Sylvia Plath was one of the most inspirational and influential feminists of the late 1900s. Throughout her life, Plath wrote many good works that people adored. What made people love her work was that her readers could relate to her experiences. She wrote about the raw, hard truths of life. She spoke of how she struggled with depression, how it consumed her life and eventually took her out of this world. Sylvia Plath was an American writer, who suffered with depression for most of her adult life while trying to be an author, wife, and mother.
She was born on October 27, 1932. Sylvia grew up in Winthrop, Massachusetts with her mother, father, and younger brother. According to her mother, she began writing poems at five years old(Kehoe 2). At only eight years old, her father passed away. He died from complications with diabetes. Despite being sad from the loss of her father, Sylvia earned good grades and had a passion for writing in high school.
As a junior, she wrote a short story called And Summer Will Not Come Again. Her short story was published in Seventeen magazine. Sylvia graduated in May 1955 with perfect grades and a knack for writing. She enrolled at Smith College in Massachusetts. Her time at Smith was short-lived as her depression and anxiety took over her life. To help treat her depression and anxiety, she underwent electroshock therapy(Teigen 42). A couple months after being treated, she returned to Smith looking recovered, but the therapy had no effect on her.
Still dealing with grief and depression, she tried to commit suicide in 1953. Her mother saw that she was struggling, and decided to put her in a psychiatric hospital(Kehoe 2). Several months after having to work through her problems, she resumed her studies. She was given the opportunity to study at Cambridge University. The night of February 25, 1956 would be a night she would never forget. The night she met Ted Hughes whom was also a poet. Four months after meeting sylvia and ted were married. In the late 1960s just after welcoming their first child Frieda, Hughes became a firmly established writer. This left Plath with her duties as a mom and on a different professional level as Ted. After a while, she was able to get back to writing. She wrote her first book of poems The Colossus which appeared in The New Yorker magazine and Atlantic monthly magazine. Finally in a good place in her career and her family, they moved to Court Green in London. In July their neighbors the Wevillls came for a visit. Shortly after they left Sylvia found out that her loving husband had an affair with Assia Wevill. Her husband’s affair was a devastating betrayal that caused her emotions to surface. She separated from her husband in September, 1961.
Wrestling with her inner demons, she turned to her writing as an outlet. She started writing a novel. The Bell Jar is a heavily autobiographical novel based on her life experiences portrayed by a fictional character. The novel was published in January 1963. Following her divorce, plath moved back to London in a small, second-story apartment. Over the next 30 days after her separation she wrote her second book of poems Ariel which were mostly about pain and despair. Ariel, the book of poems has not been published. Barely making ends meet, Sylvia was alone with her children, writing, and her emotions in her small second- story apartment. As plath was finding her voice as a writer, she started going through a psychological crisis and emotional disturbance. She experienced mood swings, had an ill temper, and had periods of extreme dependency.
On February 11 1963, Sylvia left her sleeping children two glasses of milk and a loaf of bread, blocked off the doorway of the room they were in, and committed suicide. She killed herself by sticking her head in her oven. She died from carbon-monoxide poisoning. Slyvia died when she was only 30 years old. Her decision to end her life was unfortunately not an impulsive act but something she had been considering for some time. A tribute to plath appeared a few days after her passing in The Observer, a london weekly. Hughes became the executor of plath’s literary estate and arranged for the publication of Ariel. When publishing Ariel, Hughes dropped 12 poems that were originally in the book, added 14 poems that were not included, and rearranged the order that they appeared. Even after death the steady publication of her work gave plath a greater visibility than many living poets. After their mother’s death, young children nicholas and frieda were raised by ted hughes, who shielded them from the public eye. In 1969, Assia Wevill, the woman that Hughes had an affair with, killed herself and her daughter the same exact way that plath killed herself. After losing his wife and his mistress, people named ted responsible for plath’s suicide. People shout “ Murderer” when they see him in public and at his readings. Plath was buried in the Hughes family plot in Heptonstall, Yorkshire on February 16, 1963. After her death, plath became a titanic figure, someone at the center of political and artistic debate, someone who in death acquired the fame she missed in life. Feminists saw plath as a great talent betrayed by men, others saw her as representing the poet’s reduced circumstances in an age of industry and mass marketing. In 1989, the estate authorized a plath biography. 36 years after his wife’s suicide, ted hughes died of cancer.
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