sylvia plat h
Mar y C ant well Th e Fo rg o t te n Pl ath, Re m e mb e re d
sylvia plat h Sylvia Plath was one of the most dynamic and admired
her parents, and her own vision of herself. On the World
poets of the twentieth century. By the time she took her life
Socialist website, Margaret Rees observed, “Whether Plath
at the age of thirty, Plath already had a following in the liter-
wrote about nature, or about the social restrictions on indi-
ary community. In the ensuing years her writings attracted
viduals, she stripped away the polite veneer. She let her
the attention of a multitude of readers, who saw in her sin-
writing express elemental forces and primeval fears. In do-
gular verse an attempt to catalogue despair, violent emotion,
ing so, she laid bare the contradictions that tore apart ap-
and obsession with death. In the New York Times Book
pearance and hinted at some of the tension hovering just
Review, Joyce Carol Oates described Plath as “one of the
beneath the surface of the American way of life in the post
most celebrated and controversial of postwar poets writing
war period.” Oates put it more simply when she wrote that
in English.” Intensely autobiographical, Plath’s poems ex-
Plath’s noted poems, “many of them written during the final,
plore her own mental anguish, her troubled marriage to fel-
turbulent weeks of her life, read as if they’ve been chiseled,
low English poet Ted Hughes, her unresolved conflicts with
with a fine surgical instrument, out of arctic ice.”
19 3 2
19 3 5
Sylvia Plath is born
H e r b r o t h e r, Wa r r e n , i s b o r n
Early Life
elegiac poem, Daddy. Even in her youth, she was ambi-
On October 27, 1932, the American poet, Plath, was born
tiously driven to succeed. She kept a journal from eleven
in Boston, Massachusetts. Her mother, Aurelia Schober,
and published her first poems in regional magazines and
was a master’s student at Boston University. When she
newspapers. In 1950, her first national publication was in
met Plath’s father, Otto Plath, who was her professor. He
the Christian Science Monitor, just after graduating from
taught both German and biology, with a focus on apology,
high school. In the same year as her first poem got publish-
the study of bees. Aurelia was twenty-one years younger
ed, she got accepted to Smith College.
than Otto. They were married in January of 1932. On April
In 1953, Plath wrote articles for local newspapers like
27, 1935, her younger brother, Warren, was born. Her first
the Daily Hampshire Gazette and the Springfield Union as
home was a suburb of Boston and later, the family moved
her Smith College correspondent. Her short story, Sunday
to east of Boston. This was the place where Plath became
at the Mintons, received the first place in a Mademoiselle
familiar and intimate with the sea. From an early age, Plath
contest. From the same short story, she also won a guest
enjoyed the sea and could recognize its beauty and power.
editorship at Mademoiselle in New York City. When she re-
On November 5, 1940, a week and a half after Plath’s
turns from New York, she was mentally, emotionally, and
birthday, her father died as a result of complications follow-
physically exhausted. Throughout July and August, Plath
ing the amputation of a foot due to untreated from diabetes.
wrote in The Bell Jar that she could neither read, sleep,
He had become sick shortly after a close friend died of can-
nor write. In an interview from Voices & Visions, Aurelia told
cer. He had been a strict father, and both his authoritarian
us that her daughter could in fact read, and that she meti-
attitudes and his death drastically defined her relationships
culously read Freud’s Abnormal Psychology. On August 24,
and her poems — most best-known in her infamous and
1953, she left a note saying, “Have gone for a long walk. Will be home tomorrow.” She took a bottle of sleeping pills, a blanket, and a glass of water with her down the stairs to
When Plath’s first poem got published, she sent it to the editor with a note to explain that poem describes “what I see and hear on hot summer nights.”
the celler. She crawled underneath the screened-in porch. She fell unconscious after swallowing the pills. She survived this first suicide attempt after lying unfound in a crawl space for three days, later writing that she “blissfully succumbed to the whirling blackness that I honestly believed was eternal oblivion.” She spent six months in psychiatric care, receiving more electric and insulin shock treatment under the care of Dr. Ruth Beuscher. Her stay at McLean Hospital and her Smith scholarship were paid for by Olive Higgins Prouty, who also had successfully recovered from a mental breakdown herself. Although, it was not easy to overcome her depression, she seemed to make a good recovery. In 1954, she was able to return to college and she continue her excellence in academics. In January 1955, she submitted her thesis The Magic
THE GREAT WRITERS SERIES / PLATH
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P l a t h’s f a t h e r, O t t o , di e s
H e r 1s t p o e m g e t s p ub l i s h e d
“Let me live, love and say it well in good sentences.” —Sylvia Plath Mirror: A Study of the Double in Two of Dostoyevsky’s
In early 1957, they moved to the United States and from
Novels. In June, graduated from Smith with highest honors.
