Born: 27 October 1932, United States
Died: 11 February 1963
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
The following (also here)is republished with permission from the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail.
Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) was a poet and novelist. Her novel, A Bell Jar, and volumes of poetry were published during her lifetime and she was awarded a Pulitzer Prize posthumously for her collected poems. Plath and her husband, the English poet Ted Hughes, lived at this address in 1958, during which time she took Robert Lowell’s class at Boston University and met Anne Sexton in that class. She also worked part-time transcribing patient records at Massachusetts General Hospital. Plath was born in Jamaica Plain, moved to Winthrop and then Wellesley with her family. She graduated from Smith College and studied in England where she met Hughes. They married in 1956 and had two children.
Plath’s poetry, characterized by its intense emotion and stark imagery, garnered widespread acclaim. After her suicide at age 30, she became an icon, especially in the 1970s. Her book Ariel is one of the best-selling poetry volumes of the 20th century. Plath was married to English poet Ted Hughes, and they had two children together. Her work continues to influence and resonate with readers worldwide.
The following was written by Claire Vega for iFeminist and is republished with permission.
Sylvia Plath was born on October 27, 1932, in Boston, Massachusetts, to Otto Plath and Aurelia Schober—a German immigrant professor and his student. For the first two years of her life, Plath grew up in the suburbs of Boston until her brother, Warren, was born. Then, the family moved to Winthrop, just east of Boston. Here, Plath grew deeply connected to the ocean and grew a fondness for the natural world, which she would write about later in her career. After her father’s death when she was eight, her remaining family moved to Wellesley, Massachusetts, for more affordable living conditions. Her father’s death would later appear in her poems, as she grew to resent him for leaving when she was young, complicating all her relationships with men.
Only about a year after her father’s death, Plath began to gain recognition for her literary potential. Plath sent a letter to The Boston Herald that read, “Dear Editor: I have written a short poem about what I see and hear on hot summer nights,” and it was published that Sunday, August 10, 1941. Her desire to share her work with the world began when she was young, and did not cease as she grew older. She sold her first poem to The Christian Science Monitor and her first short story to Seventeen magazine. Throughout her life, she continued to be published in Seventeen. One of her most notable works run in Seventeen was the first one accepted into the magazine: “And Summer Will Not Come Again.” This short story was accepted during her senior year of high school and follows the lives of two children, Anne and Peter during the summer. Through their conversations, the fleeting nature of youth and the concept of lost innocence remain true, potentially mirroring Plath’s own feelings as she was on the brink of ending high school and pursuing adulthood.
Plath entered Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, as a scholarship student in 1951 and co-won the Mademoiselle magazine fiction contest the following year. The next summer, she received a coveted editorship position at the same magazine. Despite her academic and career success, Plath began to endure a losing battle with her mental illness and survived a suicide attempt with sleeping pills when she was 20. She was treated in a psychiatric ward with electroshock therapy, a painful procedure still used today. Plath recounts her experiences through another person’s perspective in her most famous novel, The Bell Jar.
The Bell Jar (1963) follows the life of the main character, Esther Greenwood, a scholarship student in New York who aspires to become a poet. Like Plath, Esther experiences immense success yet feels unfulfilled, eventually spiraling throughout the novel. The reader gets a detailed look into the life of a woman who begins to lose herself. Esther then survives a suicide attempt and is treated with electroshock therapy. The novel mirrors Plath’s life so closely that it is now considered semi-autobiographical.
After recovering from her hospitalization, Plath returned to Smith College and graduated with the highest honors in 1955. She decided to continue her education after receiving a grant to study at Cambridge University in England, where she met her future spouse, Ted Hughes. Their courtship was chaotic, and the whirlwind of their love led to their marriage in 1956. Both aspiring poets, they shared their work with each other in hopes of achieving greatness. However, mundane life caught up with Plath. In 1957, after moving to the U.S. together, Plath took up a job at her alma mater and found it difficult to find time to write, which strained her mental health. The couple eventually moved back to England, where they had two children and experienced a miscarriage, which inspired several of Plath’s poems.
Hughes and Plath split in 1962 after his affair with another woman, leaving Plath with two children. Later that year, Plath experienced a creative breakthrough, writing at least 26 of the poems she is best known for. In January of 1963, Plath discussed her most recent depressive episode with her general practitioner, who then prescribed her antidepressants. Unbeknownst to the doctor, Plath had a bad reaction to these pills when she lived in America, but they were under a different name in England. A month after these pills were prescribed, Plath was found dead in her kitchen by her live-in nurse after another suicide attempt.
Sylvia Plath was a visionary, a successful and intelligent woman whose immense literary talent continues to captivate readers, even though she could never truly find happiness in her own life. Her eccentric writing style, blurring the lines between fiction and the reality of her own life, invites readers to explore the depths of her mind, creating a personal, lasting connection between reader and author. Her legacy endures, not just from the talent of her writing but the insights she lends on the human condition, mental health, and feminism.