Known for her distinctive voice and her exploration of dark and violent emotions, Sylvia Plath was one of the most acclaimed poets of the 20th century. In her poems, she uniquely addresses many common themes such as family relationships, marriage, self-image and death. Among these topics, she expresses a particularly original perspective on motherhood and its effects on the individual, which often departs completely from the traditional view of child rearing. In her poems “Moonrise,” “Heavy Woman,” and “Morning Song,” Plath expresses the idea that motherhood, while necessary, is a personal and physical sacrifice that involves much pain and suffering. In “Moonrise,” Plath depicts a woman contemplating her fertility. The woman “sits in white… does nothing” (“Moonrise” 2/3) while “the white mulberries blush among the leaves” (1). Blackberries undergo a transformation from white to red, which is the process of their ripening. Their progress is continually monitored by the speaker who again states "red berries" (13) in the middle of the poem and "purple berries" (29) at the end. The woman is also “white” (2) waiting to mature, in this case to become pregnant, and concludes at the end: “The white belly can still mature” (30). She thus shows how motherhood is a necessary part of a woman's life since she is simply waiting to “mature” (30). However, it also presents pregnancy in a negative light by associating it with death and weakness. In this poem, the speaker connects whiteness to death. This connection is evident when she says that flowers "cast a round, white shadow as they die" ("Moonrise" 6), points out the white tail of a falling pigeon, and mentions a dead "body of whiteness" (.. .... middle of article... describes the mother's attitude towards her new role Just like in the Victorian era, where women were limited in their development as individuals and. served primarily as wives and mothers, the speaker feels confined to her new role as a mother and denied her creative freedom Clearly, Plath's poems take a profoundly different approach to the concepts of pregnancy and motherhood. , which are generally considered rewarding and fulfilling stages in a woman's life by the pain and stress they cause as well as the deterioration and eventual obliteration they cause in the mother, both as a mother. than individual than physical This new perspective shines a light on the darkness and often hidden restrictions associated with pregnancy and motherhood. that many women ignore and end up experiencing at some point in their lives.