September 1957, Plath began teaching at Smith College.
Also, she won a Fulbright scholarship to attend Newnham
She found it difficult to both teach and have enough time
College, Cambridge, in England.
and energy to write and in the middle of 1958, the couple moved to Boston. Plath took a job as a receptionist in the
Career & Marriage
psychiatric unit of Massachusetts General Hospital and
Plath moved to England to attend Newnham College in mid-
in the evening took creative writing seminars given by poet
September. Despite that she needed to go back to college
Robert Lowell. Both Lowell and Sexton encouraged Plath
again, she loved Cambridge and instantly became familiar
to write from her experience and she did so.
with England and its culture. British schooling was very
She openly discussed her depression with Lowell and
different than in America so she had major adjustments to
her suicide attempts with Sexton, who led her to write from
deal with. She had a tutor, Dorothea Krook, who became
a more female perspective. Sylvia began to conceive of
a very important female role model of Plath’s. She also join-
herself as a more serious, focused poet and short-story
ed the Amateur Dramatics Club and had a small role as an
writer. At this time Plath and Hughes first met the poet W.
insane poetess. As she got used to life in a foreign country,
S. Merwin, who admired their work and was to remain a
she tried to steer clear of dating.
life-long friend. Plath resumed psychoanalytic treatment
In February, 1956, Plath met her future husband, Ted Hughes, at a party in Cambridge. She walked into the
with Ruth Beuscher in December. Plath and Hughes travelled across Canada and the
room with a date, Hamish, and quickly began enquiring as
United States, staying at the Yaddo artist colony in New
to Hughes’ whereabouts. She found him, recited his poems
York State in late 1959. She says that it was here that she
which she was able to memorize in the few hours. Accord-
learned “to be true to my own weirdnesses”, but she re-
ing to her journals, they were dancing and stamping and
mained anxious about writing confessionally, from deeply
yelling and drinking and then he kissed her on the neck and
personal and private material. The couple moved back to
she bit him on the cheek, and he bled. She described him
the United Kingdom in December and lived in London at
as “a singer, story-teller, lion and world-wanderer” with “a
3 Chalcot Square, near the Primrose Hill area of Regent’s
voice like the thunder of God.” They fell in love at first sight.
Park, where an English Heritage plaque records Plath’s re-
On June 16, 1956, Plath and Hughes got married at
sidence. Their daughter Frieda was born on April 1, 1960
St. George the Martyr Holborn and they spent their honey-
and in October, Plath published her first collection of poetry,
moon in Benidorm. They returned to Newnham in October
The Colossus. In February 1961, her second pregnancy
to begin her second year. They both became deeply inter-
ended in miscarriage; several of her poems, including
ested in astrology and the supernatural, using Ouija boards.
Parliament Hill Fields, address this event. In August she
03
19 4 4 S t a r t s w r i t i n g j o u r n al
Early October 1962, Plath experienced a great burst of creativity and wrote most of the poems on which her reputation now rests, writing at least twenty-six of the poems of her posthumous poetry collection Ariel during the final few months of her life. She wrote continuously whenever the time allowed her. In December 1962, she returned alone to London with her two children, and rented, on a five-year lease, a flat at 23 Fitzroy Road—only a few streets from the Chalcot Square flat. William Butler Yeats once lived in the house, which bears an English Heritage blue plaque for the Irish poet. Plath was pleased by this fact and considered it as a good omen. Death It was the coldest winter in two hundred years. The frost clung to the windows; the pipes froze and inside 23 Fitzroy Road in London’s Primrose Hill, Plath and her two young children battled sickness as they tried to keep warm. But thirty-year-old Plath was not just fighting flu; the emotional strain of the last five months was weighing heavily upon her. After Hughes, left her for another woman, she would found Photo of Plath reading letters in Yorkshire, England.
finished her semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar and
herself plagued by the depression she knew all too well.
immediately after this, the family moved to Court Green in
Insomnia was her bedfellow once again and she had been
the small market town of North Tawton in Devon. Her se-
prescribed antidepressants while receiving daily visits from
cond child, Nicholas, was born in January 1962. In mid-
a nurse.
1962, Hughes began to keep bees, which would be the subject of many Plath’s poems.
