it is this struggle between the true and false self, between the Double and its origin, which becomes the prevalent theme in many of Plath’s subsequent poems, i.e. the struggle of the true self to shed its shell. This struggle is evident in the poem “In Plaster”: 

I shall never get out of this! There are two of me now: The new absolutely white person and the old yellow one, And the white person is certainly the superior one. (158) 

Note the desperation of the persona in these lines. As the poem progresses, the tone of the persona changes from despondent, to hopeful, to confident in the final line: “One day I shall manage without her”. The true self is ready to break free of its confinement and believes in its ability to stand on its own, i.e. without the superficial support of the false self. 

The “white person” or plaster of the poem is the false self which prevents the true self from emerging. But while the true self most likely can exist on its own, the false self cannot exist without the presence of its counterpart, and in this way, the true self may literally be seen as a host for the false self: 

Without me, she wouldn’t exist, so of course she was grateful. I gave her a soul, I bloomed out of her as a rose (159) 

The image of the soul as a rose echoes that of the poem, “The Stones”, in which the soul as a rose is “housed” by a “reconstructed” self (137). At the beginning of “In Plaster”, the true self is weak and powerless, but gradually it “blooms” with confidence until it is convinced of its own strength and ability to conquer the obstacle of the false self which encapsulates it: 

I’m collecting my strength, one day I shall manage without her, And she’ll perish with emptiness then, and begin to miss me. (160) 

The encapsulation of the true self (or immortal soul) can also be found in Plath’s use of glass imagery. In the poem “The Other”, glass acts as a barrier between the persona’s selves: 

Cold glass, how you insert yourself Between myself and myself. (202) 

Here, the persona is frustrated by the division of the self. This suggests a desire to reconcile the two fragments, as opposed to the true self’s desire for independence in the poem, “In Plaster”. In the poem, “Mirror”, glass both hides and reflects the persona’s true self: 

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me, Searching my reaches for what she really is. (174) 

The persona is both fascinated and abhorred by the image of the true self, which in final line is described as a “terrible fish”. Thus, there is certain ambivalence between the desire to shed the false self or to hide behind it, so to speak.

. Plath uses the idea of the “double self.”  Literally, “In Plaster” refers to a person in a

full body cast, but the metaphorical meaning is that there is an internal war between

the two selves—this new, healthy versus the old, unstable, and one is being trapped

within the other. The two sides are unable to live harmoniously together. I feel that

this conflict is a symbol for Plath’s frustration between herself: the one side that is

plagued by her mental disorder, and the other that is reaching for sanity.

The poem begins with the introduction of the two selves: “This new absolutely white

person and the old yellow one.” The new, white self is seen as “the superior one”,

“one of the real saints.” She is the same as the other self, “only much whiter and

unbreakable and with no complaints,” which means that she is mentally stable. This

side wants to help the other overcome the depression; she “humored my weakness

like the best of nurses,/Holding my bones in place so they would mend properly.”

However, it is not easy; the “old yellow” one, the one marked with her past

experiences feels no connection to this other, new self: “I couldn’t sleep for a week,

she was so cold./I blamed her for everything.”

In the third stanza, we see the old half understand that though she was not as stable,

she was more well-liked: “And it was I who attracted everybody’s attention,/Not her

whiteness and beauty, as I had first supposed.” The two lines struck me. When we

read The Haunting of Sylvia Plath, there was the line that said, “above all, Sylvia

Plath desired fame. As she put it at one point in her Journals: ‘it is sad only to be

able to mouth other poets; I want someone to mouth me” (Rose, 3). Plath’s poetry,

which are partially influenced by her depression, was what made her well-known. It

is raw, edgy, fascinating in a morbid way; everyone was fascinated with her. As

Jacqueline Rose puts it, “She is…a shadowy figure whose presence draws on and

compels” (Rose, 1). I feel this internal conflict within her stemmed from the

realization she must have had: if she had become mentally stable, lived normally

without her depression clutching onto her, who would she actually be? She would

not be the Sylvia Plath people had become infatuated with: she would be this boring,

new self. Though this new part is trying to help her, she is unwilling to cooperate.

After being you your whole life, how are you expected to change? This creates the

shift between the two selves that you can see happen in the fifth stanza. The new

self becomes angry with the old: “I felt her criticizing myself in spit of herself,/As if my

habits offended her in some way.”

As the new self is becoming fed up, the old self realizes that she doesn’t want to

leave the other—“She’d supported me for so long I was quite limp—/I had even

forgotten how to walk or sit.” In the last stanza, with the line “Now I see it must be

one or the other of us” Plath realizes that her two sides can either be “one”, united,

or be an incomplete half. If they cannot work together, they cannot stay together. In

the last two lines, Plath makes it clear which side will stay: “I’m collecting my

strength; one day I shall manage without her,/And she’ll perish with emptiness then,

and begin to miss me.” The first line could be perceived as optimistic and that Plath

will be able to deal with her demons without help. However, as I read it with the next

line, I feel as though her “collecting of strength” is for her to disappear, for good this

time. The only way her other self could “perish with emptiness” is if all of Sylvia died.