Mushrooms and Sylvia Plath’s Poem About Them

Sylvia Plath’s poem entitled “Mushrooms” is often seen by scholars and readers to be a feminist allegory, rather than a poem dedicated to literal mushrooms.

Many argue that the poem—from Plath’s 1960 collection The Colossus and Other Poems—uses mushrooms as a metaphor for women in mid-century America, stuck in a world of domesticity and discontent, hungry for more as they “Diet on water, / On crumbs of shadow, / Bland-mannered, asking // Little or nothing.”

But is the poem only about women? Or can we say that the poem is also about mushrooms?

Find out the answers on the Nautilus.

(Image Credit: stevepb/ Pixabay)


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