Sylvia Plath’s “The Applicant” is a caustic critique of marriage and gender roles, wrapping sharp social observations in dark humor. Written on the very day her husband Ted Hughes abandoned her, the poem dissects marriage with a satirical edge, casting it as a disturbing commercial exchange rather than a romantic partnership. Through the character of a persistent salesman pitching a wife to an “applicant” as if she were a commodity, Plath skewers the transactional nature of 1960s marriages, exposing how society reduced women to fulfilling domestic roles with little autonomy.
The poem opens in the tone of a bizarre job interview, blending clinical questions with grotesque physical descriptions. The applicant is asked if he has any physical deformities—“glass eye, false teeth, or a crutch”—evoking images of prosthetics and war injuries. Plath’s unsettling imagery likely draws from her visit to Berck-Plage, a town in France where veterans with amputated limbs recovered. Her experiences there resonate through “The Applicant,” as the invalid male body stands as a metaphor for insecure masculinity seeking to be “fixed” by a wife.
The salesman’s questions become more invasive, revealing a consumerist perspective on marriage. The applicant’s body is evaluated, and when he fails to meet the profile of “incompleteness,” he is instead deemed emotionally lacking. A wife, the poem implies, is his “missing part,” assigned to serve, care, and satisfy, completing the man rather than existing for herself. The wife is reduced to a “living doll” with predetermined functions, portrayed as something that can be replaced or discarded if “defective.” Through this characterization, Plath confronts the misogyny underpinning the social contract of marriage, as the woman is objectified and stripped of individuality to meet the applicant’s needs.
Marriage here is portrayed as a product for purchase, with the salesman offering assurance of the wife’s durability—she’s “waterproof, shatterproof,” designed to endure all without breaking. This commodified view mirrors a broader cultural tendency to see wives as commodities rather than partners. Plath’s irony deepens in her use of commercial language and relentless rhyme, making the sales pitch both absurd and chilling. In this view, marriage becomes a service arrangement, with the woman expected to provide care, comfort, and compliance indefinitely.
As the poem reaches its climax, the language turns bleakly prophetic. The wife, the speaker assures, will fulfill her duties all the way through death, ready to “thumb shut your eyes at the end” and mourn her husband obediently. With lines like these, Plath frames marriage as a lifelong sentence for women, binding them to a life of service without regard for their own fulfillment or happiness.
In the final verses, the salesman delivers one last pitch, insisting that the applicant seize this “last resort.” There’s no question mark in the final phrase, “Will you marry it, marry it, marry it,” as if implying the choice is already made. The salesman’s relentlessness suggests a societal inevitability, highlighting the pressure men and women faced to conform to rigid gender roles.
In “The Applicant,” Plath exposes the paradoxes of 1960s marriage with biting satire, suggesting that women were groomed to play roles in a script designed for men’s comfort rather than their own aspirations. Beneath the poem’s wit lies a serious critique of a society that commodified women and stifled their agency, resonating with the early stirrings of the feminist movement. The grotesque commercial imagery and the chillingly upbeat sales pitch serve as Plath’s stark warning: the cost of marriage, in this vision, may be the woman’s own self.