The Full Text of “The Applicant”
The Full Text of “The Applicant”
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“The Applicant” Introduction
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Sylvia Plath's “The Applicant” is a free verse dramatic monologue in which a salesperson rigorously interviews a man who has applied to buy a wife. The poem satirizes rampant consumerism and patriarchy, exploring ways these forces pressure people to conform to narrow roles. "The Applicant" originally appeared in The London Magazine and is one of the first poems in Ariel, Plath’s seminal, posthumous collection of poetry published in 1965. Plath wrote most of Ariel's poems, including "The Applicant," in the highly productive five-month period before her death in February 1963.
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“The Applicant” Summary
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The speaker begins the interrogation of an unnamed applicant by asking if he is the type of person that the interviewer's organization is looking for. The interviewer then asks if any of the applicant's body parts are prosthetic, or if he relies on any devices for mobility.
The interviewer next asks the applicant if he has had anything removed, leaving stitches. The interviewer confirms the applicant’s answer, “No,” repeating it back to him in the form of another question. The interviewer wonders aloud how their organization is able to give him anything if that is the case. The applicant begins to cry, and the interviewer tells him to stop and open his hand. The interviewer asks the applicant to confirm that the applicant's hand is empty. Not bothering to wait for a reply, the interviewer confirms that it’s empty. The interviewer offers the hand of the wife that the applicant is interviewing for.
The speaker becomes a salesperson, explaining that the wife can fill the applicant's empty hand. According to the speaker, she is also willing to bring the applicant tea, massage him to get rid of his headaches, and do anything else that the applicant asks of her. The speaker asks if the applicant will marry her.
The interviewer/salesperson promises that, when the applicant dies, the wife will close his eyes and be completely devastated. The speaker explains that his organization takes widows, which become salty piles of tears, and recycles them into something new, like boiling the bones and scraps of a piece of meat to create a stock. The speaker points out that the applicant is completely naked and offers him a suit.
Although it is a rigid and conventional black suit, it fits the applicant fairly well. The speaker urges the applicant to buy the suit, asking again if he will marry the potential wife. The speaker claims that the suit is indestructible—water won’t ruin it, it won’t break apart, not even a barrage of bombs and fire will destroy the suit. The speaker tells the applicant to trust that he will be buried in it.
Without trying to be too impolite, the speaker tells the applicant that he is brainless, and as a result, the speaker knows exactly what the applicant should buy. The speaker calls to the potential wife, coaxing her out of the closet that she has been confined to. The speaker asks what the applicant thinks of her.
Although she is currently an idle blank slate, the speaker claims that her value will appreciate over time—she will match the worth of silver after 25 years and that of gold after 50. The speaker also says that she will act like a doll brought to life, always at his beck and call. She can sew and cook for him, and she can also talk at length.
Speaking as if she is a machine, the speaker points out that the potential wife is functioning properly. The speaker amps up the sales rhetoric, claiming that the wife can fulfill whatever role the applicant chooses—if he has an injury, she will be his dressing; if he needs something to gaze upon, she will be his eye candy. Addressing the applicant as if he is an adolescent, the speaker tells the applicant that this wife is his last opportunity for a decent life. The interview-turned-sales-pitch ends with the speaker asking three times if the applicant will marry her, phrasing it as a command or a matter of fact, rather than a question.
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“The Applicant” Themes
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Consumerism and Need
“The Applicant” is a dramatic monologue in which the speaker interviews a silent, presumably male subject to determine if he would make a proper husband for a particular woman. The poem parodies the transactional nature of modern courtship, with the interviewer acting as a salesperson who is eager to marry the pair off. To facilitate the deal, the speaker points out the applicant’s supposed shortcomings and depersonalizes his potential wife, so that she appears to be the ideal solution to all the applicant's problems. As a stand-in for the marketplace, the speaker reveals that consumerism constantly creates and exploits superficial needs in order to encourage the consumption of products.
