The speaker begins by asking their mother a question: who did you exclude from the invitation list to my christening? What shameful family member did you so naively forget? This is a direct allusion to the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty, in which all the fairies of the kingdom are invited to Princess Briar Rose’s christening except for one. By using this literary device, the speaker compares the constant company of the faceless figures to an unjust curse over which they have no control. It also suggests that it is the speaker’s mother, and not the slighted relative, who is the true root of their misery.

In the second stanza, the speaker examines the strength and power their mother exhibited to the eyes of a young child. With her stories, the speaker’s mother could bring a teddy bear to life and vanquish wicked witches before bedtime. Here the speaker wonders whether those words could have had the power to send the faceless figures away. This stanza raises the question: did the mother know that these figures hovered around their child? Did she see the roots of a sickness there? Did she try to protect them and fail, or did she fail to try at all? To a child, a mother is a barricade between them and all the world’s evils. The speaker ponders what it means that these figures were able to get past their mother’s defense, and begins processing the anger that comes from this shattered reality. In the third stanza, the poem shifts from nostalgia to episodic memories. In the face of a vicious storm, the speaker and their brother are without fear. As small children, they trust in the domestic magic of cookies, warm drinks, and a charm of power. This is also, notably, the only time during the poem when quotation marks are used. This is in spite of another line of dialogue further down (“Come here!” [Line 47]); this use of punctuation shows that this moment feels more real to the speaker than the layered metaphors and imaginings throughout the rest of the poem.

It is only when that magic fails that the children learn how to be afraid, perhaps for the first time. The speaker begins to understand that there are limits to what their mother can stand against, and with this limitation comes a sense of betrayal. This betrayal, both from the mother and from the self, continues into the next memory: the speaker attends a dance recital and disappoints their mother with their inability to perform. The mother’s dismay causes the faceless figures to grow in power, drawing a correlation for the speaker between them and their mother’s actions. The reader understands, however, that the figures did not really grow because of the mother’s disappointment; they grew because of the speaker’s own sadness and shame. Here we can see how these figures become a metaphor for Plath’s mental illness, which would have been exacerbated and empowered by difficult relationships like this one.

For the child, shifting into adolescence, things do not improve as they begin music lessons. Still they are unable to perform, still they are a disappointment to those around them. This causes the speaker to begin distancing themselves from their mother, instead turning to the faceless figures who have been at their side always. Finally, one morning, the speaker wakes to clearly see the distance that has grown between them. Their mother hovers in a carefully constructed fiction that mirrors the stories she once told to her children. Now the speaker is finally able to see that world for what it is—fragile and imaginary and drifting ever farther away. The mother tries to hold onto her child, now grown, but the speaker turns from her. Although there is love on both sides, the divide and betrayal between them has grown too vast to ever bridge completely. Having made their choice, the speaker remains in eternal stasis with the faceless figures, personifications of the speaker’s own uncertainty, darkness, and shame.