The Munich Mannequins

Plath opens her poem with a sort of thesis statement about perfection: it is “terrible” and “cannot have children” (Line 1). As the only line in the poem to contain a complete thought, this sentence is an emphatic beginning to an otherwise more enigmatic poem.

Her next four lines expand upon the coldness of perfection by connecting it to female fertility. Just as a mannequin could not procreate, living models embodying this standard of perfection, the speaker states, cannot bear children. As it is as “[c]old as snow breath” (Line 2), perfection “tamps the womb” (Line 2). The womb is associated with rebirth and regeneration through her use of the image of “yew trees” (Line 3) and the “tree of life” (Line 4). The naturalness of menstruation and pregnancy is highlighted in her description of periods as the “unloosing [of] their moons, month after month” (Line 5). The speaker’s definition of perfection through the use and disuse of the womb reflects the impossibility for women to escape from being reduced to their bodies, and the objectification of their bodies for the purposes of men. Models, as a result of their disinterest in pregnancy, have eggs that serve “no purpose” (Line 5) and, by extension, the women themselves then do not serve their purpose.