Literary Giants - Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath was born October 27, 1932, during the Great Depression, in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. Her Father, Otto Emile Plath, was an immigrant from Germany and a professor of apiology and German at Boston University. Her mother was Aurelia Schober Plath.

In April of 1935, Warren was born into the family and they moved to Winthrop Massachusetts the following year. Otto died suddenly shortly after Sylvia turned 8. Plath’s poem Daddy would later be put on his tombstone. She was a sensitive child and greatly affected by his death. The grief, guilt and angry despair she felt stayed with her for her entire life and would ultimately show through in her writing. Plath’s first poem was published in the Boston Herald’s children’s section when she was 8 ½ years old.

In 1942 Aurelia moved with her children and parents to Wellesley, Massachusetts. Even though Plath was troubled, she excelled in school for her superior academic skills and writing abilities. Some of her poems and stories were published in Seventeen magazine. In august of 1950, her first story, And Summer Will Not Come Again was published.

That September Plath entered Smith College in Northampton, New York on a scholarship. She did extremely well there also, academically and socially. Her teachers and peers called her the golden girl. Plath was adamant about her career and filled endless notebooks with her writings. In her junior year
she won Mademoiselle’s fiction contest and was given a guest editorship for the magazine for June of 1953.

Plath went home depressed and conflicted with the All-American girl image
that she had fought so hard to achieve. She suffered a serious mental breakdown and attempted suicide. She was given shock treatments and eventually returned to Smith College. She graduated summa cum laude and went to Cambridge on a Fulbright fellowship that she had won. It was there that she met her future husband, Ted Hughes (a poet). They were married in London in June of 1956.

Plath returned to America, with a graduate degree, to teach at Smith in 1957. After one year she quit to devote all of her time to writing. Plath and Ted spent time in Saratoga Springs as writers-in-residence to Yaddo. Their first child Frieda was born and Plath completed many of the poems printed in The Colossus. Their son Nicholas was born 2 years later. Some critics considered her radio play Three Women: A Monologue for Three Voices a transitional piece of work. After that her writing style changed and became more spontaneous and less narrative and less expository.

As her poetry developed it became more autobiographical and private. Most of the poems in Ariel were written during the last months of her life and were a personal testimony to all the negative feelings she had locked inside. In her writing she found the voice that she had sought for so long. Since it was not the norm, it offended many people with its directness and use of startling metaphors. Her writing took on the darkness that she felt was her life. It talked of suicide, death, mutilation and brutality. She had found herself at last and was no longer plagued with the All-American girl image.

Her marriage had ended by 1963, she was ill and on the verge of another mental breakdown. Caring for two small children in a cramped London flat, she hit the depths of despair. On February 11, 1963, after making sure her children were safe, she stuck her head in the oven and turned on the gas. Some believe that she had not intended to kill herself but her death was ruled a suicide. Plath was an American poet, novelist, children’s author, short story author and author of the journals that she had started at age 11 and continued until her death.