Ted Hughes's "The Other" depicts the dangers of envy, entitlement, and comparison. The speaker describes a relationship between someone who had "nothing" (referred to as "you" throughout) and a woman who had "too much." This woman's happiness and success simply made "you" all the more aware of how much you lacked, and you thus felt entitled to take "some" of everything this woman had. Seemingly never satisfied, you kept taking until the woman was left with nothing at all—leaving you with "too much." "The Other" was published in Hughes's 1990 collection Capriccio, which was inspired by his relationship with Assia Wevill. Critics take "The Other" to be about Wevill and Hughes's first wife, the famous poet Sylvia Plath, who died by suicide a few months after Hughes left her for Wevill. After Plath's death, Wevill moved into the home Plath and Hughes had bought together and helped raise Plath's children. She was haunted by Plath's memory and took her own life, in a similar manner, in 1969.
The speaker, addressing their listener directly throughout as "you," says that another woman had more than you thought she needed, so you happily helped yourself to a little of all that was hers (the speaker never mentions what, exactly, is being taken here, but readers can guess they're talking about joy, success, love, etc.). You didn't have a single thing that she did, so you took some of whatever she had. You didn't take much, at least in the beginning.
Yet this other woman still had so much that it made you all the more aware of how much you still didn't have. Evoking Aristotle's famous declaration that nature hates a vacuum, you took from this woman until you were full, justifying that doing so was only natural. She was so fortunate that you felt unfortunate in comparison, and you thus decided to correct the imbalance between the two of you. Some of what she had was all yours now, which seemed like the way it should be. Even so, her drive to succeed upset you, making you feel as useless and overshadowed as words on a page that had been crossed out and then carelessly thrown in the trash. The gods, you believed, needed someone to step in and take this woman down a few pegs. Despising her made you feel a little less anxious.
You gathered up all the things she'd won, and the joy these things brought her, and you considered this fair repayment for the fact that you'd lost. This resulted in her having nothing left. Her very life itself got tangled up in the pile of things you grabbed, leaving her with nothing at all. By the time you realized what you'd done, there was nothing you could do to stop it. The woman had died, but that didn't change anything. You finally had everything that had once been hers, but now you were the one who had more than you needed. You were the only person who could see her happily taking back what you stole from her. She didn't take much, at least in the beginning.
"The Other" illustrates the self-destructive potential of unchecked envy, comparison, and entitlement. The speaker tells a story about the relationship between “you” and a woman whose “great luck” you envied. Having “Absolutely nothing” yourself, you felt it “only fair” to take “some. / Of everything she had.” Rather than being satisfied, however, this theft (of happiness, good fortune, etc.) only made you all the more aware of your own life’s comparative lack. You took and took from this woman until eventually, she was the one left with nothing—literally; she died, and her haunting presence chipped away at your stolen abundance.
The poem is based on Hughes's relationship with Assia Wevill, the woman for whom he left his first wife, the poet Sylvia Plath; the “you” is generally interpreted as Wevill and the “her” as Plath (who died by suicide not long after Hughes moved out of their shared home). That said, it’s possible to read any number of relationships into the poem’s dynamic, and “The Other” ultimately shows how treating life as a kind of zero-sum game, wherein another’s happiness means the loss of your own, leads only to misery.
The speaker begins the poem by describing the perceived imbalance between "you" and a second, “Other” woman. You felt entitled to “some / Of everything” the woman had, the speaker says, because she had “too much.” You justified your theft by presenting it as “redressing,” or righting, “an imbalance.”
“At first,” the speaker says, you took “just a little” from this woman. But even when you had more than the “nothing” you had to begin with, you still felt a “vacuum” (or void) when confronted with this woman's abundance. She “still had so much,” the speaker says, adding that “Her great lucky made you feel unlucky.” You essentially viewed your relationship with this woman as a competition: whenever she won, you lost—and you kept taking from her because you felt owed “compensation.”
Yet despite helping yourself to “Everything she had won”—her “luck,” “ambition,” and “happiness”—you continued to resent this woman for her accomplishments. You sought to “correct” her “hubris” (or pride) with “a little hatred,” apparently unable to find satisfaction or peace so long as this woman had anything at all.
