: Plath contrasts the "stiff holiness" of the church with the raw, terrifying reality of the natural world.

"Handsmother stranglenails" is a phrase from the poem The Moon and the Yew Tree Sylvia Plath

: "The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God, / Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility. / Fumy spirituous mists inhabit this place / Separated from my house by a row of headstones. / I simply cannot see where there is to get to. / The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right, / White as a knuckle and terribly upset. / It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet / With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here. / Twice on Sundays the bells startle the sky --- / Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection. / At the end, they soberly bong out their names. / The yew tree points up. It has a Gothic shape. / The eyes lift after it and find the moon. / The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary. / Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls. / I would like to believe in tenderness. / The face of the effigy, gentled by candles, / Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes. / I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering / Blue and mystical over the face of the stars. / Inside the church, the saints will be all blue, / Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews, / Their hands and faces stiff with holiness. / The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild. / And the message of the yew tree is blackness --- blackness and silence." The "Long Paper" Connection

: The "handsmother" (often interpreted as the moon or the tree's shadow) is the antithesis of a nurturing figure. The Yew Tree

: While the specific phrase "long paper" doesn't appear in the poem itself, it is often associated with academic analyses or "long papers" written by literature students exploring Plath's use of Gothic maternal imagery