The SYLVIA PLATH Forum

Welcome to the Sylvia Plath Forum which began January 1998 following the surprise publication of Ted Hughes' Birthday Letters. The forum is moderated and maintained by Elaine Connell.
Poem Analysis

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  • The Thin People
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  • Poems inspired by Sylvia
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    Contributions: August 2000

    Melissa Dobson, I read "Ariel’s Gift" and found it a very superficial book. While the introduction is interesting (I think it was originally an article in the London Times, but I’m probably not remembering correctly), there is no real literary insight to be gleaned from Erica Wagner’s laborious prose retelling of "Birthday Letters" except to place them in a context of dates, incidents, and biographical blips. It is not a serious work about the poetry at all. In fact, if I may say so, you, back in your heady days of Forum preeminence, offered much more insight into some of those poems than does Erica Wagner.

    Cressida Hope-Bunting, I agree with Jan Watson Collins: you must put "The Silent Woman" at the top of that stack accumulating next to your divan. By the way, if you have not yet finished "Bitter Fame" (and I’m so glad you liked it as much as I thought you would), I suggest Bernard Herrmann’s score to "Psycho" as most appropriate background music.

    Jack, I am currently composing a new work entitled (after Jon Rosenblatt) "Sylvia Plath: The Poetry of Menstruation." In it, I shall examine Plath’s use of such words as "blood" to demonstrate the historical connection in female poetry ("from Sappho to Angelou") between muse and menses. With this under my belt, I hope to steal some of Cressida’s thunder and snag that post at Yale!

    Stewart Clarke
     NYC, USA
    Thursday, August 31, 2000



    A return to undergrad days when working out the 50 pp. essay "The Beekeepers Daughter: Historonic interpretation of" or something similar. I read, reread, reread, reread, reread, reread and reread everything, and while I could say a part of me was interested, I do believe much was contingent upon the relationship and nostalgia one has for the particular period in youth when, sipping ales between lectures in a smoke-filled, molasses-tone Cambridge pub a stones' step from where Plath bought her groceries, or to walk along the Cam, the improbable-appearing bridges, lozenge-paterned windows of jewel box like structures refracting the English sun, while outlining one of six papers and the sense of becoming Icarus. Much of this is in fact real, some impractical and selfish; People will always find in Plath something of themselves; I hope one doesn't after the age of 27.

    I had found a pattern with her:
    1) A tendency to devolve into a self-parody of mental sickness or hatred for the famial (of which she was very conscious of) which she used as a vehicle and not an actual "crutch" which could be extended for a broader interpretation (or ligitimatization) of the demons which would drive her, all the while aware of a underlying capacity for developing a talent. Contemporary exmples of this abound in popular culture: Jim Morrison as son of the Rear Admiral, Jane Fonda and her constant envy and hatred toward her father (No, I will not watch "Golden Pond" again) or several historic radicalists; Individuals who press on a need to showcase a position whle masking their hatred. Something can be said, perhaps, as many have pointed, in the relationship of Plath to her mother as the Letters attest; Read back to back, she emphasizes an insistence of "suffering" as an artist (in order for the product to be developed) several instances in correspondence to Ms. Plath.

    2) Plath, undeniably was more in love with the recognition of being called "a writer" as opposed to the product. Examples here, too, abound throughout most all of her Journal and Letters; she sought to be appreciated and accepted not necessarily respected. Sit and read both the Letters and the Journals ("I;ve got to get into the New Yorker, I've got to get into...") one evening(as I've done at least 12 times, concluding on their complete sloppiness)and you'll not only find the inability to evaluate or recognize talent in content (several of the "writers" she sought to emulate were less kwown by quality than name alone)and to merely "assimilate" or blend in to a fixed pattern.

    She did make her best effort, to her credit, in the "November" poems with the Bees and the liberation from a self in adopting motif and rhythym, playful innuendo

    3)The Hughes slander is injudicious and marks an astonishingly jejune -even creul- approach toward either the life and work (easily distinguishable) of Ms. Plath or the respected members of family

    Jack Schaaf
     Falls Church, USA
    Thursday, August 31, 2000



    Cressida, as one who comes from a family of Scottish expatriates, it pleases me to no end to see that you're acquainted with that auld Fornicator, Robbie Burns. Melissa, the issue of who falls out of (and gets re-inducted into) the pantheon is shamefully arbitrary, so my earlier parenthetical remarks about Lowell and Auden are not to be taken all that seriously, thank God. But I have noticed a certain trend wherein the entire Confessional School-- esp. Lowell, Berryman, Sexton, Snodgrass-- is viewed as an embarassment of McCarthy-era angst, while Auden and others of the English Group -- the ultimate Really Dead White Males-- are considered too time-specific, with their 1930's pro-socialist leanings and elaborate formalism. I don't share this opinion-- particularly not in the case of Auden-- and I'm glad there are other purists in academe (and just plain sensible readers) who agree with me.

    Jan Watson Collins
     New York City, USA
    Thursday, August 31, 2000



    Dear Dear Melissa, sorry that I wasn't fast enough to answer your bibliographical question. It seems to have been answered though by others, so thank you! I received in the mail today the Uncorrected Proof for the Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. The Publication date was crossed out and written in as 1 November. This is most distressing that they would make us wait longer--though haven't we all enjoyed the Faber edition already. I have been in touch with Karen Kukil at Smith recently and this is what she wrote to me:

    "Nice to hear from you. The Plath Journals that I edited will be released this fall in the US by Anchor Books under the title *The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950-1962*. Anchor Books is keeping Fran McCullough's selected edition in print as well....(oh I love editing....) I imagine Anchor is releasing the unabridged journals as a paperback to corner the paperback market before Faber releases their paperback edition next spring."

    And so it goes, the release is imminent and I am very excited. Americans! Be sure to buy the book as your favorite Plath bibliographer is "Acknowledged" in *The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950-1962.*!!!!

    For those interested I have recently been to Egg Rock in Nahant, Massachusetts, roughly five or six miles from Boston. For photo's please click: here & here

    Peter K Steinberg
     Springfield, Va, USA
    Thursday, August 31, 2000



    Cressida, if you read "Bitter Fame", particularly the appendix written by Dido Merwin, you may really begin to see Ted Hughes in a different light. While I doubt he was a saint, neither do I think he is the monster some feminists have made him out to be. How anyone could live with Plath - interrupting Hughes 104 times in one morning, for example - is beyond me. He clearly cared about and respected and protected her artistics gifts, and I suspected suffered a great deal in the process. Anyway, Dido Merwin notes that Sylvia's rage and hostility had to be witnessed to believe. I have no doubt that that young woman ran away out of sheer fright at the sight of Sylvia's enraged expression as she moved toward the girl and Hughes. I would've run too.

    To get back to the poetry, I had never before made the word-play connection between "Electra on Azalia Path" - and Plath's mother's name, Aurelia Plath. It's obvious, but I never saw it until it was mentioned in "Bitter Fame."

    Judy Matthews
     Okemos, USA
    Thursday, August 31, 2000



    "although nobody knows why the girl turned and ran away of course"

    I think anyone seeing a furious Plath coming toward her might be excused for running! :-)

    Re Sexton, her later poems do little for me, either, but I do like some of her earlier ones. And I can recommend the audiotape of Sexton reading that was put out about the time as the most recent Plath one. Sexton has a distinctive voice, all throaty and cigarette-scarred, that one does not soon forget.

    As for Roethke (one of my favorites, BTW), there's a Collected Poems, first published in the 1960s, that is readily available in paperback (in the US, anyway).

    Suzanne
     Mississippi, USA
    Thursday, August 31, 2000



    Can anyone tell me the title of the poem that begins "What did my arms do before they held you, What did my heart do with its love"? Is there a site online that has the words to this poem? Many thanks!

    Tania
     Canberra, Australia
    Thursday, August 31, 2000



    Recently I came across two large poetry anthologies, both of which included Plath poems I wouldn't have expected or perhaps would have chosen myself - World Poetry (1998), a compendium of poetry from antiquity to now had one, "The Colossus", and The Harvill Book of Twentieth Century Poetry in English (1999) started with "Soliloquy of a Solipsist" (I hope I have that title right) and ended with "Lady Lazarus", it had perhaps two others but I forget what they were, unfortunately. I know that anthologies try to give a good overview of a poet's work and that the editors like to avoid over-anthologized poems, but I still don't understand these decisions. Does anyone else have any anthologies with what they would consider to be odd or questionable choices?

    As for other poets, they do seem to go in & out of style; Understanding Poetry, the anthology Plath received in high school as a prize, has no Hopkins, for instance - Auden had something of a boost back in 1994 with Four Weddings and a Funeral, (you could get a few love poems by him with Hugh Grant on the cover), and as for Lowell, I am guessing he is in for a major re-think once his Collected Poems come out, something that's long overdue.

    Lena Friesen
     Toronto, Canada
    Thursday, August 31, 2000



    Oops, sorry, just found Ariel's Gift in the Forum's books section! Thank you Elaine for such an up-to-date site --

    Jan, speaking of timeliness, I'm curious as to how you arrived at your assessment of Lowell and Auden as imminent initiates into the Really Dead Poets Society. I've been out of academia for over a decade now, but last time I checked, they were safely in the pantheon. What happened?

    Melissa Dobson
     Hobe Sound FLA, USA
    Wednesday, August 30, 2000




    Melissa, 'Ariel's Gift' can be purchased through Amazon.co.uk. I have a copy, but suffering from my usual Hughes phobia, its been sitting on a shelf unopened for weeks. Apparently, it's a commentary on the poems in 'Birthday Letters'. It has an interesting cover of Ted lost in deep-thought while Sylvia stares into space.

    Paul Snyder
     New York City, USA
    Wednesday, August 30, 2000



    Melissa Dobson---(and anyone else who is interested)

    I have a copy of Erica Wagner's "Ariel's Gift, " which I purchased at Hatchard's when I was in London this past April. The book has a wraparound photographic cover with Hughes on the front and Plath on the back---a photo of them sitting side by side in front of a set of bookshelves (at one of their homes perhaps?) It is a photo that I have never seen in the standard biographical repetoires. The book begins with a discussion on the long history of literary confessions, and an analysis of Hughes' private nature and how "Birthday Letters" came into being. The introduction discusses the early works of Plath and Hughes and their literary influences, along with the process and publishing of Plath's posthumous writings and the various Plath biographies as well. She gives a holistic analysis of "BL", comparing it to the works of Hardy and others. Then Wagner embarks chapter by chapter, to provide a commentary to all the BL poems by discussing the biographical events behind them and how they draw upon Sylvia's works. If one imagines that the BL poems are conversations directed at /with Sylvia's journals and poems, then "Ariel's Gift" is the "translator" for their language. Some of the questions that have been raised in this forum concerning where and when and who references in BL are answered in AG. Wagner is obviously sympathetic towards Hughes, (not much is said concerning Assia Wevill or many specific facts given, concerning that summer when the marriage disintegrated)and yet she is not unsympathetic towards Plath. The undersong of her entire analysis is that Hughes loved Plath immensely, but could not handle her nor help her...that he was victim in this fated scenario. I know a debate concerning that perspective has been previously discussed in this forum. But I found the book to be quite interesting, especially as it clarified some of the more opaque and personal elements and references of the poems. In many ways, it causes the reader to look at Plath's work as much as Hughes'. If you have any more specific questions regarding AG, I'd be happy to answer.

