 Pictured: Marilyn Monroe, before and after plastic surgery, mid-1950s
The shallowness of plastic surgery, in Hollywood and otherwise, seems to have also bothered Plath, as we see in poems such as “Tinker Jack and the Tidy Wives,” written June 7, 1956, with the assumption that one “hag” can be either restored with a face lift, or traded in for a younger model (CP, 34). By 1950, plastic surgery was fully integrated into medicine and the public conscience, with board certification in place and a medical journal exclusively for this field. Plath’s poem was first entitled, “Tinker Jack Traffics with Tidy Wives,” implying a sort of criminal exploitation and pimping on the tinkering doctor’s part. The sylph-like Sylvia Plath, beautiful and brainy in that fifties world of Jane Russell bullet bras, had her own inner struggles with wanting to be both sexualized and smart. Plath did not like her own nose, and at least once contemplated getting her nose done (UJ, 66, 181). “Tinker” is an Irish/Scotch word for a traveling man who fixes things that are broken, and like a plastic surgeon might, he sometimes scams to fix things that aren’t. The Tinker is usually a Romani (Plath would have said the now politically-incorrect slur, “Gypsy”) or Irish Traveler, and not well-respected. In February 1956, Plath was reading Yeats and work by his Irish contemporary, John “Jack” Synge.[1] Synge’s “The Tinker’s Wedding” is a play about the antics of Irish Tinkers making off with the loot from a wedding that never quite takes place. Synge’s The Well of the Saints features two blind beggar-women who believe that they are beautiful, when they are actually old and ugly. Tinkers, beggars and tramps out to exploit beauty, steal money, and run off with the dowries of “Tidy Wives” are the core of Synge’s work, and were therefore surely on Plath’s mind. The old nursery rhyme Tinker tailor soldier sailor is also a part of Virginia Woolf’s last novel, Between the Acts, as a woman playfully divines her future by reciting the rhyme and counting cherry stones. Between the Acts is full of allusion and uses rhyme to suggest hidden meanings, and Woolf was one of Plath’s favorite writers.[2] Early in 1957, Plath wrote that her arms were full of a “battery” of Woolf novels at Bowes & Bowes bookstore in Cambridge (UJ, 269). By July of 1957, Plath said that Woolf’s novels made hers possible (UJ, 289). Plath’s “Tinker Jack and the Tidy Wives” never approaches the ease of a nursery rhyme, and yet its careful rhythm and meter feel like it is just that. Woolf’s Between the Acts is called a play within a play, casting the history of England in a negative light. Likewise, Plath’s “Tinker Jack and the Tidy Wives” is a poem within a poem, casting the present day world, England and beyond, as superficial and false. As Woolf’s pageant introduces each character, Plath’s poem introduces each wife. A key character in Woolf’s work is Miss La Trobe, who believed “vanity made all human beings malleable.” [1] Plath’s calendar notes for February 13, 1956. This calendar is held in the Sylvia Plath Archives of the Lilly Library, at Indiana University-Bloomington. [2] Plath’s calendar shows that Plath read Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway on January 30, 1956. This calendar is held in the Sylvia Plath Archives of the Lilly Library, at Indiana University-Bloomington. BETWEEN THE ACTS, EARLY POEM, FACE LIFT, FACE LIFTS, GYPSIES, GYPSY, IRISH TRAVELLERS, JOHN SYNGE, MISS LATROBE, PLASTIC SURGEON, PLASTIC SURGERY, PLATH POEM, ROMANI, SEXUALIZED WOMEN, SYLVIA PLATH, THE TINKER'S WEDDING, THE WELL OF THE SAINTS, TINKER JACK AND THE TIDY WIVES, TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SAILOR, VANITY, VIRGINIA WOOLF, YEATS
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