The Full Text of “Kindness”
The Full Text of “Kindness”
-
“Kindness” Introduction
-
Sylvia Plath's "Kindness" personifies kindness itself as a "nice" woman who's trying to help the morbidly unhappy speaker. The sweetness and comfort "Dame Kindness" offers is no "cure" for the speaker's distress, however; even the speaker's love for her children may not be enough to soothe her anguished mind. The only outlet for her overpowering pain seems to be "poetry," which flows as unstoppably from the speaker as her suffering. One of the last poems Plath wrote before her tragic death by suicide, "Kindness" draws heavily on the poet's experience and is associated, like most of her work, with the movement called Confessional poetry. It was collected in her posthumous volume Ariel (1965).
-
-
“Kindness” Summary
-
A kindly woman, "Dame Kindness," is smoothly drifting around my home. She's such a nice person! Her rings' blue and red gemstones make cloudy reflections in the windows. I see her smile reflected in mirrors around the house.
Is there anything more raw and authentic than children's crying? The screams of rabbits may sound more intense, but they don't have human feeling behind them. Dame Kindness says that sugar can take care of any problem. It's something healing that everyone needs to consume; its crystals are like a medicinal paste to treat injuries.
Oh, how kindness helps put things in order! Any minute now, my Japanese silk garments might be hung up with clothespins, like panicked butterflies being stunned as they're pinned in place.
Now you bring me a steaming cup of tea. Pain and poetry are pouring out of me like an unstoppable spurt of blood. You give me my two children to hold like a pair of roses.
-
-
“Kindness” Themes
-
Deep Love vs. Shallow Kindness
Written just days before Sylvia Plath's death by suicide, "Kindness" depicts a haunted, agitated speaker and a kind figure who's caring for her. Personified as "Dame Kindness," this figure attempts to soothe or "cure" the speaker with saccharine comforts like "smiles" and "Sugar," but the speaker seems deeply skeptical of such offerings. All that feels "real" to the speaker are her two children, whose cries move her and whom she's handed like a pair of beautiful "roses." Though the speaker seems doubtful that anything can save her, the poem suggests that deep love, rather than superficial kindness, stands the best chance of outweighing despair.
The speaker (usually identified as Plath, but not specifically named or gendered in the poem itself) is extremely wary of the kindness she receives; she appreciates it to some extent but makes clear that it's hardly a "cure" for her agony. Rather than naming the person(s) showing kindness, the speaker portrays her as a cartoonish stock figure, "Dame Kindness." The speaker's exclamation that Kindness "is so nice!" has an edge of sarcasm, and she takes no comfort from this figure's "smiles."
The speaker is also skeptical of Kindness's claim that "Sugar can cure everything." The "Sugar" here might be literal (think sugar in soothing tea) but it's metaphorical as well: the speaker rejects saccharine sweetness and kindness as a remedy for serious pain. Even Kindness's "glid[ing]" movements suggest superficiality. While this figure may be well-intentioned in "picking up pieces" of the speaker's disorderly life (such as clothes around the house), the poem's tone makes clear that their superficial solutions aren't truly helping.
At the same time, the speaker portrays her love of her children—including her sensitivity to their pain—as a more authentic and meaningful bond than kindness. To the speaker, nothing "is so real as the cry of a child": the human "soul" behind children's pain seems to move her as nothing else does. In this way, it seems to keep her partly grounded and attached to others even amid her own tremendous suffering.
In the end, the poem juxtaposes this suffering—and the shallow "cure[s]" offered by Kindness—with a meaningful human connection, a "soul[ful]" bond that's potentially worth living for even if it's not a cure. Although the speaker indicates that there's "no stopping" her agony, she ends the poem with a moment of human connection: someone (perhaps "Kindness") hands the speaker "two children" that appear to be her own, ambiguously suggesting that the speaker may still be trying to hang on to life and love.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-20
-
Art and Anguish
The speaker of “Kindness” connects her poetry directly to her pain. "The blood jet is poetry, / There is no stopping it,” she says, meaning that her inner anguish (that “blood jet,” which may be a metaphor for suicidal depression) pours out of her unstoppably, generating powerful writing even as it creates a life-or-death emergency. She also implies that nothing will ease the suffering that's both killing her and fueling her creativity. In fact, this blood metaphor suggests that she's no more capable of healing than she is of suddenly quitting poetry. The poem thus imagines suffering and art as inseparable parts of a deadly, unstoppable process.
