Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 â?? February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer.
Known primarily for her poetry, Plath also wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, detailing her struggle with depression. Along with Anne Sexton, Plath is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry that Robert Lowell and W.D. Snodgrass initiated.
College years
During the summer after her third year of college, Plath received the position of guest editor at Mademoiselle magazine, during which she spent a month in New York City. The experience was not at all what she had hoped it would be, beginning within her a seemingly downward spiral in her outlook on herself and life in general. Many of the events that took place during that summer were later used as inspiration for her novel The Bell Jar. In her junior year at Smith College, Plath made her first medically documented suicide attempt by crawling under her house and taking an overdose of sleeping pills.[2] Details of her documented and possible undocumented attempts at suicide are chronicled in her book. After her suicide attempt, Plath was briefly committed to a mental institution where she received electroconvulsive therapy.[3] Her stay at McLean Hospital was paid for by Olive Higgins Prouty, who had also funded the scholarship awarded to Plath to attend Smith. Plath seemed to make an acceptable recovery and graduated from Smith with honors in 1955. She obtained a Fulbright scholarship to Cambridge University where she continued actively writing poetry, occasionally publishing her work in the student newspaper Varsity. It was at a party given in Cambridge that she met the English poet Ted Hughes. They were married on June 16, 1956 after a short courtship.[4]
Wife, mother and poet
Plath and Hughes spent from July 1957 to October 1959 living and working in the United States, where Plath taught at Smith. They then moved to Boston where Plath sat in on seminars given by Robert Lowell. Also attending Lowell's seminars was Anne Sexton. At this time, Plath and Hughes also met, for the first time, W. S. Merwin, who admired their work and was to remain a lifelong friend.[5]
Upon learning that Plath was pregnant, the couple moved back to the United Kingdom. Plath and Hughes lived in London for a while on Chalcot Square near the Primrose Hill area of Regent's Park, and then settled in the small market town of North Tawton in Devon. While there, Plath published her first collection of poetry, The Colossus. In February 1961, she suffered a miscarriage, and a number of her poems address this event.[6]
Soon, Plath's marriage to Hughes met with many difficulties, particularly from his affair with Assia Wevill, and they separated in late 1962.[7] She returned to London with their children, Frieda and Nicholas, and rented a flat at 23 Fitzroy Road (only a few blocks from the Chalcot Square apartment) in a house where W.B. Yeats once lived. Plath was pleased by this fact and considered it a good omen.[8]
Death
Plath's grave at Heptonstall church, West Yorkshire
Plath took her own life on the morning of February 11, 1963. She left out bread and milk and completely sealed the rooms between herself and her sleeping children with "wet towels and cloths."[9] Plath then placed her head in the oven in her kitchen while the gas was turned on.
It has been suggested that Plath's timing and planning of this suicide attempt was too precise, too coincidental, and that she had not meant to succeed in killing herself. Apparently, she had previously asked Mr. Thomas, her downstairs neighbor, what time he would be leaving; and a note had been placed that read "Call Dr. Horder" and listed his phone number.[10] Therefore it is argued that Plath must have turned the gas on at a time when Mr. Thomas should have been waking and beginning his day. This theory maintains that the gas, for several hours, seeped through the floor and reached Mr. Thomas and another resident of the floor below. Also, an au pair was to arrive at nine o'clock that morning to help Plath with the care of her children. Upon arrival, the au pair could not get into the flat, but was eventually let in by painters, who had a key to the front door.
However, in the book Giving Up: The Last Days of Sylvia Plath, Jillian Becker says that, "according to Mr. Goodchildâ??a police officer attached to the coroner's office . . . she had thrust her head far into the gas oven. 'She had really meant to die.'"
Plath's gravestone bears the inscription "Even amidst fierce flames the golden lotus can be planted." The gravestone has been repeatedly vandalized with supporters of Plath chiselling off the name "Hughes." This practice intensified following the suicide in 1969 of Assia Wevill, the woman for whom he left Plath, which led to claims that Hughes had been abusive toward Plath.