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Contributions: September 2000
My God, the Forum is getting better than the World Wrestling Federation! I think that we should note that all this bitchiness is quite in keeping with Plath's personality (as attested to in her own journals and poetry). Vicious as an alley cat, Plath herself might considerably enjoy all this fang-baring in her name, but as the parent of two cats myself, I think someone needs to be put in the Kitty Carrier.
New topic. Has anybody ever wondered if Plath might have been abducted by aliens? Discuss.
Stewart Clarke
NYC, USA
Friday, September 29, 2000
Cressida----You lose points for hitting below the belt. Your saucer of milk will be Fed Ex'ed for Saturday delivery. The benefit of going to Plath related sites and taking pictures, breathing the air, and digging my toes in the sand is for the improvement of my web site on Sylvia Plath. I am sorry that you cannot find appreciation it for the hundreds of dollars I have spent in getting to these places. Have you been to Heptonstall when when the clouds drop so and the rains slides in from the Northwest?I know what the poetry means to me, and what it means to the Forum contributors who post intelligent and sincere messages. I know what the life of Sylvia Plath means to me, and I know it must mean something similar to you. We can write back and forth if you like on how difficult it will be to agree on anything. I want to agree with some of the intelligent things you say, but when you get all novice on us I cannot bear to read on.
My point was that no one wants here to discuss sexual abuse and Sylvia Plath. Especially when it's a fairly whimsical, poorly thought out topic. There are so many other topics we (the Forum) can be discussing. I am enjoying the new topic by Jan and Melissa.
I'll be quiet for a while as I move away from the South and try to find my ghost, since at the moment she is not on my shoulder.
Peter K Steinberg
Springfield, Va, USA
Friday, September 29, 2000
Dear Peter, Didn't you know everything written about Plath's behavior is speculative? Avarus animus nullo satiatur lucro. That is the fascination, even her mother and her husband did not know her!We are at liberty to make what we will of her poetry (nobody knows for sure what it means) and (even though it offends the overly sensitive) we are also at liberty to speculate on the causes and reasons (if there were any normal reasons) behind her despair.
It is uncomfortable to have someone tilt a graven image, (although there was never any fear of my toppling it,) especially for someone who romantically retraces her steps, gazes at the same unaltered view she gazed at, breathes in deeply the same fresh air, wriggles his toes in the sand and probably imagines her there beside him nestling her head on his protective manly shoulder.
Cressida Hope-Bunting
Alabama, USA
Friday, September 29, 2000
If Plath's creative output is evidence that motherhood and artistry (two qualitiatively different creative experiences)are reconcilable, her life argues otherwise. Artistic biography does seem to argue the benefit -- even the necessity -- of solitude; and for a woman, of a denial of biological fecundity. The Plath example is insupportive of this, one might argue; Ariel, one of the great works of twentieth-century poetry, issued from a mother with two young children. But this is also a poetry that took as one of its subjects motherhood, and left its readers having to come to grips with a sense of ambivalence (at one end of the spectrum) and rage (at the other) that the speaker presents as resulting from this status. The personas of Ariel are personas of quest. There would be no sequel to Ariel, no elucidation, no reconfiguration, no development, no departure. Ariel is Plath's answer to the question "What is poetry?" The book is self-sustaining. It is its own legacy.
Can one be a writer and a mother? As Jan states, it is a compulsion for many. Can one be a mother and an artist? I would imagine that that's a tricky business. If, that is, we see artists as persons who open themselves, offer themselves, to ways of being and seeing that, while consuming them, feed the rest of us -- who sacrifice their "conventional" lives and as a consequence, foreseen or unforeseen, allow the rest of us to live meaningful, productive -- and mostly conventional -- lives. For such, art is cross and vocation, blessing and curse. Plath describes this state poignantly in many of her poems. How to prepare for such a trial but within the psychic (and physical) cloister? And how responsible is it to expose others, especially innocents, to that crucible? Obviously Plath felt a dissonance between her creative and conventional/biological calling. One feels certain she loved and wanted to protect her children. It seems also true that she feared her calling (as much as she valued it, perhaps) and feared for her children as a result. Jan is right: something had to give. It should come as no surprise that something did.Melissa Dobson
Hobe Sound FLA, USA
Friday, September 29, 2000
Perhaps more unsettling to me than Cressida's ideas of sexual molestation (which she seems to have good-naturedly placed on the back burner) are Elaine's valid comments about the incompatibility of motherhood and a writing life. While a room of her own and a hefty trust fund would be the ideal set-up for most women writers, there are those of us who live from paycheck to paycheck in one-bedroom apartments. We have husbands, babies, and full-time jobs out of the home. We manage to write without the benefit of Cook, Nanny, or even much privacy, for that matter. We write because we have to, Elaine, not because it is comfortable; I am sure that's a compulsion that you know well.
Is there something inimical about motherhood and creativity? Quite possibly, and in most cases something has got to give-- either we don't work as frequently as we'd like to, or we don't mother as well as we ought to, or both. But, on behalf of myself (with a book due for publication) and my much more seasoned writer friends, I feel the need to mention that will has a great deal to do with one's success, as does a willingness to shrug off society's stubbornly archaic views of motherhood. Had Plath been able to do the latter, she might have fared much better than she did.
Jan Watson Collins
New York City, USA
Thursday, September 28, 2000Cressida--- It is offensive to carry on about the possible sexual abuse of Sylvia Plath by her father. Have you any tact? I think it was clear by some contributors to the Forum that the subject is not appropriate, completely speculative and not wanted. If there would not be any evidence, if Plath would not have written about it any where then it is not worth discussing on the Forum (You could perhaps write these theories and queries in your own Journal.) You have ruffled some feathers and dear dear the talons are out.
Peter K Steinberg
Springfield, Va, USA
Thursday, September 28, 2000
Elaine, That was a keen observation about female writers being unable to successfully combine writing with married life and motherhood. Anne Stevensons marriage broke up too when she decided to leave her husband and children for a lover. Enid Blyton seems to have managed it in a fashion, although reportedly she was a very poor mother. She spent her time writing to entertain millions of other children while neglecting her own.One of the points about the possible sexual abuse of Sylvia Plath by her father was that there would NOT have been any evidence. Even Sylvia herself would not have been able to provide evidence to support her story (unless she had a blue dress stashed away in a closet with an incriminating stain down the front,) and nobody in that day and age would have believed her.
Whatever the cause of her rage, as you say it was excessive, but it may all have just come from her mental imbalance with no material evidence for ANY of it.
