Death by Domesticity: Sylvia Plath’s ‘Bee Poems’

Olivia Thorne

Sylvia Plath’s poetry book Ariel was published two years after her death in 1963 when she committed suicide in her London home. Plath’s original manuscript for Ariel suggests that she intended to end her collection with her ‘Bee Poems’. This is made up of the poems ‘The Bee Meeting’, ‘The Arrival of the Bee Box’, ‘Stings’ and ‘Wintering’ which, as a result of the editing by her husband Ted Hughes, now sits in the middle of the collection. This non-consensual diminishment of the importance of the ‘Bee Poems’ by Hughes, and thus the reduction of Plath’s agency over her own poetry, is significant when considering the feminist agenda behind the composition of these poems. The ‘Bee Poems’, according to Sandra M. Gilbert, represent Plath ‘coming to terms with her own, female position in the cycle of the species’, which can be applied specifically to the position of the female in 1950s America. The post-war American society in which Plath lived had an expectation for women to marry young and bear children shortly afterwards, with the average age that women married in 1950 being only twenty years old, and the average age for bearing children being twenty two years old. Plath expresses her disdain for the domesticity and housewifery expected of women in an illustration to Hughes titled Great Faux Pas from approximately 1956. The drawing depicts herself as a maid who, while serving guests, imagines herself attacking them with an axe in a thought bubble. Her face is pictured as expressionless, and instead of eyes has two crosses indicative of the soullessness required for or inflicted by domestic servitude. This is further demonstrated in her semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar (1963), in which the protagonist Esther Greenwood muses that:

Maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about as numb as a slave in a totalitarian state.

In her ‘Bee Poems’, Plath utilises the image of the bee and the hive, and metaphorises it to depict the constraints and expectations of women in 1950s American society. This essay intends to explore Plath’s ‘Bee Poems’ and analyse the ways in which she uses the bee imagery to depict the ‘brainwashed’ state of women under the patriarchal society in which she lived.

Before exploring her ‘Bee Poems’, it is first worth noting that Plath’s father, who died when she was ten, was an entomologist with a specific expertise on honey bees. In 1934, he wrote a book about bees titled Bumblebees and Their Ways which explores the various types of bumblebee and their life cycles. Plath refers to her father’s knowledge of bees in a journal entry from 1959 in which she states that: ‘I know nothing of bees. My father knew it all’. By the time she came to write her ‘Bee Poems’ this was not strictly true, as Plath became a beekeeper herself. Considering that these poems explore the effects of a patriarchal society on women using the metaphor of bees, it is relevant to bear in mind the association for Plath between bees and her personal childhood patriarch.

The first of Plath’s ‘Bee Poems’ is ‘The Bee Meeting’. The poem opens with and exhibits frequent interrogatives which add a feeling of anxiety and uncertainty to the tone. ‘The Bee Meeting’ opens with the question: ‘who are these people at the bridge to meet me?’. The speaker’s reference to ‘the bridge’ implies there is a change or metamorphosis happening, and that the speaker feels some apprehension about this. Plath writes that:

They are the villagers –

The rector, the midwife, the sexton, the agent for bees. (55)

It is significant that these people in particular should meet the speaker, as they each represent the expected stages of a woman’s life in 1950’s American society. The rector is representative of marriage, the midwife of bearing children, and the sexton for death, as, according to the OED, their responsibilities ‘traditionally included...grave-digging’. The speaker’s journey to these figures across the bridge demonstrates her progression into womanhood, and the expectations which await her. The description of the trio as being ‘the agent for bees’ positions the speaker with the bees, as ‘these people’ are there to ‘exert power’ over her as well as the bees in the hive. Furthermore, these three figures also suggest the limitations of the life of a women at this time, one which consisted of marriage, childbirth, and then death. The anxiety of the speaker is demonstrated further in her declaration that:

I cannot run, I am rooted, and the gorse hurts me [...]
I could not run without having to run forever. The white hive is snug as a virgin,

Sealing off her brood cells, her honey, and quietly humming. (56)

Plath’s portrayal of entrapment evokes the Ancient Greek ‘Daphne’ myth in Ovid’s Metamorphoses who, in order to escape from the relentless sexual pursuit of Apollo and wishing to ‘remain a virgin for ever’ prays for the help of her father Peneus who transforms her into a laurel tree. Plath’s reference to Ovid’s myth is significant, as it suggests that in order for a woman to escape the damaging expectations and demands of the patriarchy, she must lose her womanhood altogether. Furthermore, this metaphor portrays the inescapability of her marital fate, as though she is rooted to the ground, vulnerable and exposed to the expectations and constraints of society.

The second ‘Bee Poem’ is ‘The Arrival of the Bee Box’ which addresses the issue of motherhood and was written when Plath was already a mother. In her 2008 essay on Plath, Andrea Powell Wolfe concludes that:

[In ‘The Arrival of the Bee Box’], the box represents the pregnant female body and the bees inside an unborn child, and Plath conveys her speaker’s ambivalence regarding maternity but also the empowerment that she gains from her position as mother.

