Poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes were married for 6 years, as such their poetry often

overlaps and contains similar themes, ideas, and motifs. Their poems often contain similar
language and Hughes’ poems in particular were often written in response to Plath’s. While
the poets tend to differ in their style of writing, though this was not the case for “Thought
Fox” by Hughes and “Ariel” by Plath, the poems can be compared and contrasted specifically
on how each poet writes about their intense emotional experiences.

When writing ‘Ariel’ Plath was in a very self-destructive place, she hardly slept and Hughes
had recently run off with his mistress. This intense emotional experience led to her writing
some of her most famous poems, including Ariel. Within the poem it can be seen that this
was an extremely dark period of her life, thus the reoccurring theme which can be seen
right from the first line, “Stasis in darkness”. The darkness that Plath feels can be related to
Hughes in two ways. The first being that he had sent her into this breakdown which caused
her to feel so agitated but also that within her work, when making subtle references to
Hughes, darkness and the color black are almost always mentioned. This can also be seen in
other emotional works of Plath such as “The Arrival of the Bee-box” and “Daddy”.
Hughes also makes use of the reoccurring theme of “darkness” however, unlike Plath,
darkness seems to be a way for Hughes to emphasize more positive ideas. The inspiration
for Hughes’s poem came from a dream he had whilst suffering writers block in university.
While the theme of darkness for Hughes could relate back to his dream and his foggy state
of mind at the time, it could also be a way to emphasize the foxes relentless nature within
Hughes head, pushing through the darkness and allowing him to find inspiration. This can
also be seen as by the last stanza of the poem, Hughes seems to have become the fox and
enters the “dark hole of the head” the poem then ends with the “page being printed”.
Showing how the idea of the fox provides inspiration for Hughes.

Plath in the poem ‘Ariel’ uses half rhyme and assonance. The use of assonance is often used
to emphasize words and can be seen in Plath’s continuous use of “I” sounds “Thigh”, “fly”,
“cry”. The distinct sound is used within “Ariel” to emphasize that this poem is about an
internal experience from Plath’s point of view. We can also see that this is an emotion
experience which Plath feels both mentally and physically. The half rhyme is used very
clearly in the first line “stasis in the darkness” in order to emphasize the iambic pentameter
of the poem changing quickly and speeding up.
Hughes uses multiple rhyme techniques within his poem including full rhyme, half rhyme,
and internal rhyme in order to change the pace of the poem quickly, both to mimic the
movement of the fox as well as to create a sort of confusion for the reader, similar to
Hughes confusion that he was feeling at the time that the inspiration for this poem was
given to him. Hughes uses sibilance rather than assonance to emphasize certain moments of
the poem such as when the fox seems to be getting closer “sudden sharp hot stink”. Hughes
also experiments with sibilance and plosives in order to introduce and end the poem
“midnight moment”/”page is printed”.

The Poem “Ariel” is often thought to be named after Plath’s horse which she rode weekly
while in Devon. Ariel seems to be related to Hughes in many ways and one such way is how
it overlaps with Hughes belief in animism as Plath seems to use her horse as a way to
explain her feelings, even making the iambic pentameter of the poem mimic a horse’s
galloping. This can also be seen as Plath references Godiva, the lady famous for riding naked
on a horse through Coventry. Plath is using the image of her horse as a way to explain her
growing confidence as a poet but then using the image of Lady Godiva as a way to contrast
this confidence with the fear of exposure. As Plath was a growing poetic sensation at the
time it makes sense that these intense emotions would be fought by her negative mental
state.
Hughes using the symbol of the fox in his poem reflects on his aforementioned belief in
animism. Hughes also believed in totemic animals and often writes about becoming animals
such as in “Hawk” or writes his poetry from the point of view of an animal such as in “pike”.
This can be seen in “The Thought-Fox” as Ted Hughes not only mimics the movement of the
fox hunting with the iambic pentameter of the poem, but also writes about the fox from
both the foxes point of view and then as himself being the fox by the last stanza. This is
similar to “Ariel” in the way that animals seemed to influence both of their poems when
they write about intense emotional experiences.

The poets also explore gender throughout these poems. Plath takes a much more bold
approach, even naming the poem Ariel which many think may have been taken from the
genderless water nymph character in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”. Plath also blurs the line
between masculinity and femininity within Ariel, using phrases such as “Gods Lioness” and
calls herself an “Arrow” which is generally used in phallic imagery. While this is a very
common theme in Plath’s work, it can be especially seen in Ariel as Plath is referring
everything back to herself and uses the poem to express her wants and needs.
Hughes also makes references to gender but in much more subtle ways, such as by not
referring to the fox as “it” and by alternating between feminine and masculine rhyme. This
alters the poem structure more as feminine rhyme was often used in classic poetry and
masculine rhyme in modern poetry. While Sylvia’s use of gender in her poetry is both far
more meaningful and symbolic, Hughes use of masculine and feminine rhyme acts similarly
to Plath’s as it helps to blur the lines between the different poetic methods and styles of
poetry.

The atmosphere of the two poems is also contradicting as Plath’s poem uses repetition of
the word “air” and has a general atmosphere of being very weightless and sinking into
nothingness. This is aided by Plath’s short stanzas as well as her orphan line at the end.
Plath even says she “melts into nothing”. This could be a commentary on Plath wanting to
be out of the public eye due to the intensity of becoming a well-known author.
Hughes poem on the other hand uses the repetition of the word “now” and seems to
have a very fast paced overwhelming sense of fear within the poem. While Hughes seems to
invite the idea of the fox in, he also writes as though he is afraid of it. The poem is confusing
to the reader in terms of methods used and point of view and the poem, in contrast to
Sylvia Plath’s “Ariel”, feels very frantic.

The poets both seem to write about their emotional experiences in similar ways by using
animals representation and similar themes and poetic devices. However, each poet tends to
vary their style both in structure and in the way poetic devices are used For example,
Hughes uses alliteration and Plath uses assonance. However, the two poems both embody
the intensity of the emotions that each poet was feeling at the time and is a good
representation of how each poet deals with intense emotions and writes using those
emotions.