At 4:30am on the cold morning of February 11, 1963, Plath prepared bread and milk for her sleeping children, closed the kitchen door, carefully sealed it with wet towels,
Separated
turned on the gas and laid her head in the oven. By the
In early 1961, Plath and Hughes rented their flat at Chalcot
time she was discovered less than five hours later, she was
Square to Assia and David Wevill. It was a mistake to rent
dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. But in that moment
their flat to Wevill because Hughes was immediately struck
someone else was born—one of the most famous female
with the beautiful Assia, as she was with him. In June 1962,
poets and enduring feminist icons of our time. Plath’s sui-
Plath got into a car accident. The car accident was not a
cide was not the first time she had tried to end her life.
mere accident but it was one of her suicide attempts. Plath
It was at the age of twenty, following her very first descent
found out Hughes had been having an affair with Wevill. In
into depression. It came after a difficult stint as a guest
September, the couple got divorced.
editor at Mademoiselle magazine in New York in 1953.
THE GREAT WRITERS SERIES / PLATH
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At tends Smith College
Interns at Mademoiselle, 1s t at t e mp t o f s u i c i d e
Goes back to Smith College
About Her Work
Plath’s letters were published in 1975, edited and select-
Plath’s early poems demonstrate her typical imagery, using
ed by her mother, Aurelia. The collection, Letters Home :
personal and nature-based depictions focusing on, for ex-
Correspondence 1950–1963, came out partly in response
ample, the moon, hospitals, fetuses, and skulls. They were
to the strong public reaction to the publication of The Bell
mostly imitation exercises of poets she admired such as,
Jar in America. Plath had kept a diary from the age of ele-
W. B. Yeats, Dylan Thomas, and Marianne Moore. In late
ven until her death, doing so until her suicide. Her adult
1959, when Plath and Hughes were at the Yaddo writers’
diaries, starting from her first year at Smith College in 1950,
colony in New York, she wrote the seven part Poem for a
were first published in 1982 as The Journals of Sylvia Plath,
Birthday, reflecting Theodore Roethke’s Lost Son, though
edited by Frances McCullough, with Hughes as consulting
its theme is her own traumatic breakdown and suicide
editor. In 1982, when Smith College acquired Plath’s re-
attempt at twenty one. After 1960, her work moved into a
maining journals, Hughes sealed two of them until February
more surreal landscape darkened by a sense of imprison-
11, 2013, the fiftieth anniversary of Plath’s death.
ment and looming death, overshadowed by her father. The
During the last few years of his life, Hughes began
Colossus is shot through with themes of death, redemption
working on a fuller publication of Plath’s journals. In 1998,
and resurrection. After Hughes left her, she produced, in
shortly before his death, he unsealed the two journals, and
less than two months, the forty poems of vengeance, love,
passed the project onto his children by Plath, Frieda and
despair, and rage on which her fame mostly rests. Her
Nicholas, who passed it on to Karen V. Kukil. Kukil finished
landscape poetry, which she wrote throughout her life, has
her editing in December 1999, and in 2000 Anchor Books
been described as “an important and rich area of her work
published The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. More
that is often overlooked. Some of the best of which was
than half of the new volume contained newly released ma-
written about the Yorkshire moors.” Her poem, Wuthering
terial; The American author Joyce Carol Oates hailed the
Heights, takes its title from the Bronte novel, but its content
publication as a “genuine literary event”. Hughes faced
and style is her own particular vision of the Pennine.
criticism for his role in handling the journals: he claims to have destroyed Plath’s last journal, which contained entries from the winter of 1962 up to her death. In the foreword
Photo of Plath’s husband, Ted Hughes (on left), and plath, on their wedding day.
of the 1982 version, he writes, “I destroyed [the last of her journals] because I did not want her children to have to read it (in those days I regarded forgetfulness as an essential part of survival).” Legend Rises Anew The most gossipy, most divisive and arguably most compelling literary legend of them all — “the plot of the suicidal poetess and her abandonment by the man with the witty mouth,” to quote Janet Malcolm — is turning fifty. It was on February 11, 1963, Plath, having first sealed up her young children’s bedroom with tape and towels, went into
05
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G r a du a t e s S m i t h w i t h h o n o r s , a t t e n d s N e w n h am C o l l e g e
G e t s m a r r i e d w i t h Te d H u g h e s
Star ts teaching at Smith
Ta ke s p a r t- t i m e j o b a t M a s s a c hu s e t t s G e n e r a l Hospit al
the kitchen of her London flat and gassed herself. Thus
added and removed poems and changed their sequence,
began the American poet’s deification as a feminist martyr
the order of Ariel was a focal point in the first wave of con-
and an ongoing conflict of Biblical fervor. On one side stand
tention surrounding his self-serving manipulation of Plath’s
those who place culpability for her suicide squarely on the
literary legacy. After all, if his intentions were honorable,
head of her husband. The other side, equally intransigent,
the argument goes, he would not have destroyed her jour-
blames her innately tortured psyche, which had led to at
nal that covered the final months of their relationship —
least one prior suicide attempt.
