Sylvia Plath’s Fig Tree and Navigating Life After Uni in your Early 20s
Sylvia Plath’s Fig Tree and Navigating Life After Uni in your Early 20s
By Milly Morgan
“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig-tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. […] I saw myself in the crotch of this fig-tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose.”
Many of you may recognise this quote from Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, whether that may be because, like me, you followed the thought daughter to English student pipeline and came across Plath in your early teens, or perhaps you saw the TikTok trend whereby users drew out their own fig trees complete with endless avenues that their lives could go down.
In short, Plath’s fig-tree analogy describes each branch and fruit as a representation of a different path that your life could take, as she writes that one fig was a husband, another was a famous poet, and another was Europe and Africa.
It is no surprise to me at all that we have resorted to Plath’s fig-tree as a way of trying to process and navigate our early 20s. For many of us, we finish uni and are confronted with a barrage of different trees complete with their own figs and branches whether they be, going straight into a career, travelling the world, or doing a masters to name a few.
How do we know which fig to choose, and how will we ever know if we have made the right decision? In truth, I am still trying to work out these answers myself!
When I graduated from Nottingham in summer my fig tree bloomed with possibilities of going straight into a career in journalism, doing a masters, moving to London, spending the year travelling and so on. And while I chose to make the move to London in pursuit of living out my Carrie Bradshaw fantasy, my friends’ fig-trees have led them down wildly different paths. Some have become corporate girlies, others are backpacking around central America, and some are still in Nottingham, attending Ocean Fridays on behalf of the rest of us. It is so strange to think that but a couple of months ago we were sprawled out over our uni sofa in oodies debriefing Wednesday night and planning the hungover takeaway of choice!
And while I couldn’t be prouder of each one of my friends as their lives start to unfold, I sometimes can’t fight the urge to compare and over-analyse every decision I have made since leaving uni. Am I choosing the right path? Should I also be backpacking around the world, or doing a masters, or starting to earn some money to pay of my crippling student debt?
Luckily for me, my uni bestie turned London flatmate, Livvy, is always there to share a rant on these thoughts. Like me, she has always wanted to live in London and so far we have jam-packed our weekends with trips to Nottinghill, days out to Hampstead Heath, and evenings at The Ship, as living for the weekend has become an all too familiar phrase.
And beyond sharing a dream of moving to London, we also share the same intrusive thoughts that I divulged in this article! When I told Livvy that I wanted to write on post-grad life so far, she was keen to share her experience too, as our chat quickly became a mini-therapy session.
Livvy spends her weekdays working for a PR firm at Soho Works in central London. A day in the life consists of morning papers round ups, copyrighting, reaching out to journalists, and the of course obligatory trips to Blank Street Coffee – white chocolate matcha supremacy!
For Livvy, moving to London and getting a job in PR has always been the goal but, like me, she still often gets weighed down by questions of whether she has made the right decision: “I do sometimes think oh god have I rushed into this too quickly?”- but she always circles back to the fact that hostel life isn’t for the faint hearted and maybe the morning commute isn’t so bad.
When I asked for her London highlights and lowlights she said her highlight was: “Sunday walks to the common or around Hampstead Heath.” And for her lowlight: “Crying on the Victoria Line – I don’t need to say anymore on that do I?”
Our twenties have been referred to by many as “the panic years”, a label that I personally, will refuse to claim. Yes, it can be extremely overwhelming and complete with trees bearing so many fruits that sometimes we just want someone to reach up and pick a fig for us, all while promising that this path is the right one!
It is my belief that we should allow ourselves to feel daunted, unsure, and even overwhelmed at times, and have these conversations with our friends who no doubt feel the exact same. Instead of succumbing to the panic years, we should all collectively lean into the chaos of it all, try and say yes to everything, and pick as many fruits from the branches of our fig-trees as we possibly can.