Cressida Hope-Bunting
Alabama, USA
Thursday, September 28, 2000
Nancy's question of wheather knowing the facts of Plath's life affects a person's reaction to her poetry is a good one. It would seem logical that given the personal nature of the poetry knowing her biography would help in its appreciation. But a case can also be made that it simply gets in the way. As has often been noted Plath was an intuitive poet and her poems are not literal. More seems to be going on in them than can be explained by her external conditions. Or, at least, her emotional responce to her external conditions, as they appear in her poems, can show surprising shifts and amazing transformations. Even her more accessable poems have shades of elusiveness. And among my favorites are her most obscure poems. In the end, it's the language that keeps us going back to them.
In my case, I was aware of Sylvia Plath 'the suicide', before I knew Sylvia Plath 'the poet'. At the time, I assumed the poetry was over-hyped because of her death. It wasn't until I read The Bell Jar and accidentially came across Edward Butscher biography that I was induced to read the poems, and realized how wrong I was. Since then I've followed the controversy surrounding her life. It's a compelling, if tragic, tale. I'm hardly an unbiased observer, or without opinions on the poetry, although I've changed my views--and rechanged them--often enough over twenty five years. However, when I return to the poems, I do it solely to get lost in the words, and under what conditions they were created seems irrelevant.Paul Snyder
New York City, USA
Tuesday, September 26, 2000
Thank you to everyone in the forum for your replies and messages. I think overall Melissa Dobson wins the prize for creativity. The one thing missing in her scene of debauchery was the music (now you KNOW I am a big music fan Melissa). I think perhaps Ravel's "Bolero" would go very nicely with the performance on the couch. I am not much into simulated sex (as per "The artist formerly known as") nor am I very partial to stripping off all my clothes in public (unless everyone else is nude as well).....but, what the heck, if thats what it takes......
You are all invited to my next soiree. Bring you own sleeping bags. :-)Cressida Hope-Bunting
Alabama, USA
Tuesday, September 26, 2000
Cressida, I have always found something rather excessive about Plath's rage in proportion to the life Fate had dealt her. It could be explained by abuse but there's absolutely no evidence that Otto Plath was an abuser.Nancy, the relationship between motherhood and creativity is one I've often thought about, especially as the mother of two children myself. I believe that most major creative/intellectual activities need a great deal of uninterrupted time in which to work. This is a major lack in most mothers' lives as evidenced by Sylvia's constant complaints about the problems of getting and retaining household help. Even if one can hire such asssistance nothing can ever quite replace that handy aid, the wife, which so many male writers have benefited from! Could a woman with ten children have written novels such as Dickens did with his brood?
Of course everyone works differently - Jane Austen could write in small snatches of time, covering up her pen and paper with embroidery whenever anyone entered the room.
With the exceptions of Anne Bradstreet and the novelist Mrs. Gaskell(the latter had servants and presumably Bradstreet did?),I find it significant that most of the major female writers other than Plath and Sexton were either unmarried and/or childless. And they both took their own lives. Could it be that there is something inimical about motherhood and creativity at least in terms of the way our society is currently structured?
Must finish as a plaintive, little voice is crying "Hurry up!"
Elaine Connell
Hebden Bridge, UK
Tuesday, September 26, 2000
Nancy, I did read Plath before knowing anything about her life and the poems surely worked, I know now that I did not understand them all and did not always know which particluar experience she transformed into a poem but they worked the way other poetry has worked for me, I read, combine what I read with my own experience of life and people and I learn something new about myself or the world. It all sounds a bit stupid but in the end this is why people read literature (unless they study it for a degree or write criticism). The poems in Ariel drew me to Plath immediately, there was something about the language that was absolutely beautiful. I also read Winter Trees and Crossing the Water before turning to The Bell Jar. I must say that reading the Bell Jar has helped me to understand some of the obscure references to foetuses in bottles etc. that turn up in Ariel. But on the whole I'd say her poetry can be appreciated without ever reading about her life. The problem! is that once you have read a biography or two and maybe the journals there is no going back to reading the poems without that knowledge.Cressida, sorry if I sounded angry. But I do prefer discussing the poetry to discussing the personality of Plath. If you like The Highwayman - check out Loreena McKennitt's beautiful song based on that poem. If you are looking for poetry that sounds like Highwayman you'd have to look at modern song lyrics, like Suzanne Vega - she tells those sort of stories beautifully, or Leonard Cohen.
As for Plath wearing a mask or not: Of course she wrote from her own experience, yet not every first person poem is a plain retelling of that experience, it's an adaptation of experience, a reworking of it. If you have not yet read her interview with Peter Orr, you should do that. It tells you a lot about her ideas about writing poetry.
Peter, you are really moving to Boston? I must admit, I envy you, I love that city. I'm not sure whether radical surgery really refers to a sex-change operation, I thought it had something to do with an abortion or possibly radical surgery as in breast cancer when the breast needs to be amputated.
Anja Beckmann
Leipzig, Germany
Sunday, September 24, 2000
Cressida, I have another dinner party suggestion for you -- how about reciting "Ariel" in the nude, as a piece of bump-and-grind performance art? You could compensate for there being no bootie in the journals by using the poem to pantomime a sexual climax, using your couch as the galloping stallion -- sort of a literary "When Harry Met Sally" orgasm scene. You could use all that energy generated by fomenting dissension in the Forum to enliven your performance -- imagine the drama you could inject into such lines as "Nigger-eye Berries" and "Dead hands, dead stringencies"! At the end, you could hurl the Janet Malcolm book against the wall for effect, shoot out a red light bulb, maybe have a few of your yoga candles explode. The possibilities are endless. Granted the women "girls" you invited would get angry (then again, maybe not!) but I'd warrant you'd keep a few of those men "boys" in the room!!
Melissa Dobson
Hobe Sound FLA, USA
Sunday, September 24, 2000
Nancy
I can't claim not to have read the biographies, etc.. But I did actually read Plath's poems before I read anything else about her (in 1982). It was a long time ago, but I still vividly remember the force with which they hit me. I particularly remember the intensity of feeling "Three Women" evoked. I can't say I fully understood it, but it was the first poem I ever read which captured some of the complexity of pregnancy, child-bearing, motherhood...Other poems puzzled me so much, I couldn't get any handle on them at all. However, even without knowing what they referred to, I still felt the power of poems like "Elm", "Lady Lazarus", "The arrival of the Bee-box".