Throughout the poem, the speaker points out the applicant’s alleged flaws to convince him that he desperately needs a wife. The speaker invokes terms associated with emptiness to suggest that the applicant is incomplete because he is unmarried. For example, the speaker has the applicant stretch out his hand and calls attention to the fact that it is empty, implying that the applicant does, in fact, have “something missing.” This image of an empty, outstretched hand is associated with poverty and suggests that marriage will crucially increase his value.
The speaker later points out that the applicant is “stark naked,” insinuating that he needs outward signifiers—specifically a wedding suit and ring—to prove his worth to society. Shortly thereafter, the speaker says that applicant's “head … is empty,” again creating need, this time by suggesting that the applicant’s lack of a wife makes him brainless. The speaker also implies that the applicant’s lack of a wife puts him in danger, claiming that marriage would protect him from “fire and bombs through the roof.” The speaker exacerbates the pressure that the applicant feels to marry by creating urgency with the phrase “last resort,” a method consistent with sales tactics—language like “Act now!” and “Limited time offer!”
After building the illusion that the applicant is in dire need, the speaker profits by presenting the applicant’s potential wife as the perfect solution to all of these newly minted “problems.” In order to market the applicant’s potential wife, the speaker dehumanizes her and strips her of all personality so that she is highly adaptable to the applicant’s needs and desires. For instance, she is said to “fill” his empty hand and be “the ticket” to remedying his empty head.
In fact, the speaker purports that the wife will morph into whatever tool the applicant might need, remarking “You have a hole, it’s a poultice. / You have an eye, it’s an image.” The speaker calls the applicant’s potential wife “a living doll,” which implies that she does not act of her own accord and is instead intended to be controlled by her husband, serving his needs. Language such as “It works, there is nothing wrong with it,” reinforces the image of the applicant’s potential wife is a machine, with her functionality determining her worth. Furthermore, the speaker refers to her as an investment that will accrue value over time through service to the applicant.
In this way, the poem’s speaker parodies the idea that products can be trusted to solve all of one’s problems—that products can radically change, and even save, one’s life. Moreover, the speaker illustrates that consumerism thrives by constantly creating problems—often suggesting that people are unacceptable or incomplete—in order to sell products as solutions. When unchecked, such toxic market pressures will ultimately encourage people to see one another as products and judge others based on their perceived ability to serve their own so-called needs. As the theme below explores in more detail, gender roles aid consumerism by providing narrow but widely-accepted ideals that serve as the basis for what a person “needs” to be.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-40
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Gender and Freedom
During the applicant’s interview, the speaker measures him against a narrow definition of masculinity that prioritizes dominance in all areas of life. At the same time, the speaker presents the applicant’s potential wife as the perfect archetype of a woman, in an attempt to sell her. In order to confine them within narrow gendered ideals, the speaker denies both the applicant and his potential wife their individual identities and right to self-determination. In this way, the speaker reveals that patriarchal gender roles restrict the freedom of both men and women.
The speaker disregards the applicant’s individual needs and opinions, instead suggesting that he will only find success by adhering to the vision of manhood that the speaker lays out. While the speaker asks the applicant a series of questions, giving the illusion of choice, the speaker implies that there is only one proper answer. Indeed, the poem opens with the question “are you our sort of a person?” As the monologue portrays an interview, the applicant is keenly aware that he must be the interviewer's “sort of a person” in order to land the job.
The speaker also asks questions in rapid succession, leaving little room for response and in turn restricting the applicant’s ability to disagree. In fact, the speaker bluntly denies the applicant’s personality, thoughts, and opinions by telling him that his “head … is empty.” The only moment in which the applicant is asked his opinion—“Well, what do you think of that?”—requires him to judge the worthiness of his potential wife, yet it's phrased almost as a rhetorical question. The speaker is unveiling a product the applicant's clearly expected to admire.
Similarly, by telling the applicant that his wife will “do whatever you tell it,” the speaker pressures him to order his wife around. Sometimes the speaker calls more overtly for the applicant to act “manly” and dominant, such as when the speaker brusquely tells the applicant to “stop crying.” Finally, the speaker forces a plain, stiff suit onto the applicant, remarking that it’s “not a bad fit.” Thus, it is clear that speaker’s goal isn’t to find personalized ways for the applicant to express himself. Rather, the goal is to force the applicant to adopt a rigid, conservative attitude towards marriage that is consistent with that of his male peers and patriarchal society more broadly.