nor appointed as the estate’s literary agent someone who,
In the years following her death, she also became the
as he was well aware, hated Plath with a passion: his for-
most oxymoronic of entities: a commercially successful
midable, possessive sister, Olwyn. Indeed, not one book
poet. Ariel, her second collection of poems — her first, The
about Plath has been written without Olwyn — herself
Colossus and Other Poems had been published in 1960 —
becoming a legendary figure, bestriding Colossus-like over
sold an incredible 15,000 copies in its first ten months of
the dominion of her brother’s reputation — intimidating,
publication in the United Kingdom. Edited by Hughes, who
placing injunctions and threatening to withhold permission to quote from poems if conditions are not met. “Well, then the separation just looked like Sylvia had lost her mind.” Frieda Hughes, Plath’s daughter and now the estate’s liter-
“I should have loved
ary executor, also gets into periodic tussles over what she sees as the rampant, shameless feeding on her mother’s life and work. When the Gwyneth Paltrow’s biopic, Sylvia,
a thunderbird instead; At least when spring comes they roar back again. I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.”
was produced, Frieda banned them from using Plath’s poetry and published a poem, My Mother: “Now they want to make a film /For anyone lacking the ability/To imagine the body, head in oven / Orphaning children.” Yet as a former Salon editor, and the author of Wintering, an acclaimed novel about Plath’s last days — has pointed out, it is precisely the enduring appetite for all things she that provides Frieda with considerable financial comfort. The saga’s latest episode involves Elizabeth Sigmund, who was a friend of Plath’s and, with her husband, the original dedicatee of The Bell Jar. Interviewed by The Guardian’s Sam Jordison, Sigmund has reiterated several points deemed strictly off-message by the Hughes faction, including that the last straw for Plath was hearing of Wevill’s pregnancy, and that after her death, a “guilt-ridden” Hughes said: “It does not fall to many men to murder a genius.” Needless
From Mad Girl’s Love Song
to say, Olwyn has taken characteristically voluble exception to Sigmund’s words: “The nonsense that has continued
THE GREAT WRITERS SERIES / PLATH
19 6 0
19 6 2
19 6 3
H e r d au g h t e r, Fr i e d a , i s b o r n , Th e C o l o s su s i s p ub l i s h e d
Her son, Nicholas, is born, Plath gets into a car accident, g e t s di v o r c e d w i t h H u g h e s
Commits suicide, Th e B e l l J a r g e t s p ub l i s h e d
Before Plath’s suicide, she wrote her last poem, Nick and the Candlestick, dedicated to her son, Nicholas (on right).
to be written about the story is shocking to me,” she told
as Hughes and Olwyn endeavored to foreground their ver-
Jordison. “Sylvia wasn’t the innocent victim, or half so help-
sion of history and rebut the narrative featuring Hughes
less as she’s been made out to be. You just have to look at
as the murdering brute.
some of her poetry … She was vicious and a little bit crazy.” Entirely contrary to Olwyn’s wishes, these endless con-
Just as Plath dwelled on the newly widowed Elizabeth Taylor stealing Eddie Fisher from poor Debbie Reynolds,
troversies only serve to glorify the Plath mythology, whose
the debate over whether Hughes was the villain and Plath
seductive lure to authors and critics never seems to fade.
the victim, or vice versa, has exercised many literary minds
Two new biographies are accompanying the dual fiftieth
over the years. A.S. Byatt, the Booker-winning novelist more
anniversaries of the publication of The Bell Jar and Plath’s
renowned for her dazzling intellect than her penchant for
death: American Isis: The Life and Art of Sylvia Plath by Carl
tittle-tattle, once confided to the New York Times: I’m auto-
Rollyson and Mad Girl’s Love Song: Sylvia Plath and Life
matically on [Ted’s] side about Sylvia Plath. When I knew
Before Ted by Andrew Wilson. Wilson’s thoughtful and well-
her, it was during her most writing-for-Mademoiselle-ish
researched study, a compendium of Plath’s many lovers
days, and she had bobby socks and totally artificial bright
from the pre-Ted days — including Richard Sassoon, who’s
red lips and totally artificial bright blond hair, and I remem-
officially sanctified as The One Who Got Away — persua-
ber her as a made-up creature with no central reality to
sively submits that the seeds of Plath’s self-destruction
her at all, always uttering advice like a woman’s magazine
were sown long before she met her husband, joining such
advice column. She wrote beautiful words, but there was
influential Plath-Hughes exegeses as Janet Malcolm’s The
not anybody inside there. I’m sure he behaved very badly,
Silent Woman on the “not Ted’s fault” side. Rollyson’s more
but I regard it as automatic that anyone married to Plath
conventional biography, a lively whistle-stop tour of all the
would have to find someone else in the end, because I do
significant landmarks in its subject’s short life, is consum-
not think she was a complete person.