    Melissa Carl
     York, USA
    Wednesday, August 30, 2000



    Another book note: I read this morning about a new work titled "Ariel's Gift: Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and the Story of the Birthday Letters," by Erica Wagner, literary editor of the London Times. The publisher is Penguin Canada; I was unable to find it on Amazon.com -- has anyone read this yet? Peter Steinberg, esteemed Plath Forum bibliographer, any info?

    Melissa Dobson
     Hobe Sound FLA, USA
    Tuesday, August 29, 2000



    An addendum to my earlier reading list: It occurs to me that someone might ask why I omitted Anne Sexton, whom Plath herself cited as an influence. Frankly, most of Sexton's poetry does very little for me aesthetically, but I suppose it would be negligent of me not to bring her into this mess.

    As for the Roethke, my specific recommendation is "Praise to the End!"-- published in 1951, or thereabouts. In a way it's a body of poems more cohesive and well-realized (and here I dodge under my desk for cover) than Plath was able to compose in her short life, though Plath appropriated their style most ably.

    Jan Watson Collins
     New York City, USA
    Tuesday, August 29, 2000



    Thank you Anna for that poem by Ted Hughes. Does it state specifically in 'Birthday Letters' that this is a reply to Sylvia's version of that particular day? The one sentence that jumped out at me, (and I identify with, especially in this forum) is, "I was the gnat in the ear of the wounded
    Elephant of my own Incomprehension." but I'm learning, bear with me.....

    Jan, I have read Yeats, Elliot, Keats, Auden, Milton, Coleridge, Shelley, Blake, Marvell, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Frost, and poetry as diversified as Edward Lear and Omar Khayyam. I have even read Robert Burns, and the President's favorite, Walt Whitman, and enjoyed the work of John Betjeman. But I have NEVER read Sylvia Plath's work before......strange isn't it?

    You mention Werther.......Is this the Werther you mean?

    Werther had a love for Charlotte
    Such as words could never utter.
    Would you know how first he met her?
    She was cutting bread and butter.

    Chatlotte was a married lady
    And a moral man was Werther,
    And for all the wealth of Indies,
    Would do nothing for to hurt her.

    So he sighed, and pined and ogled,
    And his passion boiled and bubbled,
    Till he blew his silly brains out
    And no more was by it troubled.

    Charlotte, having seen his body
    Borne before her on a shutter,
    Like a well-conducted person,
    Went on cutting bread and butter.

    ;-)

    Jan, You may be pleased to know that I am slowly revising my opinion of Ted Hughes the more I am reading. The part in her journals where she is eaten up with jealousy when she sees him talking to a female student. - It turned out that he had just caught up with that student only minutes before as he was crossing the campus on his way to meet Sylvia. Sylvia had been out looking for trouble and it seemed she had found it, but what she had seen and recorded in her journal was from her perspective and not the truth of the matter, (although nobody knows why the girl turned and ran away of course).

    Cressida Hope-Bunting
     Alabama, USA
    Tuesday, August 29, 2000



    I haven't been keeping up with posts for the past few months, so I apologize in advance if the following is common knowledge, but Amazon.com (U.S.) has posted information on the American release of the Karen V. Kukil-edited version of Plath's journals. In the United States, the book will be called "The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath" and will be published in a paperback edition (just think of all the Americans that will be able to leaf through some Plath whilst lounging at the beach!) on October 17, 2000, exactly 10 days before Plath's birthday. It will cost a mere $16.20 (the passion and pain of Plath's life for just under 20 bucks! Scary).

    As a side note (not relevant, but distantly amusing), I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the cover photograph of the American edition ("SP at the Quadigras dance, Smith College, May 1954" - a photograph in which Plath, *gasp*, actually looks happy, a phenomenon that I hadnt believed was possible given the myriad of blood-red roses and shadowed female figures wasting away in dimly-lit rooms that have graced the covers of prior Plath publications) is the exact photo that I had suggested would have made a much better cover than the tired portrait on the jacket of the British edition. I posted my small complaint back in late April on this very forum because I had grown weary of the stock portrayal of Plath as some pathetically, eternally miserable wretch. Such one-sided portrayals do an injustice to the complexity of this woman, who was so often brutally hilarious and possessed a marvelous sense of humor, as her writings can attest to.

    I'm looking forward to adding this beautiful edition to my Plath library.

    James Chong
     Los Angeles, USA
    Tuesday, August 29, 2000



    Dear Ms. Hope-Bunting of the Ever-Expanding Home Library:

    I realize you are inundated with reading suggestions as of late, but may I also make the (admittedly controversial) recommendation of Anne Stevenson's "Bitter Fame" and Janet Malcolm's "The Silent Woman," in that order? It is essential that you read these books in conjunction with one another, as the latter does much to shed light on the nature of the first. I make these recommendations specifically in response to some of the anti-Hughes sentiments you've posted earlier; in deference to those who'd prefer to keep the discussions focused away from biographical dross and detritus, I'll refrain from revealing too much of my bias, but I do think it would benefit you as a reader if you would be willing to villify Hughes a bit less.

    For a look at other poets besides Alfred Noyes (of "Highwayman" fame), I recommend reading Theodore Roethke and W.H. Auden, whose styles Plath consciously aped at times. (Yeats, Eliot, and Robert Lowell's work also had an influence, and I believe that the first of these two ought to be read just on general principle. Lowell's work seems a bit dated today, and regrettably, Auden's work is in almost as precarious a position.)

    I also highly recommend taking a stroll through A. Alvarez's "The Savage God," an accessbile study in literary suicide through the ages. There you will learn that lost loves are rarely the true reason why one chooses to end one's own life, despite what young Werther and a few bad films from the 1940s would have one believe.

    Jan Watson Collins
     New York City, USA
    Monday, August 28, 2000



    Cressida, whatever happened in the 24 hours between the time when Sylvia Plath wrote: "Never in my life have I had conditions so perfect.... Perfect mental and physical well being, etc." and "Alone, deepening. Feeling perceptions deepen with the tang of geranium and the full moon and the mellowing of hurt... The hurt going in, clean as a razor, and the dark blood welling... Listening, he scratches his chin, the small rasp of a beard. He is not asleep. He must come out, or there is no going in" seems to have puzzled Ted Hughes too (they were honeymooning in Benidorm, Spain), who makes that same incident the subject of "Moonwalk", in "Birthday Letters". It's too long to be quoted in full, but here are a few passages:

    A glare chunk of moon.
    The hill no colour
    Under the polarized light.
    Like a day pushed inside out. Everything
    In negative. Your mask
    Bleak as cut iron, a shell-half -
    Shucked off the moon. Alarming
    And angering moon-devil - here somewhere.
    The Ancient Mariner's Death-in-Life woman
    ...
    ... your words
    Like bits of beetles and spiders
    Retched out by owls. Fluorescent,
    Blue-black, splintered. Bat-skulls. One day, I thought,
    I shall understand this tomb-Egyptian,
    This talking in tongues to a moon-mushroom.
    ...
    I was the gnat in the ear of the wounded
    Elephant of my own
    Incomprehension. Curator
    Of the tar-pit. Around us
    On the moon-brown hills, the stars rested
    Their possible anaesthesia,
    All the mythologies, all inaccessible.
    ...
    I could no more join you
    Than on the sacrificial slab
    That you were looking for. I could not
    Even imagine the priest. I walked beside you
    As if seeing you for the first time...

    About your earlier question, "Have you ever considered that she may just have written for effect?" I don't think she did that at all, not her later poetry, at least. (The fact that as soon as she had she written a poem she was busy sending it off to this or that magazine is another matter entirely). If we go by what she said (and I don't see why we shouldn't), far from "frantically churning out poetry to make ends meet", as you say, she was simply possessed by an urge to write per se. In October 1962, she was asked: "But basically this thing, this writing of poetry, is something which has been a great satisfaction to you in life, is it?". SP: "Oh, satisfaction! I don't think I could live without it! It's like water or bread, or something absolutely essential to me. I find myself absolutely fulfilled when I have written a poem, when I'm writing one. Having written one, then you fall away very rapidly from having been a poet to becoming a sort of poet in rest, which isn't the same thing at all. But I think the actual experience of writing a poem is a magnificent one." (Peter Orr, ed., "The Poet Speaks", Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1966).

    Anna Ravano
     Milan, Italy
    Monday, August 28, 2000



    You sound like a very nice person Melissa - no apology needed, I was not in the least offended by your message. By putting something like that up on the board I have to take what comes, although Jack's sarcastic comments cut me to the quick!

    I had to rush off to light some aromatic candles after reading Jack's message to help me find my inner peace, then sit in the Lotus Position for several hours with my eyes shut chanting "OM MANI PADME HUM" over and over again until the man next door banged on the wall and threatened to set his dogs on me, which upset me so much I had to start all over again! I think the least Jack could do is offer to pay for the two boxes of candles and six boxes of Kleenex I used. (Sniffling, and blowing nose fairly loudly).

    Stewart, I have not read Ariel. I suppose the impact of that statement in this forum is tantamount to confessing in church that I have never read The Lord's Prayer! The book I went to collect from Barnes and Noble, (Sylvia's collected poems) had mistakenly been put out on the shelf and apparently snapped up by someone immediately. (You see, there is more than one person in Alabama interested in Sylvia Plath). I have now placed my order with Amazon since I have a gift certificate to spend with them; (besides, it will save me having to get up off my couch again in this hot weather). Meanwhile, I am going to download Ariel from the Internet, that will be my homework for today then I hope I will be able to discuss those poems with you.

    Cressida Hope-Bunting
     Alabama, USA
    Monday, August 28, 2000



    Cressida, the Ariel poems represent the exact opposite of Plath’s tendency to write what would sell. On the contrary, I believe that her immense breakthrough occurred precisely because these poems were written with no intention, at first, of publishing them at all. They are extremely personal poems, arising out of an extreme personal crisis. I think that, if she had any intended audience, it was Ted Hughes. I believe no one was more taken aback by the poems than Plath, when she suddenly saw so clearly that these were the poems of her career, the ones that would make her name. In fact, the few poems she did submit for publication from this period were met with overwhelming rejection. She continued writing them, receiving encouragement from A. Alvarez among others, because she knew that she was onto something entirely, uniquely her own.

