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Sylvia Plath wrote Tulips while in an utterly depressed state. In pondering this, it would seem that the colors that would come to her mind would be grays and blacks, but no, there are only two colors, both bright, dealt with in Tulips. A second thought is that tulips usally represent beauty, spring, joy, etc. Again, in Tulips, the scarlet flowers are nothing but an offense to her, scoffing her depression.

Could it be that having suffered a very recent miscarriage, Ms. Plath could have been suffering from something similar to what we now know today as post-partum depression? This poem is so intensely personal. The white color representing the pristine sheets surrounding her in her bed, and the environment of the room that she is in. The red of the tulips is an invasion on her psyche.

It is wintery white outside and hospital white inside. As the poet lies very still with nothing to do but opine and take everything in she feels helpless, and perhaps used and abused. She feels that in this surrounding she doesn't really matter as a person. Everything and everyone she loves or cares about is slipping away - or rather she is pulling away from them and cannot really do anything about it.

The tulips are "too red", so much so that they inflict emotional pain. She refers to the tulips as ingesting her very air. She does not want to be in the presence of anything joyous or happy, yet the picture of her husband and child, "smiling hooks". She wants to escape the hooks but cannot, and the red tulips are a reminder of this.

The poem is descriptive, but she cannot help but expose her melancholy through it. We can observe her surroundings through her colorful words, but she reveals much more of herself and her thoughts about death being a liberating experience. The white seems to expose to us her absolutely absorption with death as freedom symbolized by the hospital environs but then the tulips - perhaps a gift from a loved one - represent life and vibrance. She is going through an internal battle between her desire for death and the pervading responsibilities of life - career, motherhood, spouse. Perhaps the miscarraige has caused her to feel remorse and failure on the "life" side of the war.

This is a poem that graphically exposes inner turmoil, whether this is what she originally intended or not. The use of the two colors, red and white, are an abstract painting telling us of her pain. How tragic to feel this forlorn at a mere thirty years of age, especially one so gifted. Could her poetic genius have contributed to her depression? Could it have been a touch of madness, like Van Gogh or so many other tormented artists?

Learn more about this author, Linda Burleson.
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