it is this struggle between the true and false self, between the Double and its

origin, which becomes the prevalent theme in many of Plaths subsequent

poems, i.e. the struggle of the true self to shed its shell. This struggle is evident in
the poem In Plaster:
I shall never get out of this! There are two of me now:
The new absolutely white person and the old yellow one,
And the white person is certainly the
superior one. (158)
Note the desperation of the persona in these lines. As the poem progresses, the
tone of the persona changes from despondent, to hopeful, to confident in the final
line: One day I shall manage without her. The true self is ready to break free of
its confinement and believes in its ability to stand on its own, i.e. without the
superficial support of the false self.
The white person or plaster of the poem is the false self which prevents the true
self from emerging. But while the true self most likely can exist on its own, the
false self cannot exist without the presence of its counterpart, and in this way, the
true self may literally be seen as a host for the false self:
Without me, she wouldnt exist, so of course she was grateful.
I gave her a soul, I bloomed out of her as a rose (159)
The image of the soul as a rose echoes that of the poem, The Stones, in which
the soul as a rose is housed by a reconstructed self (137). At the beginning of
In Plaster, the true self is weak and powerless, but gradually it blooms with
confidence until it is convinced of its own strength and ability to conquer the
obstacle of the false self which encapsulates it:
Im collecting my strength, one day I shall manage without her,
And shell perish with emptiness then, and begin to miss me. (160)
The encapsulation of the true self (or immortal soul) can also be found in Plaths
use of glass imagery. In the poem The Other, glass acts as a barrier between
the personas selves:

Cold glass, how you insert yourself

Between myself and myself. (202)

Here, the persona is frustrated by the division of the self. This suggests a desire
to reconcile the two fragments, as opposed to the true selfs desire for
independence in the poem, In Plaster. In the poem, Mirror, glass both hides
and reflects the personas true self:
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is. (174)
The persona is both fascinated and abhorred by the image of the true self, which
in final line is described as a terrible fish. Thus, there is certain ambivalence
between the desire to shed the false self or to hide behind it, so to speak.

. Plath uses the idea of the double self. Literally, In Plaster refers to a person in a
full body cast, but the metaphorical meaning is that there is an internal war between
the two selvesthis new, healthy versus the old, unstable, and one is being trapped
within the other. The two sides are unable to live harmoniously together. I feel that
this conflict is a symbol for Plaths frustration between herself: the one side that is
plagued by her mental disorder, and the other that is reaching for sanity.
The poem begins with the introduction of the two selves: This new absolutely white
person and the old yellow one. The new, white self is seen as the superior one,
one of the real saints. She is the same as the other self, only much whiter and
unbreakable and with no complaints, which means that she is mentally stable. This
side wants to help the other overcome the depression; she humored my weakness
like the best of nurses,/Holding my bones in place so they would mend properly.
However, it is not easy; the old yellow one, the one marked with her past

experiences feels no connection to this other, new self: I couldnt sleep for a week,
she was so cold./I blamed her for everything.
In the third stanza, we see the old half understand that though she was not as stable,
she was more well-liked: And it was I who attracted everybodys attention,/Not her
whiteness and beauty, as I had first supposed. The two lines struck me. When we
read The Haunting of Sylvia Plath, there was the line that said, above all, Sylvia
Plath desired fame. As she put it at one point in her Journals: it is sad only to be
able to mouth other poets; I want someone to mouth me (Rose, 3). Plaths poetry,
which are partially influenced by her depression, was what made her well-known. It
is raw, edgy, fascinating in a morbid way; everyone was fascinated with her. As
Jacqueline Rose puts it, She isa shadowy figure whose presence draws on and
compels (Rose, 1). I feel this internal conflict within her stemmed from the
realization she must have had: if she had become mentally stable, lived normally
without her depression clutching onto her, who would she actually be? She would not
be the Sylvia Plath people had become infatuated with: she would be this boring,
new self. Though this new part is trying to help her, she is unwilling to cooperate.
After being you your whole life, how are you expected to change? This creates the
shift between the two selves that you can see happen in the fifth stanza. The new
self becomes angry with the old: I felt her criticizing myself in spit of herself,/As if my
habits offended her in some way.
As the new self is becoming fed up, the old self realizes that she doesnt want to
leave the otherShed supported me for so long I was quite limp/I had even
forgotten how to walk or sit. In the last stanza, with the line Now I see it must be
one or the other of us Plath realizes that her two sides can either be one, united, or
be an incomplete half. If they cannot work together, they cannot stay together. In the
last two lines, Plath makes it clear which side will stay: Im collecting my strength;
one day I shall manage without her,/And shell perish with emptiness then, and begin
to miss me. The first line could be perceived as optimistic and that Plath will be able
to deal with her demons without help. However, as I read it with the next line, I feel as
though her collecting of strength is for her to disappear, for good this time. The only
way her other self could perish with emptiness is if all of Sylvia died.