Victoria Lucas

Sylvia Plath (; October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet and author. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for ''The Colossus and Other Poems'' (1960), ''Ariel'' (1965), and ''The Bell Jar'', a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her suicide in 1963. ''The Collected Poems'' was published in 1981, which included previously unpublished works. For this collection Plath was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1982, making her the fourth to receive this honor posthumously.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Plath graduated from Smith College in Massachusetts and the University of Cambridge, England, where she was a student at Newnham College. Plath later studied with Robert Lowell at Boston University, alongside poets Anne Sexton and George Starbuck. She married fellow poet Ted Hughes in 1956, and they lived together in the United States and then in England. Their relationship was tumultuous and, in her letters, Plath alleges abuse at his hands. They had two children before separating in 1962.

Plath was clinically depressed for most of her adult life and was treated multiple times with early versions of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). She died by suicide in 1963.

Biography

Early life and education

Plath was born on October 27, 1932, in Boston, Massachusetts. Her mother, Aurelia Schober Plath (1906–1994), was the American-born daughter of Austrian immigrants, and her father, Otto Plath (1885–1940), was from Grabow, Germany. Plath's father was an entomologist and a professor of biology at Boston University who wrote a book about bumblebees in 1934.

On April 27, 1935, Plath's brother Warren was born. In 1936 the family moved from 24 Prince Street in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, to 92 Johnson Avenue, Winthrop, Massachusetts. Since 1920, Plath's maternal grandparents, the Schobers, had lived in a section of Winthrop called Point Shirley, a location mentioned in Plath's poetry.

Otto Plath died on November 5, 1940, a week and a half after Sylvia's eighth birthday, of complications following the amputation of a foot due to untreated diabetes. He had become ill shortly after a close friend died of lung cancer. Comparing the similarities between his friend's symptoms and his own, Otto became convinced that he, too, had lung cancer and did not seek treatment until his diabetes had progressed too far. Raised as a Unitarian, Plath experienced a loss of faith after her father's death and remained ambivalent about religion throughout her life. Her father was buried in Winthrop Cemetery in Massachusetts. A visit to her father's grave later prompted Plath to write the poem "Electra on Azalea Path".

After Otto's death, Aurelia moved her children and her parents to 26 Elmwood Road, Wellesley, Massachusetts, in 1942. Plath commented in "Ocean 1212-W", one of her final works, that her first nine years "sealed themselves off like a ship in a bottle—beautiful, inaccessible, obsolete, a fine, white flying myth".

Plath published her first poem at the age of eight in the ''Boston Herald''s children's section. Over the next few years, Plath published multiple poems in regional magazines and newspapers. At age 11, Plath began keeping a journal. In addition to writing, she showed early promise as an artist, winning an award for her paintings from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards in 1947. "Even in her youth, Plath was ambitiously driven to succeed."

Plath attended Bradford Senior High School, which is now Wellesley High School in Wellesley, Massachusetts, graduating in 1950. An influential English teacher was Wilbury Crockett who she referred to as “my own Mr. Crockett.” Just after graduating from high school, she had her first national publication in ''The Christian Science Monitor.''

College years and depression

In 1950, Plath attended Smith College, a private women's liberal arts college in Massachusetts, where she excelled academically. While at Smith, she lived in Lawrence House, and a plaque can be found outside her old room. She edited ''The Smith Review.'' After her third year of college, Plath was awarded a coveted position as a guest editor at '' Mademoiselle'' magazine, during which she spent a month in New York City. The experience was not what she had hoped for, and many of the events that took place during that summer were later used as inspiration for her novel ''The Bell Jar''.

She was furious at not being at a meeting that ''Mademoiselle'' editor Cyrilly Abels had arranged with Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, a writer whose work she loved, according to one of her boyfriends, "more than life itself". She loitered around the White Horse Tavern and the Chelsea Hotel for two days, hoping to meet Thomas, but he was already on his way home. A few weeks later, she slashed her legs "to see if she had enough courage to kill herself." During this time, she was not accepted into a Harvard University writing seminar with author Frank O'Connor. Following ECT for depression, Plath made her first medically documented suicide attempt on August 24, 1953, by crawling under the front porch and taking her mother's sleeping pills.