Throughout the monologue, the speaker objectifies and stereotypes the applicant’s potential wife, denying her individuality and freedom in order to market her as the “perfect” woman. The speaker discusses the applicant’s potential wife as a tool to serve him, rather than a person with inherent value. She is said to be “the ticket” to filling his empty head, and the speaker rattles off various services she can provide—she will “bring teacups and roll away headaches,” “thumb shut your eyes,” “sew,” and “cook,” for example.
Furthermore, the speaker encourages the applicant to invest in his wife, as her value will increase from "paper" to "silver" to "gold." And she can be recycled as "new stock" when the applicant dies, which will maximize her worth. In fact, the speaker repeatedly refers to the applicant’s potential wife as “it” to downplay her humanity. Instead, the speaker emphasizes her sexuality by reducing her to her body parts (“a hand”), referring to her as “naked,” and calling her “an image,” to suggest that she has little purpose beyond being a sexual object. The speaker describes her personality only through sexist tropes, claiming that she drones on and on (“talk, talk, talk”) and is overly emotional (“dissolve of sorrow”). By saying that “there is nothing wrong with it,” the speaker suggests that this is how a wife is supposed to behave.
The speaker denies both the applicant's and his potential wife’s individuality by claiming that their value to society is directly proportional to their adherence to narrow gender roles. By enforcing these stringent standards, the speaker proves that patriarchal gender roles erode the freedoms of both men and women. Ultimately, gender roles facilitate consumerism by providing ideals for people to aspire to, creating a narrative that institutions like marriage will correct their shortcomings and increase their worth.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-40
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Applicant”
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Lines 1-6
First, are you ...
... show something's missing?The poem opens with a flurry of questions, which indicate that the monologue is a transcript of a rather unconventional interview. The speaker establishes the purpose of the interview—to determine if the applicant is their “sort of a person”—before going on to list various factors that speak to the applicant's eligibility for some unspecified role. The vague collective “our” that the speaker invokes suggests that the interviewer is acting on behalf of a larger organization, or possibly should be interpreted as a satirical stand-in for society itself.
Almost all readers will have interviewed for a position at one point or another, allowing them to fill in the details of this nondescript setting and empathize with the applicant’s position. The use of apostrophe allows the speaker to address readers directly, encouraging them to experience the poem’s events from the applicant’s perspective.
The speaker’s first question comes across as direct and assertive, especially because it is neatly contained in a short line. It also contains a high concentration of stressed syllables, a technique that will persist throughout the rest of the poem, putting force behind the speaker’s statements:
First, are you our sort of a person?
As readers well know, the purpose of an interview is to vet candidates and decide who most closely matches the profile the interviewers are looking for. Indeed, the stresses on “our sort” emphasize that the speaker’s singular task is to prove his worthiness on the speaker's terms.
However, this question immediately raises doubt, or employs aporia, to suggest that the speaker is skeptical of the applicant’s suitability. This skepticism builds a power dynamic at the poem’s outset, wherein the applicant is at the mercy of a rigorous interviewer.
The speaker goes on to list various prosthetics and other assistive devices, asking the applicant if he relies on any of them. The speaker frames these devices as evidence that “something’s missing” and uses them to determine if the applicant is truly “in need” of a wife. Because the speaker callously suggests that people who rely on prosthetics are incomplete and thus needy, these devices can be interpreted as a symbolic representation of people’s perceived shortcomings in a male-dominated, consumer-driven society.
The list of these devices employs polysyndeton, an abundance of conjunctions (in this case, "or"). This abundance extends the speaker's question, which sprawls out across 5 lines and spans the poem’s first stanza break. Line 6 is relatively long and syntactically complex. It also employs sibilance, or repeating /s/ sounds ("Stitches to show something's missing"). All of these factors slow the reader down, making the speaker’s subsequent statements appear exceedingly curt.