The speaker hints that she's dying of some incurable anguish—the same anguish that has inspired the poem:
- The figure of "Kindness" claims that "Sugar can cure everything" and that it acts as a "poultice," or a treatment for a wound or inflammation. It's implied, then, that the speaker is ill or hurt and this "kind[]" figure is trying to help her out.
- The speaker also ambiguously fears that her "silks" could be "pinned any minute" like "butterflies." This image could refer to literal clothes, but it also seems to be a metaphor for her art or psyche: something beautiful and fragile that she fears will be stopped dead, as if "anesthetized."
- Finally, she describes herself as mortally (albeit metaphorically) wounded and links her wound with creative inspiration: "The blood jet is poetry."
This metaphor suggests that suffering and creativity are intertwined—and that an artist can lose control to the point where they're simply a vessel for both pain and art. The fact that "there is no stopping" the "blood jet [of] poetry" implies that this speaker is helplessly writing even as she's helplessly dying. She can't turn off her torment nor her inspiration because they're part of the same process.
Note, too, how this blood metaphor is sandwiched between two images of attempted comfort: "you" (which seems to refer to “Dame Kindness”) brings the speaker a cup of tea, then hands her a pair of small children (presumably the speaker's own kids). The tea is clearly not enough to help her; more unsettlingly, it's implied that even her kids might not be enough to ease her suffering. On the other hand, the image of beautiful children ends the poem ("stop[s]" this piece of "poetry"), so the speaker may still hold out some faint hope that love, family, etc. can ease her psychological wound. Even if the speaker isn't definitively doomed, however, she's terrified by the sense that she's lost all control over her art and life.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 9-11
- Lines 14-20
-
-
Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Kindness”
-
Lines 1-5
Kindness glides about ...
... filling with smiles.The poem's first stanza introduces both the speaker and a figure called "Dame Kindness," who is "glid[ing]" (moving smoothly and gracefully) around the speaker's "house." This Dame Kindness seems to be a personification of kindness itself, imagined as a well-off woman (notice those "rings" with "jewels") who is "nice" and full of "smiles." It's possible, however, that she's meant to represent a real person—perhaps a kindly relative, friend, or neighbor visiting the speaker's home.
Though the description of Kindness seems positive, it has a slightly mocking edge to it:
- The verb "glides" suggests a smooth, easy, even cheerful movement, which will soon contrast with the speaker's heavy thoughts and apparent stillness.
- "[S]he is so nice!" could be read as faint praise: perhaps her niceness is glib or shallow.
- Her "jewels" suggest a certain wealth and comfort—maybe it's easy for her to be nice, since her life isn't terribly hard. The way her jewels "smoke" (create cloudy reflections) "in the windows" also seems ominous, adding a hint of danger to this quiet domestic scene. (The speaker's perception of these jewels as "smok[y]" might reflect some deeper emotion smoldering inside herself, Kindness, or both. Notice, too, that blue and red are also colors associated with blood, as well as emergency sirens and the like.)
- Even Kindness's "smiles" are unsettling, since the speaker describes them "filling" her "mirrors"—symbolically suggesting that they're superficial.
Because "Kindness" was one of the last poems Plath ever wrote, it's impossible to know for sure whether "Dame Kindness" alludes to a real person. Plath's friend Jillian Becker, who took care of Plath and her kids not long before Plath died, may have been a partial inspiration (Becker said that she wore red and blue rings like those described here). Some critics have suggested that this figure might have been based on Plath's mother, with whom Plath had a close but troubled relationship.
These opening lines establish the form that will continue throughout the poem: five-line stanzas (cinquains) of free verse.
-
Lines 6-8
What is so ...
... has no soul. -
Lines 9-11
Sugar can cure ...
... a little poultice. -
Lines 12-15
O kindness, kindness ...
... any minute, anesthetized. -
Lines 16-20
And here you ...
... children, two roses.
-
-
“Kindness” Symbols
-
Sugar
For the poem's speaker, sugar symbolizes a superficial sweetness or kindness, a saccharine attitude that's supposed to provide comfort but doesn't really help matters.
The personified "Kindness" figure in the poem claims that "Sugar can cure everything." According to "Dame Kindness," sugar is, in fact, a "necessary" substance and a metaphorical "poultice," or medicinal paste for a sore or wound. Since "tea" is mentioned later (line 16), these lines might literally refer to a kindly woman who's adding sugar to tea and claiming that it'll make the speaker feel better. Symbolically, the sugar evokes Kindness's cloyingly sweet temperament, or her falsely saccharine view of life in general. (Remember that the speaker, closely based on Plath, is having a profound crisis and needs more serious help than tea and kindness can provide.)
