Empty, I echo to the least footfall,
Museum without statues, grand with pillars, porticoes, rotundas.
In my courtyard a fountain leaps and sinks back into itself,
Nun-hearted and blind to the world. Marble lilies
Exhale their pallor like scent.
I imagine myself with a great public,
Mother of a white Nike and several bald-eyed Apollos.
Instead, the dead injure me attentions, and nothing can happen.
Blank-faced and mum as a nurse.
Plath, the empty museum (barren woman), imagines herself full of statues (children) in order to gain the view of the public, or recognition from society. In order to be viewed as “something” by society, Plath would have to have children and the museum would have to contain statues.
Barren Woman