    Cressida, your analogy to AbEx is a good one, I think, particularly when applied to the last wave of poems before her death. "Totem" is a particularly good example of this: personal images, subconscious colors splashed across the page like a Jackson Pollock "action painting." Still, as the vivacious Melissa Dobson observes, even splashes across a canvas are not as random as they may appear. I believe that many of her poems are meticulously crafted to be inscrutable to all but a selected audience of one — her husband. (Hence "Birthday Letters", almost a poem by poem response in turn). On many levels, the Ariel poems are coded messages, and deeply mysterious because of this. As for your charge of "writing for effect," if I’m catching your meaning correctly, this is a hair’s breadth away from the charge most often leveled against Plath by her critics — "sensationalism." (Oh, and "hysteria.") So you’re not alone in your opinions!

    Stewart Clarke
     NYC, USA
    Saturday, August 26, 2000



    Cressida, I apologize for the snide tone of my previous posting; feeling most unimaginative today, I will blame it on PMS. It's quite evident that you are no philistine, and certainly any friend of the highwayman is a friend of mine. Keep musing, keep posting, stay on that couch, and don't be disturbed by the old whore petticoats of this veteran reader! I've appreciated your sentiments immensely.

    Melissa Dobson
     Hobe Sound FLA, USA
    Thursday, August 24, 2000



    Having been struck by your words, Cressida, when I first read them in your latest posting, I went back to reconsider what you said, to wit:



    Now I think it's indeed unfortunate that certain deconstructionist and post- or neo-deconstructionist critics I can think of at Yale and elsewhere do not deign to participate in this Forum, Cressida, for I am sure they would recognize in you a kindred spirit and perhaps even a good prospect for a position there. After all, not every day in these criticasterous times does such a remarkable voice come along.

    Jack Folsom
     Sharon, Vermont, USA
    Wednesday, August 23, 2000



    Ouch, Melissa!!.. My couch seemed a little lumpier after your last message. The truth is, (although you know I am not exactly a philistine) I have never been very interested in poetry. Poetic prose yes, but my interest in poetry is about at the level of I wondered lonely as a cloud The bit about that poem which appeals to me most is, And oft when on my couch I lie, in vacant and in pensive mood :-)

    My very favorite poem is The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees, The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas, The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor, And the highwayman came riding Riding riding - The highwayman came riding up to the old inn door. (shiver, shiver)

    Today I have been visiting the town of Hebden Bridge (online) where Sylvia Plath is buried, and Elaine Connell hails from. This time I chose to listen to the glorious music of Tchaikovskys Andante Cantabile while touring through the photo gallery. This piece of music is over six minutes long, so I had plenty of time to pause and enlarge the beautiful photographs. I filled my screen with the moody picture of Rochdale Canal, and while Tchaikovskys music hypnotized me, drifted lazily up the canal in my daydream houseboat. This lovely countryside is where Sylvias heart is buried, her spirit roams the hillsides. Here I am sure she has found the peace she never found in her lifetime.

    Thank you Melissa and Anja for your recommended reading, (the pile of books is rapidly reaching my knees). I am reading Stewarts choice at the moment, Bitter Fame and was delighted with the conclusions I had reached alone from reading Plaths journals without being influenced by other (more researched) opinions first. Anne Stevenson has done a lot of research and she actually picked the EXACT passage out of the whole journals I had chosen which depicted the first discord in Sylvia Plaths marriage. This is a good example of the extent of her mood swings. One day she writes:-

    Never in my life have I had conditions so perfect: a magnificent handsome brilliant husband (gone are those frayed days of partial ego-satisfaction of conquering new slight men who fell easier and easier), a quiet large house with no interruptions, phone, or visitors; the sea at the bottom of the street, the hills at the top. Perfect mental and physical well being. Each day we feel stronger and wider awake.

    The very next day:-

    Alone, deepening. Feeling perceptions deepen with the tang of geranium and the full moon and the mellowing of hurt, too far from the bitching fussing surface tempests. The hurt going in, clean as a razor, and the dark blood welling. Just the sick knowing that the wrongness was growing in the full moon. Listening, he scratches his chin, the small rasp of a beard. He is not asleep. He must come out, or there is no going in.

    What had happened (Anne and I wonder) to throw her so dramatically to the other extreme in a matter of hours?

    Cressida Hope-Bunting
     Alabama, USA
    Wednesday, August 23, 2000



    Though I find the idea of a painter throwing some paint on a canvas and then riding a bike across to prove that even the arbitrary can be beautiful (not meaningful!) quite funny and appealing, I do not believe that Plath was that type of poet, she was not a Dadaist or a "sound effect performance artist" or something like that. But, of course, she also wrote for effect. Sound creates effect, and that effect was important to her, but meanings also create an effect, a more conscious one than sound which speaks to our subconscious easily. And I'd say that the effect the meanings of the words, of the poems, created was of extreme importance to her. But I agree it's the sound that makes her poems appealing in the first place.

    As a young girl she chose every word carefully, checked out meanings and double meanings with her thesaurus. That she did not do that anymore later on does not mean that the accurate meanings of words were no longer important for her. But she stopped using unusual words more or less in favour of simple words, everyday words even, words with ancient meanings and many connotations, words suggested by the subconscious maybe rather than by a (thesaurus-)conscious mind. This is what Graves was trying to express with his idea of the muse poet, that poetry comes from a source deep inside, bringing out the essence of the poets beliefs, thoughts, dreams, fears, loves, hatreds. This is also what I understand as "duende". Everything is very condensed in the late poems, a mere word evokes a whole complex concept, like the moon, for example.

    Well, I am realising this is difficult to explain. But I hope you got my ideas, Cressida. I recommend Kroll's book "Chapters in a Mythology" which can be obtained through second hand bookshops, have a look at bibliofind.com.

    Nice to see you online again, Melissa!

    Anja Beckmann
     Leipzig, Germany
    Tuesday, August 22, 2000



    Cressida, the approach to Plath's work you suggest in your latest posting is actually well-represented in this Forum, so yes, I think we've all had ample opportunity to consider it. And I agree that the Ariel poems can be appreciated solely for the sound of the words in combination, an aspect that initiated and sustains my own reading of Plath. But I am of the school that believes that, in poetry, sound itself is a kind of sense. I think "Sound and Sense" is even the name of a Poetry 101 textbook, which you might consider curling up with the next time you're on your couch listening to Ravel. Undoubtedly those of us who find meaning in Plath's poetry are aided and abetted by the language, its "Echoes traveling / Off from the center like horses." Perhaps we ride roughshod at times. But I would argue that Plath was quite intentional in her approach to her work -- as, by the way, are the great abstract painters. Her "intent" was at times subordinate, no doubt, to subconscious echoes, desires, and voice (especially when the duende took up permanent residence). This is from the early journals; I think the year is 1951:

    Perhaps what you're responding to, Cressida, is the various "pseudorealities" Plath inspires in her readers, some of which contain the odd sunset and waterfall, some of which are bereft of same.

    Melissa Dobson
     Hobe Sound FLA, USA
    Tuesday, August 22, 2000



    Re: recent posting about Plath and her mother. For quite a few years I had a lot of trouble trying to understand this particular parent-child dynamic. Plath's 'hatred' of Aurelia or rather her 'love/hate' relationship with her mother was not understandable to me from the texts that I was reading - i.e. the various biographies, Letters Home, and especially the poetry. It's only upon reading Stephen Gould Axelrod's 'The Wound and Cure of Words' and Linda Wagner Martin's "Sylvia Plath: A Literary Life" that the *possible* nature of the relationship became clearer. I highly recommend both of these books (Gould's book goes into the Sylvia-Aurelia relationship in more detail than Wagner Martin) to anyone who has experienced the same confusion that I have. HOWEVER, I do not wish to say that these 2 writers have the definitive word on the subject. I would say that, with all due respect to Richard who knew Aurelia and worked with her on 'Voices and Visions', that it is one thing to have known and worked with Aurelia and quite another thing to have been her daughter. The same thing would apply to critics of Plath's work, who can only base their assessments on texts and sometimes letters or interviews, but who are not involved in or living the dynamic. I'm not sure I completely understand my own relationship with my mother, so I would be hard pressed to understand or make a judgment call on someone else's relationship - be it with their mother, father, husband, child or therapist. I don't think that Aurelia *actively* or *maliciously* made her daughter's life a misery, but I would say that parenting is perhaps the most difficult job a person could take on and that there are few, if any, guidelines.

    As for Ted Hughes' living with himself after the deaths of Sylvia, Assia, Shura and his mother, I would submit that suicide is a choice made by the individual - in this case 2 individuals. Edith died just after hearing of Assia's and Shura's deaths, when she was just out of hospital after a routine operation. I would not blame Hughes for this just as I would not blame him for the other 3 deaths. The psychological assessment of what happened with and between all of these individuals is complicated and incomprehensible to those of us who did not live it.

    This is the dilemma then, even if we, as Anja has so rightly suggested, stick to the poetry - trying to separate biography and psychology from the work.

    Kim
     Detroit, USA
    Tuesday, August 22, 2000



    I was lying on my couch on Sunday afternoon in the cool airconditioned atmosphere of 72degs. (while the temperature outside raged at 110) listening to the lovely music of Ravel's 'Pavane for a Dead Princess' when my thoughts turned once again to Sylvia. Sylvia the iconoclast. I was thinking about what the two Malissa's had said about duende, mulling it over in my mind.

    Have you ever considered that she may just have written for effect? I am not suggesting for a moment that she was shallow, she was capable of very deep thought, but she seemed to fall in love with certain words and ideas as evidenced in her journals. Bell-jar was a combination of two words she liked, solipsist was another word she repeated in her journals. She collected them to develop later. Ted Hughes used to toss her a subject just off the top of his head for her to write about as an exercise when she was short of ideas.

    If you had a box full of collected words and ideas which you decided one day to assemble into poetry, how much depth of meaning is there behind those words? If you were frantically churning out poetry to make ends meet, would you have time to reference deep thoughts of other poets or would you just get the words down on paper as fast as you could, hoping your work would sell? She knew what would sell, what The New Yorker would print for instance. Admittedly she bled some of her poems on to paper, but it is possible that a lot of her poems were no more than you see, merely a collection of words on paper. The way a painter might throw several pots of paint onto a canvas and then ride a bicycle across it for people to speculate over in a museum, fantasizing about sunsets and waterfalls which do not exist.

