Edge

This a lyric poem because it’s short and reflects the personal perspective of the speaker and their subjective view of the dead woman. This also a confessional poem due to its connections to Plath’s life. Plath wrote “Edge” on February 6, 1963, and five days later, she died by suicide. In the context of the confessional genre, Plath is the speaker and the dead woman. She appraises her impending death and its meaning, writing about herself to try and fathom her fraught state. The confessional nature of the poem also taps into universal experiences of exhaustion, disillusionment, and the dark allure of finality. 

At the same time, Plath is not the inevitable speaker or dead woman. By separating Plath from the poem, the difference between Plath and her poetic persona is acknowledged. The speaker and dead woman are anonymous, so for a general analysis, the speaker and the dead woman can be nonsynonymous with Plath. This ambiguity allows the poem to serve as both a personal and collective meditation on death. The anonymity universalizes the experience, suggesting that the perfected woman could be any woman worn down by societal pressures or internal battles. 

The title hints at the tone and themes of the poem. An “edge” is precarious, and the tone is menacing, with the speaker aestheticizing the dead woman. The artistic treatment of death links to the theme of The Allure of Death. “Edge” also reflects a haughtiness. If someone has an “edge” over someone else, they’re superior and possess something others don’t. The woman’s edge centers on her death. She’s “perfected” (Line 1)—better—because she’s “dead” (Lines 1-2). The second meaning of “edge” highlights the theme of Competition and Hard Work. 

The tone is often declarative and elusive: The speaker’s statements are not always straightforward. The speaker declares, “The woman is perfected. / Her dead / Body wears the smile of accomplishment” (Lines 1-3). While there’s a clear association between death and perfection, the smile has multiple interpretations. The woman’s body smiles because she is proud of her flawlessness. Conversely, the smile is superficial. The body “wears” the smile to hide the woman’s doubts. The smile becomes a mask for the possibility that death isn’t a supreme achievement. The duplicity of the smile exemplifies Plath’s masterful use of irony. 

The diction continues to subvert the declarative tone. The speaker senses the “illusion of Greek necessity” in “her toga” (Lines 4-5). The speaker relates the dead woman to women in Greek myths who appeared fated to die, such as the titular character in Euripides’s play Medea. Medea fell in love with Jason and had two sons with him. Jason left her for another woman, so Medea killed their sons in revenge. Another tragic Greek figure is the titular character in Sophocles’s play Antigone. Antigone broke the orders of King Creon and grieved her rebellious brother. As punishment, Creon ordered her execution, but Antigone died by suicide. By invoking these tragic heroines, Plath places the dead woman in a lineage of defiant women who confront patriarchal oppression. As with Medea and Antigone, the dead woman in “Edge” sees her death as “necessary.” Yet the “illusion” suggests her death isn’t predetermined. There are other outcomes, so the woman’s death is an avoidable fate. 

The tension between “necessity” and choice creates the theme, Fate Versus Free Will. This expands when the speaker declares, “Her bare / Feet seem to be saying: / We have come so far, it is over” (Lines 6-8). They got to this point on their own, and they choose death. Yet the word “seem” adds another reading, as the exact meaning is not stated. The agency is misleading: What moved them is fate. 

Plath mixes imagery and allusion when her speaker writes, “Each dead child coiled, a white serpent, / One at each little / Pitcher of milk, now empty” (Lines 9-11). Through vivid language, the dead children wrap around the mother’s breasts like white snakes. The milk pitchers add a surrealist component to the image, eerily symbolizing the woman’s breasts. The dead children allude to Medea’s violent narrative, and the serpents reference William Shakespeare’s tragedy Antony and Cleopatra (1607), where Cleopatra, the Queen of Egypt, uses poisonous snakes to die by suicide. 

The multi-layered images persist with the speaker comparing the mother and children to the closing petals of a rose, as the garden “[s]tiffens and odors bleed / From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower” (Lines 15-16). The depiction returns to the theme of Fate Versus Free Will. The woman, representing the roses, responds to the Dionysian environment (the garden) by closing ranks. She keeps herself and her children safe by shutting out the seductive external world. The night flower—a flower that blooms at night—becomes the antagonist, producing a sensuous atmosphere, which prompts the woman to act.

The tone remains stark, but Plath adds a hint of irony when her speaker says, “The moon has nothing to be sad about / Staring from the hood of bone” (Lines 17-18). The irony is that the death of the woman and her children isn’t sorrowful to the moon. Yet the moon remains odious, as the speaker grafts her to a skeleton-esque image by putting her in a hood made of bones, which represent the white color of the moon, and the hood signifies the moon’s surface. 

The ironic tone continues when the speaker deadpans, “She is used to this sort of thing. / Her blacks crackle and drag” (Lines 19-20). Plath’s speaker advances the twist by making the dead woman and her children unremarkable. The dead woman begins the poem as a “perfected” (Line 1) figure on par with classical myths. By the end, they’re blasé. The moon doesn’t give the dead woman a celebratory welcome. Instead, the moon makes a series of ambiguous noises and doggedly drags the night along. Another interpretation emphasizes the “crackle” (Line 20) and hood, which turns the moon into a witch and the dead woman into a victim of the witch’s spell. As the moon/witch has felled many women, the newest dead woman is expected.