The speaker seems to have a stronger sense of authority than in the first poem, as she states that ‘I ordered this, this clean wood box’. It is likely that the speaker is acknowledging her decision to become a mother, and the authority that this gives her. However, the ‘ambivalence’, touched upon by Powell Wolfe, is evident in the second stanza as the speaker states that:

The box is locked, it is dangerous. I have to live with it overnight
And I can’t keep away from it. (58)

There is a sense of claustrophobia evoked by Plath, of the all-consuming and inescapable state of pregnancy, shifting between having authority over it, and it over her. Plath’s ‘ambivalence’ to motherhood is evident in her journals, as she demonstrates the tension between wanting to provide Hughes with children and serve her wifely duty yet worrying that a child would destroy her ambition of being a successful writer. For example, in July 1957, before she was a mother, Plath had a pregnancy scare and wrote in her journal:

The horror, day by day more sure, of being pregnant... the overhanging terror which, I know now, would end me, probably Ted, and our writing & our possible impregnable togetherness...hating and hating the intruder. (294)

The ‘horror’ and ‘terror’ evoked by the possibility of pregnancy, and the intrusion the child would make upon the couple’s lives is visible in the attitude of the speaker in ‘The Arrival of the Bee Box’. Like releasing bees from a box, Plath’s speaker is concerned with the danger to herself when the inhabitant is released, portraying Plath’s worry that motherhood has the potential to destroy her.

However, Plath exhibits a different kind of vulnerability in the poem by suggesting a love for and fear of abandonment by ‘the intruder’. She does this by once again evoking Ovid’s ‘Daphne’ myth. In the sixth stanza, Plath writes:

I wonder how hungry they are.
I wonder if they would forget me
If I just undid the locks and stood back and turned into a tree. (58-59)

Plath’s speaker expresses concern for the wellbeing of the bees, wondering whether her care for them is sufficient enough. The speaker’s concern then moves to the bees’ relationship to her, wondering whether they would abandon her despite her nurturance. This stanza is more reflective of Plath’s later journal entry from June 1959 when she was concerned that she was infertile. Plath wrote that:

Everything has gone barren. I am part of the world’s ash, something from which nothing can grow, nothing can flower or come to fruit...I want a house of our children...I want to be an Earth Mother in the deepest richest sense. (500)

Unlike her 1957 entry, Plath expresses a desire to be a mother, and feels a lifelessness at the prospect of not being able to fulfil this role. Therefore, Plath’s Daphne-esque imagery in this poem of turning ‘into a tree’ reflects the harmony with and connection to nature that being a mother would provide her with and that even if she is abandoned by her offspring, she would still have this new life-force and, ironically, a sense of ‘real’ womanhood.

In her essay, Powell Wolfe summarises the presentation of motherhood in ‘The Arrival of the Bee Box’, stating that:

[The poem] represents the reality of motherhood. Plath shows in this poem that becoming a mother, although common for and expected of women in the 1950s, is ... an experience marked not only by joy, but by pain and ambiguity.

The ambivalent nature of the speaker’s relationship to the bees is Plath exhibiting the complex truth of motherhood. This stands in contrast to the image of motherhood perpetuated by the media at this time, such as in the 1950 Rinso poster advertisement. This, as with most adverts at this time, presents a mother beaming with happiness as she fulfils her domestic duties, as though completely and unquestionably satisfied with her role. Significantly, in this advert, the daughter exhibits the same smile as she assists her mother with the laundry, wearing the exact same dress as though eager to fill the mother role herself. ‘The Arrival of the Bee Box’ is therefore a refreshing depiction of motherhood, as Plath uses the bee metaphor to acknowledge her love for her child while depicting her concern with the domestic entrapment that motherhood entails.

The next ‘Bee Poem’, ‘Stings’ is described by Sandra M. Gilbert as ‘perhaps the best of the bee-keeping poems’. In this poem, Plath uses the bee metaphor to suggest that women in 1950’s American society are either queen bees (wives) or virgin bees (prospective wives). Plath introduces the ageing queen bee in the third and fourth stanzas:

Is there any queen at all in it?

If there is, she is old,
Her wings torn shawls, her long body
Rubbed of its plush –
Poor and bare and unqueenly and even shameful.

The speaker’s questioning of whether there is any queen at all in the hive speaks to the queen’s incapability to fulfil her domestic duties due to her age. The image of deterioration presented in the description of her wings as ‘torn shawls’ reflects the undesirability of an ageing woman, who without attractiveness and fertility is as redundant to society as the old queen bee is to the hive.

The speaker’s focus shifts from the queen bee to herself, and she reflects that:

I stand in a column

Of winged, unmiraculous women,

Honey-drudgers. (60)

Powell Wolfe considers this moment to be a contemplation of the wasted potential of women who abandoned their ambitions for housewifery. She writes:

With the image of wings, Plath conveys her belief that women are potentially powerful and creative human beings. However, the word “unmiraculous” indicates that too many women sacrifice their strength and talents to the drudgery of housework.

