"If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days"
About this Quote
Desire, for Plath, is not a gentle appetite but a civil war. The line grabs you with its mock-clinical premise - "If neurotic is..". - as if she can pin down torment with a tidy definition, then immediately blows that tidiness up with a punchline: "I'm neurotic as hell". It's funny in the way a cracked mirror is funny: the joke lands, and you realize you are laughing at damage.
Her brilliance is the metaphor of motion. "Flying back and forth" makes the psyche a commuter trapped between incompatible destinations, forever spending emotional fuel on the trip rather than arriving anywhere. Mutually exclusive things aren't just choices; they're identities that cancel each other out. Plath isn't confessing indecision so much as diagnosing a culture of impossible asks, especially for ambitious women in mid-century America: be incandescent and contained, sexually alive and spotless, artist and helpmeet, singular and agreeable. The self is forced to split to survive, then punished for the split.
The subtext is darker than the comic bravado suggests. "For the rest of my days" reads like resigned prophecy, a life sentence handed down by her own mind and by the roles on offer. Plath turns the language of pathology back onto the world that loves to pathologize her: call it neurosis if you want, but notice how rational it becomes when the menu is designed so every option costs you your wholeness.
Her brilliance is the metaphor of motion. "Flying back and forth" makes the psyche a commuter trapped between incompatible destinations, forever spending emotional fuel on the trip rather than arriving anywhere. Mutually exclusive things aren't just choices; they're identities that cancel each other out. Plath isn't confessing indecision so much as diagnosing a culture of impossible asks, especially for ambitious women in mid-century America: be incandescent and contained, sexually alive and spotless, artist and helpmeet, singular and agreeable. The self is forced to split to survive, then punished for the split.
The subtext is darker than the comic bravado suggests. "For the rest of my days" reads like resigned prophecy, a life sentence handed down by her own mind and by the roles on offer. Plath turns the language of pathology back onto the world that loves to pathologize her: call it neurosis if you want, but notice how rational it becomes when the menu is designed so every option costs you your wholeness.
Quote Details
| Topic | Anxiety |
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