"Fever 103°" is a poem by Sylvia Plath, dated 20 October 1962, and first appearing in the collection Ariel published by Faber & Faber in 1965, and by Harper & Row in 1966.Barnard, 1978 pp. 121-128: Selected bibliography
Background Plath struggled to find her theme in the material that emerged as "Fever 103°"Plath, 1981 p. 294: Notes: 1962 Ted Hughes discovered an un-finalized manuscript that reflected Plath's attempt to grasp her thematic aims. The closing stanzas in these unpublished verses read:
Theme Biographer and literary critic Caroline King Barnard refers to the "strumpet- spinster" theme evident in Plath's poetry, “powerfully and excellently expressed in"Fever 103°.” The tension is created by the contest between the spinster, who invokes “disturbing questions about purity and punishment,” and the strumpet, who “yearns for sexual abandon.”Barnard, 1978 p. 54, p. 84-85
Barnard discovers in the “rhythmic cadences” of the poem a description of approaching orgasm, only to be disabled by the “pure acetylene virgin.” The poem ends when the spinster “has finally gained control” and purity is achieved at the cost of death.Barnard, 1978 p. 85: “The conflict is complex and unresolvable.”
The poem closes with a phoenix-like rebirth:
Sylvia Plath, in a BBC reading of “Fever 103°,” introduced the work as follows:
Footnotes
Sources Barnard, Caroline King. 1978. Sylvia Plath. Twayne Publishers, G. K. Hall & Co., Boston, Massachusetts. Plath, Sylvia. 1981. Sylvia Plath: The Collected Poems. Editor, Ted Hughes. Harper & Row Publishers, New York.