[1] Plath struggled to find her theme in the material that emerged as "Fever 103°"[2] Ted Hughes discovered an un-finalized manuscript that reflected Plath’s attempt to grasp her thematic aims.
The closing stanzas in these unpublished verses read: Blanched and finished, I surface Among the blanched, boiled instruments, boiled instruments, the virginal curtains.
Here is the beauty Of cool mouths and hands, open and natural as roses.
[3]Biographer and literary critic Caroline King Barnard refers to the “ strumpet- spinster theme evident in Plath’s poetry, “powerfully and excellently expressed in"Fever 103°.” The tension is created by the contest between the spinster, who invokes “disturbing questions about purity and punishment,” and the strumpet, who “yearns for sexual abandon.”[4] Barnard discovers in the “rhythmic cadences” of the poem a description of approaching orgasm, only to be disabled by the “pure acetylene virgin.” The poem ends when the spinster “has finally gained control” and purity is achieved at the cost of death.
[5] The poem closes with a phoenix-like rebirth: I think I am going up, I think I may rise— The beads of hot metal fly, and I, love, I Am a pure acetylene Virgin Attended by roses ……………………….