She survived this first suicide attempt, later writing that she "blissfully succumbed to the whirling blackness that I honestly believed was eternal oblivion". She spent the next six months in psychiatric care, receiving more electric and insulin shock treatment under the care of Ruth Beuscher. Her stay at McLean Hospital and her Smith scholarship were paid for by the author Olive Higgins Prouty, who had also recovered from a mental breakdown. According to Plath's biographer Andrew Wilson, Olive Higgins Prouty "would take Dr Tillotson to task for the badly managed ECT, blaming him for Sylvia's suicide attempt".

Plath seemed to make a good recovery and returned to college. In January 1955, she submitted her thesis ''The Magic Mirror: A Study of the Double in Two of Dostoyevsky's Novels'', and in June graduated from Smith with an A.B., ''summa cum laude''. She was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa academic honor society, and had an IQ of around 160.

She obtained a Fulbright Scholarship to study at Newnham College, one of the two women-only colleges of the University of Cambridge in England, where she continued actively writing poetry and publishing her work in the student newspaper '' Varsity''. At Newnham, she studied with Dorothea Krook, whom she held in high regard. She spent her first-year winter and spring holidays traveling around Europe.

Career and marriage

Plath met poet Ted Hughes on February 25, 1956. In a 1961 BBC interview now held by the British Library Sound Archive, Extract from the 1961 BBC interview with Plath and Hughes. Now held in the British Library Sound Archive. Plath describes how she met Hughes:
Plath described Hughes as "a singer, story-teller, lion and world-wanderer" with "a voice like the thunder of God".

The couple married on June 16, 1956, at St George's, Bloomsbury, with Plath's mother as the sole witness. They spent their honeymoon in Paris and Benidorm, Spain. Plath returned to Newnham in October to begin her second year. During this time, they both became deeply interested in astrology and the supernatural, using ouija boards.

In June 1957, Plath and Hughes moved to the United States; beginning in September, Plath taught at Smith College, her alma mater. She found it difficult to both teach and have enough time and energy to write, and in the middle of 1958, the couple moved to Boston. Plath took a job as a receptionist in the psychiatric unit of Massachusetts General Hospital and in the evenings sat in on creative writing seminars given by poet Robert Lowell (also attended by the writers Anne Sexton and George Starbuck).

Both Lowell and Sexton encouraged Plath to write from her personal experience. She openly discussed her depression with Lowell and her suicide attempt with Sexton, who led her to write from a more female perspective. Plath began to consider herself as a more serious, focused writer. At this time Plath and Hughes met the poet W.S. Merwin, who admired their work and was to remain a lifelong friend. Plath resumed psychoanalytic treatment in December, working with Ruth Beuscher.

Plath and Hughes traveled across Canada and the United States, staying at the Yaddo artist colony in Saratoga Springs, New York, in late 1959. Plath stated that at Yaddo she learned "to be true to my own weirdnesses", but she remained anxious about writing confessionally, from deeply personal and private material.

The couple moved back to England in December 1959 and lived in London at 3 Chalcot Square, near the Primrose Hill area of Regent's Park, where an English Heritage plaque records Plath's residence. Their daughter Frieda was born on April 1, 1960, and in October, Plath published '' The Colossus'', her first collection of poetry.

In February 1961, Plath's second pregnancy ended in miscarriage; several of her poems, including "Parliament Hill Fields", address this event. In a letter to her therapist, Plath wrote that Hughes beat her two days before the miscarriage. In August she finished her semi-autobiographical novel ''The Bell Jar''; immediately afterwards, the family moved to Court Green in the small market town of North Tawton. Nicholas was born in January 1962. In mid-1962, Plath and Hughes began to keep bees, which would be the subject of many Plath poems.

In August 1961, the couple rented their flat at Chalcot Square to Assia (née Gutmann) Wevill and David Wevill. Hughes was immediately struck with Assia, as she was with him. In June 1962, Plath had a car accident, which she later described as a suicide attempt. In July 1962 Plath discovered Hughes was having an affair with Wevill; in September, Plath and Hughes separated.

Beginning in October 1962, Plath experienced a great burst of creativity and composed most of the poems on which her reputation now rests, writing at least 26 of the poems of her posthumous collection ''Ariel'' during the final months of her life.''Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath – a marriage examined''. From ''The Contemporary Review''. Essay by Richard Whittington-Egan 2005
accessed July 9, 2010 In December 1962, she returned alone to London with their 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 a good omen.

