Summary
In the previous stanza, the speaker told the applicant that his future wife was as naked as paper. Now he continues in this vein, explaining that she won't always be this way. In 25 years, she'll become silver, and in 50 years, she'll become gold. She's basically a talented, lifelike doll able to cook and clean and make conversation, he says. The wife has no problems and can serve any need: if the applicant has a wound, the wife can become a bandage, and if he has an eye, she'll become an image to fill it. And, the speaker reminds the applicant, he doesn't really have a choice: this is his last resort, so he should go ahead and marry it.
Analysis
Here, Plath continues to anchor the surreal and slightly confusing world of "The Applicant" with allusions to well-known customs in the outside world. She does this throughout the poem by imagining the courting and marriage process as a job application, but she also does it on smaller levels, dropping clues for the reader to pick up. The speaker, for instance, reassures the applicant that his wife won't always be like paper, and will eventually become like silver and gold. This is a reference to the tradition of couples giving one another marriage anniversary gifts corresponding to the number of years of marriage: traditionally, paper is given on the first anniversary, silver on the twenty-fifth, and gold on the fiftieth. Here, Plath makes the tradition seem strange and sinister, using it to suggest that the wife becomes more monetarily valuable as she ages—like a commodity.
The general suggestion that marriage commodifies women (and does a disservice to men by making them reliant upon a commodity) is clearer than ever in these closing stanzas. For one thing, the speaker refers to the young woman as "it." For another, he opts to describe her almost solely through metaphor and simile. She is a poultice or an image or a doll, but never a person. In this poem, figurative language is actually a rather dangerous thing. It is used to blur the lines between human beings and objects, allowing people to use one another rather than interact as human beings. Metaphor becomes a kind of sleazy sales technique, used to avoid the inconvenient reality of women's personhood and men's vulnerability.
It seems, however, that the applicant might not be altogether falling for the speaker's sales pitch. The speaker seems to be growing increasingly desperate. His final pitch to the applicant simply involves threatening him that marriage is his "last resort," before repeating "marry it" three times, as if having run out of methods. Meanwhile, his rhymes get slightly messier. No part of the poem has a regular rhyme scheme, but each stanza involves lines that rhyme, creating a satisfying sales-jingle-like effect. Stanza 7, for instance, features the rhyme "A living doll, everywhere you look. / It can sew, it can cook." The final stanza has no end rhyme, except for the word "it," which rhymes with itself, concluding the stanza's first and last lines alike. This repetition isn't especially musical, and it doesn't make the speaker sound smooth and salesmanlike. Rather, it stresses his desperation—and the dehumanization of the woman he is describing.