Throughout this initial passage, repetition in the form of polysyndeton ("or") and diacope (“Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch”) contribute to a barrage of /r/ sounds, which suggest a growling sound and give the speaker’s tone a harsh edge.
Furthermore, repetition creates metrical patterns that repeat briefly, helping to build momentum and draw the reader into the poem’s rhythms. More specifically, polysyndeton results in a repeating unstressed-unstressed-stressed pattern (anapests), while diacope results in a repeating stressed-unstressed-stressed pattern, with the two overlapping in line 5:
... or a crutch,
A brace, or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch.These interlocking patterns capture the forcefulness of the speaker's monologue.
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Lines 6-10
No, no? Then ...
... Empty? Empty. -
Lines 10-14
Here is a ...
... you marry it? -
Lines 15-18
It is guaranteed ...
... from the salt. -
Lines 19-25
I notice you ...
... you in it. -
Lines 26-29
Now your head, ...
... ? -
Lines 30-35
Naked as paper ...
... talk, talk, talk. -
Lines 36-40
It works, there ...
... it, marry it.
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“The Applicant” Symbols
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Prosthetics and Assistive Devices
Within the poem, prosthetics and other assistive devices represent a person’s perceived deficiencies in a patriarchal consumerist society—that is, a society in which men have structural power over women, and in which the excessive consumption of goods (i.e., buying things) is encouraged. The speaker lists such devices to determine if the applicant is “missing” anything. This language implies incompleteness and suggests that there is something “wrong” with people who rely on assistive devices.
When the applicant answers that he does not use any of the devices listed, the speaker asks, “Then / How can we give you a thing?” Thus, it becomes clear that the speaker exploits applicants’ deviations from an invented norm or masculine archetype in order to sell them products that will “fix” them.
Of course, dominant political and social structures create ideals that go beyond the physical to include mental, sexual, psychological, economic, and other traits. Therefore, the assistive devices stand in for deviations from a larger set of societal standards. The poem reveals that making people believe they are flawed pressures them to purchase items that make them more “acceptable”—makeup, clothing, a college degree, or even a spouse.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Line 3: “glass eye,” “false teeth,” “crutch”
- Line 4: “brace,” “hook”
- Line 5: “Rubber breasts,” “rubber crotch”
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Clothing and Nakedness
The speaker presents the applicant and his potential wife as blank slates, or “naked,” ready to be molded by societal ideals, or “clothed.” Therefore, within the poem, clothing can be interpreted as a performative display of identity, while nakedness represents the belief that people are defined only by these superficial signifiers. Indeed, the speaker repeatedly denies both the applicant and his potential wife the opportunity to express themselves, disregarding their personalities, desires, opinions, and so on.
According to the speaker, such characteristics do not figure into their roles within society. Instead, they are valuable only insofar as they conform to strict social conventions. The applicant’s potential wife is “naked as paper to start” but will accrue value by spending decades serving her husband’s interests. Similarly, the applicant is “stark naked” until he puts on a wedding suit, which will protect him until his death as long as he accepts its plainness and rigidity.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Line 19: “stark naked”
- Line 20: “suit”
- Line 23: “It”
- Line 25: “it”
- Line 30: “Naked”
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“The Applicant” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Anaphora
The anaphora that appears in this poem is concentrated in its final two stanzas, working to build anticipation and momentum as the poem's conclusion nears. All three examples of this poetic device give structure to lists of services that the speaker claims a wife would perform for the applicant. In doing so, anaphora also allows the speaker to create links between the miscellaneous purported advantages of marriage.
In lines 31-32, anaphora sets up a comparison between "twenty-five years" and "fifty" as well as a comparison between "silver" and "gold":
But in twenty-five years she'll be silver,
In fifty, gold.Thus, the repetition of "in" emphasizes the potential wife's accrual of value over time, indicating that she has little inherent value and it will take decades of dedicated commitment to prove her merit. This insinuation also signals to the applicant that he will be rewarded based on the longevity of his commitment.
