Sylvia Plath wrote in the midst of growing racial tensions in the 1950's and 1960's America.Her work demonstrates ambivalence towards her role as a middle-class white woman.In this paper,I examine the racial implications in Plath's color terms.I disagree with Renee Curry's reading in White Women Writing White that Plath only considers her whiteness insofar as it affects herself.Through a phenomenological study of how whiteness shifts meaning in this poem,I hope to show that Curry's negative estimation is only partly right.I suggest that embodiment is a problem for Plath in general,and this contributes to her inability to fully examine other bodies.

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