The following version of Sylvia Plath’s poem “The Applicant” was used to create this guide: Plath, Sylvia. The Collected Poems. Edited by Ted Hughes, HarperPerennial Modern Classics, 2018.

Note that all parenthetical citations within the guide refer to the lines of the poem (1-40) from which the quotations are taken.

“The Applicant” is a satirical poem written by American poet Sylvia Plath. It was first published in on the 17th of January of 1963 in The London Magazine. Sylvia Plath composed the poem a mere matter of days after leaving her husband, Ted Hughes. The poem was published only a few weeks before Plath committed suicide by what was deemed intentional carbon monoxide inhalation in her London flat.

The poem satirizes the institution of marriage in the western world. Plath scathingly ridicules men in heteronormative relationships and suggests that marriage dehumanizes women. Plath’s verse is terse and jocular. She writers from the position of someone who has experienced and witnessed the ego-destroying capacities of married life. As such, many have labeled Plath a "confessional" poet, and therefore ascribe autobiographical meaning to most of her poetry. Indeed, in contemporary poetry studies, most agree that Plath's husband Ted Hughes (also a poet) was an abusive partner and that many of her feminist poetic critiques were inspired by their marriage.