Silvia Plath

Reality and Artifice

Overview

Plaths Background Early Traumas School Days and Character Smith College Cambridge Ted Hughes and Marriage Writing Separation Death Posthumous publication of Ariel

Biography: General Overview

Silvia Plaths parents: Otto Plath and Aurelia Plath Father: Born in Germany Family emigrated when Otto Plath was 15 Rigid, conservative character Held Ph.D. from Harvard U. in Applied Biology Research focus on entomology Bees Taught at Boston U. Met wife as his student in German class Wife 21 years younger

Biography: General Overview

Mother: Born in U.S. parents emigrated from Austria Family home in Winthrop, MA Family observed traditional values and nurturing Held B.A. , working on M.A. when married Marriage to Otto Plath 1932

Silvia Plaths Early Childhood

Born, 1932 in Boston, MA Early years lived in Jamaica Plain a suburb of Boston Father taught at Boston U.; mother took role of suburban housewife Father successful as university professor

Early Plath and Family

Silvia Plath reveled in fathers attention 1935, Birth of Brother, Nicholas

Welcomed by parents Viewed as an intrusion and competition by Silvia House on the bay Near maternal grandparents home

1936, Family moved to Winthrop, MA

Often visited maternal grandparents

Caring grandparents and environment on the seashore Images of the sea important in Plaths poetry

Formative Years and Problem Elements

Otto Plath demanding, stressed academic achievement

Expressed his love through approval of achievement

Aurelia Plath passive, subordinate Silvia Plath sought approval from father

Achievement Ambivalence & parents latent hostility Tension later reflected in poetry

Achievement became means of paternal acceptance Hurricane linked to parents inadequacies & natures omnipotent power (The DisQuieting Muses) Sea came to mean a womb and a grave birth and death

Early Traumas

Emergence of Hitler in Germany Nazi rise father, Otto Plath, outraged Otto Plath becomes ill, doesnt seek medical oversight Diabetes diagnosed too late 1940, Otto Plath dies

Silvia reacts intensely feels his death is betrayal; isnt helped with loss Copes by compensating through

Public approval Success Seals off era before fathers death Writes diary poems First published poem (in childrens section of newspaper) at 8

Harmonious poem about a cricket unrelated to inner reality or life (escapist) Successful in suppressing, disguising and ordering inner turmoil through poetry Poetry becomes a means of ordering, objectifying experience, masking herself

School Days
Mother worked as breadwinner taught school School was a way to demonstrate normalcy through intellect not emotional adjustment Moved from Winthrop, MA to Wellesley, MA Wellesley important as social framework & provided attributes for social masks. Masks had dual effect: Concealed emotional problems Was superficial basis for admiration & manipulation Drive for achievement (approval) dominates Plaths life Recognized for superior intelligence; published poetry Obtained awards for writing and achievement Achievement masked pathology -- narcissism Clear lack of empathy, helping others, or spontaneity

Silvia Plaths Character Traits in School

Intelligent Sensitive Loner Detached Manipulative Emotionally Distant Self controlled overly disciplined

Smith College
Attended on full scholarship endowed by Olive Higgins Prouty -- successful novelist. Impelled to achieve academically, socially, artistically. Writing Demonstrated modernist approach to themes and poetic structure Poems suggest a deep, lurking psychological discord toward father Imagery -- disillusion with life, modern world, felt godlessness, and despair Use of allegory or hidden meanings

Poetic Motifs

Use of allegory to express menacing feelings

Fever 103 (from Ariel poems) Refers to suffering personal extended to universal depth, metaphor on Isadora Duncans haunting death
Of a snuffed candle! Love, love the low smokes roll From me like Isadoras scarves, Im in a fright One scarf will anchor and catch in the wheel Such yellow sullen smokes Make their own element. They will not rise But trundle around the globe Choking the aged and the meek The weak

Smith College and Illness

Public portrait conveys idea of dedicated, all-American girl Publishing poetry in national journals & magazines Writing noted for sparseness Poems continued as a surface device revealed subtle vision of a destructive universe antihuman, mechanistic, damned Won numerous awards Growing feelings of despair onset of depression Attempted suicide twice cut wrists & drowning Serious suicide attempt with sleeping pills Found two days later - crawl space under house, maggot laden

Hospitalization and Smith Graduation

Hospitalized at private hospital paid for by Prouty Inability to formulate words language failed Personality disintegration ECT and psychotherapy Plath came to understand her deep-rooted ambivalence toward parents

Electra complex psychoanalytic idea of girls desire to kill mother and possess father; all derived from repressed, unconscious desires Changed to liberal attitude toward sex Reconstructed exterior model or myth & returned to Smith Graduated summa cum laude; wins Fulbright to Cambridge

Cambridge

Poetry not at her best often attributed to her identification with Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop Noted as feeling self important determined to win fame Emotional life continued under the radar concealed

Leading Double life repressed emotional discord and outward composed and hard-working Interest in concept of double in literature evil and good

English winters difficult, disliked fellow women students manipulated them, felt isolated, disliked England (history written in dust) and English Second year met Ted Hughes, a poet & Cambridge grad.