    Cressida Hope-Bunting
     Alabama, USA
    Tuesday, August 22, 2000



    The connection between Federico Garcia Lorca / duende and Plath is an interesting one. I think they both shared a belief regarding what poetry is and where it should come from. I think Garcia was trying to explain how poetry comes from true experience, full living, awareness. The connection to death mentioned in the post is only one aspect of it. It seems that duende is the muse, a visitation that enables to poet to write poetry from a source deep inside. "Every step that an artist takes towards the tower of his perfection is at the cost of a struggle he maintains with a force, a spirit we call duende...The great artists of southern Spain know that no real emotion is possible unless there is duende...It is not a matter of ability but of blood; of ancient culture...The duende has to be aroused in the distant-most chambers of the blood...The duende surges up from the soles of the feet. This mysterious power that everyone feels but that no philosopher has explained is in fact the spirit of the earth."

    This concept seems similar to Grave's concept of the Muse which is explained by Kroll in her book "Chapters in a Mythology", she regards Plath as a muse poet and I agree with her. it's in Kroll's book page 42/43 and the related notes in the appendix.

    In 1961 Graves gave a number of lectures on The White Goddess, the idea of a Muse and a muse-poet. Kroll says that The Moon and the Yew Tree could have been influenced by these lectures. She maintains that Plath declares herself a muse poet in Graves' sense in this poem, "implying a personal mythology allied with the moon, identifying herself with the White Goddess myth through the witch-goddess aspect of her muse." Graves himself writes

    I feel that Graves and Lorca were trying to explain the same thing.

    Interestingly, Hughes translated Garcia Lorca, so he must have felt an affinity to him poetically. He translated Blood Weddings but I haven't seen it yet.

    I am glad the discussion has moved away from madness and PMS to something I find far more interesting, the "interconnectedness" of all things of real importance ... :-)

    Anja Beckmann
     Leipzig, Germany
    Monday, August 21, 2000



    Melissa Carl, thank you for contributing that amazing quote from Lorca -- I have never read any analyses that use this term with respect to Plath, but what a fascinating application of it you make here! My dictionary states that the word comes from the phrase dueno de casa, meaning "owner of a house," which of course made me think of another of Dickinson's "zero at the bone" lines, that art is "a House that tries to be haunted." The Plath/Dickinson continuum is infused with such metaphors; Dickinson seems even to have constructed the metaphysical architecture that Plath later inhabited. And poor tortured Hughes seems to be lost in its whispering corridors in Birthday Letters. I find Lorca's "wound" image to be stunning as applied to Plath -- such imagery is pervasive in Ariel; how often we see wounds conceived as blooming flowers, their astounding "red plush." Yes, duende -- both her's and Dickinson's walls were permeable to it. We can speculate forever about Plath's life -- did she have a "fragile psyche," as Cressida maintains? I would rather see it in the light of duende, or through Plath's own words in "Medusa," that hers was a mind that, through poetry, was "keeping itself . . . in a state of miraculous repair."

    Melissa Dobson
     Hobe Sound FLA, USA
    Sunday, August 20, 2000



    As I've said before on the Forum, I've often felt a great deal of sympathy for Aurelia Plath who, I believe, coped heroically with an extremely difficult life following the death of her husband. When I saw her in the interview on the "Voices and Visions" video she seemed to be a highly intelligent, aware and sympathetic individual not in the least like the overcontrolling Mrs. Greenwood of "The Bell Jar".

    Professor Larschan's opinion that Sylvia's literary portrayal of her mother should be treated as fiction, not fact is to be welcomed. From the seventies I recall an ironic feminist saying: "A woman's place is in the wrong," and as Professor Larschan so correctly observes if Aurelia hadn't been very much involved in her daughter's life Sylvia's tragedy would have been attributed to maternal deprivation. Plath's demonisation of her mother is a salutary reminder of the pain which so many writers inflict on their families.

    Elaine Connell
     Hebden Bridge, UK
    Sunday, August 20, 2000



    Thank you, to everyone on the Forum who has responded to my plea regarding ideas on "The Couriers." Your insights are compelling, and I was glad to read that I am not the only one who finds the poem hard to interpret. I also took note of the other discussion threads concerning Plath and PMS, bipolar depression, and her suicide attempt, the "complete" journals, etc.---I'd like to offer something else for consideration here. (If this issue has already been discussed previously, I apologize---I have read about half of the archive of this Forum but have not had the chance to read it in its entirety.) I was reading the Selected Verse of Federico Garcia Lorca, and in the preface noted something that reminded me instantly of Plath. Lorca's concept of duende as great art occurring only when "the creator is acutely aware of death." The preface continues a summary of the elements of duende---demonic irrationality, closeness to nature, and the awareness of death. (Sound familiar?) Lorca says:"The duende does not come at all unless he sees that death is possible. The duende must know beforehand that he can serenade death's house and rock those branches that do not have, will never have, any consolation.//With idea, sound, or gesture, the duende enjoys fighting the creator [the Girl Who Wanted to Be God]on the very rim of the well. Angel and muse escape with violin and compass; the duende wounds. In the healing of that wound, which never closes, lie the invented, strangest qualities of a man's work." And so, comes forth the voice of Ariel and that quality of her work that is, as Melissa Dobson has said, "Zero at the Bone." I wonder to what extent, as I never seen any discussion or comments about it, Plath was familiar with Lorca and his notions. Thoughts, anyone?"

    Melissa Carl
     York, USA
    Saturday, August 19, 2000



    I have been waiting for someone with more knowledge of Sylvia plath's work to answer the professor's message, but since nobody has stepped forward, I would like to say something.

    Richard, the point you make in your first paragraph about demythologizing Plath's life. Do you REALLY think her fans want it to be demythologized? I think they want to spin a cocoon around her, they do not want the mystery solved. Have you ever read any of the numerous versions of the "Jack the Ripper" theories? It is a mystery nobody wants solved, the same with the deaths of JFK and Marilyn Monroe, The Princess of Wales, and now JFK jnr. Perhaps that is why there has been no reply to your message from this forum. People enjoy speculating, they enjoy the hunt, but when they come up against someone who actually knew her mother..........Oh dear, that's getting a bit too close to reality!

    In your second paragraph you say:-

    "Aurelia Plath had no self; she lived for and through her children. From Sylvia Plath's infancy, her primary parent's selflessness gave Plath no model for a self that could maintain its autonomy or exist beyond meeting other people's needs."

    There are thousands of mothers who do that, but it does not drive their children to suicide. Her brother survived without serious mishap. In the days before female equality, a girl was brainwashed from infancy what her role in life would be, to find a good husband to support her (preferably wealthy) then to be a good wife and mother. Sylvia did not want to replicate her mother's life, she wanted to break free of 'the ties that bind', but was not strong enough, so she turned in on herself. Instead of murdering her mother she murdered herself. Aurelia cannot be blamed for her daughter's suicide anymore than her husband Ted Hughes, but they were certainly contributing factors. With a psyche as fragile as Sylvia's, a dull morning could have driven her over the edge.

    Did you ever meet Ted Hughes? One thing I would like to know is how he could live with himself after being indirectly responsible for the deaths of four females, his wife, his lover, his child and his mother.

    Cressida Hope-Bunting
     Alabama, USA
    Saturday, August 19, 2000



    I've been very impressed with the forum's discussion of 'The Couriers'. It reminds me how inexhaustible Plath's poetry is to interpretation. It's one of its greatest strengths--or weaknesses depending on ones disposition or mood. The poem has always given me great pleasure to read without knowing exactly why. It seems to deal with themes I associate with, and respond to, in Plath's poetry, those of disillusionment (with a strong dose of betrayal), human vulnerability, and the redemptive power of love.

    One of the most detailed interpretations I've come across is in Jon Rosenblatt's 'Sylvia Plath: The Poetry of Initiation'. I can't do it real justice but he believes the first three stanzas represent symbols of married life, and the following three are counter-symbols representing love unemcumbered by domesticity. The couriers, which he believes represents Plath's other poetry, advise the reader to reject the first set of symbols and offers images of a more challenging life, but one with greater integrity. As does Jan, he views the poem as an extension of other poems, including 'Ariel', 'Lady Lazarus' and 'Fever 103'.

    Paul Snyder
     New York City, USA
    Tuesday, August 15, 2000



    In her discussion of Sylvia Plath's recently published unexpurgated Journals (The Real Sylvia Plath, Salon, 5/30 and 6/1), Kate Moses offers a generally balanced assessment of how this new edition helps illuminate pervasive biological influences on Plath's writing. Perhaps it also might be added that editor Karen Kukil herself deserves praise for carefully documenting obscure references that further illuminate Plath's state of mind. In thus helping de-mythologize Plath's life, Moses contends, the Journals actually enhance appreciation for Plath's art, apparently with one notable exception: Plath's portrayal of her mother, Aurelia.

    Despite clinical research suggesting that manic-depressive illness magnifies common human experiences to larger-than-life proportions, and despite Catherine Thompsons extensive documentation that Plath was subject to recurrent hormonal disruption during the late luteal phase of her menstrual cycle, Moses appears not the least skeptical about Sylvias depiction of her mother: Aurelia Plath had no self; she lived for and through her children. From Sylvia Plath's infancy, her primary parent's selflessness gave Plath no model for a self that could maintain its autonomy or exist beyond meeting other people's needs.

    That Sylvia herself sometimes felt hostility, undying for her mother is not in question. It is even true that Plath understood [my emphasis] that her mother lived vicariously through her daughter and her daughter's achievements. But that such an understanding coincided with the facts of Aurelia's actual feelings and behavior is far less clear than most psychobabblers would have us believe and should have been viewed more skeptically by Ms. Moses.

    Having worked on various projects with Aurelia Plath over the course of a decade (among other things, her PBS Voices and Visions interview was filmed in my house), I have no doubt that Sylvia's portrayal of her mother was largely fabricated. Was Aurelia fully invested in her children? Of course--and had she not been, then presumably Sylvia's death would have been attributed to maternal neglect!

    But Aurelia was also holding down a full-time job; and if anything, her mother (also named Aurelia) was truly the maternal figure in their household (baker of wheat loaves and apple cakes in Point Shirley), just as Aurelia's father was the only Daddy with whom Sylvia actively engaged after the age of 4, when Otto Plath became fatally ill.

    From the hours and hours of audio and videotape recordings I made of our conversations, the unmistakable impression one gets is that Aurelia's autonomy needs were at least as threatened by Sylvia as the other way around.

    Thus, while I certainly commend Kate Moses for showing how the unexpurgated Journals can enhance our appreciation of Plath's art, I would also extend that insight to Plath's fictionalized version of her mother in The Bell Jar, The Disquieting Muses, Medusa and elsewhere.