Anaphora appears again in lines 34-35, which list three stereotypical qualities of the 20th-century housewife—she sews, cooks, and has a tendency to drone on without saying anything of substance:
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk, talk.Anaphora unites these three clichés, creating a simple, compact image of the ideal stereotypical housewife. Furthermore, the anaphora, aided by asyndeton, creates a repeating metrical pattern (unstressed-unstressed-stressed) that gains momentum before being abandoned as line 35 trails off:
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk, talk.This break from the anticipated rhythm causes the phrase "talk, talk, talk" to come across as very elongated due to its string of three stressed syllables, instead of the expected one. As a result, this line's rhythm reflects the droning that it describes and draws attention to the potential wife's penchant to go on and on. The various forms of repetition within this sentence match the idea that she will perform the same tasks over and over again. In this way, the repetitive meter is consistent with the monotony of her expected life.
The poem's third and final example of anaphora occurs in lines 37-38, where the speaker gives examples of the various roles that the applicant's potential wife would be able to fulfill.:
You have a hole, it's a poultice.
You have an eye, it's an image.She is said to become a dressing when the applicant is wounded, and an image when he desires something to gaze upon. By setting these starkly different needs side-by-side, anaphora conveys that wives are expected to shape themselves around the needs of men and keep up with their ever-changing impulses. Additionally, the anaphora creates identical sentence structures (i.e. parallelism) and meter for lines 37 and 38, reflecting the consistency with which wives are expected to submit to their husbands' needs.
Where anaphora appears in the poem:- Line 31: “in”
- Line 32: “In”
- Line 34: “It can,” “it can”
- Line 35: “It can”
- Line 37: “You have a”
- Line 38: “You have an”
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Aporia
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Apostrophe
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Asyndeton
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Consonance
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End-Stopped Line
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Metaphor
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Repetition
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Assonance
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Enjambment
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"The Applicant" 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.
- Stock
- Stark
- The ticket
- Living doll
- Poultice
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(Location in poem: Line 18: “stock”)
A broth created by simmering animal or plant material in water to impart flavor. Stocks serve as the base for many dishes and typically use the remnants of foods prepared for other purposes—think prawn shells, vegetable peels, and bones with bits of unused flesh. The term insinuates that women are little more than bodies that should be “recycled” to maximize their value. The speaker could be referring to widows remarrying, or mothers giving birth to children who are ultimately subject to the same systemic courting rituals as their parents. This term is also associated with merchandise (i.e. “we have it in stock”) and corporate capital (i.e. “stock prices are rising”).
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Applicant”
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Form
This poem is broken up into eight cinquains/quintains, or stanzas containing five lines each. The length and number of stressed syllables vary greatly from one line to the next. Furthermore, stanza breaks almost always occur in the middle of sentences, creating unnatural divisions. The resulting tension between the irregularity of the poem's lines and the forced uniformity of its stanzas reflects the poem’s commentary on conformity. More specifically, like the poem’s lines, people are highly unique but feel pressure to present themselves in an orderly, socially acceptable way. Moreover, people are often divided into groups—such as "male" and "female”—that determine how they are expected to behave.
Overall, the poem's lines are very short, contributing to the terseness of the speaker's tone. Sometimes the abrupt line and stanza breaks visually and rhythmically reflect the corresponding text. For example, the speaker's first commands to the applicant—"Stop crying" and "Open your hand"—come across as especially blunt due to the relatively long length of the two preceding lines. The stanza break after "Naked as paper to start" causes the reader's gaze to drift down the page, mimicking the passage of time described in the sentence that spans stanzas 6 and 7.
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Meter
This poem does not follow a specific pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables, known as meter. It is instead written in free verse.
That said, this poem does contain a high concentration of stressed syllables, which are more drawn out, slowing the poem’s cadence. Without so many stressed syllables, the rapid-fire nature of the speaker’s questioning could become overwhelming and lead the reader to blow past important images and ideas. Furthermore, this poem does not contain many iambic or trochaic moments, in which syllables alternate between stressed and unstressed, creating a bouncy rhythm. Such a jaunty cadence would be out of step with the poem’s aggressive mood. The poem's most iambic moment occurs in lines 32-33, which fittingly describe a perfectly domesticated woman:
In fifty, gold.