Ted Hughes and Marriage

Two Cambridge graduates instant chemistry married within months of first meeting. Honeymooned inexpensively in Spain both wrote Visited Hughes family in rural, rustic Yorkshire (Wuthering Heights atmosphere) Plath uncomfortable with family rivalry with Hughes sister and threatened by mothers domestic role

Marriage and Writing

Plath dedicated herself to being perfect wife, poet. Strained Plaths sense of self narcissism Continued to publish in American national magazines Typed and marketed Hughes poetry, helped first publication of The Hawk in the Rain Writing alluded more to interior darkness and corruption Language becomes more sparse, kinetic energy Moved to U.S. where Plath taught at Smith Hughes disliked U.S. returned to England.

Developing Singular Voice

Confessional

Significantly influenced by Lowell road to good moves through hell first Reaction against impersonality of the Modernists Attitude compared to a morality play Hell expressed with her own demons

A meaningless, cruel world

Voice expressed awareness of:

Mans imperfection Corruption, decay Inner dynamics Rage against natures cruelty

London

Friendship with W. S. Merwin and wife in London

Helped Plath and Hughes find affordable apartment

Daughter born Frieda Hughes book The Hawk in the Rain awarded Plath publishing poems and book Colossus issued

Mixed reviews noted as having sense of masked danger

Generally an enthusiastic, happy time Reading poetry for the BBC Pregnant again, but lost child Abdominal pains, then hospitalization for appendicitis

Woman in bed near was in a cast (white plaster cast) Two poems based on experience Tulips and In Plaster

Tulips and In Plaster

Both poems intimate an undercurrent of anger and rage Tulips

Symbol of outside world (health) while in hospital I am nobody refers to sense of winter nothingness worthlessness, loss of identity Tulips are red (red is life), but drown her sinkers around my neck. Woman in hospital wrapped in cast. Serves as image of a double and suggests and divided self Anxiety concealed by masks

In Plaster

Publication of The Colossus

First published collection of poetry father obsession Themes organized around mythologizing of father
I shall never get you put together entirely, Pieced, glued, and properly jointed. Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles Proceed from your great lips. It's worse than a barnyard. Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle, Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other. Thirty years now I have labored To dredge the silt from your throat. I am none the wiser.

Life and Writing in Devon

Lived in rural village in Devon (Southeast England) Third pregnancy and birth of son, Nicholas Many poems based on life in Devon; natures destructive forces images of animals, mechanistic world, colossal father

The Moon and the Yew Tree (Moon madness;Yews death dualism), Blackberrying, Lesbos (revenge poem), Elm (female spirit projection of Plaths inner life; an unformed darkness)

Tone is desperate for normal life and sanity

Elm first real evidence of blurring between reality and fantasy Didnt like village; felt isolated, unsophisticated villagers Devised masks acceptable to the villagers and their acceptance

Started writing The Bell Jar

Abandoned Again
Husband, Ted Hughes, seduced by another woman As her father had left (for different reasons), her husband now also left irrational associations, indicated unresolved and complex emotions Complete disillusion with any possibility of happiness Enraged hysterically Evicted Hughes Hughes moves to London Expressed belief in supernatural, occult, mystical folklore Wrote Sting Expressed of feeling trapped and abandoned without Hughes Conceptualized Fever 103 when she was sick with flu wrote it later Christian and Classical mythology Love is viewed as a sin Agony is not private, but universal trundle around the globe/ Choking the aged and the meek

Grief Again

Wrote many poems alluding to husbands affair

The Bitch surfaces persona established as destructive and herself as a victim

A Secret Dwarf Baby Daddy

Allegorical Persona is girl Recalls fathers death, his perceived tyranny as Nazi imagery indicates Poem may be interpreted as confessional, but the cool detachment and allegorical features that are surrealistic images of unconscious

Lady Lazarus

Alludes to death wish and suicidal urge

London Again

Moved to London apartment (flat) in December; rented flat in which Yeats lived. Said to have looked extremely strained Winter that year was worst in a century Writing from 4 in the morning to 8 (before children woke)

Balloons (like children -- guileless) Kindness (Hughes betrayal to her and children) Confusion Words

All poems said to be an extended suicide note Poem Words is most agonized and bleak

Third Time -- Lost

Visited friends and kept up exterior of cheer Moods fluctuated physician notified and tried to find hospital bed. No appropriate bed Nurse called to stay at house with Plath and children until hospital bed arranged Night before nurses arrival, Plath dies of self-inflicted carbon monoxide poisoning. Plath had sealed off the childrens room to protect them from injury. Ariel manuscript left on desk. Published posthumously.