If the sugar is being added to tea, it falls dramatically short in the final stanza: the sight of the "cup" only makes the speaker reflect on the uncontrollable pain that seems to be pouring out of her like a "blood jet" (line 18). The sugary-sweet nature of kindness—as opposed to deep love or a more meaningful intervention—is simply no match for whatever the speaker's going through.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 9-11: “Sugar can cure everything, so Kindness says. / Sugar is a necessary fluid, / Its crystals a little poultice.”
-
-
“Kindness” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
-
Personification
The poem personifies kindness as "Dame Kindness," a woman helping out around the speaker's house. Kindness is portrayed as extremely "nice," full of "smiles" and good cheer, "Sweetly picking up pieces"—perhaps literally meaning pieces of clothing or other items strewn around the house. Metaphorically, Kindness is trying to help put the pieces of the speaker's chaotic life in order.
This figure might be a stand-in for a particular "nice" person who was trying to help Plath at the time she wrote the poem. (Her mother and her friend Jillian Becker have been suggested as possible models for "Dame Kindness.") She could also stand for the friendly or familial kindness of anyone who tries to help someone through a difficult time.
But this personification isn't entirely positive. The poem's tone and imagery make Kindness seem somewhat cloying and ineffective. For example, Kindness claims that "Sugar can cure everything" (line 9), perhaps in response to "the cry of a child" (line 6) or to the speaker's own distress. But while sugar might sometimes cheer up an unhappy kid, it's clearly no "cure" for whatever anguish the speaker's going through—for the "blood jet" of pain that's pouring out into her "poetry" (line 18). Thus, the personification suggests that kindness isn't always enough; it can be a poor, saccharine substitute for the genuine love and help a distressed person needs.
Where personification appears in the poem:- Lines 1-5: “Kindness glides about my house. / Dame Kindness, she is so nice! / The blue and red jewels of her rings smoke / In the windows, the mirrors / Are filling with smiles.”
- Lines 9-13: “Sugar can cure everything, so Kindness says. / Sugar is a necessary fluid, / Its crystals a little poultice. / O kindness, kindness / Sweetly picking up pieces!”
-
Consonance
-
Assonance
-
Repetition
-
Metaphor
-
Apostrophe
-
Rhetorical Question
-
Juxtaposition
-
Alliteration
-
-
"Kindness" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Dame Kindness
- Smoke
- Rabbit's cry
- Poultice
- Anesthetized
- Japanese silks
- Pinned
- Blood jet
-
(Location in poem: Lines 1-2: “Kindness glides about my house. / Dame Kindness, she is so nice!”; Line 9: “Sugar can cure everything, so Kindness says.”)
A personification of kindness, imagined as a smiling woman eager to help and comfort. Plath's portrayal of Kindness may have been based on her friend Jillian Becker, who helped care for Plath and her children shortly before Plath's death.
-
Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Kindness”
-
Form
"Kindness" consists of four cinquains, or stanzas of five lines apiece. It's a free verse poem, so it has no meter or rhyme scheme. (It does contain a few sporadic, mostly imperfect rhymes; for example, "tea" in line 16 rhymes with "poetry" in line 18.)
The line lengths are slightly erratic, ranging from three to eleven syllables, and the transitions between sentences and stanzas are often jarring. For example, the rhetorical question at the start of the second stanza ("What is so real as the cry of a child?") doesn't seem prompted by anything in the first. The alarming "blood jet" metaphor in lines 18-19 seems to come out of nowhere.
The stanza length, then, is the only formal element imposing any order or logic on the poem. The speaker's thoughts are erratic, morbid, surreal, haunted by images of panic and distress ("A rabbit's cry," "desperate butterflies," etc.)—in other words, the speaker barely seems to be holding herself together. Just as Dame Kindness is "picking up pieces" (of clothing? clutter?) around the speaker's house, the reader is forced to assemble the poem's strange fragments into some sort of coherent whole. But this struggle to achieve coherence ties in with the poem's themes. After all, the speaker links "poetry" with uncontrollable pain (lines 18-19), the kind that can leave sufferers panicked and disoriented.
-
Meter
As a free verse poem, "Kindness" has no consistent meter. (It doesn't have a rhyme scheme, either, though it does include scattered, partial rhymes; see the Rhyme Scheme section for more). Its stanzas are all the same length—five lines apiece—but the lines never settle into a regular rhythm.
The lack of meter helps convey the speaker's psychological state, which reads as disjointed and quietly distressed. A smooth, regular rhythm wouldn't match this erratic flow of thought. The poem's consistent cinquains suggest that the speaker is trying to put her thoughts in some kind of order, but ultimately, the "blood jet" of her "poetry" (lines 18-19) is too wild to be controlled by something as strict as meter.
