The Interviewer
“The Applicant” is a monologue structured in the form of a job interview. Every line of the poem, therefore, is something that the interviewer is asking or telling the applicant. Since the speaker is evidently interviewing an applicant to see if he wants or is worthy of a wife, he seems to personify patriarchal pressure, perhaps in the form of familial, financial, and religious entities reinforcing gendered marriage structures. At the same time, the speaker's language is that of an energetic corporate worker, full of sales pitches and aggressive deal-making. He veers from over-the-top displays of enthusiasm to threatening, desperate-sounding urging to invasive questions, ultimately conveying a sinister insensitivity and eagerness.
The Applicant
The title character is actually silent throughout the poem. It is only through the interviewer’s reactions and responses that we can determine anything about this applicant. Context clues make it clear that he is a man, being considered for (or convinced of the need for) marriage. One detail about the applicant which is explicitly stated is that he is naked. In response to this, the interviewer offers him a suit. This suit becomes a metonymic representation of masculine roles, and Plath suggests that the applicant will be urged to disguise his personality and emotions in order to fit expectations of masculinity. Though the speaker assures the applicant that he will benefit from getting married, since his wife will solve all of his problems and perform any task he asks, the applicant is evidently not persuaded—as the speaker's increasingly angry, desperate-sounding tone reveals.
The Wife
While the applicant's voice is unheard throughout the interview, discernable only via the speaker's responses, the wife figure never appears to speak at all—and in fact, she is almost never addressed. Instead, she is discussed in the third person, usually through synecdoche and metaphor: she is described as a disembodied hand able to perform tasks, as a doll, and as a bandage, each one of these figurative representations emphasizing a different type of task she is able to perform. Furthermore, the speaker only refers to the wife as "it," heavily hinting that marriage (and the expectations created by it) are dehumanizing to women. Like the applicant, the wife is naked. However, the speaker suggests that she will become more valuable and useful, her paper-like nudity eventually turning into high-value gold—she is, after all, ultimately a commodity, her inner life unknown because the speaker refuses to address or imagine it.
