Discuss the treatment of nature in the poem ‘Winter Trees’ by Sylvia Plath.

A key aspect of any good literature essay is a proper investigation of the question, and its implication. Here, the breadth of the question requires a definition of nature and how it functions within this specific poem if we are to answer convincingly. For example: in ‘Winter Trees’ nature is an antithesis to the imperfection the persona sees in herself and her sex more generally — being ‘Truer than women’, the trees ‘Kno[w] neither abortions nor bitchery’. Once this initial argument has been established, analysis and discussion are required to demonstrate (rather than merely explain) it. For 'Winter Trees', we might comment on how Plath creates a series of weak, parodic parallels between the persona and the trees to emphasise their dichotomy: where the trees are ‘footless’, the poem is in free verse (a pun on a metrical and literal ‘foot’), and where the trees are secure and ‘Waist-deep in history’, her poem can only suggest the security of lateral tree roots by a series of juxtaposed short and elongated lines. The result is a flimsy affinity with the natural world that rather foregrounds the deficiencies of the persona. Similarly, she can only express nature’s ‘otherworldliness’ by turning to symbolic figures from lost civilisations: ‘in this they are Ledas’ refers to the Ancient Greek figure of Leda who was seduced by Zeus in the form of a swan, just as ‘who are these pietàs?’ alludes to a tradition in art of depicting the Virgin Mary holding the dead body of Christ. The comparison is inexact and slightly clunky (how can trees be like the Virgin Mary?), which points to an underlying psychological element to the natural landscape evoked in the poem: both Leda and Mary represent unrealistic ideals (Leda being the archetype of conflicting womanly virtues such as chastity and sensuality, whilst Mary represents unparalleled virtue), against which the persona measures herself. This elevation of the trees to symbols of perfection, far from being realistic, demonstrates the subjective significance of the natural world: the trees are timeless and beautiful only insofar as the persona wants them to be. This egocentric construction of the landscape is seen also in: ‘Memories growing, ring on ring,/A series of weddings’. The assonance in ‘ring on ring’ is picked up in ‘weddings’ in the following line, and aurally demonstrates the proliferation of memories and experiences through time that the image of the concentric rings on the tree trunk evokes. Yet 'ring on ring' also suggests bigamy. Given the reference to infidelity in the following stanza (‘Truer than women’), this seems to be an intrusion of personal narrative into the natural landscape which makes it not a distinct, objective and perfected entity in the poem, but a projection of the persona’s (and Plath’s) disturbed psyche.