I don’t really know why “Stings” has gained my attention to the degree it has, but since opening Ariel I have certainly read it the most.
So the “two ways of interpreting the poem.”
1. Literal.
She, presumably Plath, is working with a man over a bee hive:
“Bare-handed, I hand the combs.
The man in white smiles, bare-handed,
Our cheesecloth gauntlets neat and sweet,
The throats of our wrists brave lilies.
He and I
Have a thousand clean cells between us,
Eight combs of yellow cups,
And the hive itself a teacup,
White with pink flowers on it,
With excessive love I enameled it”
She is concerned for the health of the hive, specifically the queen:
“Brood cells gray as the fossils of shells
Terrify me, they seem so old.
What am I buying, wormy mahogany?
Is there any queen at all in it?
If there is, she is old,
Her wings torn shawls, her long body
Rubbed of its plush ----
Poor and bare and unqueenly and even shameful.”
The health of the hive is highlighted (or low-lighted) with the first line of the above section, “Brood cells gray as the fossils of shells” along with “wormy mahogany”. Both of these images are dilapidated and negative.
The Queen’s health is vital to a hive. An elderly one with torn wings and a poor, bare body is a strong indicator that the overall vitality of the hive is lacking.Then, someone unrelated to her and the bee keeper walks through the garden:
“In eight great bounds, a great scapegoat.
Here is his slipper, here is another,
And here the square of white linen
He wore instead of a hat.
He was sweet,”
Because this man did not wear a protective suit, he was attacked by her bees:
“The sweat of his efforts a rain
Tugging the world to fruit.
The bees found him out,
Molding onto his lips like lies,
Complicating his features.”
He lost his slipper, probably while running from the defensive bees. Those worker bees died when they lost their stingers stinging the stranger, but Plath is more concerned about her Queen. Without the queen, the hive has no future, so she searches for her:
“They thought death was worth it, but I
Have a self to recover, a queen.
Is she dead, is she sleeping?
Where has she been,
With her lion-red body, her wings of glass?”
Finally, she finds the Queen and see she is healthy enough to fly and seems vibrant with the color and adjectives Plath chooses.
Now she is flying
More terrible than she ever was, red
Scar in the sky, red comet
Over the engine that killed her ----
The mausoleum, the wax house.
Now.
2. The way I think it should be interpreted.
Or, Husband, husband, and Me.
I will not enthrall you by re-quoting “Stings,” but I will be referring to the sections I pasted above, so I do hope you read over them.
I am keeping Plath as the speaker (“I”) of the poem, but also as the Queen bee she is searching for.
Both the bee keeper at the beginning of the poem and the man walking by her bee hive are her husband, Ted Hughes. At first I thought the bee keeper was her father, Otto Plath, because he authored a book about bumblebees and was a professor of Biology. That being said, I have no problem reading the beekeeper as her father, but I prefer it this way.
This was another poem written in October of 1962, one month after Hughes and Plath split, about three months after she discovered her husband’s affair. Although Hughes and Plath’s marriage has been shown to be far from perfect, I am sure uncovering an affair would have shattered Plath’s previous view of her husband. This is why I changed my mind about the bee keeper being her father. I thought since Plath is being duplicitous with her character, by being both the bee keeper’s helper and the queen bee, Hughes should also be two-fold. I am sure this was especially true to Plath, seeing that her husband had shifted from being a part of their marriage to an unliked stung stranger, as seen in the second half of “Stings.”
In the first two stanzas pasted far above, Plath and Hughes are over a bee hive, bare handed, with thousands of cells between them. I think Plath is describing the calm before the storm in their marriage. The thousand cells between them is referring to their family they constructed together and are sharing. They could also refer to the poetry both had written. It would not surprise me if, at times, Plath thought poetry more intricate than a family. They are also bare handed, with is dangerous. She is saying what they had worked for, their family or marriage, is not being handled with care. However, even at the end of the second stanza there seems to be a nostalgia note on her part, “With excessive love I enameled it.” She wanted this life, with a family.
The second selection I pasted described that dilapidated hive. I think this is the calm AFTER the storm in her marriage. Before the cells were clean and a healthy yellow, but now they are grey and seem old. After her marriage crumbled, so probably did the rest of her family. Or at least it was perceived that way at times by Plath. By asking, is there a queen, she was asking herself if she was still up for the challenge of raising a family. The forth stanza, describing the old queen, is describing the way she felt after realizing her husband wanted and obtained another woman. She probably felt broken and useless from such a blow to her esteem.After this moment of self-pity Plath seems to gain momentum as a person through her poetry.
“It is almost over.
I am in control.
Here is my honey-machine,
It will work without thinking,
Opening, in spring, like an industrious virgin
To scour the creaming crests
As the moon, for its ivory powders, scours the sea.
A third person is watching.
He has nothing to do with the bee-seller or with me.
Now he is gone”
By claiming control of the situation, Plath is asserting that she can be over her hive, her family, without her husband. The machine and honey making process she refers to is probably a tip to her writing poetry. If I wrote 25 keepers in one month. . .Well I don’t know what I would do. The third person she mentions is the beginning of the stranger. He, the stranger, has nothing to do with the person who was a part of her marriage. Right after these stanzas are the ones finding the stranger’s clothing. I have no doubt this is literal. Once Hughes moved out I am sure Plath found a sock or two of his in some forgotten and rediscovered box.
Then the bees attack her cheating husband making him unrecognizable. Payback is a bitch. The last stanza, which I kind of promised to not re-quote is below. I do apologize, but it’s so good.
“Now she is flying
More terrible than she ever was, red
Scar in the sky, red comet
Over the engine that killed her ----
The mausoleum, the wax house.”
Plath regains her regal stature through, I believe, poetry and surviving without the wax marriage to Hughes.
