The following version of this poem was used to create this guide: Plath, Sylvia. “Cut.” AllPoetry, https://allpoetry.com/poem/8498445-Cut-by-Sylvia-Plath.

Note that all parenthetical citations within the guide refer to the lines of the poem from which the quotations are taken.

“Cut” was written in 1962, shortly after Plath’s separation from her husband Ted Hughes. An American poet, Plath was living in England at the time and wrote this poem as a response to a real-life experience in which she cut her finger and was briefly hospitalized. The poem uses the image of a wounded thumb as a metaphor for overcoming a patriarchal society, and explores internalised trauma and its relationship to the physical body.