Stings (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Sylvia Plath
- First Published: 1965
- Type of Work: Poem
- Genres: Poetry
- Subjects: Power, personal or social, Women, Kings, queens, or royalty, Homemakers, Bees
One of a series of poems based on her father's (and subsequently her own) knowledge of beekeeping, “Stings” uses the behavior of bees within their hive as an allegory for her own obsession with death and renewal. A free-verse poem, “Stings” describes the transfer of the bees to the woman who is their new owner. During this transfer, the bees sting a third person, a scapegoat figure; the stinging of the scapegoat enables the hive to renew itself and replace or awaken its sleeping queen.
In this hive there are drudges, “unmiraculous women” who are only interested in...
[The entire page is 592 words long]
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