19 pages • 38-minute read
The Munich Mannequins
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Background
Biographical Context
Plath’s work is often read with special attention to its biographical context because of her confessional poetry style. This poem was likely inspired by certain events in her life. Plath did take a trip to Munich where she took a late-night walk through the city as she struggled with insomnia. At the time of writing this poem, Plath was living in London during one of the coldest winters in a century. Plath’s isolation after her separation from her husband while caring for an infant and toddler child likely informed the poem’s themes. Just months later, Plath would die by suicide, and her troubled mental health likely contributed to the tone of the poem.
Autobiographical readings of Plath’s poetry divide scholars of her work. Many scholars see the overwhelmingly personal topics and themes as a defining trait of her writing, with some even criticizing her for being melodramatic or self-indulgent. Other academics argue against strictly autobiographical interpretations of her material. For example, while The Bell Jar includes events that correlate to events in Plath’s life, there are also elements that, these scholars argue, should be read as literary, figurative, and fictitious.
Literary Context
Plath’s poetry has become emblematic of confessional poetry. Confessional poetry was especially popular beginning during the late 1950s and early 1960s in America. Other prominent poets writing in the genre include Anne Sexton. As a form of Postmodernism, this genre was a way of responding to the horrors of the 20th century like the Holocaust, World War II, and the beginnings of the Cold War. A controversial element of Plath’s poetry is the use of Holocaust imagery to describe her own struggles. This poem’s presentation of Munich as a cold and dead city might also be informed by its role in the war.
Confessional poetry focuses on the personal, reflected in the use of the first person “I”. The topics often focus on defining moments, personal trauma, and highly emotional experiences. Often, poets discuss recently or still taboo topics such as mental illness, sexuality, and suicide. These topics are not only treated as personal experiences, but are also set in their larger social context.
While this poem is not one of her most explicitly confessional, her reputation as a confessional poet often leads readers to consider the speaker of this poem as an extension of Plath herself.
Cultural Context
Plath’s honest and personal poetry resonated deeply with contemporary women readers and reflected second wave feminist concerns. The poem’s frank and critical examination of motherhood and gendered expectations were unheard of at the time in western poetry. By putting words to what had previously been unspeakable, many women readers felt her poetry reflected their experiences during post-war life.
After World War II, women were expected to give up their careers to become mothers and housewives. Plath herself had ambiguous feelings about this expectation. She dreamed of being a writer from a young age, but she also found herself wanting to be a mother and wife. This paradoxical desire resonated with her readers. Plath had a complicated relationship with motherhood, and her relationship with her own mother was often fraught. All around her, as she grew up, she saw women giving up careers and personal freedoms to become housewives whose lives revolved around their homes and children.
Plath also criticizes the period’s beauty standards. Originating from the French for “model,” “Mannequins” was used in English as a slang term for female models. They were expected to be extremely thin, and androgynous or boyish in appearance. For example, the most famous model of the period, Lesley Hornby, was nicknamed Twiggy. Plath contrasts this standard with the other expectation of women: the round body of a pregnant woman. In this way, Plath expresses her frustration with patriarchal expectations for women’s bodies.
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