mately written and worth reading for the final chapter alone:
Hughes’ final collection of poems, Birthday Letters,
In the Temple of Isis is a gripping account of the feuds that
published shortly before his death in 1998, invites the
occurred between the Hughes camp and various writers,
reader to see Plath as Byatt did, and it marks a crowning,
07
19 6 5 A ri e l g e t s p ub l i s h e d
“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.” —Sylvia Plath valiant attempt at exoneration in the court of public opinion.
She was right, of course: Not only has Plath’s small oeuvre
The book, an international bestseller, didn’t so much have
spawned an ever-flourishing worldwide industry of biogra-
its intended effect as provide grist to the mill of speculation,
phical interpretation, but her writing so seamlessly fused
more evidence to weigh in the apportionment of guilt and
self-obsession with an other worldly gift for language that,
innocence. Novelist, Fay Weldon, for example, was unsway-
on reading, it’s impossible to differentiate between scholarly
ed, finding space in her autobiography, Auto da Fay, to
interest and “curiosity of quite a low order” in one’s mind.
assert that Plath died “for love … not depression, let alone
This entrancing quality, this perfect, irreproducible formula
‘born to suicide’ as is so often said of Sylvia.” What no one
of unadulterated narcissism and true genius, is what sus-
can dispute, though, is that Plath would be thrilled to wit-
tains her place in the spotlight just as much as the post-
ness the intricacies of her life still drawing fascination fifty
humously self-perpetuating Plath and Hughes soap opera.
years on: More than anything else, she longed to be im-
So it is that the defiant mantra of Esther Greenwood, not
mortal, famous, and celebrated. Hughes once complained
only echoes through the ages but regularly gets tattooed on
that scholarly interest in Plath was motivated by “curiosity
young women’s skin : “I took a deep breath and listened to
of quite a low order, the ordinary village kind, the bloodsport
the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”
kind.” But she instinctively knew that only by taking herself as the sole subject for her art, before the term “confessional poetry” had even been coined would she attract the level of attention she craved.
THE GREAT WRITERS SERIES / PLATH
The Colossus and Other Poems (1960) The Bell Jar : a Novel (1963) Ariel : the First Edition (1965) Three Women : Poems (1968) Crossing the Water : a Book (1971) Letters Home : Correspondence 1950 - 63 (1975) Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams (1977) The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath (1981) The Journals of Sylvia Plath (1982) Selected Poems of Sylvia Plath (1985) The Magic Mirror : Sylvia Plath’s Thesis (1989) The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (2000)
19 6 5 A ri e l g e t s p ub l i s h e d
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“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.” —Sylvia Plath valiant attempt at exoneration in the court of public
of attention she craved.
opinion. The book, an international bestseller, didn’t so
She was right, of course: Not only has Plath’s small oeuvre
much have its intended effect as provide grist to the mill of
spawned an ever-flourishing worldwide industry of biogra-
speculation, more evidence to weigh in the apportionment
phical interpretation, but her writing so seamlessly fused
of guilt and
self-obsession with an other worldly gift for language that,
innocence. Novelist, Fay Weldon, for example, was unsway-
on reading, it’s impossible to differentiate between scholarly
ed, finding space in her autobiography, Auto da Fay, to
interest and “curiosity of quite a low order” in one’s mind.
assert that Plath died “for love … not depression, let alone
This entrancing quality, this perfect, irreproducible formula
‘born to suicide’ as is so often said of Sylvia.” What no one
of unadulterated narcissism and true genius, is what sus-
can dispute, though, is that Plath would be thrilled to wit-
tains her place in the spotlight just as much as the post-
ness the intricacies of her life still drawing fascination fifty
humously self-perpetuating Plath and Hughes soap opera.
years on: More than anything else, she longed to be im-
So it is that the defiant mantra of Esther Greenwood, not
mortal, famous, and celebrated. Hughes once complained
only echoes through the ages but regularly gets tattooed on
that scholarly interest in Plath was motivated by “curiosity
young women’s skin : “I took a deep breath and listened to
of quite a low order, the ordinary village kind, the bloodsport
the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”
kind.” But she instinctively knew that only by taking herself as the sole subject for her art, before the term “confessional poetry” had even been coined would she attract the level
THE GREAT WRITERS SERIES / PLATH