I subsequently read "The Bell Jar", but didn't really read much of Plath again until recently when I had to do some work about her. This involved reading up her life - I re-read the poems several times, the Journal, a few biographies - and then got Plathindignestion for a while! But I have just started back again with the poems: I really feel all the other stuff - what she says herself, and what others say, about her peotry - is in some way a distraction.
The poems do stand on their own, even if there are difficulties. I am not sure that what is written about a poem - whether by the author or another - necessarily adds to one's true understanding of what the poem says.
Ann Hyland
Wexford, Ireland
Sunday, September 24, 2000
I'd be interested to hear of any Plath fans who have managed to avoid the biographies (perhaps including "The Bell Jar") altogether. Is her poetry as affecting without knowledge of her childhood, family, marriage, and death?I'll admit that I read Wagner-Martin's biography before delving into the "Collected Poems," so my take on Plath has always been colored by the various renditions of her life.
(I do my best to keep up with the discussions here and am working on formulating a post about motherhood and the creative process. If anyone has more on the ball than I do, please feel free to start this discussion.)
Nancy
Falls Church, Virginia, USA
Saturday, September 23, 2000
Hello,
I am pretty new to the forum and pretty new to Sylvia Plath. I have recently embarked upon an A-level English Literature at my local college. Sylvia Plath's The bell Jar is on our curriculum, could anybody tell me where on the web I could access this work? I would be very grateful to hear from you.
Is there a Sylvia Plath email newsgroup to which I could become a member, as I find receiving news and views via Digest form email easier -and less expensive whilst I am having to pay phone charges currently - to receive.
Thank You for this Forum and I wish you well with its success. I am looking forward very much to studying The bell Jar and indeed learning more about Sylvia, it is so sad why any lovely soul should feel so saddened and despairing to end their life in such a tragic circumstance.
I wish the host of this Forum and all members well. With Kindest regards.Bethany Megan Robinson
County-Durham, England
Saturday, September 23, 2000
I have a question and am hoping that someone or anyone out there will have insight into this thought.
In the Bell Jar, when Esther is with Buddy at the University watching Mrs. Tomolillo give birth, she seems detached from the experience. Yet, Mrs. Tomolillo appears in two other places in the book, particularly later when in the institution. Is Mrs. Tomolillo really there, or did Plath intend for her to be the manifestation of Esther's (and her own) fear of motherhood and dislike for anything maternal?
I'm just looking for a few other perspectives regarding this...any input is appreciated. Thanks!Holly
Washougal, WA, USA
Saturday, September 23, 2000
For what it's worth--since Cressida feels neglected in the male responce to her latest messages--I find her reasons for suspecting sexual abuse unpersuasive given the facts we know, and that it's totally unremarkable that Plath didn't write graphic descriptions of her love making. Like most people, she'd rather do it than write about it. Other than that, what's to say?Paul Snyder
New York City, USA
Friday, September 22, 2000
Cressida, Cressida, Cressida, what are we to do with ye? You plaintively state that your most recent contributions to the Forum have been greeted with silence from the men and anger from the women. Let me be the first to say that I harbor no anger towards you or the theories you've posed; perhaps a little bemused exasperation has cropped up from time to time, but anger is an emotional investment I'd never be willing to make under these conditions.In terms of whether or not the course of Plath's life should determine the way one should read her work, I fall neither in the pro-biographical camps or the anti-biographical camps, but rather in the desolate no man's land where these two readerly approaches intersect. I do think that Melissa Dobson's comments about separating the "dancer from the dance" (elegantly and efficiently put, as usual) have great merit. In the particular and problematic case of Plath, however, it might be somewhat fallacious to think that details of Plath's emotional life do nothing to inform her work. Note that I said "inform" here, and that information is not determination.
It seems to me that the best way to read Plath-- insofar as there can ever be a "best way" to read anything-- is to compare life to art judiciously and sparingly, and to avoid highly politicized ideas about sexual molestation, monomania, whether or not Hughes's adultery "killed" Plath (funny, it didn't work that way for Hilary Clinton), the mother-daughter dynamic, et alia. I do not see how such interpretations will do much to enhance one's intellectual and aesthetic appreciation of Plath's work. More useful questions for the lay reader might be: Who are Plath's models, and how does she expand upon (or even reduce) these influences in her own work? What is her relationship to life and death, and to what effect are these values represented in her poetry?
One other thing. Your estimation of "The Highwayman" as a fine poem that has a "beginning, a middle and an end" leads me to believe that there are some fundamental tenets of poetry that you aren't grasping-- namely, that modern poetry is not MEANT to have a beginning, a middle, and end. To paraphrase Plath, it is the "open-handed" counterpart to "close-fisted" fiction (the latter of which, if we ignore those pesky Postmodernists, always has just the kind of arc you seem to crave).
Your dinner parties do sound delightful. At your next one, why not try singing Emily Dickinson's "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas"? I promise you, this suggestion is better than it sounds.
Jan Watson Collins
New York City, USA
Friday, September 22, 2000Cressida, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath are as complete as they can get. All information, writing, misspelling is in there. Did you bother to read Karen Kukil's Preface to the UK edition?
"The goal of this new edition of Sylvia Plath's journals is to present a complete and historically accurate text. The transcription of the manuscripts at Smith College is as faithful to the author's originals as possible. Plath's final revisions are preserved and her substantive deletions and corrections are discussed in the notes. Plath's spelling, capitalization, punctuation and grammar, as well as her errors, have been carefully transcribed and are presented without editorial comment...."
From what I gather here (pages ix and x in the UK Journals) is that everything is there. If there were passages about sexual intercourse they were torn out by her. Did you read the Paris 1956 Journal in which Plath described a Holocaust of a night with Hughes in London? There are more Journals, yes, but those pre-date these are are held at Indiana University. It is better, I think, to have sex than to read about it.
Peter K Steinberg
Springfield, Va, USA
Friday, September 22, 2000
I announced in one of my first messages in the forum that it was not my intention to cause dissension here, but unfortunately that seems to be what I am in danger of doing. The men "boys" have withdrawn from the subject I introduced without comment, and the women "girls" have become angry.One of the questions I posed, (why Plath did not write about sexual intercourse in her journals,) may have been answered in Silent Women. There is a difference between unabridged and unexpurgated, this recent publication of Plaths journals is unabridged, it does not claim to be unexpurgated. The original publication had been expurgated by Frances McCullough and it seems obvious that the same passages were left out of this version too.
Frances McCullough states in her preface that
"some of the more devastating comments are missing these are marked omission to distinguish them from ordinary cuts and there are a few other cuts of intimacies that have the effect of diminishing Plaths eroticism, which was quite strong".
