The passing of Ingmar Bergman is a giant loss to the film industry.Plath based her poem "Three Women" on Bergman's filmd Brink of Life (1958). She saw the film in London in 1961 or 1962, where it was probably called So Close to Life. Here is a film synopsis:
"The film takes place in a maternity ward, within the space of twenty-four hours. Cecilia, married and by profession a secretary of the board of education, is three months pregnant when she is brought to the hospital. She has a miscarriage. A later talk with her husband, Anders, confirms her suspicion that he never wanted the child. He is an intellectual who has built up an armour against the world and against emotion. Cecilia, meanwhile, becomes moody and introspective.Also in the ward is Stina, a very happily married and healthy woman, looking forward to the experience of having a child. She is visited by her simple but kind husband, who gives her flowers as a gesture of his love. Only once does she feel fear—in the midst of a joyful conversation with the comforting Sister Brita—when she quotes from the Bible, "Yea, a sword shall pierce thy soul..."The third woman in the ward is Hjördis, who is young and unmarried. Realizing that the father of the baby is indifferent to her fate, Hjördis tells a friend that she really wants an abortion. Only after a talk with a welfare director, who is herself sterile, does Hjördis decide to have the child."
"Three Women" was written in the spring of 1962 while Plath was still in Devon, living with Hughes. She had given birth to her second child a couple of months prior. "Three Women" was broadcast by Douglas Cleverdon and the BBC in 1962. Turret Books published a handsome limited edition with an introduction by Cleverdon in 1968. "Three Women" later appeared as the final poem in Winter Trees, published in 1971/2.