A living doll, everywhere you look.The rhythm throughout the rest of the poem is very dynamic, gaining speed through short syllables and rhythmic force through long syllables, which work together to build momentum. Furthermore, there are often multiple stressed or unstressed syllables in a row, which creates greater contrast between the two, as in line 1:
First, are you our sort of a person?
Elsewhere, repetitive language creates repetitive metrical patterns, building anticipation. A list that uses anaphora has this effect in lines 34-35:
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk, talkThe two stressed syllables that break the above passage’s anapestic rhythm make the line appear to drone on, as the speaker insinuates women do.
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Rhyme Scheme
The rhymes that appear in this poem are relatively infrequent and unsystematic, following no set rhyme scheme. Rather, the poem uses rhyme to subtly link images and ideas, draw attention to important moments, and create sonic interest. Consonance has the latter effect in stanzas 1 and 4, creating the near-rhymes "crutch" with "crotch" and "stock" with "stark." The strings of rhymes in stanza 3—"fill" with "will" and "willing" as well as "do" with "you" and"you"—mimic the speaker's claim that the hand of the applicant's potential wife is the perfect match for his own empty palm. The slant rhyme between "new" and "suit" in stanza 4 reflects the suit's imperfect fit on the applicant.
However, each line of the following stanza contains perfect end rhymes, in addition to the internal rhyme between "marry" and "bury."
Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.
Will you marry it?
It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof
Against fire and bombs through the roof.
Believe me, they'll bury you in it.Here, the speaker insists that it is in the applicant's best interest to commit to the suit, pushing him to believe that it fits well enough. Furthermore, the playful use of rhyme indicates that the speaker is unmoved by the death and violence this stanza describes.
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“The Applicant” Speaker
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Essentially no background information is revealed about the speaker over the course of this poem. The speaker’s gender, age, and exact occupation remain a mystery. However, the speaker appears to be an executive of some sort, so it would be safe to assume that the speaker is an affluent adult.
“The Applicant” is an example of a dramatic monologue, or a poem whose speaker addresses someone (or something) who cannot respond. Dramatic monologues are known for their ability to reveal a speaker’s true character without the speaker’s own realization. Throughout this poem, the speaker is forceful and insistent—hell-bent on rigorously vetting the applicant and coercing him into buying a wife. The speaker also proves to be self-interested, disregarding the applicant’s individual needs and opinions by giving him no opportunity to respond.
Due to an overarching lack of empathy and dearth of biographical information, the speaker hardly seems human and is more likely a satirical stand-in for something else. Indeed, the speaker openly represents a larger organization—one that puts immense pressure on people to conform to narrow gender roles and buy, buy, buy. In this way, the speaker can be interpreted as the embodiment of “the marketplace” in a consumerist, patriarchal society—that is, a society that structurally privileges men over women and encourages the excessive purchase and consumption of goods.
Much of the speaker’s language is consistent with this interpretation. For example, the speaker refers to the applicant’s potential wife as an investment in stanza 7, tells the applicant to “stop crying” and act like a man in line 8, and is incapable of engaging in a back-and-forth exchange, which would require a degree of self-criticality and recognition of its interlocutor’s humanity. The most consistent and compelling evidence that points to this interpretation, however, is the speaker’s loyalty only to the “bottom line.”
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“The Applicant” Setting
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This poem's setting is so ambiguous that it almost appears to take place in a vacuum. Aside from a brief reference to a closet in line 28, the poem is devoid of sensory details—sounds, sights, smells—that would point to its setting, providing depth and realism. However, as the poem is essentially the transcript of a one-sided interview, it is easy to imagine that it takes place in a generic office. As most people have interviewed for a job at one point or another, the shallow setting invites readers to fill in its details themselves. The ordinariness and universality of the presumable setting allow the reader to empathize with the applicant, which is consistent with the poem's message that all people come under pressure to conform.