Personally, (I may be alone here) I think that possible sexual abuse of Sylvia Plath IS a moot question, but in deference to the rest of the forum I am moving on now.
Brad, If John Keats really did say that, I can only think that he did not expect anyone to take him seriously.
Some poets can do that,(wear a mask) but Plath was not one of them. She may have copied Yeats style for symbolism as she copied Saligers style of prose. But everything she wrote was from her own life experiences. My favorite poem The Highwayman, is a complete figment of the poets imagination, a wonderful story, with a beginning, middle and end. A poem I love to recite at the end of a dinner party in winter, with the candles flickering and possibly (ideally) rain, hail or sleet slashing at the windows.
Janet Malcolm states in her book the same thing I felt and wrote on the message board after I had read her journals.
"Had she lived, Plath might have developed into a first rate novelist. The Bell Jar might have been to her mature fiction what The Colossus is to her mature poetry."
And in another part...
"The journals keep forcing us to engage with the idea of what a novelist she might have lived herself into. Hughess idea that Plaths genius for instant confrontation with the most central unacceptable things could find proper expression only in verse is belied by the confrontations that appear in the journals".
Sylvia Plath was only thirty when she died; she had a fantastic talent for description. Janet Malcolm says, "she might have lived herself into". I say, I am SURE (with proper treatment) she would have lived herself into, a GREAT novelist.
Cressida Hope-Bunting
Alabama, USA
Friday, September 22, 2000
Cressida Hope-Bunting, I could not disagree with you more. A poet's work is NEVER him/herself. Poems are always masks, disguises, or pseudo voices no matter how sincere or adherent to biography they seem to be. I think John Keats best put it by saying that the poet was a NOBODY, which is absolutely right.Brad
Oxford, England
Tuesday, September 19, 2000
Matt, I wouldn't call Butscher's interpretation generally accepted. Of course, the horse ride stands for something, what it stands for is not entirely clear from the poem alone, I would say. Ariel has been interpreted as suicidal because in the end the dew drop evaporates in the sun, compared with that Butscher's idea of creation being at the end of the poem is not too bad. For me, this poem is about the release of energy, creative energy, life force, ecstacy. I agree there is sexual imagery in there. But the sperm and egg theory may just be too one-dimensional. I think the poem is very open, allowing the reader to fuse the sense of release of energy it creates with something that is important to the reader.Anja Beckmann
Leipzig, Germany
Monday, September 18, 2000
Melissa, You said it well about the separation of the artist from the art. Let's try and avoid "artistic voyeurism" and concentrate o the poetry. That said, I have read a few interpretations of Ariel, but Edward Butscher, in "Method and Madness," writes (pg. 378) that the poem has generally been misconstrued by A. Alvarez and others. Butscher writes, "Ariel must be read as an allegory...which uses the sperm cell as its major metaphor. It's fierce flight towards the ovary is parallel to the gallop of a runaway stallion." Butscher then substantiates his assertion with a line by line analysis showing various sexual metaphors. E.g. "Stasis in darkness" represents the quietude of waiting for the sperm to be released from the testicle. Is Butscher's interepretation generally accepted? If so, it will certainly shatter my view of one of my favorite poems. I have noticed that Butscher sometimes seems a bit too creative in some of his Plath poem analyses.Matt Paldy
NYC, USA
Monday, September 18, 2000
Cressida, the "silence" in the wake of your victim-theory posting may have been due to simple disinterest. So much has been theorized and speculated about Plath's life, and all the pundits out there seem to be in possession of a kind of clairvoyance with respect to her, but in the end, their comments almost always say more about themselves than about Plath. And in a forum such as this, one would hope and expect, the focus inevitably returns to the poetry, which is the proxy in this court of guilt or innocence, and always comes down on the side of neither or both. You can't separate the poet from the poetry, it may be true, but the poetry is what speaks now. Plath, as the late great Lowell attested, is dead, but "language never dies in her mouth." Isn't the poetry interesting enough, graphic enough, angry enough, moving enough, screaming enough, alive enough for you? You can't separate the dancer from the dance, it is true, but you miss the performance when you gaze ! up at the ceiling and wonder what the prima ballerina ate for breakfast. Ya know?Melissa Dobson
Hobe Sound FLA, USA
Sunday, September 17, 2000
I just received word from a friend that the October 2000 edition of Vanity Fair magazine has an article called something like Sylvia Plath's Lost Golf Journals. Apparently it reads something like this: "Caddy, Caddy, you bastard, ...." Should be interesting. This article must be coming out now because of the near publication of the American edition of the Journals. I only hope that other magazines are more careful.
Last weekend I was in Boston (I'm moving there in early October) and I met the owner of Anne Sexton's house in Newton Lower Falls, right on the Wellesley town border. The house is a nice periwinkel/purple color. And she confessed to having an old tree removed. I also paid a visit to Lookout Farm (now called Marino's Lookout Farm, South Natick) about three or four miles from Wellesley center. The barn that Sylvia Plath must've been the barn that Ilo kissed Plath in still sits in the middle, with the fields surrounding in every direction. (See the Journals pages 8-12). I also visited Swampscott where Sylvia cared for the Mayo children durning the summer of 1951. (See pages 67 and on). The house at 144 Beach Bluff Avenue is just as Plath described it 49 years ago. That amazes me. The second floor balcony-porch still looks over a long green lawn to a road and to the sea beyond. My last stop on my way out of town was to Wellesley High School (formerly Bradford Senior High Sch! ool). The library is called the Wilbury Crockett Library...Mr Crockett being the influential English teacher Plath had. Just inside the library door, above you to the right, is a little dedication written by Plath. I am not sure when it was written, but I do plan to find out. You can
read it here
And finally, a question. I was reading 'Elm' (April 1962) on the train from work the other day and the lines: "I let her go. I let her go / Diminished and flat, as after a radical surgery." stuck in my head to know end. Plath's usage of the word 'flat' as in 'Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices' (March 1962)has been to describe men. Do you think, can you agree with me, that this 'radical surgery' is a sex-change operation?Peter K Steinberg
Springfield, Va, USA
Sunday, September 17, 2000
"I teach high school level American Literature. I always begin any study of Sylvia Plath by warning the students not to fall into the trap of romanticizing Plath into a tragic suicide case who death was only preceded by a life full of twisted, dark, masochistic suicidal thoughts. Has anyone out there read her letters? A whole, complex, delightful, intelligent, unusual person comes to life in them".Dear T. One cannot separate the work from the person. Sylvia Plath's work WAS herself. She had trouble relating to anyone or anything else except what gave her pleasure or pain.
