In Sylvia Plath's "Mad Girl's Love Song," which feature contributes to the sense of existential doubt?

• A. Absence of any refrain
• B. Repetition of two lines as refrains
• C. A fixed rhyme scheme
• D. A strict single-stanza structure

Answer: (B)

The main feature at work here is the repetition of two lines as refrains throughout the poem. Those lines—presented again and again—create a looping, chant-like pattern that mirrors the speaker’s unsettled mind. Each refrain interrupts the narrative with the claim that the world can disappear or be born again simply by shifting perception, which makes reality feel unstable and unreliable. That repeated returning of the same lines emphasizes doubt about what is real, about whether the self remains constant, and about memory and perception tying together to form a stable existence. The effect is a creeping sense of existential doubt: certainty dissolves whenever the refrain appears, leaving the speaker suspended between doubt and affirmation.

If there were no refrains, the poem would read more like a sequence of thoughts rather than a cycle that traps the mind in doubt. A fixed rhyme scheme or a single-stanza form wouldn’t generate that same sense of looping uncertainty; the repeated refrains are what push the reader into feeling the speaker’s ongoing questioning of reality and self.