The Applicant Summary
Sylvia Plath

The Applicant Overview

Sylvia Plath’s poem “The Applicant” was first published in 1963. It satirizes the institution of marriage by depicting the marriage contract in its inception. The poem’s major themes revolve around class and gender, criticizing the proscribed social roles for women and the outlandish assumptions of men in the bourgeois society of mid-twentieth century America.