“Is there no way out of the mind?”
Her name is synonymous with the best writing of the 20th century. Confronting, emotional, and often dark, it was only in hindsight that the extent to which her words mirrored the troubles in her life was revealed. For Sylvia Plath felt “owl’s talons clenching (her) heart” throughout her days, and when they finally pierced deep, the world lost one of its greatest artists.
Sylvia Plath was born on October 27th, 1932, in the lush Jamaica Plain of Boston. The region was home to a diverse range of immigrants, and her parents were no different, with mother Aurelia of Austrian descent, and her father Otto originally from Germany.
Otto was a strict husband and father, but his death in 1940 would bear heavily on Plath throughout her life, especially in her relationships with men. In later years, she would write Daddy, in which she reflects on her need to ‘kill’ the lingering influence that Otto has on her.
Diligent and focused, Plath was focused on success even in her youth. Her first poem was published in the Boston Herald when she was eight, and her first nationally-printed piece went out in the Christian Science Monitor a decade later. She also kept a diary from the age of 11, and showed promise as a painter, winning an award from The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards at 15.
Her academic talent saw Plath accepted to Smith College. “The world is splitting open at my feet like a ripe, juicy watermelon,” she declared to her mother.
Life did look good for a time. Plath was editor for The Smith Review, a role which helped her attain a coveted position as guest editor for Mademoiselle, an esteemed women’s magazine in New York City. Her month stay in the city was not everything she imagined, however.
Her disappointment culminated in the moment she learnt the editor was meeting with Welsh poet Dylan Thomas – an artist whom she adored “more than life itself” – but that she hadn’t been invited. Plath spent the next two days waiting at his hotel in the hope of meeting him, but was unsuccessful.
Only a few weeks later, Plath slashed her legs. It was a test; a test to see whether she had the will to attempt suicide. After being refused entry into a writing seminar at Harvard, and undertaking electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) to curve her depression, Plath ultimately tried to take her life in August of 1953 by stealing her mother’s sleeping pills, consuming them, and hiding under the house.
She spent three days in the darkness, coming to believe that the nothingness surrounding her was “eternal oblivion”. Fortunately, however, she eventually came out and was treated for the next six months at the McLean Hospital.
After seeming to recover, Plath returned to Smith College, and completed her degree with highest honours in 1955.
Receiving a Fulbright Scholarship, Plath moved to Cambridge to continue her study. It was here, in early 1956, that she met poet Ted Hughes. They married on June 16th of the same year.
Not long after, Plath returned to the US. She would continue with her poetry, and end up teaching at her alma mater. The job didn’t last long though. Unable to find the energy to both teach and write, Plath would end up taking a receptionist job at the Massachusetts General Hospital psychiatric ward.
It allowed her time to contemplate her work, and with the support of Hughes and some friends, began to develop the voice in which she would form her most potent works. Though Plath still felt mildly uncomfortable writing from such a personal perspective, she continued on, and published her first collection of poetry, The Colossus, in October of 1960, six months after the birth of her daughter Frieda.
She suffered a miscarriage the following year, but found comfort while working on The Bell Jar, a semi-autographical novel, and her seminal work in the format. In the novel, Esther Greenwood fights to maintain her mental state under the strain of depression and uncertainty.
The Bell Jar was initially dismissed as “disappointing, juvenile and overwrought” by her publisher, but Plath persevered. Today, the novel stands as one of the most insightful literary accounts of mental illness, though at the time very few people realised how much it echoed the writer’s own life.
Even the completion of the manuscript was not enough to keep Plath in good mental health. She attempted suicide by crashing her car in June of 1962. That same year, she separated from Hughes, who had been cheating on her.
What sprung from these times were the bulk of the poems that made up the Ariel collection, undoubtedly Plath’s best known work.
The depression continued, however, and Plath struggled to look after both herself and her two children. She couldn’t sleep, was constantly agitated, and lost 10kgs in a few months. Her doctor and friend, Dr. John Horder, prescribed her an antidepressant and arranged a live-in nurse, with the hope of getting her back on track.
It was not to be.
“Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.”
On February 11th, 1963, the nurse arrived to find Plath dead. Her head was in the oven. She had gassed herself. Thankfully, she had taken measures to ensure the gas did not seep out of the kitchen, and so her two children remained safe.
Sylvia Plath was only 30 years old. Her novel, The Bell Jar, had been released in the UK only a month earlier. It would not release in the US for several years, due to what had occurred.
Plath was deeply troubled. “It is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative – whichever is running at the moment dominates my life, floods it.” Her problems were a major contributor to what made her a great artist, and also responsible from taking her away from both her life and art at such a young age.
When Ariel released two years after Plath’s death, her name was cemented in the annals of literary history. Both beautiful and disturbing, it served to shape the reality of Plath’s tortures in the eyes of those who had only come to know about them after her suicide, and remains powerful insight into how art can capture a person’s essence so profoundly.