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Literary and Historical Context of “The Applicant”
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Literary Context
In addition to poetry, Plath wrote short stories, a novel, and even a lighthearted children’s book during her lifetime. The posthumous publication of Ariel led to a dramatic uptick in Plath’s popularity, which was formerly limited to poetry circles. It is considered a landmark work largely because of its groundbreaking voice—one that is proud, aggressive, impolite, and all-knowing, but also pointedly female. “Lady Lazarus” is one iconic example of this voice.
Plath famously used her personal experiences—complicated personal relationships, struggles with mental health, ambivalence about motherhood—to explore larger tensions within society. Rather than present life’s horrors as subtle and insidious, Plath does away with pleasantries and coded language, instead holding up a mirror to the brutal world as it really is. She often wrote about the social restrictions that people—particularly women—come up against. The protagonist of her novel, The Bell Jar, is a young woman who searches for an identity beyond the entrenched expectations of femininity.
The highly autobiographical nature of Plath’s work was radical at the time and helped to usher in the confessional mode, a poetic style characterized by the candid, graphic exploration of poets’ personal experiences. The term “confessional poetry” was first used to describe the work of Robert Lowell ("For the Union Dead"), who mentored Plath as well as Anne Sexton ("The Kiss"). John Berryman ("Dream Song 14"), Randall Jarrell ("90 North"), and W. D. Snodgrass (" The Poet Ridiculed by Hysterical Academics") are also closely associated with the emergence of the confessional mode. Confessional poets tended to use plain speech, refer directly to real people, and dispense with flowery euphemisms used to discuss unsavory subjects in a traditionally “poetic” manner. While the confessional poetry movement trailed off in the 1970s, its preoccupations, stylistic elements, and techniques have informed countless poets since. Pulitzer Prize-winner Sharon Olds ("Satan Says") is one oft-cited example.
Historical Context
Plath wrote “The Applicant” during a period of intense productivity during the weeks and months leading up to her death by suicide in February 1963, when she was only 30 years old. The poems she wrote during this time ultimately comprised her posthumous collection Ariel, first published in 1965. However, “The Applicant” originally appeared in The London Magazine shortly before her death. Plath had a fraught relationship with her husband, poet Ted Hughes ("Hawk Roosting"), who was known to batter her. As a result of his infidelity, the two separated in 1962, leaving Plath to look after two small children. Plath’s poems are known for being radically autobiographical, and Ariel often explores motherhood, marriage, and the role of women in society. The violence and obsession with death that characterize much of Plath’s work (and creep into “The Applicant”) can be traced back to personal experiences, such as Plath’s suicide attempts and the horrors she witnessed as a child growing up during the Second World War, which spanned 1939 to 1945.
In the wake of World War II, men returned home and reentered the workforce, causing a restoration of traditional gender roles, wherein men were expected to be breadwinners and women were expected to be housewives. The Baby Boom was in full force from the war’s conclusion in 1945 through the mid-sixties. The onset of the Cold War pitted democracy against communism, and identifying with free-market capitalism—a foil for communist economic ideology—was encouraged amongst Americans. Plus, with restrictive rationing lifted, men and women alike were eager to buy. The explosion of “new media” including radio and television caused a sudden increase in advertising, which targeted housewives and encouraged excessive consumption.
Plath satirizes these movements in American society, using the speaker of “The Applicant” as a hyperbolic embodiment of consumerism and patriarchy to show how far-reaching and sinister their influence truly is.
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More “The Applicant” Resources
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External Resources
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Sylvia Plath Reads "The Applicant" — Listen to the author read the poem aloud.
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"1940s, Cold War and Consumerism" — An overview of the explosion of advertising and the "new media" in post-war America from Ad Age.
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Sylvia Plath's Biography — A detailed look at the author's life and work, including links to her poems and other related resources from Poetry Foundation.
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A Brief Guide to Confessional Poetry — A concise account confessional poetry's emergence, including an explanation of what makes a poem "confessional."
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50 Years of Ariel — A 21-minute podcast episode in which writers examine the legacy of Plath's book Ariel, the collection in which "The Applicant" appears.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Sylvia Plath
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