-
Rhyme Scheme
"Kindness" is basically a free verse poem, meaning that it has no regular meter or rhyme scheme. However, a few partial or perfect end rhymes are sprinkled unpredictably throughout the poem.
Notice, for example, how "child" (line 6) rhymes with the stressed syllable in "wilder" (line 7), while "soul" (line 8) rhymes with the stressed syllable in "poultice" (line 11). More subtly, the unstressed second syllable in "poultice" rhymes with the unstressed second syllable of "kindness" in the following line. "Butterflies" (line 14) makes for an imperfect rhyme with "anesthetized" (line 15), and "tea" (line 16) makes for a perfect rhyme with "poetry" (line 18).
These scattered fragments of rhyme may reflect the speaker's scattered, agitated mental state, her sense that her life is in disordered "pieces" (line 13). They might also reflect the speaker's claim that her poetry is wild and uncontrolled, like a "blood jet" (line 18)—or, rather, that the "blood" from her inner, psychological wound is what's producing her poems. Such poetry isn't likely to cohere into a tidy musical structure, but it seems to create moments of erratic, unexpected musicality. It may even be that "poetry" (one half of the poem's only perfect rhyme) is one of the few things holding her troubled mind together.
-
-
“Kindness” Speaker
-
The speaker of "Kindness" makes a number of cryptic, ambiguous statements, so it's difficult at first to understand who she is and what she's going through. Probably the clearest evidence comes in lines 18-19: "The blood jet is poetry / There is no stopping it." This speaker seems to be a poet who's going through an acute crisis or suffering from a deep psychological wound (there's no evidence that she's literally bleeding). The "blood jet" metaphor implies that her pain and her creativity are closely linked and impossible to control. Her pain is pouring out in her poems, including "Kindness" itself.
Readers have generally assumed, then, that the speaker is the poet, Sylvia Plath. Plath wrote "Kindness" less than two weeks before she tragically took her own life, and the poem's details map closely onto her circumstances during this time. She was a young mother of two kids, recently separated from her husband, the poet Ted Hughes. As an American who had moved to England, she was isolated from family, leaving only friends to help care for her and her kids during a difficult winter in which she struggled with depression. One of those friends, Jillian Becker, is thought to be a model for "Dame Kindness." During this period of upheaval, Plath was writing poetry at a furious pace, including many of the poems for which she has become famous. Because these poems drew heavily on Plath's real experiences, including family conflicts and previous suicide attempts, they came to be associated with the movement known as Confessional poetry.
At the very least, then, the speaker of "Kindness" is inspired by Plath's real experiences. The speaker is sharing "[her] house" (line 1) with "two children" (line 20), at least one of whom seems to be "cry[ing]" (line 6). A kindly, smiling figure, personified as "Dame Kindness" (line 2), seems to be helping around the home: bringing her (and/or her children) drinks with "Sugar" (lines 9-10), "picking up pieces" of clothing or other clutter (line 13), and so on. The speaker is suffering from some unstated illness or pain, and Kindness is offering sugar as a "cure" (line 9). All these details provide a basic context for the speaker's reflections, which are fragmentary and disjointed in a way that suggests mental distress.
-
-
“Kindness” Setting
-
The poem is set in the speaker's "house" (line 1), where a figure called "Dame Kindness" seems to be visiting and helping out. The speaker doesn't describe this setting in depth, but it unsurprisingly contains "windows" (which are reflecting Kindness's rings, suggesting that it may be nighttime), as well as "mirrors" (lines 4-5), "Japanese silks" (line 14), and "tea" (line 16). The Japanese silks may refer to kimonos or dressing gowns—probably the "pieces" (of clothing) that are lying around, and that Kindness is "Sweetly picking up" (line 13). In other words, this house seems messy.
The house also contains "two children": the speaker's kids. At least one of these children is "cry[ing]," as line 6 indicates ("What is so real as the cry of a child?"). The speaker herself appears to be in a morbid or depressed state, comparing the silk garments to "desperate butterflies" (line 14) and her own poetry to a "blood jet" (line 18). It's not clear whether the "you" who brings the tea is Dame Kindness (suddenly referred to in the second rather than the third person) or a separate figure, such as the other parent of the two kids. Regardless, this is a home in moderate to serious disarray, a gloomy place where Kindness is trying—with little success—to lift the speaker's spirits.
-
-
Literary and Historical Context of “Kindness”
-
Literary Context
Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) was a leading light of the Confessionalist poetry movement. Famous both for her intense, personal verse and her autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, Plath spoke what had been unspeakable about womanhood, mental illness, and other subjects in the first half of the 20th century.
