A Study Guide for Sylvia Plath's "Mirror"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Sylvia Plath's "Mirror," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Aug 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535828666

Book preview

7

Mirror

Sylvia Plath

1963

Introduction

First appearing in the New Yorker in 1963 and then the posthumously published collection Crossing the Water: Transitional Poems (1971), Plath’s poem Mirror exhibits many of the thematic and stylistic qualities which made her one of the best known poets of her generation. Mirror was written in 1961, just two years before Plath’s suicide—a two-year period which, ironically, was among the most productive of her literary career. Her poems from this time, many of which are collected in her most widely acclaimed book Ariel, are often dark, at times full of despair and anger at life, and many contain violent images and unsettling