The Disquieting Muses

Although influenced by fairy-tale lore, magic, and surrealism, “The Disquieting Muses” is a very personal poem. It directly references three family members: Sylvia Plath’s father Otto Plath, her brother Warren, and, most predominantly, her mother Aurelia Plath. The poet alludes to real-life experiences, such as her mother’s stories about Warren’s teddy bear Mixie Blackshort, and Plath’s challenging music lessons. Plath was known to attend piano lessons as a teenager; this, along with her father’s early death when she was a child, gives the reader an approximate timeline of the years over which the events of this poem take place.

Within the poem, it is shortly after the speaker’s music lessons that they begin distancing themselves from their mother. Although the stanza is not given a specific time or age, understanding that the image comes from a time when Plath was on the cusp of childhood and adulthood gives new dimension to the poem’s context. Known to struggle with mental illness and depression, Plath likely experienced the shadow of this battle her entire life. It was only moving into her teenage years, however, that she would have had a slightly more cognitive grasp of what was happening to her.