    Richard Larschan, Ph.D.
    Professor of English
    University of Massachsuetts-Dartmouth

    Wellesley, MA, USA
    Monday, August 14, 2000



    Based on what I know about mental illness (A bit, not a tremendous amount. I'm not a doctor, but I've worked in the mental health field in a counseling capacity), I think SP may have been a high-functioning bi-polar (manic-depressive). The extreme highs (functioning at a very high standard as a "perfect" student/artist/teacher/wife/mother, feeling herself able to do "anything") and devastating lows (inability to get out of bed for days at a time) alternating at an unpredictable rate seem to indicate the condition. I say "high-functioning" because SP was sufficiently unaffected by the disorder to be able to work effectively, both in a creative sense and a practical sense. Many bi-polars are unable to hold jobs and have difficulty surviving outside of a clinical setting without help, and are forced to become dependent upon either family or governmental assistance. PMS may have played a part; nontheless a lot of males with bi-polar disorder can't hold it together as well as SP did.

    As far as the suicide, I have to agree with Jan Watson Collins; non-impulsive suicides do plan everthing in exquisite detail (imagine what a highly creative individual could plan after years of thought, and prior attempt(s)!). This is partly why I've long felt that SP was not actually planning a completed suicide (the 1953 attempt is also thought to be of questionable intent). She did it on a morning when the nurse was expected early (the nurse was in fact delayed by weather), the children were protected from the gas by tape around the door (nontheless some gas escaped - maybe SP thought the odor would attract attention?)(Was the door even locked? I don't remember) and a note was left asking whoever found her to call her doctor (I don't remember if the rest of this note has ever been made public). Plath always ate herself up with guilt when unable to fulfill her responsibilities, except when illness provided an acceptable excuse for slacking (read the section in the journals regarding her surgery in an English hospital. She seemed to enjoy the experience). Going "crazy" and being hospitalized for a suicide attempt must have seemed an attractive way to get rest, attention, and retaliation on Ted ("Look what you made me do!"), while manipulating him into taking care of the kids (indeed, her doctor had actively tried, and failed, to get her a bed in a hospital. Maybe she decided to force the issue). Can we really blame her? Faced with "the worst winter in 80 years", lack of heat, lack of hot water, and uncertain income, anyone would be looking for a way out (besides, the rent was paid a year in advance. She could have picked her life right back up again after a short rest). Obviously, no one can know her thoughts, but it would seem that if she were really serious, she would have carried out a plan which precluded any possibility of being foiled by the arrival of the nurse or the neighbors.

    Kevin
     New Brunswick NJ, USA
    Sunday, August 13, 2000



    "The Couriers" is a curious piece of poesy indeed. I am ill-informed as to the specific sources SP was using with respect to the allusions; without knowledge of these, no matter how one views it, rightside up or upside down, this poem reads initially like a Magnetic Poetry offering, an interesting though temporary and arbitrary arrangement. But of course we know better. A riddle whose answer is buried in Devon with the bones of a sparrow, perhaps. It does yield clues, SP's famous "doubling," for one, in its mirror-like structure and repetition, in its very mentioning of mirrors. The structure, two sets of three couplets (I use the term loosely), features a breakout line at the end -- the eye, or I (in this case contained in the poem's proprietary "mine" and "my"). The repetition occurs with the word "leaf." If we see the poem in light of its mirror trope, then we must look for object and reflection. In this case I think the object is contained in the second set of couplets, beginning with "frost on a leaf." Here is an unambiguous, natural image. Contrast this with the first "leaf" and you still have a natural image. Or do you? Is it possible that all of the images in the first set of couplets stand for artistic mediums, i.e., "couriers" that attempt to reflect the natural world? For example, the first image could be a metaphor for a book -- with its plates and leaves. The second image, "acetic acid in a sealed tin" represents film or photography. The third "a ring of gold with the sun in it," a painting in a frame. All are denigrated as false, with the worst judgment falling on item one -- literature is as immortal, the commentary goes, as the trail of slime a snail leaves behind. If this is the "false" reflection, what is real? Move to the second set of couplets and what we find is Mother Nature, in all her chthonic glory. Nature is both particular ("frost on a leaf") and immense ("immaculate cauldron"), and definitely "all to itself."

    Art thus becomes merely a "disturbance in mirrors" ultimately shattered by Nature. Who triumphs in the end? It is the fate of the Couriers, those "mediums" of art, to perish in the season of Love, which of course belongs to Nature, the shattering "I" of this poem. That art is vanquished in a season of "love" is a delightful Plathian irony, as Stewart Clarke suggests, and this poem must have had a cathartic effect on Plath, whose agon was none other than Nature itself. Its very existence gives Plath a slight edge over her adversary, at this moment in time at least.

    Melissa Dobson
     Hobe Sound FLA, USA
    Saturday, August 12, 2000



    OK, Stewart, I'll bite. I read the Salon.com article about Plath's PMS. For what it's worth, I think it's an interesting idea. I'm not a major sufferer of PMS, but I do know people who are, and it certainly has serious emotional repercussions. However, to say that the bulk of Plath's emotional health rested on that diagnosis would be a significant oversimplification, in my opinion. Not being a clinical therapist, nor having met Plath personally, I'm not in a good position to judge. But the records seem to indicate mental illness in her family (I read somewhere that Otto Plath had several mentally ill family members, one of whom committed suicide), as well as recurring mental illness for Plath herself, no doubt exacerbated by PMS. The unedited journals do have several sections that back up the PMS claim, at least in terms of it being a factor. But if that's a factor, so is the frequent sinusitis Plath experienced, which is debilitating and can be chronic and depressing. Throw in some repressed grief for Otto and a horrendous mother/daughter relationship, and it's a pretty unhappy package.

    Now that I've given you an opinion, let 'er rip -- what did you think, Stewart?

    Amy Rea
     Eden Prairie, USA
    Saturday, August 12, 2000



    I would like to start with Stuart's first because that was that last one I read and it is fresh in my mind. I am glad you mentioned the articles by Kate Moses in Salon, I had made a note to mention them sometime.

    Trying to pinpoint Sylvia Plath is like trying to nail down a ball of mercury. She is a will-o-the-wisp a figment of the imagination. No two people will ever agree absolutely on what they make of her or her work, that is the fascination of her. Kate Moses gets caught up in her own rhetoric, tumbling over herself in her scramble to find the right adjectives attempting to define Plath, in her lengthy article on 'The Journals'. It leaves one with the impression that she likes the sound of her own voice rather than Plath's. Her other article on the PMS syndrome theory, although well researched, leaves me ambivalent. I can see how PMS could exacerbate Plath's condition, (it drives anyone nuts who has it) but Plath's mood swings were too erratic and more frequent than once a month. When I saw the title of the article I thought 'Oh no.....here we go again, female hormones, the time of the month. Are you kidding me? I won't even bother reading it.' but I am glad I did, it is a much better piece than her piece on 'The Journals,' and well documented.

    I would like to reply to Jan's message next. Thank you for your comments, I really do appreciate this discussion with people who have studied Syliva Plath for a long time. I have not tried to hide the fact that I am a newbie and if I sounded rather curt in my reply to Jack's message I apologize.

    The sensitivity I seem to have created towards my use of the term 'monomania' to describe Sylvia's condition may stem from the fashion of today. It is now politically incorrect to use certain terms, lunatic, and maniac, for instance. Plain speech (of which I am frequently charged) has been softened, so the term 'monomania' is more acceptable under the generic term of 'depression'. Whatever terminology is used to describe it, mental illness is still mental illness. Her mood swings pointed towards manic-depression or to be more politically correct 'bi-polar disease'; but her self-obsession pointed towards monomania. In other words she thought about herself so much that she had literally been driven crazy by it. Whether you agree with me or not, would you not say that it is worth contemplating?

    About her children, I did not say she disliked her children. I do not know whether she liked them or not. I know she tried to be perfect in everything she did, she thought it was expected of her. She had set a very high standard for herself when she was young which she found increasingly difficult to maintain as time went by, but she still wanted to be the best at everything, a pefect mother was included in her inventory of ambitions. I said "she cared nothing for her two little children" meaning she had no regard for their welfare beyond that moment in time, not that she did'nt care for them the way one may not care for tripe and onions.

    Amy, On the contrary, I felt feelings of great sorrow not animosity for Sylvia when I had finished reading her journals. What a waste of a life. She should be writing best-sellers now, not pushing up daisies. We do differ on what age a person is expected to mature however. I remember in the infamous Louise Woodward case when much was made of the fact that she was ONLY eighteen and not really capable of taking care of a child. Ridiculous! I think as Paul said, that it was probably the vocabulary of the day, since she also referred to men as 'boys'. But this kind of thinking is not conducive to psychological maturity. As I said, at 26 she was NOT a girl.

    Thank you Peter for welcoming me to the forum.

    A point both you and Amy made about not taking the journals literally. If one can't believe her day to day journals what can one believe? I realize that they were interspersed with fiction, for instance I think it was a figment of her imagination that so many of her clothes were made of silk! Her hatred for her mother though, which came out during therapy with Dr. Ruth Beuscher was not fictional.

    Paul, you say several things which make me think that you are inclined to brush her mental illness aside. You say "To me, the thin skin you observe is more a function of her optimism and high expectations from people than anything more serious." How can you say that? When she had already attempted suicide once, and she herself thought she was mentally ill? Her mood swings made her say one thing one day and another thing the next. Her thoughts were mostly governed by her emotions, (those raw nerve ends I spoke about which were like antennae,) not her brain. You say she was as hard on other people as she was on herself, I agree. She was a perfectionist.

    I know people who have been fans for a long time feel the need to defend her against the likes of me, and perhaps after time become more subjective than objective to protect her against the more dispassionate view. I welcome your views. Just hope I don't ruffle too many feathers with mine.

    I will take your advice and read up more about her, thank you Stuart for the recommendation, I will get that book. I am about to pick up her 'Collected Poems' from Barnes and Noble in a few minutes. Can you believe, they did not have it on the shelf? It had to be a SPECIAL order?

    Cressida Hope-Bunting
     Alabama, USA
    Saturday, August 12, 2000



    "The Couriers" is a poem that not much is said about, strange as it is; Axelrod sees it only as "withering male abuse" and Kroll says a few of the images can be traced back to The White Goddess. It seems to me to be a meditative, free-associative poem about her wedding ring; it always reminds me of "Letter in November", as both seem to be about the season (hers, she was born in mid-fall) and her happiness in being free of Hughes. The language comes from the outside as well as the inside, in other words.

    Plath was a complicated, always-evolving personality, who wanted to get better and understood well what her problems were - as it is, she wrote eloquently about her situation and tried to make it reflect more than herself. I don't know what she would have written once she became "better" - but to say The Bell Jar was not what she was totally capable of in fiction is to ignore what it did in the first place. I am sure that her next novel would have been better too, the one about her marriage to Hughes - but then writers always hope to progress. Some people think "Double Exposure" would have been as good as "Ariel" - who knows? There may not be enough of it to judge.

    As for her hatred - she loved her mother too, in her journals she says so. The fact that she couldn't tell her mother that she disliked her - just once, a catharsis - was really her downfall. I hate to be simple here, but no family relation is so cut and dried as to only allow one strong emotion, and no other. This goes for marriage as well - friendships too. Last year a terrible thing happened to me, which some people would mark as the 'end' of the relationship. But I didn't want it to end, & I didn't let it - Plath died while in a period of transition, before she could really figure out what to do with her life, besides live in London.

