Struggles of motherhood
The poem attends to both the physical exhaustion and emotional intensity of motherhood, in particular by using the allegory of the mine. Comparing herself to a miner, the speaker highlights the physical experiences of cold, sleep deprivation, and discomfort. But she also discusses the fear, uncertainty, and alienation of a new and singular experience. Interestingly, she neither resents her child nor considers him to be a reason for her feelings of fear and physical discomfort. Instead, she views him as her ally, and links the experiences of being newly born and of having given birth. Mother and child, she implies, are united in their struggles: they are deeply reliant on each other as they undergo bizarre new physical and emotional challenges.
Religion
The poem ends with the speaker comparing her own baby to the newborn Jesus, in particular calling attention to the juxtapositions of the nativity story: namely, the messiah being born in humble, uncomfortable circumstances. Through this comparison, the speaker implies that her own child can bring hope in times of fear, and in fact she even suggests that the struggle of birth and parenthood are signs of coming hope and comfort. This is not the only place in the poem where the speaker compares both motherhood and being born to a religious awakening. She calls the fish swimming in her imagined mine “holy,” and suggests that the child’s nursing is a sort of first communion. One way to view these allusions is in light of Christian traditions of martyrdom and asceticism: the mother and child both suffer, but their devotion to one another is both a reason to endure suffering and a source of hope during that suffering.
Domesticity
One issue that looms in the poem is that of domesticity and, more broadly, home. The speaker links her own womb to a foreboding mine, suggesting that her body, the most familiar home of all, has become alien to her after giving birth. On the other hand, she implies that her baby feels alienated and lost after being born—for him, the womb was a home, and the outside world has not yet become one. However, Plath hints, the mother and the child will craft a version of domestic comfort to the best of their ability. The speaker’s assurance that she will hang “Victoriana” in their cave hearkens back to an era in which the domestic and maternal were particularly viewed as realms of refuge. The reference is ironic, but not entirely: it is clear that the mother plans to create just such a refuge for her child, even if she knows that she is merely offering the trappings of comfort in an inevitably frightening world.