Your envy grew so ravenous that it eventually left the woman with “absolutely nothing,” her “life” itself “Trapped in the heap” (or pile) of things that you took from her. And by the time you realized the consequences of your actions, the speaker says, it was “Too late.” The other woman was dead, and the tables had reversed: you were the one with "too much" and the other woman began to take something back (the implication being that her haunting presence made it impossible to enjoy the things you'd stolen).
Hughes is alluding to the fact that Plath became very famous after her death and that her memory haunted Wevill, who also died by suicide six years after Plath did. More broadly, however, the poem paints a disturbing portrait of how destructive envy and entitlement can be, suggesting the danger of constantly measuring your life and happiness against someone else's.
She had too ...
... just a little.
"The Other" begins with an anonymous speaker addressing a second person directly. This opening is fairly vague: the reader doesn't know who "she" or "you" is nor what their relationship to each other might be (nor what their relationship to the speaker is). There's also no explanation as to what this "she" had "too much" of, which suggests that the exact nature of this "too much" doesn't particularly matter; as the poem goes on, readers will get the sense that the "you" of the poem would never be happy so long as "she" had anything at all.
Listen to how the sibilance here adds a smooth hush to the opening line, perhaps suggesting the delicateness and stealth with which "you" took "some," smiling all the while:
She had too much so with a smile you took some.
That "smile" might suggest deception—that you pretended to be close to the woman's while stealing from her—or perhaps it simply shows that you were pleased with yourself for this theft.
Line 2 then begins with a preposition, which might make it sound like a continuation of line 1 ("you took some / Of everything she had"). Except, line 1 is firmly end-stopped with a period. Line 2 is thus really the start of a new clause; it means something more like, "You had none of the things she had."
The line would read more clearly had Hughes written, "Of everything she had, you had absolutely nothing"—but, of course, Hughes didn't write it this way! Instead, he's deliberately toying with syntax here to make the lines of the poem run together, blurring the poetic distance between this other woman and "you."
The enjambment across lines 2-3 ("you had / Absolutely nothing") adds to the effect, keeping the poem feeling slippery and disjointed. In starting line 3 with the phrase "Absolutely nothing," enjambment also calls attention to the vast chasm between these two people's experiences: whereas "she" had "everything," the person the speaker is addressing had nothing at all.
Notice the repetition in lines 1-3:
She had too much so with a smile you took some.
Of everything she had you had
Absolutely nothing, so you took some.
Diacope (the repetition of "She had" / "had") adds rhythm to the poem and also feels a little claustrophobic, as though your envy for what the woman ate away at the space between the two of you.
Meanwhile, epistrophe (the repetition of "you took some" at the ends of lines 1 and 3) suggests that this taking was hardly a one-time thing. The repetition implies a pattern; you took and took from this woman. Indeed, in line 4, the speaker says that "At first," you took "just a little." The qualifier "At first" implies that you would go on to take far more than "just a little."
In terms of form, notice how short this first stanza is in comparison to the subsequent two. This gives the poem's opening stanza an introductory feel; the fourth line feels like a springboard into the rest of the poem. The poet's use of free verse creates a conversational and intimate tone, which is fitting considering the speaker is addressing someone they seem to know an awful lot about.
Finally, a note on the poem's context: given that this poem appears in a collection inspired by Hughes's relationship with the poet Assia Wevill, many readers take "she" as Sylvia Plath, "you" as the Wevill, and the speaker as Hughes himself. In this reading, Wevill is envious of Plath's relationship with Hughes, her poetic skill and ambition, and so forth. While this context helps to ground the poem's ambiguous language, readers should note that it's not strictly necessary to interpret the characters this way (indeed, if one didn't know this context, it might sound like the speaker is talking to themselves).
Still she had ...
... for nature's sake.
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Get LitCharts A+Because her great ...
... into a basket.
Somebody, on behalf ...
... steadied the nerves.
Everything she had ...
... She had nothing.