Plath expresses a fear of wasting her own potential in a 1959 journal entry in which she writes:

What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age. (524)

Like the expressionless domestic servant in her Faux Pas drawing, Plath conveys the soul- destroying and lifeless nature of housewifery through the image of the ‘honey-drudgers’, the potentially brilliant bees who devote their lives to the home, or the hive.

The poem ends with a changed perception of the queen bee, who is no longer the ageing and deteriorating creature she was previously but a beautiful and strong force. Plath’s speaker states:

Now she is flying
More terrible than she ever was, red Scar in the sky, red comet

Over the engine that killed her –
The mausoleum, the wax house. (61-62)

The queen’s revival is not as optimistic as it may appear, as it is ultimately a flight to her death. Jessica Lewis Luck explores this moment in her 2007 essay on Plath, and concludes that:

As a beekeeper, Plath knew that the flight of the queen is a suicidal one – she takes flight when she is old and has been usurped by another queen, and she will die without the protection of the hive. She might be flying with terrible power and beauty, but it is a flight to her death.

The enjambment of these lines reflects the speed and power with which the queen has left the hive, yet, as Luck points out, she is soaring to her death. Plath’s comparison of the queen with a comet further demonstrates her usurpation as, according to NASA, comets are ‘frozen leftovers from the formation of the solar system’. Like comets, the queen is now just ‘leftover’ from the formation of her hive and must be disposed of to make room for the new queen.

Moreover, Plath’s description of the hive as ‘the wax house’ and choosing to end the poem on this image signifies the preoccupation with domesticity and its destructivity to women. By ending the poem on the glorified image of the suicidal queen, Plath is suggesting that the only escape from ‘the wax house’ is death, which evokes an eeriness when considering her suicide following shortly after the composition of this poem, especially since she was ‘usurped’ by another woman in her husband’s infidelity. This final image also touches upon the competition which the patriarchy encourages between women. The usurpation of the queen bee by the younger virgin bees is reflective of the life-cycle of women in Plath’s society, as once a woman was no longer young, fertile and able to perform household duties, she was disposable and unwanted.

The final ‘Bee Poem’ in Ariel is ‘Wintering’ which Plath had originally intended to end the collection with. It is worth noting that Plath had intended to end with this poem, as it is largely more optimistic and hopeful than her other poem ‘Words’ which Hughes chose to end with. Plath’s speaker tells us that:

The bees are all women, Maids and the long royal lady. They have got rid of the men,

The blunt, clumsy stumblers, the boors.

On an apiological level, Plath is referencing the process of the female bees expelling the male bees or ‘drones’ from the hive during winter, which she would have been familiar with as a bee keeper herself. Plath depicts an almost courtly scene in which the queen bee is surrounded by her maids, free from the ‘clumsy stumblers’. Unlike the previous poem, which depicted female competition, Plath presents a female community in which the bees are fulfilled by their relationships with other females. Plath is therefore depicting matriarchal domesticity as being more fulfilling than patriarchal domesticity.

The poem ends with a note of hope and optimism. Plath writes:

Will the hive survive, will the gladiolas Succeed in banking their fires
To enter another year?
What will they taste of, the Christmas roses? The bees are flying. They taste the spring. (64)

‘Wintering’ ends with a sequence of questions except, instead of this demonstrating a sense of anxiety and uncertainty as in ‘The Bee Meeting’, the speaker’s questions look towards the future, and ends with the optimistic note that the bees can ‘taste the spring’. The final stanza highlights the resilience of the female bees, in the implication that they will survive to see spring. In her 1997 work on Plath, Karen Jackson Ford concludes that Plath utilises the image of the female hive to convey that, for the bees, and for the women in the society in which Plath lived, ‘unity is necessary for survival’. Plath therefore ends her ‘Bee Poems’ with a message of hope for women, that unity and relationships with other women is the greatest force against patriarchal societal rule and that by uniting, women can also ‘taste the spring’ after the winter of patriarchal rule.

When Plath wrote Ariel, she felt that the ‘Bee Poems’ were ‘ones on which she could build her poetic reputation’. Many critics, both contemporary to Plath and modern, see the ‘Bee Poems’ as being some of the strongest in the collection, with Luck summarising that through these poems, ‘questions of body, mind, culture, and feminist resistance all come together’. Plath utilises the metaphor of the hive and of the bees to convey the oppressive and demanding force of patriarchal society on women at that time, and explores her ambivalence regarding motherhood, such as in ‘The Arrival of the Bee Box’. Plath’s ambivalence, seemingly between her literary ambition and her maternal urges, can be deduced from a painting she produced in 1950 titled Triple-Face Portrait. It is inspired by cubism in style, abstractly depicting three faces both profile and straight on all at once, suggesting a duality of identity or a personal conflict of some sort. Plath’s ‘Bee Poems’ allow her to navigate her ambivalence regarding housewifery and motherhood, as well as to help her to come to terms ‘with her own female position in the cycle of the species’, to speak in terms of Gilbert. Thus, Plath’s ‘Bee Poems’ sting with the truth of the reality of being female at this time.