    I am glad to see new people here, I didn't expect the Forum to be so hopping in August!

    Lena Friesen
     Toronto, Canada
    Friday, August 11, 2000



    I wish I had something substantive to offer in the way of deconstructing "The Couriers," but the best I can say is that it's a poem that I've always viewed as an extension of "Ariel," "Elm," and a few others. In any case, it encompasses a few of Plath's recurring motifs.

    Without further comment, I will pass the baton on to someone else. Of course, one can play this mix-and-match game ad nauseum, but does there not seem to be a most expressive thread of continuity here?

    (P.S. To Stewart, with his mention of the Salon article-- I have little to say on that, as I've always contended that PMS is nothing more than an unimaginative woman's excuse for bad behavior.)

    Jan Watson Collins
     New York City, USA
    Thursday, August 10, 2000



    I have always loved "The Couriers", even as I have been baffled by its specific imagery. The persona Plath assumes in the first section, that of a haughty queen (like so many I have known) rejecting the love gifts of her suitors, always brings a smile. "The Couriers" is one of those Plath poems that makes Melissa Dobson and I rave on and on about the Emily Dickinson-Sylvia Plath continuum. The irony, the twisted whimsy, the self-dramatizing for comic effect, the sour vision of romantic love -- these are qualities Dickinson and Plath share in spades. Here, Plath --jilted Devonshire housewife and baby-soaked single mother (I can’t remember where this poem falls in the chronology) -- gleefully transforms herself into a Marie Antoinette, a Catherine the Great or, better yet, a Turandot. The stinging, satiric voice of Plath in high comedy mode -- that voodoo that she do so well (remember, she told A. Alvarez that Daddy was a bit of light verse)-- is much in evidence in this first stanza, where she even flirts with a rhyme scheme (often a signal that Plath is up to hi-jinx). What the possible significance of the word of a snail on the plate of a leaf could be (but doesn’t it make you think of Dickinson?), let alone acetic acid or nine black Alps, escapes this reader. What is important here is the swift slippery descent from arch comedy in section one to the almost horrifying nihilist vision, full of real pathos, in section two, culminating in the unnerving shattering of that briny mirror. This is one of those Plath moments that, for me, raises the hairs on my neck and starts the goosebumps. And yet, how deftly, how beautifully she catches herself, puts the lid back on the Pandora’s box, with that wonderfully barbed "Love, love, my season." Dripping with irony and self-pity-- this is Plath in venomous high gear.

    Cressida, I have always held a similarly uncharitable assessment of SP, which many tend to equate with high treason. But then I have always found Plath's least desirable aspects her most alluring. I do agree with Jack that you should take advantage of the overwhelming amount of biographical material available. I suggest you begin with Anne Stevenson’s "Bitter Fame", in which you will find ample support for many of your impressions. "Bitter Fame" is the "Mein Kampf" of Plath literature and will give you the tingly sensation of blasphemy as you devour its gossipy pages. Of course, Salon magazine has revealed that Plath’s daemonic personality can now be attributed to a bad case of PMS (an article that I thought would have sent the Forum abuzz but about which, unless I missed it, the gang was strangely silent). Anyway, you've certainly stirred up the hive!

    Stewart Clarke
     NYC, USA
    Thursday, August 10, 2000



    Actually, Cressida, I have read the complete journals that were published in England earlier this year. My reaction to them were apparently quite different from yours. I thought Plath came across as a much more likable person, someone less, not more self-absorbed than the person that emerged from the earlier, truncated version of her journals. Maybe you're easily offended. The 'nasty bits' that were surpressed earlier were certainly nasty enough. No disappointment there. But I never thought they were a final condemnation of any of the people she raged about. To me, the thin skin you observe is more a function of her optimism and high expectations from people than anything more serious. When people disappointed her, or failed her in some way, she let it all spill out in her journals. Did that make her a difficult person to be around? Probably. But I don't see any self-pity involved. She was as hard on herself as she was on everybody else. That's not self-pity.

    As regards, her 'hatred' for her mother. Here, I think you're taking her statements too literally. Don't forget she was going through therapy at the time, and trying to deal with her complex feelings for her mother. Somewhere in the journals she admits she doesn't really hate her mother. The 'choking' fantasy I believe she put in one of her short stories. Maybe not. As for calling herself a 'girl' at the age of 26 or whatever, she was simply speaking the language of her time. The word didn't become charged with offensive connotations until later. If you noticed, she often referred to men in their twenties as 'boys'.

    In your piece, you mention the 'fact' of her mental illness, and that her values were not the same as a 'normal' person. If that's your opinion, fine. But it's not an opinion shared by everyone. Was it a family secret? You conclude that with proper treatment for her 'condition', she would have done better things. Come on. Give the girl a break.

    Paul Snyder
     New York City, USA
    Thursday, August 10, 2000



    Melissa, thank you for posting. Here is the poem The Couriers for everyone to have at hand.

    Peter K Steinberg
     Springfield, Va, USA
    Thursday, August 10, 2000



    Hello, to everyone on the Forum. ALthough I do not often contribute comments, I am a regular visitor and reader. I've been enjoying the postings regarding The Bell Jar, but was wondering if I might change the topic and ask some questions about one of Plath's poems. I am not a student who needs "work done for me"---just some one who loves Plath and the poetry and who would like some insights. The one poem of SP's that had always baffled me somewhat is "The Couriers." I have some scattered thoughts and ideas about it---obviously a courier is someone/thing that delivers a message. The poem seems to list symbols that have messages, messages that she disclaims association with and rejects. ("It is not mine. Do not accept it.")I can understand the stanza about the ring of gold. That symbol of marriage Plath would naturally associate with lies and grief, given her personal experience with infidelity---So the "message" of life-long promise intended by the ring she spurns as false. What I am more uncertain about is the symbolism of the snail and the acid in the sealed tin. Plath was very interested in archetypes and symbols, but I am not sure what she is doing here, what the snail symbolozies, etc. And what is represented by the nine black Alps? The ninth card of the major arcana in the Tarot (which Plath knew about) is that of the Hermit, which symbolizes loneliness and spiritual quest---pursuits of youth sacrificed, suffering, denial, etc. The Hermit is pictured standing on a snowy peak (like the Alps)and embodies self-reflection, searching---a self-reflection which could be "the disturbance in mirrors." But this interpretation seems WAY too far-fetched. I have been most impressed by the comments and interpretations of Plath's work by "regulars" Jack F., Peter S., Melissa D., and Elaine, and the many comments of others, so I am hoping that someone would be willing to talk to me about this poem. Thank you, in advance.

    Melissa Carl
     York, USA
    Thursday, August 10, 2000



    "As for the minute joys: as I was saying: do you realize the illicit sensuous delight I get from picking my nose? I always have, ever since I was a child - there are so many subtle variations of sensation. A delicate, pointed-nailed fifth finger can catch under dry scabs and flakes of mucous in the nostril and draw them out to be looked at, crumbled between fingers, and flicked to the floor in minute crusts. Or a heavier, determined forefinger can reach up and smear down-and-out the soft, resilient, elastic greenish-yellow smallish blobs of mucous, roll them around on the under surface of a desk or chair where they will harden into organic crusts...."

    These are Sylvia Plath's own words from 25 January 1953. Pretty candid. Sylvia Plath would write five years later after a fuming incident with some saucy girls in Child's Park, Northampton, that she had the fever in her blood that could cause her to kill another human being (paraphrased). There is no doubt that Sylvia Plath had ill feelings for her mother from time to time. Just because she wrote it in her Journals does not mean they are THE final word. The words are not written in Red. In her Journals Sylvia Plath went back and forth between emotions for herself, her mother and her husband Ted Hughes. I do not think that Sylvia Plath died hating either Ted Hughes or her mother.

    Cressida, we all welcome your contributions to the Forum. They are mostly interesting to read but please by all means take special care to Jack's words. The Bell Jar is a phenomenal book that lends insight into a period of Plath's life that is for the most part undocumented in her Journals. Fact or fiction, you can be that most of the scenes in the book occurred. Whether they occurred that summer or later or earlier is another story.

    Even The Journals of Sylvia Plath is covered, from front to back, with little splashes of fiction (re-read please the earliest passages), and this is a mostly autobiographical book!

    Peter K Steinberg
     Springfield, Va, USA
    Thursday, August 10, 2000



    Cressida, You seem to have a great deal of animosity towards Plath yourself. Her writing can certainly inspire a range of emotions! But I would caution you against taking her journals too literally. I think most writers would agree that journals are both a recounting of what's happening in a person's life as well as a writer's stage--a place to try things out, twist things to a writer's needs, etc. Did she hate her mother? Quite possibly. I do agree that their relationship is given short shrift; it looks pretty dysfunctional. But the journals as source for knowledge of Plath, while helpful, are by no means the complete record of her life. There is no way to confidently conjecture what was going through her mind when she wrote of her hatred against her mother; of her helplessness in being unable to write; or in her act of suicide. As for whether or not that was an act of selfishness would definitely be open to debate. As a parent who's experienced the horrors of severe postpartum depression, I can only speculate that she might have believed at that moment that her children would be better off without her.

    But regardless of which side of any debate you fall on, I agree with Jack -- without having thoroughly studied the voluminous materials out there by and about Plath (many of which are highly contradictory and subjective), it's probably not the right time to make definitive statements about her hatred, laziness, parental selfishness, or monomania. As for hardly being a girl at 26, well...as someone long past 26, I can say (at least for myself!) that I'd hate to be held accountable for things I said and wrote at that age. 26 is more mature than 16, but it's hardly the peak of maturity.

    Amy Rea
     Eden Prairie, USA
    Thursday, August 10, 2000



    Cressida, I think you aren't entirely on the wrong path with some of your comments, but bear in mind that "monomania" is a mental disorder in its own right (now a bit of an old chestnut, having been locked in the proverbial trunk alongside "dementia praecox," and other diagnoses of that ilk). I doubt that Plath's tendency toward depression, lassitude, and rage were the byproducts of said monomania, or vice versa. What you describe as Plath's "unhealty obsession with herself { }, her inability to forget herself even for a moment" is an excellent way of describing chronic depression-- the feeling of choking for life on one's own air, so to speak-- but it does not effectively describe or make a case for monomania.