The split-personality she portrayed is certainly not uncommon in American society. We are RAISED to be hypocritical. (That in itself does not indicate madness). We are taught to smile, smile, SMILE. Smile though our hearts are breaking. The brave tough face Sylvia portrayed after kicking Ted out of the house was a FRONT. Her real self was screaming her agony in her poetry. Her letters were deliberately upbeat to make people believe she could cope, but her reactions were beyond normal, her extreme sensitivity was all part of her gift. She could see and feel things others could not, and had the gift and ability to describe everything in such a way that thousands have been able to identify with her pain.
Once again I am at varience with Jan. After reading "Silent Women" and the first person account of Trevor Thomas, (The man who lived downstairs at Fitzroy Road,) I have stuck with my first opinion formed after reading her journals, that she killed herself because of Ted Hughes' unfaithfulness. Apparently Thomas had told this story countless times (as anyone would) and according to his friend Robbie the story never varied. The image of Plath the night before she died had been burned into his memory (after all he nearly died too). Thomas said, "When I tell you the story now. I see her standing there, I'm opening the door. There she is. Tears streaming down her face. She is all red eyed. Her hair looks awful. 'I'm going to die. Who will take care of my children?" Thomas asked her in and offered her a drink. He said that she was "fiercly angry with an intensity that was quite alaming as she punched clenched fists up and down, "It's that awful woman's fault," she said, "She stole him. We were so happy and she stole him away from me. She's an evil woman, a scarlet woman, the Jezebel. They're in Spain spending our money, my money. Oh! How I hate them!"
I agree that her ability to write upbeat letters was all part of her gift and the Sylvia Plath personality. She went through periods of great elation (as manic-depressives do) she was able to fool people to save face the way alcoholics do; but her happy elated moods cannot be separated from the whole person. She was complex, gifted and mentally ill. No normal person commits suicide, I think you should make sure to tell your students that.
Cressida Hope-Bunting
Alabama, USA
Monday, September 11, 2000
I always begin any study of Sylvia Plath by warning the students not to fall into the trap of romanticizing Plath into a tragic suicide case who death was only preceded by a life full of twisted, dark, masochistic suicidal thoughts - see poem analysis page "Cut" to read this contribution in full
Cressida, I don't know why other people did not respond to that suggestion regarding incest but I assumed it was written by you in the same joking vein as all the other stuff had been written but nobody wanted to take up joking on that one. I did not believe you to be serious, I still don't. Sure, it is not possible to rule it out but it is equally impossible to prove and it is quite futile to discuss what could have been as we can't ask any of the people who were involved. I didn't enjoy the discussions that tried to define what particular mental illness Sylvia Plath was possibly suffering from and I wasn't going to start one on what else might have been wrong with her. Because, for me, this is all beside the point.As for why she didn't write about sex in her diary, maybe she didn't want to, maybe it wasn't worth writing about, maybe she did and later ripped out the pages. We don't know. I see quite a lot of sexual images in her poetry. Not many people write about the actual act even though many people write a lot and certainly also have sex a lot.
Anyway, if you feel you should explore this idea and try to get a PhD from Yale for it, good luck to you. Maybe E. Method'n Madness Butscher will help you.
Anja Beckmann
Leipzig, Germany
Tuesday, September 12, 2000
Does anyone have an information on Plath's poem 'Blackberrying?' I haven't been able to find much on it (articles, essays, etc.) I was just wondering what the general perception of the poem is.Ella Cornell
New York City, USA
Tuesday, September 12, 2000
I love Sylvia Plath's work and the Forum has been very helpful to me in my 11th grade English 3 Honors class. This site is wonderful, it has helped me to better understand Sylvia Plath's poetry and to find a fascination or a respect for her work. I do, however, wish that there was a discussion on Sylvia's poem 'Lady Lazarus'. I would like to see peoples' views on that one. It is a very complex poem and I love it but have yet to figure it out. Once again, thank you.Aleigh
Lexington, NC,, USA
Monday, September 11, 2000
We would be happy to create an analysis page for Lady Lazarus as soon as someone starts us off - EC
I didnt know what to make of the silence in the forum following my musing on sexual molestation. It could have meant that aspect has been thoroughly discussed already and dismissed as unlikely. It could have meant that none of you wanted to be the first person to open that particular can-of-worms. It could have meant that it had never entered your heads and you had all been stunned into shocked silence. Or it could mean that to put forward such an idea is a kind of sacrilege and better left untouched.
I was about to add as a follow up, that incest was never even spoken about openly until the late 1970s (early 80s as Jan mentioned) almost 40yrs after Otto Plath died. As with homosexuality earlier The love that dare not speak its name, it would have been such a terrible thing to confess (and who would have believed her anyway, - her father was a highly respected university professor) so she buried it so deeply even her psychiatrist could not extract it from her?
Number 10 on my list of arbitrary clues was missing and of course is the most important. Her suicide.
The rejection by Richard Murphy (Bitter Fame Ap.111) to her advances just a few months before her death could have had a profound effect on her. The one thing she had been sure of all her life besides her gift was her sexual attraction to men. Now she had lost her husband to another woman and her first attempt to fill his place with a new romantic lover in Ireland had been met with a rebuff. Even being liked for the wrong reasons was failing to work.
However difficult the task may be for lesser mortals, I do not agree that Sylvia Plath was incapable of writing about sexual intercourse. I refer you to her description of rain (P. 123) The Journals of Sylvia Plath UK edition, her description of The Band Concert (P.128) and the vivid description Peter treated us to earlier, of her picking her nose. She may have had other reasons for not wanting to document this experience other than repression or denial but it certainly was not from lack of ability.
Now dont get me wrong hereI am merely curious as to WHY she did not write about this. It is not that I want to know the details, how, where, etc. This is not the kind of reading I relish, (except when I was about 13yrs old and a dog-eared copy of Lady Chatterleys Lover with passages heavily underlined in red was passed around under the desks at school. You see D.H. Lawrence managed to write about it Jan).
Cressida Hope-Bunting
Alabama, USA
Monday, September 11, 2000
I agree that the father figure in Plath's poems is a fabrication, and fantasy, on her part. Aurelia started to notice a deterioration in the health of her husband when Sylvia was three years old, which means her memories of her father were that of a sick, and, as it turned out, a dying man. And yet she looked upon her childhood as a special period in her life. In some ways, Plath is an American Proust, someone constantly drawn back trying to recapture a magical, and possibly a wholly imagined, lost time. She ended her memoir, Ocean 1212-W, written only months before her death, this way:"And this is how it stiffens, my vision of that seaside childhood. My father died, we moved inland. Whereon those nine first years of my life sealed themselves off like a ship in a bottle--beautiful, inaccessible, obsolete, a fine, white flying myth."
