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Ambivalence in Plath's 'Morning Song'

© Linda Sue Grimes

Sylvia Plath's poem, "Morning Song," portrays a mother talking to her newborn child. The words and images the mother focuses on reveal her ambivalent feelings in her new role as a mother: She feels that the baby is an intimate part of her, but she also senses that the baby is a stranger in her life. In the first line, "Love set you going like a fat gold watch," the mother compares her baby's conception to the setting of a watch. This comparison reveals that the mother thinks her baby is a part of her life to be cherished as people cherish old watches passed down from generation to generation. Because the mother claims that "love" caused the baby's life to begin, we can assume that the mother is remembering her love for the baby's father, although he does not play a further role in the poem. The mother's claim that "love" set the baby going also indicates that she feels the natural closeness a new mother would feel for her baby.

In the second stanza the mother compares the baby metaphorically to a "new statue." But that new statue is not found in an intimate place like the home; it is located in a "drafty museum." By comparing her newborn to a new statue in a drafty museum, the mother opens up a great distance between herself and her child. While the "fat gold watch" indicates that she cherishes her newborn, the "new statue" comparison reveals that the mother also feels somewhat distant from her baby. Because museums are places where foreign objects are displayed, her choosing to place the new statue/baby in a museum further hints that her baby is also foreign to her.

That the baby is foreign and strange to the mother is especially evident in stanza three: "I'm no more your mother / Than the cloud that distils a mirror to reflect its own slow / Effacement at the wind's hand." Although she has given birth to the baby like a cloud produces rain which in turn becomes a lake that will reflect the cloud, she cannot take credit for the baby's existence. She feels that like the wind that blows away the cloud, a power beyond herself drives her the same way that it drives the cloud, the wind, and the mirror lake. The baby may resemble the mother, but its individuality ultimately drives it from the mother just as the wind drives the cloud beyond the lake.

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