    Having said that, I agree that chronic depression can be an anathema to both the writing process and one's interpersonal relations. I'd even venture to say that Plath's depression may have created occasional distancing between herself and her children; your conjecture that she disliked them, however, is nowhere supported in any of Plath's own writings (unless one gives too much credence to the journal passage where Nicholas's birth is described-- the one where Plath, upon seeing his wrinkled angry face, is honest enough to say, "I wasn't sure if I liked him"). I also consider your comment that Plath "did not stop to think about who would raise her own children" is conjecture of the most far-flung kind. Suicides usually contemplate the act and its aftereffects-- right down to the eulogy!-- long before committing the deed, even if the day that one ultimately chooses to end one's life is determined by a sudden impulse. Perhaps that's a grim point to be dwelling on here, but I think it needs to be said in order to put forth the theory that Sylvia knew her children would end up in Ted's care, and had reconciled herself to that fact.

    By the way, Cressida, I personally think it is nice to see new Plath enthusiasts. Keep reading and learning; develop a thick skin; and continue to post your opinions, by all means.

    Jan Watson Collins
     New York City, USA
    Thursday, August 10, 2000



    Jack, I have read your messages and respect your posts. My opinion, formed as I said after reading her journals from cover to cover, including all the notes and appendices, though different from your own, is still valid. I am more interested in suggesting an alternative viewpoint for discussion than creating dissension. If you disagree with me, it would be helpful to know on which points.

    Paul, I would like to take up the point you make about 'hate'. You say that you think hatred is too strong a word for her hostility towards people close to her. Since this latest book "The Journals of Sylvia Plath 1950 - 1962" has not been published over here yet I am assuming you have not read it. (My copy was purchased for me in England). When you read it you will understand what I mean. There is no mistaking that she hates her mother, she dreams of killing her. Of putting her hands round her mother's scrawny neck and choking the life out of her. These are Sylvia Plath's own words,(paraphrased). Her note to herself (Dec. 12 1958) "MAIN QUESTIONS" Number one on the list is, "What to do with hate for mother." Another note on the list reads, "Why do I freeze in fear my mind & writing: say, look, no head, what can you expect of a girl with no head?" Its food for thought that she always thinks of herself as a "girl". When she wrote this entry she was 26yrs old. Hardly a girl.

    Referring to the writer's block you mentioned. I think what we are inclined to lose track of, is the fact that Sylvia Plath was mentally ill. Her values were not the same as a normal person. One of the reasons she could not come up with a plot in spite of a very full life, (her journals provide plenty of fodder for several novels) is that she could not see any further than her nose end. Her endless wallowing in self-pity, her constant dredging up de profundis.... All part of her disease. Her creativity, was all on the same theme. Wonderful as it was, and we find it wonderful because she had the gift of being able to put into words EXACTLY what she was feeling, and to describe her surroundings and the effect they had on her with such clarity and beautiful use of the English language; I still maintain that with proper treatment for her condition she would have done better things.

    It makes one realize what a lot Ted Hughes had to put up with (I am not defending him) but she must have been hard to live with. Take the episode when they were staying at the writers colony together after they married. He was disciplined, got up and worked every day. She could not settle to her surroundings and did nothing but whine about not being able to start the novel she so badly needed to write. He was sick of hearing it, but he comforted her and helped her the best he could. She was sick of herself too and of course writes volumes in her journals about not being able to write!

    It becomes clear when you read her journals that the strain of trying to live up to her earlier sucesses when she was young, was just too much for her when she got older.

    Cressida Hope-Bunting
     Alabama, USA
    Wednesday, August 9, 2000



    Cressida, I can see that as a newcomer to Sylvia Plath you are eager to express your opinions. With all due respect, however, I do think that you might consider spending more time with the voluminous biographical, archival, and critical materials on Plath before making such off-the-wall statements as you have made in your latest posting.

    Jack Folsom
     Sharon, Vermont, USA
    Wednesday, August 9, 2000



    Hello, everyone. I'm stating a retraction for comments made in late October of 1998 in Elaine's forum on Sylvia Plath. The meeting I mentioned had nothing to do with Leonard Baskin or his wife. I was mistaken as to who the person was and posted information prematurely and without knowing the person yet. Apologies are in order to the Baskins and to the readers here for such a clumsy report. Thanks :)

    Dena Tooma
     Canada
    Wednesday, August 9, 2000



    I'd like to add to my earlier comments on 'The Bell Jar.' In regard to Plath's intentions for writing the novel, I know the 'pot-boiler' comment is often used to show that Plath was mainly interested in writing a 'popular' best seller, and didn't hesitate to abuse her family and friends to serve that purpose. Sorry, but I don't think it's nearly that simple. It's true she always wanted to be a successful novelist, but she continually lamented her inability to think up an interesting 'plot.'Given her ambition and early start at writing prose, it's always surprised me how long it took her to come up with the idea for 'The Bell Jar.' She spent most of her mid and late twenties writing short stories dealing with minor incidents in her life, but never thought about taking on its most dramatic event. We can speculate why. No doubt her sessions with her psychologist, and maybe no longer living in America were required experiences before she could tackle the subject. But once she started, it was a very serious enterprise, and not just because she wanted to get a novel published. It should hardly be surprising that she would want to return to the time of her earlier suicide attempt if only to understand it better. Isn't that what most memoir writing's all about. But to be honest to herself, and the novel she was writing, Plath had to recognize a lot hostile (I think 'hatred' is too strong)feelings she felt towards people close to her. That probalby gave rise to guilt feeling and would explain the 'pot boiler' comment to her mother, and the use of the pheudonym, 'Victoria Lucas.' I agree the 'juvenile' voice a la Salinger was very deliberate, and I believe it was intended to make a very painful story more bearable both for the reader and herself. While the novel has its faults, its success over the years is due to the truthfulness of the writing.

    Alsi, it's customary to whitewash the 1950's as a decade of bland conformity, However, it was a decade which gave us rock music, the beatniks, existentialism, experimental theatre, and many other forms of rebellion. Sylvia Plath was anything but a natural rebel, but from an early age she expressed discontent with the status quo and the blind following of conventional beliefs. As much as anything, this discontentment is the sub-text of her only novel.

    Paul Snyder
     New York City, USA
    Tuesday, August 8, 2000



    Hello Elaine, thank you for your comments. I am not an expert on Plath, in fact I have only recently been introduced to her work. I received 'The Journals' as a gift for my birthday. I am very much enjoying this board and the different opinions, I formed mine after reading her journals.

    The monomania was her unhealthy obsession with herself; her inability to forget herself even for a moment, aware almost of every heartbeat, what a terrible burden to carry. She cared nothing for the hurt and concern she caused others. She claimed her work was everything, but her work WAS HERSELF. (I know you will disagree with this) but (in my opinion) she cared nothing for her two little children. She did what her own mother whom she hated, would never have done, she put her own despair above their needs by depriving them of a mother to care for them when they were only infants.

    Another view I have (which seems to be only mine) is that she was far more affected by her hatred for her mother than by her grief for her father. Compared to the vitriolic attack on her mother she hardly mentions her father at all in the journals. She blames her mother for her own inablity to break free of her. She thought that she could only ever break free of her mother by killing herself. Where I wonder was her responsibility to her own children? She was suffering from a mental illness, so she did not, or could not, step outside herself briefly enough to consider them beyond leaving them with meagre nourishment on the day she died. It is a wonder they did not die too from the gas fumes which were so strong that they knocked a neighbour unconscious! She did not stop to think who was going to raise her children. Their father, who had gone off with another woman? Or her own mother? (heaven forbid) Or Ted's sister, whom Sylvia also hated? Thoughts such as these w!
    ould have stopped a normal person in their tracks but she was undeterred, her pain was too great.

    I agree Elaine that she knew what she was doing when she wrote 'The Bell Jar' she did copy the Salinger style directed at a young market, but I stick to my opinion that it was unworthy of her, she was capable of much better. There is some wonderful, wonderful, writing in her journals, music to the ear. I only wish I could write half as well. Sylvia Plath is a fascinating subject, a subject which will keep people occupied for many years to come. Her children have yet to speak, they have a tale to tell too........

    Cressida Hope-Bunting
     Alabama, USA
    Monday, August 7, 2000



    I've been very interested in people's reactions to "The Bell Jar" over the last few days. Cressida, I can see why you think that the novel is "juvenile" but don't you think that might have been Plath's intention? It is, after all, the description of an adolescent's perception of the world. Perhaps one's reaction to it might be affected by the age you are when you read it for the first time. I was 21 myself and found it corresponded very well with my own late adolescent views! I gave it to a woman in her 70's to read a few years ago and she found she couldn't finish it because it was, "too depressing."

    I feel it's rather unfair to use the word "monomania" to describe Sylvia, solipsistic perhaps... I often find myself feeling very sorry for Aurelia Plath who coped heroically in very difficult circumstances. It must have been quite shattering to discover the venom her daughter felt for her. But creative people, especially artists, often give their families and friends bum deals and often hell. I do sometimes wonder if we find this necessary, ruthless, egotistical attribute of the great artist far more unacceptable in a woman than we do in a man.

    At least nowadays I can pose this question and everyone knows what I'm talking about. But as Jack so rightly points out, in the 50's conformity ruled for everyone. But its straitjacket was even more pronounced for the young women of the time who above all else were expected to be "nice". What I like most about "The Bell Jar" and Plath's work in general is that as Erica Jong remarks: "She sprung open the trap of niceness in women's literature."

    Elaine Connell
     Hebden Bridge, UK
    Sunday, August 6, 2000



    Another comment about The Bell Jar and The Catcher in the Rye: Yes, of course there's nothing the matter with Holden, or with Esther, or , for that matter, with Huck Finn, their spiritual father, so to speak. All three of them are done in by the hypocrisy around them -- the shoulds-and-oughts purveyed by self-righteous and/or duplicitous control-nazis, the Pecksniffs of their age. One of my favorite lines from Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman: "Everyone around me is so false, I'm constantly lowering my ideals." The innocent and idealistic ones encounter one disillusionment after another, until they sink into cynicism and depression, or, as Huck decided to do, "light out for the territory."

    In the 1950s of Sylvia's world, there was little room in cities and suburbs for nonconformist attitudes and questioning of the established order. That eruption took place a decade later. Meanwhile, the "misfits" of the earlier decade, artists especially, were often exiled to psychic hell if they were not anaesthetized by booze or tranquilizers.

    Ironically, the "hicks" in rural American villages never had (and still never have) trouble distinquishing among outsiders the real people from the fake people. Authenticity is in the blood of rural people everywhere.

    Jack Folsom
     Sharon, Vermont, USA
    Sunday, August 6, 2000



    I've been reading, with interest, the comments that have recently been posted about THE BELL JAR. As a disgruntled commuter, I have an audio recording of it (Harper Collins)in my car that I often re-listen to when there is nothing of interest on loan at the library. I would highly recommend it to any student who is a bit frustrated with trying to get a grasp on the narrator's tone. Unfortunately, it's an abridged recording; I haven't been able to locate an unabridged version. (Therefore, it's not a substitute for the book but a great supplement.) The reader, Frances McDormand, perfectly captures the irony and sardonic humor that underpins many of Esther's comments. I laugh outloud when I'm listening to it, something I never did when reading the novel. I'd love to know if there's a recording of A CATCHER IN THE RYE.