Paul Snyder
New York City, USA
Thursday, September 7, 2000
I agree with Jan: I think that in the Ariel poems, Plath conjures a fantasy of paternal connection that was denied her at a formative time; her explicit use of Freudian constructs seems to argue against the sexual-abuse-victim theory. I think this language must be seen in the same light as her appropriation of Holocaust imagery, which is without biographical antecedent. The fantasy of paternal connection finds its true form in the Plathian tyrant boot, ironic compensation for the poems' greatest threat: a "heaven starless and fatherless," amounting to cosmic abandonment. Better to live (and wrail against)life as as a foot in such a brute shoe than to trip the light fantastic in a podiatric vacuum.
As for the lack of sexual blow-by-blow in the journals -- I find this a curious criterion for sexual health. But as always, I would refer -- and defer -- to the poetry, which has a sexual cadence perhaps unmatched in twentieth-century poetry. See the syntactic climax effected in the title poem of Ariel, for example. See also Birthday Letters, where Hughes evocatively conveys a sexual--as well as psychic and linguistic--branding by the ever estranged, piston-in-motion Plath.
Melissa Dobson
Hobe Sound FLA, USA
Thursday, September 7, 2000
While the angels of my better nature tell me I oughtn't tackle the most recent revisionist theory-- Plath as Sexual Abuse Victim-- it is too rich and tempting for me to leave alone, and I am feeling unaccountably weak today.Cressida, your checklist of traits exhibited by a sexual abuse victim coheres with the latest thinking. Unfortunately, this "latest thinking" reflects the sad crossover between cultural myth and clinical psychology that began to rear its head in the early 1980's, when victimhood became -de mode- for would-be patients and the psychiatrists who serve them. The same acquisitive impulse that leads the Herr Doktors of the world to assign the symptomology of readily classifiable victimhood to its patients has afflicted popular thinking and, by extension, affected the way some of us choose to read literature. Where the bee sucks....
No one will ever know for certain if Plath suffered sexual abuse at the hands (much less the bean-fingers) of her father, but I, for one, would be inclined to dismiss this interesting suggestion. The poet's job has always been to turn microcosmic events into macrocosmic ones (though the inverse principle seems to be at work among the students cranked out of today's writing workshops). My sense-- and this is only a sense, mind you-- is that Plath had little or no relationship with her father, sexual or otherwise, and later came to regard this absence as out-and-out negligence and betrayal-- a view that rings through the "Ariel" poems and elsewhere. Her lack of attachment to Otto Plath took on its own revisionistic spin-- one which would have great metaphorical significance and would be aggressively expanded upon during the last year of her life, after the departure of Ted Hughes.
As for the question of why Plath never wrote graphically about her sexual experiences-- Cressida, I don't know if you've ever done any creative writing, but as one who has taught both fiction and nonfiction, I can assure you that sex is a subject about which one can almost never write well. The results become pedestrian and rather ludicrous even in the hands of the most competent stylist. Plath, who was as adept with an arresting image as anyone, helpfully supplied us with plenty of references to Ted's "banging virility" and "groaning giantism", and left those of us with a scatological bent to imagine the rest.
Jan Watson Collins
New York City, USA
Wednesday, September 6, 2000
Hello "Australia"I read your contribution with interest. I found myself nodding in agreement with most of the points made. Plath the poet has always interested, although until recently I confined myself to those of her poems which I found most accessible. However, recently I have started reading those poems I avoided before. I find her challenging and wonderful.
I have also been asked to do some work which requires me to study her life story - something I generally eschew with writers I like. I find it a distraction. Reading a couple of the books (some of them recommended on this site) purporting to be accurate accounts of her life is pretty confusing. Going from Paul Alexander, Linda Wagner Martin and Janice Markey to Anne Stevenson is an object lesson in how facts can be quoted to support any point of view.
I have just completed the Journals, and I felt much as you describe - a sense of intruding on areas of someone's life which should be totally private. The way her writings have been used to vilify (or sanctify) her is incredible. And the vilification (or sanctification) of Ted Hughes seems to be de rigueur also. It is as if most of these writers don't allow people to be people, dealing with the human condition in the best way they can - not always well, but equally not always badly.
I am grateful to those who contribute to this page: I find the discussions here enjoyable and informative. And thanks also to Elaine for maintaining it. Yours is the next book on my reading list!
Last point - almost everything I read by or about Sylvia Plath leaves me with a sense of loss. The world of "might-have-been" is always seductive, but in this case I really wish........
Ann Hyland
Wexford, Ireland
Wednesday, September 6, 2000
Hello EveryoneHaving watched with interest the lively discussion posted on this forum since I discovered it a few months ago, I just can not resist adding my two cents - again!
But first may I just say how much I enjoy this site. Living in a rural area can, I am finding, sometimes be an isolating experience - especially intellectually, so it is wonderful to have found a place where I can observe and participate in discussions and debates concerning the work of Plath who has long been one of my favourite poets. Elaine you have my admiration and gratitude for the effort you so obviously put into maintaining this site.
I have noticed that a number of recent posts (many dealing with the new edition of Plath's journals) have touched upon the eternal debate over Plath's personality (Sylvia the wronged vs Sylvia the tyrannical) No doubt this is an area that will continue to stir the hearts and minds of Plath scholars for many years to come, but I can't help noticing that the discussion of these issues inevitably tends to organise itself into two opposing camps. Based on the reading that I have done so far, which has by no means been comprehensive, I believe that Sylvia - like the rest of us - was a very complex individual who had her good and bad points, and whom it is impossible to catergorise in either a wholly positive or negative light.
Unfortunately much of the academic and biographical discourse on Plath so far has been tainted somewhat by rhetoric that has bordered on the histrionic and/or vindictive (the Merwin memoir is a prime example of this) so we are left with a situation where scholars and enthusiasts are encouraged to 'take sides' in the Plath/Hughes domestic tragedy and in the process the value of both poet's work is sometimes lost.
Cressida, for someone who has not read the work of Plath you have made some very interesting observations (you also sound very pleasantly situated on your couch with your accumulating stack of books!). I was particularly interested in your comments about the two journal entries from Plath's honeymoon that express such dramatically differing states of mind. You ask 'what happened to throw her to the opposing extreme in a matter of hours?' Good question, but not one, I don't believe, that any one other than Plath herself (or perhaps Hughes) could answer with any degree of certainty.
