The Disquieting Muses (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Sylvia Plath
- First Published: 1960
- Type of Work: Poem
- Genres: Poetry
- Subjects: Mothers, Painting or painters, Witches or witchcraft
Written in 1957, when most of Plath's work was still in formal verse, “The Disquieting Muses” is an unnerving explanation of alienation and otherness. The title, as Plath explained, refers to a painting by the artist Georgio de Chirico—a painting of three faceless dressmaker's dummies with elongated heads who cast eerie shadows in a strange half-light. “The dummies suggest a twentieth century version of other sinister trios of women—the Three Fates, the witches in Macbeth, [Thomas] De Quincey's sisters of madness,” she commented. The equation suggests that the poet...
[The entire page is 658 words long]