Like many of the poems in Plath's collection Ariel (1965), "Kindness" can be read as autobiographical. Unvarnished self-revelation was rare in English-language poetry at the time. As more and more writers adopted this revolutionary stance in their work during the 1950s and '60s, critics found a name for their movement: Confessionalism.
Confessionalist poets wanted to drop the barrier between themselves and "the speaker" of the poem and to examine aspects of life that a conformist post-war society deemed too indelicate to talk about. Robert Lowell's "Skunk Hour," W.D. Snodgrass's "Heart's Needle," and Anne Sexton's "The Double Image" are all good examples of Confessionalist poetry. Inspired by these poets, Plath began writing more and more about personal subjects, including her experiences of motherhood, family conflict, and mental illness. "Kindness" is one of many poems in Ariel that deals with mental distress, as well as Plath's complex feelings about parenthood. Its morbid "blood jet" image has some echoes in a famous Ariel poem, "Cut."
Plath wrote "Kindness" on February 1, 1963, just 10 days before her death by suicide. At this time, she was recently separated from her husband, fellow poet Ted Hughes, and taking care of two young children as a single mother. Though Hughes visited periodically, she was generally isolated, overwhelmed, and depressed throughout a cold English winter. During her last months, she received some help and companionship from her friend Jillian Becker, who is thought to be one of the models for "Dame Kindness" in the poem. Critics have suggested that "Dame Kindness" may also be a veiled portrait of Plath's mother, Aurelia, with whom she had a troubled relationship. The "you" in the final stanza could be Kindness but has also been interpreted as Hughes—that is, the other parent of the speaker's children. Both the "rabbit's cry" (line 7) and the "two roses" (line 20) are images pointedly borrowed from Hughes's radio play Difficulties of a Bridegroom, which had aired the previous month and seems to comment on the two poets' marital problems. (Plath had also written a poem called "The Rabbit Catcher," which alludes to their breakup in ominous terms.)
Despite all this personal upheaval, Plath wrote at a furious pace in 1962-'63, producing most of the poems that later cemented her literary reputation. The "blood jet [of] poetry" in "Kindness" may refer to her astonishing outpouring of creativity during this time. The posthumous publication of Ariel brought her lasting fame as a poet.
Historical Context
From adolescence onward, Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) suffered from recurring bouts of suicidal depression. Mental health treatments during this era were often crude and ineffective, and some of the treatments she received, including poorly administered electroconvulsive therapy, worsened her suffering. Much of her most famous work, including her novel The Bell Jar, details her struggles with mental instability and the questionable medical practices of the time. In the same vein, "Kindness" portrays the morbid imaginings of a woman whom others seem to be trying to "cure."
Plath's writing is also considered a landmark in the history of feminist literature; she died just on the cusp of what became known as second-wave feminism. Following World War II (during which women often worked outside the home while men served in the military), women across Western society faced pressure to return to the home and fulfill their supposedly natural roles as wives and mothers. As a writer and academic, Plath found many of these stereotyped expectations oppressive.
Many women during this period felt profound unhappiness at their lack of autonomy, described by feminist writer Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique (1963) as "the problem that has no name." Though Plath experienced career success as a writer, the social pressure she faced to fulfill the roles of wife and mother, as well as the double standards surrounding the behavior expected of husbands and wives, may have exacerbated her mental illness. Thus, much of Plath's writing, including "Kindness," involves troubled domestic settings and a complicated experience of motherhood and femininity.
-
-
More “Kindness” Resources
-
External Resources
-
The Poet's Life — Read about Plath's life and work via the Poetry Foundation.
-
Plath on Living and Parenting Abroad — Listen to a 1962 interview in which Plath explains why she and Ted Hughes chose to live and raise children in England.
-
"The Blood Jet Is Poetry" — Read a 1965 Time magazine review, titled after a line from "Kindness," that helped shape Plath's posthumous reputation.
-
Jillian Becker on Plath's Last Days — Jillian Becker, thought to be the model for "Dame Kindness" in "Kindness," recalls taking care of Plath shortly before the poet's death. [Content Warning: depression, suicide]
-
Confessional Poetry — Read Poetry Foundation's introduction to Confessionalism, the literary movement with which Plath's work is often associated.
-
"Difficulties of a Bridegroom" — More information on one of the inspirations for "Kindness": a radio play written by Plath's estranged husband, Ted Hughes.
-
-
LitCharts on Other Poems by Sylvia Plath
-