Too late you ...
... much too much.
Only you ...
... just a little.
Repetition plays an important role in "The Other." On one level, it emphasizes the fact that the person the speaker is addressing is never satisfied; the poem's repetitive language reflects this person's repetitive taking from the "woman" they so envy.
For example, listen to the epistrophe and diacope in lines 1-3:
She had too much so with a smile you took some.
Of everything she had you had
Absolutely nothing, so you took some.
Epistrophe (the repetition of "you took some") emphasizes this continual theft; this isn't something that happened just one time! Rather, they "took some" again and again. The diacope of "had," meanwhile, emphasizes the way that this person keeps comparing themselves to the other woman, measuring whatever they "had" against whatever she "had."
The polyptoton in line 8 works similarly, calling attention to the zero-sum relationship between these people. That is, the first person feels like only one of them can have luck, happiness, success, etc. at a time:
Because her great luck made you feel unlucky
The repetition of the root word "luck" highlights the perceived imbalance between these people.
The speaker also repeats language more broadly across the poem. Most obviously, the first and final stanzas feature similar or outright identical language in spots:
She had too much so with a smile you took some.
[...]
Absolutely nothing, so you took some.
At first, just a little.[...] Which left her absolutely
Nothing. Even her life was
Trapped in the heap you took. She had nothing.
[...]
You had much too much.
Only you
Saw her smile, as she took some.
At first, just a little.
The repetition of "had too much," "absolutely nothing," "smile," and "at first, just a little" all reflect the reversal that happens between these two people: the woman who was stolen from in turn becomes the thief (of "happiness," "ambition," "life," etc.).
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Get LitCharts A+Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
Emptiness, lack, void.
"The Other" is a free verse poem whose 29 lines are divided into three stanzas of varying lengths. It doesn't follow any regular poetic form and instead feels intimate and conversational.
The first stanza has 4 lines and feels introductory in nature, the second stanza has 12 lines and the third has 13. The number 13 is often considered unlucky, and the 13-line stanza might subtly reflect the character of the "unlucky" person the speaker is addressing. Note, too, that there's a large gap of white space between line 26 ("You had too much.") and line 27 ("Only you"). This space creates a pause, a moment of dramatic anticipation, before the speaker delivers the final lines' twist.
The poem is written in free verse, so it doesn't follow a regular meter. Instead, its rhythms are casual and conversational. This makes sense, given that the speaker is addressing a listener ("you") directly. Meter would likely have made the poem sound overly formal and stiff, whereas free verse makes the poem feel more intimate.
That said, the poem still sounds distinctly poetic. Hughes creates music here not through meter but through devices such as enjambment and repetition, which allow the poem to feel intense even while the language feels ordinary.
As a free verse poem, "The Other" doesn't use a rhyme scheme. A rhyme scheme would likely have made the poem sound more pleasantly musical, predictable, and formal. The lack of rhyme, by contrast, just makes the poem feel more personal, as though the speaker is speaking directly to this other person rather than performing for an audience.
The poem's speaker is anonymous, genderless, and apparently omniscient. They seem to know everything there is to know about the relationship between the person they're directly addressing ("you") and the woman this person envies. From the text alone, it isn't clear what this speaker's relationship to these two people is, and, in fact, it is quite possible to read the "you" in the poem as the speaker addressing themselves.
While the poem itself doesn't give anything away about its speaker, context suggests that it's Hughes himself. Hughes included "The Other" in Capriccio," a collection that deals with his relationship with Assia Wevill. Hughes left his first wife, the poet Sylvia Plath, for Wevill, and Plath died by suicide a few months later. Because of this, the poem is commonly interpreted to be about Wevill and Plath's relationship, with the "you" of the poem being Wevill and the "other" being Plath. (Note that while the speaker presents themselves as an objective narrator of events, things were undoubtedly more complicated in real life.)
The poem doesn't have a physical setting at all. Instead, it focuses entirely on the relationship between the person the speaker is addressing and the woman whose happiness and success this person envies. In fact, the poem is noticeably lacking in imagery of any kind, which is pretty unusual for a Hughes poem; Hughes is famous for his imagery-driven poems about nature and animals.