The winter of 1962–1963 was one of the coldest on record in the UK; the pipes froze, the children—now two years old and nine months—were often sick, and the house had no telephone. Her depression returned but she completed the rest of her poetry collection, which would be published after her death (1965 in the UK, 1966 in the US). Her only novel, ''The Bell Jar'', was published in January 1963 under the pen name Victoria Lucas and was met with critical indifference.

Final depressive episode and death

Before her death, Plath tried at least twice to take her own life. On August 24, 1953, she overdosed on sleeping pills; then, in June 1962, she drove her car off the side of the road into a river, which she later characterized as a suicide attempt.

In January 1963, Plath spoke with John Horder, her general practitioner. She described the current depressive episode she was experiencing; it had been ongoing for six or seven months. While for most of the time she had been able to continue working, her depression had worsened and become severe, "marked by constant agitation, suicidal thoughts and inability to cope with daily life." Plath struggled with insomnia, taking medication at night to induce sleep, and frequently woke up early. She had lost 20 pounds (9 kg) in a short time. However, she continued to take care of her physical appearance and did not outwardly speak of feeling guilty or unworthy.

Horder prescribed her an anti-depressant, a monoamine oxidase inhibitor, a few days before her suicide. Knowing she was at risk with two young children, he made strenuous efforts to have her admitted to a hospital; when that failed, he arranged for a live-in nurse.

Hughes claimed in a hand-written note to the literary critic Keith Sagar, discovered in 2001, that the anti-depressants prescribed were a "key factor" in Plath's suicide. He said Plath had previously had an adverse reaction to a prescription she had taken when they lived in the U.S. These pills were sold in England under a different name, and although Hughes did not name the pills explicitly, he claimed a new doctor had prescribed them to Plath without realizing she had taken them before with adverse effects. Several commentators have argued that because anti-depressants may take up to three weeks to take effect, her prescription from Horder would not have taken full effect prior to her death; however, others have pointed out that adverse effects of anti-depressants can begin immediately.

The live-in nurse was due to arrive at nine on the morning of February 11, 1963, to help Plath with the care of her children. Upon arrival, she could not get into the flat but eventually gained access with the help of a workman. They found Plath dead with her head in the oven, having sealed the rooms between her and her sleeping children with tape, towels, and cloths. She was 30years old.

Plath's intentions have been debated. That morning, she asked her downstairs neighbor, art historian Trevor Thomas (1907–1993), what time he would be leaving. She also left a note reading "Call Dr. Horder", including the doctor's phone number. It is argued Plath turned on the gas at a time when Thomas would have been likely to see the note, but the escaping gas seeped downstairs and also rendered Thomas unconscious while he slept. However, in her biography ''Giving Up: The Last Days of Sylvia Plath'', Plath's friend Jillian Becker wrote, "According to Mr. Goodchild, a police officer attached to the coroner's office... lathhad thrust her head far into the gas oven... ndhad really meant to die." Horder also believed her intention was clear. He stated that "No one who saw the care with which the kitchen was prepared could have interpreted her action as anything but an irrational compulsion." Plath had described the quality of her despair as "owl's talons clenching my heart".

Aftermath

An inquest was held on February 15 and concluded that the cause of death was suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. Hughes was devastated; they had been separated for six months, due to his affair with Assia Wevill. In a letter to an old friend of Plath's from Smith College, he wrote: "That's the end of my life. The rest is posthumous." Wevill also committed suicide, using a gas stove, six years later.

Plath's gravestone in Heptonstall's parish churchyard of St. Thomas the Apostle bears the inscription that Hughes chose for her: "Even amidst fierce flames the golden lotus can be planted." Biographers have attributed the source of the quote either to the Hindu text ''The Bhagavad Gita'' or to the 16th-century Buddhist novel ''Journey to the West'' written by Wu Cheng'en.

Eight years after the death of Plath, Al Alvarez (a friend of Plath and Hughes between 1960 and 1963) wrote that Plath's suicide was an unanswered cry for help. This prompted an angry response from Hughes who demanded that this claim be withdrawn from wider publication. In a BBC interview in March 2000, Alvarez spoke about his failure to recognize Plath's depression, saying he regretted his inability to offer her emotional support.

Plath's daughter Frieda Hughes is a writer and artist. On March 16, 2009, Plath's son Nicholas Hughes

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