“Rhyme”: Breaking the Golden Rule

Pictured: Gold Coast’s Independence from Britain to become Ghana
Plath’s poem “Rhyme” may be one of her least-analyzed works, and most readers interpret it as simply a commentary on the creative process. There is a good chance that Plath wrote her poem “Rhyme” around mid-May, when the BBC had announced that Britain’s colony, the Gold Coast, would be granted independence to become the nation of Ghana. In March of that year, Plath’s journals talk about poet Stephen Spender discussing the depressing misfortune of India’s beggars, another formerly British territory (UJ, 216). Plath’s poem likens Britain to a greedy goose collecting gold but not making its own. The goose-queen simply “begs / Pardon” for all her takeovers in a feeble attempt to appear peaceful (CP, 50). The poem ends with a ghastly image of a slit throat, the blood gushing out like rubies. Historically, rubies are widely found in India and fit Plath’s “ruby dregs.”
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