The lack of setting emphasizes the tunnel vision created by this person's incredible envy. It's as if they're incapable of seeing what's around them because they're so focused on what they don't have. But even after they've taken "some. / Of everything" this other woman has, this person still feels empty and "unlucky." No matter how much they steal from her, they aren't satisfied. The lack of setting, then, seems to reflect this person's "vacuum"—the deep sense of emptiness that drives them to hate and steal from this other woman.
The English poet Ted Hughes (1930-1998) is considered one of the most important writers of the 20th century. His arrival on the scene with his 1957 debut, The Hawk in the Rain, was a shock to the system of British poetry; Hughes's raw imagery challenged the dominance of more restrained and formal poets like Philip Larkin. To this day, Hughes remains one of the most widely read poets in the English language.
Hughes grew up in West Riding, Yorkshire, a relatively rural part of England, and he cultivated an early interest in the natural world that would influence his poetry. Hughes was both reverent and unsentimental about nature, seeing it not just as a source of wisdom and beauty (as the 19th-century Romantics like William Wordsworth often did), but also as a place full of instinctive violence and danger. Animals also occupy a central role in Hughes's poetry (most famously in the "Crow" series of poems), where they often symbolically reflect the human psyche.
"The Other" was published in Hughes's 1990 collection Capriccio. The poems in this collection revolve around Hughes's relationship with Assia Wevill, the woman for whom he left his wife, the poet Sylvia Plath, in 1962. Plath died by suicide the following year, with Hughes's and Wevill's affair being a contributing factor (Plath supposedly knew Wevill was pregnant by Hughes, a pregnancy Wevill aborted after Plath's death). This fact loomed over the rest of Hughes's and Wevill's relationship.
In 1961, Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath moved from London to a small country village in Devon, England. They let their London flat to David and Assia Wevill, a pair of poets they soon invited for a weekend at their house in Devon. Hughes and Wevill struck up an affair soon afterward.
Plath quickly caught on to what was happening and kicked Hughes out of the house. Hughes spent the next few months going back and forth between the two women, trying to win Plath back even while continuing to pursue Wevill. Hughes ultimately refused to end things with Wevill, and he left Plath to be with her in London. Plath moved the family to London two months later, and, on February 11, 1963, she ended her own life.
Wevill had, for all intents and purposes, taken "Everything [Plath] had won, the happiness of it." She had her husband; she took over Plath's role as mother to his and Sylvia's children; she lived with Hughes in the house he and Sylvia had lived in; and for some time, she and Hughes were apparently happy together in spite of Plath's death.
But Hughes continued to have affairs (in fact, he was in bed with another woman, Susan Alliston, the night Plath killed herself, and continued this affair even while promising Wevill that "no other women exist"). He grew more and more distant from Wevill. They had a child, Shura, together, but a family friend observed that Hughes didn't treat her with the same affection and pride as he did his children with Plath—in fact, she says he didn't give "any indication that [Shura] was his daughter."
Wevill had apparently staked her happiness on a life with Hughes, and when it became apparent that he was never going to marry her, she decided to end her life. Afraid that her four-year-old daughter would be neglected by Hughes or else sent to a foster home, Wevill decided the merciful thing to do was to take Shura with her. In March of 1969, Wevill fed her daughter sleeping pills and then turned on the gas oven. In her suicide note, she wrote that "the ghost of Sylvia was making [her] suicidal," something "The Other" hints at in its final lines.
The Ted Hughes Society's Review of Capriccio — A thoughtful examination of what makes Capriccio, the collection in which "The Other" was published, one of Hughes's most intriguing books.
Assia Wevill, Ted Hughes, and Sylvia Plath — An in-depth look at Wevill's background and her relationship to Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath.
Fact vs. Fiction — This Guardian article, titled "Written out of history," examines the contradictions between the events surrounding Hughes's relationship with Wevill and the way Hughes later portrayed these events in his work.
The Poet's Life and Work — A Poetry Foundation biography of Hughes.