Sylvia Plath

Lips the colour of blood, the sun an unprecedented orange, train wheels that sound like 'guilt, and guilt, and guilt': these are just some of the things Mary Ventura begins to notice on her journey to the ninth kingdom. 'But what is the ninth kingdom?' she asks a kind-seeming lady in her carriage. 'It is the kingdom of the frozen will,' comes the reply. 'There is no going back.' Sylvia Plath's strange, dark tale of independence over infanticide, written not long after she herself left home, grapples with mortality in motion.

Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom

Silje Løvli Lorentsen

shivani karadia

“The long black hand of the clock on the wall clipped off another minute.”

“In the sky hung a flat orange disc that was the sun.”

“The black waiter flashed the woman a grin and scribbled hieroglyphics on his paper tablet.”

“There will be a brightly lighted gateway. Do not take that. Go up the stairs, even if they look black, even if there are lizards. Trust me, and take the stairway?”

“Gradually the passage widened, and there came the sound, from somewhere beyond, of bells chiming in a clock tower, clear and musical. Like a link of metal, the small snake fell from her ankle and glided away into the wall.”

“Mary emerged at the top of the stairs, blinking at the fertile gold webs of sunlight. White and blue pigeons rose from the pavement and circled about her head.”

Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom quotes

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