Sylvia Plath Essay

Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 – February 1 1, 1963) was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born In Boston, Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge, before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer. She married fellow poet Ted Hughes in 1956 and they lived together first in the united States and then England, having two children together, Frieda and Nicholas. Plath suffered from depression for much of her adult and in 1963 she committed suicide. 2] Controversy continues to surround the events of her life and death, as well as her writing and legacy.

Plath is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for her two published collections, The Colossus and Other Poemsand Ariel. In 1982, she won a Pulitzer Prize posthumously, for The Collected Poems. She also wrote The Bell Jar, a semi- autobiographical novel published shortly before her death. Plath was born on October 27, 1932, in the Massachusetts Memorial Hospital, in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood. [4] Her mother, Aurelia Schober Plath (1906- 1994), was a first-generation American of Austrian descent, and her father, Otto Plath (1885-1940b was from Grabow, Germany.

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Plath’s father was an entomologist and was professor of biology and German at Boston university; he also authored a book about bumblebees. On April 27, 1935, Plath’s brother Warren as born[4] and In 1936 the family moved from 24 Prince Street In Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, to 92 Johnson Avenue, Winthrop, Massachusetts. [81 Plath’s mother, Aurelia, had grown up in Winthrop, and her maternal grandparents, the Schobers, had lived in a section of the town called Point Shirley, a location mentioned in Plath’s poetry.

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While living in Winthrop, eight-year-old Plath published her first poem in the Boston Herald’s children’s section. [9] In addition to writing, she showed early promise as an artist, winning an award for her paintings from The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards in 1947. 10] Otto Plath died on November 5, 1940, a week and a half after Plath’s eighth of complications following the amputation of a foot due to untreated diabetes. Raised as aunltarlan Christian, Plath experienced a loss of faith after her father’s death, and remained ambivalent about religion throughout her Ilfe.

He was burled In Winthrop Cemetery; visiting her father’s grave prompted Plath to write the poem Electra on Azalea Path. After his death, Aurelia Plath moved her children and her parents to 26 Elmwood Road, Wellesley, first nine years “sealed themselves off like a ship in a bottle—beautiful inaccessible, bsolete, a fine, white flying College years [edit] Plath attended Bradford Senior High School (now Wellesley High School) in Wellesley, graduating in 1950. [4] Smith College, in Northampton, Massachusetts In 1950, Plath attended Smith College and excelled academically.

She wrote to her mother, “The world is splitting open at my feet like a ripe, Juicy watermelon. “[13] She edited The Smith Review and during the summer after her third year of college Plath was awarded a coveted position as guest editor at Mademoiselle Magazine, during which she spent a month in New York City. 4] The experience was not what she had hoped it would be, and it began a downward spiral. She was furious at not being at a meeting the editor had arranged with Welsh poet Dylan Thomas”a writer whom she loved.

She hung around the White Horse bar and the Chelsea Hotel for two days hoping to meet Thomas, but he was already on his way home. Many of the events that took place during that summer were later used as inspiration for her novel The Bell Jar. [1 5] During this time she was refused admission to the Harvard writing seminar. [13] Following electroconvulsive therapy for depression, Plath made her first edically documented suicide attempt in late August 1953 by crawling under her house and taking her mother’s sleeping pills.

She survived this first suicide attempt after lying unfound in a crawl space for three days, later writing that she “blissfully succumbed to the whirling blackness that I honestly believed was eternal oblivion. “[4] She spent the next six months in psychiatric care, receiving more electric and insulin shock treatment under the care of Dr. Ruth Beuscher. [4] Her stay at McLean Hospital and her Smith scholarship were paid for by Olive Higgins Prouty, ho had successfully recovered from a mental breakdown herself.

Plath seemed to make a good recovery and returned to college. In January 1955, she submitted her thesis The Magic Mirror: A Study of the Double in Two of Dostoyevsky’s Novels and in June, graduated from Smith with highest honors. [17] She obtained a Fulbright scholarship to Newnham College, Cambridge, in England, where she continued actively writing poetry and publishing her work in the student newspaper Varsity. At Newnham, she studied with Dorothea Krook, whom she held in high regard. [18] She spent her first year winter and spring holidays traveling around Europe.

Career and marriage [edit] Plath’s stay at McLean Hospital inspired her novel The Bell Jar In a 1961 BBC interview (now held by the British Library Sound Archive),[19] Plath describes how she met Ted Hughes: I happened to be at Cambridge. I was sent there by the [US] government on a government grant. And I’d read some of Ted’s poems in this magazine and I was very impressed and I wanted to meet him. I went to this little celebration and that’s actually where we met… Then we saw a great deal of each other.

Ted came back to Cambridge and suddenly we found ourselves getting married a few months later… We kept writing poems to each other. Then it Just grew out of that, I guess, a feeling that we both were writing so much and having such a fine time doing it, we decided and world-wanderer” with “a voice like the thunder of The couple married on June 16, 1956, at St George the Martyr Holborn in the London Borough of Camden with Plath’s mother in attendance. Plath returned to Newnham in October to begin her second year.

In early 1957, Plath and Hughes moved to the United States and from September 1957 Plath taught at Smith College. In the middle of 1958, the couple moved to Boston. Plath took a Job as a receptionist in the psychiatric unit of Massachusetts General Hospital and in the evening took creative writing seminars given by poet Robert Lowell (also attended by the writers Anne Sexton and George Starbuck). Plath and Hughes first met the poet W. S. Merwin, who admired their work and was to remain a lifelong friend.

Plath resumed psychoanalytic treatment in December, working with Ruth Beuscher. [4] Chalcot Square, near Primrose Hill in London, Plath and Hughes’ home from 1959 Plath and Hughes travelled across Canada and the United States, staying at he Yaddo artist colony in New York State in late 1959. The couple moved back to the United Kingdom in December 1959 and[22] lived in London at 3 Chalcot Square, near the Primrose Hill area of Regent’s Park. Their daughter Frieda was born on 1 April 1960 and in October, Plath published her first collection of poetry, The Colossus.