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    A Study Guide for Sylvia Plath's "Sylvia Plath's Mushrooms"
    A Study Guide for Sylvia Plath's "Sylvia Plath's Mushrooms"
    A Study Guide for Sylvia Plath's "Sylvia Plath's Mushrooms"
    Ebook35 pages37 minutes

    A Study Guide for Sylvia Plath's "Sylvia Plath's Mushrooms"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Sylvia Plath's "Sylvia Plath's Mushrooms," 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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateSep 2, 2016
    ISBN9781535834544
    A Study Guide for Sylvia Plath's "Sylvia Plath's Mushrooms"

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      A Study Guide for Sylvia Plath's "Sylvia Plath's Mushrooms" - Gale

      10

      Mushrooms

      Sylvia Plath

      1960

      Introduction

      Mushrooms is a poem by American poet Sylvia Plath. The poem was published in England in 1960 in Plath's first collection of verse The Colossus. An American edition, The Colossus and Other Poems followed in 1962. Mushrooms is also available in The Collected Poems, edited by Ted Hughes in 1981.

      The poem has as its main theme the unexpected power of small and seemingly insignificant things, as symbolized by the growth of mushrooms. While showing an intense sympathy toward nature and its processes, Mushrooms can also be interpreted as having a feminist message. This aspect of the poem fits Plath's reputation as an early voice in the emerging feminist movement of the 1960s.

      Much of Plath's work has an intensely autobiographical aspect. As her journal writings show, she was preoccupied with the question of how she, as a woman, could forge an identity and define herself in relation to society. This preoccupation became a central theme in her only novel, The Bell Jar (1963), and in much of her poetry. Mushrooms is a seminal work in Plath's lifelong exploration of an issue that is still much discussed today.

      Author Biography

      Plath was born on October 27, 1932, in Boston, Massachusetts, the daughter of German immigrant Otto Emil Plath, a professor of biology, and Aurelia Schober Plath, a teacher. Plath's father died of diabetes when she was eight years old. Many of her poems focus on her relationship with her father, including The Colossus, the title poem of the collection in which Mushrooms appears.

      Plath excelled in her high school studies and published stories and poems in national magazines. She won a scholarship to Smith College and studied there from 1950 to 1955. In 1952 she won a fiction contest run by Mademoiselle magazine, and she won a guest editorship to work at the magazine the following year. During this time she began suffering from the depression that would ultimately lead to her death. In a journal

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