    I've always enjoyed the novel and never felt that the motivations behind Esther's breakdown were not fully established. Maybe I just plugged in to those seemingly universal sentiments with which most adolescents and college students struggle, the big unanswerable (and sometimes dauntingly so) "what now?" after pre-mapped out years of academics where decisions are limited to what course to take and how hard to study for it. The real world can seem immensely intimidating if your whole life (all 19 or 20 years of it...) has been micro-managed for you to some degree. I also tuned into that sometimes inexplicable feeling of being outside a situation or somehow distanced from the rest of society. It often seemingly stems from deep inside with no apparent cause, at least not at the time. Hence, I didn't question Esther's evolving depression.

    But back to the novel...I was always impressed with those elements that so neatly tie together various scenes. The opening line, "It was a queer, sultry summer" of course captures Esther's inner state of mind. But as the sentence continues, "...the summer they eletrocuted the Rosenbergs...I'm stupid about executions," the irony that permeates the novel is present from the beginning, for one could easily substitute "the summer they electrocuted me." Later, Esther's description of her first shock treatment corresponds to her imagining, in that opening page, of the Rosenbergs' fate of being "burned alive all along your nerves." After this paragraph, a single sentence stands alone: "I thought it must be the worst thing in the world." It packs a bit of a punch, especially upon re-reading, by its lone placement on the page like that. After describing Esther's first shock treatment, Plath similarly isolates the sentence on the page in which Esther questions her own fate: "I wondered what terrible thing it was that I had done." I can't help but notice the poet's concern for language and textual strategies that are used for emphasis and that circle back upon and relate to one another.

    What I like least about the novel is the neat coincidence of Joan's arrival at the hospital. It seems a bit forced and contrived. But I admire most the images that connect the novel and seem to fall into place regardless of their autobiographical origins.

    Pamela St. Clair
     Connecticut, USA
    Sunday, August 6, 2000



    With regards to Cressida's comments about 'The Bell Jar', I think it is important to remember that this was the first full-length novel that Plath ever wrote, and, as it turns out, the only one to be completed and see the light of day.

    Most of the critical and biographical work done on Plath to date has shown her to have continually struggled with the writing of prose throughout her career. I believe if one reads those stories collected in 'Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams', it becomes clearer just how significant a breakthrough 'The Bell Jar' was for Plath. Most (if not all) of the stories in 'Johnny Panic' were written for publication in women's magazines (a long held ambition of Plath's), and I believe, as a consequence they come off as forced and trite. The only time her short stories ever seem to engage the reader is when Plath lets down the facade of pleasantness so characteristic of the 1950's and injects into the narrative of these stories some of the tensions and resentments she herself was railing against in her journals.

    'The Bell Jar' was a breakthrough for Plath because by writing this novel she not only overcame the terrible writing block that so often plauged her, she also found a subject and a style that suited her, and she also tapped into that aspect of her writing that many readers have since found so arresting - that blunt engagement with 'the world's hardest things'.

    There can be no doubt that autobiographical aspect of the novel was damaging to Plath's relatives and friends. Plath herself recognized this by originally having the novel published under a pseudonym. Yes her mother is correct when she referrs to 'The Bell Jar' as representing 'the basest ingratitude', but isn't this 'not niceness' that we see in Plath's work one of the characteristics that many readers find so compelling in her poetry?

    Shelley
     Australia
    Saturday, August 5, 2000



    The whole idea of The Bell Jar serving as a kind of flip side for The Catcher in the Rye is interesting, to say the least. I definitely agree that there are similarities between the two narrators' levels of insouciance and disaffectedness. But how comparable is Holden's mental affliction to Esther's? I was always one of those renegade Salinger readers who believed that there was never anything REALLY wrong with Holden, though of course I know this point is arguable.

    Jan Watson Collins
     New York City, USA
    Friday, August 4, 2000



    Thank you Paul and Jan for correcting me about Richard Sassoon. I had to return to her journals to read up on Dick Norton again. I assumed since she mentioned Buddy Willard so often in the novel that she had reversed the situation in her mind (perhaps partly for revenge) and made Richard pathetically in love with her, instead of the other way around.

    I finished reading 'The Bell Jar' soon after my last post about it. My opinion has not changed, I think she could have done much better. I agree that it was written with the mass market in mind, she was hoping to write a best seller (and she did).

    At the end of my edition of 'The Bell Jar' is a copy of a letter her mother wrote to Sylvia's editor. In it she states that she wants to tell them about one of the last conversations she had with her daughter......

    "What I've done', I remember her saying, 'is to throw together events from my own life, fictionalizing to add color- its a pot boiler really, but I think it will show how isolated a person feels when he is suffering a breakdown".......

    In another part of the letter her mother writes:-

    "Practically every character in 'The Bell Jar' represents someone- often in caricature - whom Sylvia loved; each person had given freely of time, thought, affection, and in one case financial help during those agonizing six months of breakdown in 1953. As this book stands by itself, it represents the basest ingratitude. That was not the basis of Sylvia's personality; it was the reason she became so frightened when, at the time of publication the book was widely read and showed signs of becoming a success."

    Her poor mother of course, could not possibly have known what we who have read her journals know - how much Sylvia Plath hated her mother. The journals Ted Hughes had sealed until after the death of her mother, make it quite clear that she WAS ungrateful and not at all above exploiting her friends, relatives, and acquaintances as it suited her.

    Cressida Hope-Bunting
     Alabama, USA
    Friday, August 4, 2000



    The way that I have always read The Bell Jar is like a 'one-up' on Salinger and Holden Cuafield. For the most part the two novels do read similarly in madness content. Both Holden and Esther experience mental collapse, skewed reason and depression. Both take place in New York, though Eshter moves out of New York and back to Boston. But, Holden, in the book, and I doubt if the book continued would have, attempted suicide, like Esther did. I believe this was intentional, I believe it was an episode, a scene, to place a woman over a man. I'm not saying it was an act of feminism or anything like that. But, I do think that it was almost a kind of rational decision on the part of Esther because she was ill, she was not sleeping, she could not read, her self-esteem was shattered, and a whole list of other things. Esther (& Sylvia) were obviously not the only young women in the 1950's to attempt suicide. I have a difficult time not reading The Bell Jar as autobiography. It's not all autobiography, but enough of it is.

    I am reading The Bell Jar again at the moment, to pick up on new, previously missed lines, important phrases or character portrayals, etc. And, I actually found, probably one of the few, if not the only nice line about Esther Greenwood's mum. In Chapter Four, after the girls were over their vomit-a-thon, Doreen brings Esther her soup first. The scene goes like this:


    This is just unconsistent with virtually every other scene that her mother is in, and it's somewhat nice to read too.

    Peter K Steinberg
     Springfield, Va, USA
    Friday, August 4, 2000



    Paul is quite correct about the Dick Norton-as-Buddy Willard angle; I doubt that Sassoon, unlike poor Norton, could have ever been reduced to something as simple as a caricature of the bourgeoisie.

    Incidentally, if anyone knows anything about the fate of Richard Sassoon-- a question that has puzzled me for years-- I would love to hear about it. He seemed like one who was bound for interesting things, one way or the other.

    As for "The Bell Jar"-- it's an engaging story, but a rather shallow treatment of mental disintegration, wouldn't you say? I suspect Plath was trying to put a slick veneer over the book in order to make it marketable; she was anxious to put forth her reputation as a prolific poet/novelist, yet it is clear that her true talents were never housed in her fiction-- a fact which she was aware of and plagued by.

    Jan Watson Collins
     New York City, USA
    Thursday, August 3, 2000



    In response to Cressida's comments on The Bell Jar, Buddy Willard is based on Dick Norton, Plath's rather put-upon home-town boyfriend in the early 1950's, and not Richard Sessions.

    I also remember being disappointed when I first read the novel. As I recall, I was disturbed by its disjointedness and a lack of motivation for Ester's depression and suicide attempt. However, since then I've returned to it with increased enjoyment and appreciation for it originality and perceptiveness. The novel may be influenced by Salinger, but it has its own unique voice, seen again in Plath's own journals. For someone who is often accused of being unable to get outside of herself, the novel is a telling representation of life in the United States during the 1950's.

    I try to read it as a work of fiction and not just autobiographical, and don't assume that Ester will meet the same fate as its author. In any case, something more than sensationalism must account for its continuing popularity. And it was always popular, at least in the USA. It was on the NYTimes's best seller list for-I believe-six months when it was first published here in 1971. Even for that more literate time, that's pretty impressive for a so called 'serious' novel.

    Paul Snyder
     New York City, USA
    Thursday, August 3, 2000



    Re: Chris Blackwell's comments about a possible Sylvia & Ted film. Sure, there was enough dramatic tragedy in Sylvia's life to make "Sid & Nancy" look lije Noddy in Toyland and I am sure Hollywood would love it. But it took years to set the literary record straight after "Bitter Fame", what with "Letters Home" and all. It was not until Janet Malcolm's "Silent Woman" was published that I felt that Sylvia was done justice, and then Ted Hughes fittingly had the final word with "Birthday Letters". I fear that a film would give the whole sorry tale of Sylvia's demise another push down the helter skelter of controversy that would take years to put right (again).

    Lovely Web site. Let's stick to the poetry eh?

    Christopher
     Manchester, England
    Tuesday, August 1, 2000



    I would like briefly to return to Karen Kukil's meticulously edited Sylvia Plath Journals to make a small correction. On page 279 and again on page 281, Ms. Kukil refers to the ship that SP and whatshisname took back to England as the "Queen Elizabeth II."

    Sorry, dear! That vessel was the RMS Queen Elizabeth, named after the wife of George VI and in our time referred to at age 100 as "the Queen Mum." This ship was built during 1938-39, and is listed as going into service by Cunard in 1940, then to become a troop ship in WWII (eh, young persons, that was the little contretemps with Hitler & Co.). The Queen Elizabeth 2, named after the present queen, was launched in 1967 and entered Cunard service in 1969.

    How do I know all dis? My wife and I sailed to England on the Queen Elizabeth a few months after Ted and whatshername did. Like them, we were in what was euphemistically called Tourist Class, and I can attest to the accuracy of Sylvia's accounts on pp. 609-612.

    Jack Folsom
     Sharon, Vermont, USA
    Tuesday, August 1, 2000



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    This forum is administered by Elaine Connell, author of Sylvia Plath: Killing The Angel In The House - second edition with new preface just out, December 1998. Elaine lives in Hebden Bridge, near where Sylvia Plath is buried and where Ted Hughes was born. Web Design by Pennine Pens. This forum is moderated - contributions which are inappropriate, anonymous or likely to offend may be edited or omitted.