These passages and the way they have been used by Anne Stevenson in 'Bitter Fame' highlight the problematic nature of the use of Plath's journals. I was given a copy of the new unedited version as a gift (at my own request) but so far have been unable to read only small sections as everytime I delve into the text I am overcome by a squeamishness at being privy to Plath's private thoughts and emotions. I don't deny that I have on occasion felt a certain voyeuristic interest in the more scandalous and sensational details of Plath's personal life, but I can not overcome the guilty knowledge that the text contained within Plath's journals was not written for publication. Therefore, while I acknowledge the value of the Journals in perhaps shedding light on Plath's artistic motivation and inspiration I don't believe that they can be taken as the last word on Plath as a person or as an artist. The only text I have read that I felt came to grips with the issues surrounding the Pl! ath/Hughes biographical enterprise was Janet Malcom's 'The silent woman' which demonstrated how subjective the whole art of biography actually is. Malcom's assertion that Plath can be seen as 'kind of allegory of the problem of biography in general' is particularly relevant to the recent discussion sparked by Cressida's reaction to reading Plath's journals.
Cressida if you do get the chance to read 'The Silent Woman' after you finish 'Bitter Fame' as Jan has suggested I would be very interested to hear your reaction to the issues raised by Janet Malcom and the way in which it changes (or perhaps reinforces) any conclusions you may have drawn about Plath and Hughes from 'Bitter Fame'
Shelley
Australia
Monday, September 4, 2000
The Theme & Version book is a rare find Paul, you're right. I found my copy at the Camden Town markets in London. The book was edited by one Anthony Rudolf and the contributing essays are by Yves Bonnefoy, Audrey Jones (illustrations) and Daniel Weissbort. Weissbort was the Cambridge friend of Hughes, and aldo a co-founder/contributor of the illustrious Saint Botolph's Review. The book was pubslished in 1994 and does contain information about an American distribution (SPD Inc in Berkeley, Ca).Peter K Steinberg
Springfield, Va, USA
Sunday, September 3, 2000
While I don't always agree with Steward's assessments, I'll take his word regarding "Ariel's Gift", and add it to my list of books purchased but never read. The last thing I need is a rehash of the same old, same old.Sylvia seems to be having a bad few weeks. At various times-by my count--she been accused of being a serious mental case, a plagiarist, a jealous nagging wife, the darling of feminists, the goddess of PMS, a so-so poet, and an all-around egotist. Do I detect a slump?
For those interested in Plath, the artist, I recently came across (at the main NY Public Library)a small publication called, Theme and Version: Plath and Ronsard. It was published by The Menard Press in England, and may be difficult to find.
It contains Plath's Cambridge translations of Ronsard poems, and has three accompanying essays. I was rushing at the time and didn't have time to get the names of the contributors. I don't think the essays add much to Plath's biography, but I still found them revealing. The first essay was written by someone who knew Plath at Cambridge (and remarkably doesn't have anything negative to say about her). He's now a professor in the field of translations, and gives Plath high marks for her efforts. He believes she probably had the talent to make translating a career. Why Ronsard? We already know she loved Paris, and apparently believed she was temperamentally closer to the French than her ancestral Germans. According to the contributor, her French was almost accent free. Hey, that's our girl! The second essay was written by the woman illustrator who provided four illustrations for the book. She writes about the difficulties she had in reconciling the three viewpoints she had to consider, Ronsard's, Plath's, and her own. I think I got the gist of it, but don't quiz me. I'll have to return at a later date to read the third essay. It's about Ronsard, a French renaissance poet I know nothing about.
Paul Snyder
New York City, USA
Saturday, September 2, 2000
Camille, Yale?, Stewart, Berkeley? Are you serious? Both my parents and grandparents met while at Berkeley, while the family is filled to gills (even owning property in the hills above) with alumni and academics, teaching and otherwise. I hope you find what you are in fact seeking. I do know it is not as simple as such a planal thesis (pun non-intended), but should atleast be original. I'm going to save you some time and perhaps serious choice-making while proffering support; The topic (i.e., menstural) has already been achieved several times. Have you not actually checked Disertation Abstracts? Some of the indices or pocket parts to the more scholarly Feminist journals? International?
As for Paglia a scholar? Are you serious? First you need to know how to write before developing digressive arguments masking personalized politics (Yale by way of SUNY....)
Recognition without attention (are they different?); Try Salinger (Plath did in fact steal from him, "It was a queer summer, the summer they killed the Rosenburgs..." etc.). Attention of mother from a compulsive-obsessive. Perhaps. An insistence on making everyhting a struggle and an infatuation with the mere facile publishing for publishing sake, quite another.
You may find you are simply in it for the wrong reasons; intent arrives at perfection, not practice alone; If you know less than you understand. (ergo, you may actually know little). Good Luck Stew and Camille; Qaulity without wanting massive recognition or attention but only good works and intention? I am such a person. I'll prove it ADIOS AMIGOS!!!!!!!!!
Jack Schaaf
Falls Church, USA
Saturday, September 2, 2000
My God, Jack Folsom, you’re right, I should drop Yale like a hot potato. Besides, first I need to learn to spout Greek -- I wonder if there are any rooms to let in Falls Church?
Have a good Labor Day, all you Amurcan Plathies! I’m off to McLean for some much needed shock treatments!
Stewart Clarke
NYC, USA
Saturday, September 2, 2000
Jack Schaaf, I went to Oxford (the other blue school). Da mihi mutuum testimonium.What do you think of the idea (which is mine at the moment since I have not read anything anywhere else to support it) that Sylvia was sexually assaulted by her father, as a child? It would explain a lot of things wouldnt it?
1) Her hatred for her mother
2) Her love/hate feelings for her dead father.
3) Her need to replace him with a strong father figure (Ted Hughes)
4) Her promiscuity
5) Her sense of guilt and self-abasement. (Will I ever be liked for anything other than the wrong reasons)
6) Her lifelong penance to her mother.
7) The way the root of her problems was always blocked in her mind.
8) Her stunted psychological maturity, always referring to herself as a girl. (What can I do to sift out grown self from contracted baby feelings)
9) Her escape into madness.How can one know for sure what Sylvia Plath meant to convey in her poems? The answer is one can never be sure unless she left a prose gloss on her poems and even then she may not have been able to tell you the meaning she packed into her verse in the heat of composition, or care to be conscious of what her subconscious did. Some of her work however, is as transparent as glass; The Bell Jar and Azalea Path for instance, and The Fifty Ninth Bear story which upset the family and friends of Ted Hughes; while other aspects of her work, her poems particularly are so ambiguous and surreal.
