Sylvia Plath’s Pink Pages Uncovering the Palimpsestic Materiality of “Fever 103°”
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This essay argues for the interpretive significance of material surfaces in the composition and meaning of Sylvia Plath’s “Fever 103°,” written on the verso of pink Smith College memorandum pads originally used for drafting The Bell Jar. Drawing on textual materialism, I examine how the reused pages enact a layered interplay between past and present texts, embodying the poem’s central themes of purification and transformation. Tracing Plath’s engagement with chemistry, alchemy, illness, and spiritual ascent, I show how The Bell Jar’s textual residue seeps into the verso poem’s figuration and diction. These drafts, charged with institutional, biographical, and gendered significance, not only shape the content of “Fever 103°” but also participate in its meaning.
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