Edge

Plath is a confessional poet, which means her poems—mainly, the poems in Ariel—connect to her life. “Edge” is the last poem Plath wrote before she died by suicide, and the emphasis on death reinforces the link between the poem and Plath. Plath experienced mental health crises throughout her life. She tried to die by suicide when she was at Smith, and after she and Hughes separated, her mental illness returned. In the context of her life, Plath is the dead woman in the poem. She felt the “illusion of Greek necessity” (Line 4) and experienced the deadly fate of tragic Greek heroines like Medea and Antigone. Plath didn’t kill her children, but her children were present in her London apartment when she died. Before she turned on the oven in the kitchen, she left them bread and milk. She then sealed the room with wet towels. 

“Edge” and other poems in Ariel turn death into an aestheticized process that makes dying look like a sophisticated art. However, Plath’s letters and other works challenge the mystifying presentation of death. Plath’s novel The Bell Jar displays death as a gory, alienating enterprise. Her letters don’t portray a “perfected” woman (Line 1), but a flawed, distraught person trying to rebuild her life and identity after she separated from Hughes—her “center.