Sylvias rage at her fathers death, (Ill never speak to God again) and getting her mother to sign a declaration that she would never remarry, was extreme and unnatural, and the fact that it took her 19 years after his death to visit his grave for the first time.
Sylvia was supposedly a virgin until she was turned 20 but all that abnormal bleeding when she first attempted intercourse could that have been an old wound opening up again? According to Sylvia her mother did not love her father, so there was probably not much sex there. What do you think Sylvia meant when she wrote the barely disguised incestuous lines in The Beekeeper's Daughter
Sat by my fathers bean tree
Eating the fingers of wisdom.In her journals, Sylvia describes in detail every bodily function except what it feels like to make love with a man. For a person with such hypersensitivity one would think that love making would have been an earth shattering experience, (or at least, earth-moving,) but she does not mention anything at all about making love with Ted Hughes for the first time. Or any other man for that matter.
OK. Jack F.. Ive braced myselfIm holding on to a sturdy piece of furniture!
Cressida Hope-Bunting
Alabama, USA
Friday, September 1, 2000
I think I should advertise that Ann Skea has started writing her book on
'Birthday Letters' and chapters can be read at http://ann.skea.comShe knows about Cabbalism and the Tarot which seem to have been very important
to Ted Hughes and affected both the writing and organistation of the book.
Well worth keeping an eye on.And regarding 'Ariel's Gift' I found it pretty much a waste of time.
Douglas Clark
Bath, USA
Friday, England 1, 2000
I have to agree with Stewart that Ariel's Gift is not a serious discussion of the poetry, instead it is a summary of it's background and it links Hughes' poems with those Plath wrote. But I have to give credit to the book for making me sit down for two days to read BL from beginning to end, which I had not been able to do before. And this was a most haunting and intense experience.
As for the comment on Plath wanting the recognition as a writer rather wanting to be a writer, I think this could appear so because she felt she needed to justify her decision against a "proper job" with recognition, she wanted to make money with her writing in order to tell her mum "look here, I made the right decision, and you were wrong to tell me I needed short-hand and secretarial skills". Maybe she also needed the recognition to prove to herself that she was indeed right in her choice. I think that very few people are so convinced of themselves that they don't need recognition by others.
Regarding Dido Merwin's "memoir" - this is so extremely spiteful that you wonder what made her write it, what made her share her hatred with the rest of the world. If you read Meeting Ted Hughes by Carolyne Wright you will see that he said: "But she wasn't so difficult, not at all". He gazed down into the river water, with what looked like a fond, rueful smile. "Actually, she was quite cheerful, bright, even a bit - how too say this - diffident? She always went along with what others wanted. Only when jealous was she difficult - she'd fly into a rage, become almost someone else. " So maybe there was some jealousy indeed.Anja Beckmann
Leipzig, Germany
Friday, September 1, 2000
Stewart, in my haste to praise Cressida as a promising critic of the Neo-Deconstructionist School, I neglected to mention that Destructionist criticism is also now in vogue. Surely your seminal work on the ecstasies of Camille Paglia, now sure to be surpassed by your manifesto titled "Sylvia Plath: The Poetry of Menstruation," will earn you good repute as a destructionist. But a post at Yale? Leave that to Cressida, old buddy. Only Berkeley, with its highest-rated English department, is good enough for the likes of you! Moreover, you will find the Bay Area climate more salubrious than grimy, gritty old NYC.Jack Folsom
Sharon, Vermont, USA
Wednesday, August 23, 2000
I very much agree with Stewart's assesment of "Ariel's Gift" by Erica Wagner. I found very little of the book to be something new, or something I did not already figure out via discussion or reading. The original articles in the The Times of London where basically elaborated on, if not out and out copied and pasted, copied and pasted, copied and pasted. It's worth is no doubt important at the moment, or for the beginner or the curious. Wagner and the publishers were bloody genius to publishi n conjunction with The Journals in the UK. As the first book about Birthday Letters, there leaves so much room for improvement. I am curious to read the biographies of Ted Hughes that are currently being written by noted Sexton biographer Diane Wood Middlebrook and others. Like the first Plath biographies (the torturous Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness for example) we have hope and faith that the Anne "Bitter Fame" Stevenson of Birthday Letters will one day be read.Peter K Steinberg
Springfield, Va, USA
Friday, September 1, 2000
The composition on the "use of blood" in feministic literature (there is ample more in "male" lit., if there be such a thing), reminds me of a curious story, as retold by its author. Seems Ellman was on leave from OSS during WWII when he took time out to visit Yeats' house in order to aquire some first-hand knowledge bits of material for his curious little book (see; Yeats; The Man and the Mask). When meeting his window, who maintained the working library in immaculate condition -its letters and corredenda wrapped in ribbons- she, who claimed to be picking up scraps like a hen, was asked what exactly he meant by blood in the moon in one of his poems (It may have been "Second Coming" or "The Tower"). Was this modelled, Ellmann asked, upon the mestral cycles, etc? Oh dear no, he wouldn't have known of such thngs or even dared to apply them in such a manner (or somethn to that effect as a response.
Be careful: the last thing you want to do is force an interpretation however unique it may seem. While I know your field may rely heavily upon appeasing and making endemnification to the MLA mafia for developing such ridiculous and digressive workable topics (as e.g., "Henry James Under garments: the Disrobing of the Mystique in Literary Convention of the Victorian Period," "Surface Tension and Elasticity in Flatland: A Geodisic Paradigm for a Qualitative Interpretation of Time and Space"), you'll find it safer to stick to a track which is less idio than broad in scope.
Plath, by the way, was very subsumed by effect and the appearance of words (particularly titles) on the page itself, "The Yew Tree" "Medusa" "White Godess" etc., (trust me, while she read Yeats and Graves,no one will today defend the latter as anthropoligist or in some instances, poet) Image over substance is like being wed to one era; you end up being a widow in the next. So be careful. I enjoyed Plath's efforts, just not her intent or the phoniness to her claims the world was filled with phoniness (see e.g., her literal theft from Mr. Salinger for her "Bell Jar" as well, her Letters in this regard).
As for Yale: Unless you have an extensive background (i.e., academic record) in the antiquity of Latin, Greek, and probably prep school background, you may find it hard to share a cup of tea on the quad with Mr. Kegan. Don't envy the tower; work with good intentwith firsthand experience and knowledge and the quality of the work itself.Jack Schaaf
Falls Church, USA
Friday, September 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.
