Sylvia Plath

I first became interested in Sylvia Plath while I was studying Ted Hughes during sixth form. A small group of us got together over the upper sixth autumn term, and took extra classes. The classes (and occasionally the fellow students) were pretty horrific, symptomatic as they were of a pushy, aggressive syllabus and school that didn’t really give two hoots for installing a love of poetry in us but instead just cared that we should be able to impress the dons and the deans at our upcoming university interviews. Our after school classes often felt like scenes from The History Boys - the endless stuffing us with tidbits of knowledge to impress the scholars on the most anodyne of levels. A bit like this:

Anyway, I digress. We were sat reading Ted Hughes one November evening. We looked at Birthday Letters. Birthday Letters is a collection that Hughes wrote about his relationship with Plath, from the first time he ever saw her photograph, to his feelings about her death. In his poem, ‘The Earthenware Head’, Ted accuses Sylvia:

‘You ransacked Thesaurus in your poem about it’

(The ‘your poem’ is Plath’s own poem, ‘The lady and the earthenware head’, to which this poem is Hughes’ response.)

This line jumped out at me immediately. First, the awkwardness of it. Secondly, and more importantly, it was one of the first lines of Great Poetry TM that ever really made sense to me. You know this idea that great literature is that which jumps off the page and into your mind, expressing already something so clear, so perfect, that no intellectual filtration is required? Well reading this line was one of the first times I ever felt that way. Sadly I still don’t have a huge amount of time for poetry - when done well, it is outstanding - yet it is so often done badly, to my mind. But I have plenty of time for Plath, because of her crystal clear expression, combined with - despite? - the sophisticated complexity of her thought. 

I also love the accusatory tone of the line. You, grafting your little poem, he seems to be saying. You’re not the effortless poet you’ve gone down in history as: you’re a human and you need help and reference books too, and you have to slog like the rest of us. But at the same time, it’s an admission of her wonderful writing and her ability to pick exactly the right words, clauses, phrases to make her meaning. ‘Make’ it - poetry doesn’t always spring from nowhere and arrive on the page in a perfect series of metaphors and rhymes - it is hard, hard work.

Sylvia, had she not killed herself aged 30, would have turned 80 this month (October 2012) - something I only learnt when reading Stylist’s feature on her. I have tried to find other mainstream UK publications that ran anything on Plath this month, but with no luck. Which is a sad thing, but cheers to Stylist for being a lone voice nonetheless. (I have commented before on these very pages about how much I like Stylists’s book pages...and here’s my evidence!)

I liked that, unlike many articles about Plath - indeed, unlike this one - the author waited until the second paragraph at least to talk about Hughes. Sure, you can still read Hughes without needing to read Plath, but I don’t think you can read Plath without knowing something, at least, of her relationship with Hughes. I’m sure most people are familiar with their story, but for those who aren’t: Brilliant Young Things meet at Cambridge - fall madly in love - write poetry to each other endlessly - get married - a few years go by - he starts an affair - she leaves and moves away - she moves back - she kills herself - he marries the woman he had an affair with - she later kills herself, too - he becomes public hate figure, a reputation that, to me, he has never really been able to shake off. (Here is a good piece on the death of his second wife.)

The article trots through Plath steroetypes rather in the style of my previous sentence, but one paragraph did especially catch my eye though:

In 2001, Professor James C Kaufman did indeed find a link – naming it the ‘Sylvia Plath effect’. He conducted a study of 1,629 writers, which revealed that poets and in particular, female poets, are more likely to exhibit symptoms of mental illness. In a second study of 520 high-profile American women, he again found that poets were more likely to have mental disorders than women of other professions such as journalists, politicians and actresses. “I think the same things that make people sensitive to problems in their life can also give people the kind of life insight that leads to being more creative,” says Professor Kaufman. “So the same factors that were ultimately personally harmful to Plath may have enriched her poetry.” For much of her life, Plath was able to balance depression and creativity, though there was clearly a connection between her periods of great productivity and her darkest hours.

It is very rare to find this sort of evidence-based research in women’s magazines, or literary papers. Although the research is very old, I’m glad to see it feature at all. And I think it adds a certain weight to what otherwise risks being a piece of quite flimsy journalism. Stereotypes around female poets - that they are mad, bad, angry wimmin - abound, and while I definitely disagree with that crude characterisation, it’s good at least to see that some people out there are willing to acknowledge in a non-sensationalist way the relationship between mental illness and creativity. It is the glamourisation of this link between mental illness and creativity that is crass. The cracks may be necessary to let the light in, but let's not pretend the cracks are craic.

The elevation of Plath as Crazy Woman Supreme really annoys me: I find it belittling. Her work is stronger than her subsequent sterotyping. And although I’m glad to Kaufman for having done the work he has, even just giving his findings the name ‘the Plath effect’ perpetuates the myth that Plath is The Be All And End All of mad female poets.  Which leads us to a situation like this one:

Person 1: Name a mad female poet.

person 2: Plath.

Person 1: Name a mad female poet

person 3: Oh, er, I’ve heard of Plath? I’ll say Plath. Yes, Plath.

person 1: Name a mad female poet

person 4: I’ll have what they’re having...Plath.

So the story perpetuates itself at the cost of learning more about the topic (Kaufman studied 520 ‘high-profile’ American women, and yet we can only name....one) and at the same time, belittles Plath’s story to generic narrative. 

(Yes, this is just a close-up of a section of the above image....but isn't it great?)


In 2001 the film Sylvia was released. Sylvia was played by Gwneth Paltrow, one of my favourite actressses, and Ted by Daniel Craig. Could a hotter couple grace our screens or our pages? I think not. I adore this film, but sadly my response is a minority one: the generally-quite-reliable Rotten tomatoes gives it just 37%, and it was slated by critics. I really do not know why. To me, the film is beautifully shot, and perfectly-paced. The opening scenes are among the films best, for their verve, brightness and charm, and they remind me of the very first poem in Birthday Letters, ‘Fulbright Scholars’. 

Fulbright Scholars

Where was it, in the Strand? A display
Of news items, in photographs.
For some reason I noticed it.
A picture of that year’s intake
Of Fulbright Scholars. Just arriving -
Or arrived.  Or some of them.
Were you among them?  I studied it.
Not too minutely, wondering
Which of them I might meet.
I remember that thought.  Not
Your face.  No doubt I scanned particularly
The girls.  Maybe I noticed you.
Maybe I weighed you up, feeling unlikely.
Noted your long hair, loose waves -
Your Veronica Lake bang.  Not what it hid.
It would appear blond. And your grin.
Your exaggerated American
Grin for the cameras, the judges, the strangers, the frighteners.
Then I forgot.  Yet I remember
The picture : the Fulbright Scholars.
With their luggage?  It seems unlikely.
Could they have come as a team? That’s as I remember.
From a stall near Charing Cross Station.
It was the first fresh peach I had ever tasted.
I could hardly believe how delicious.
At twenty-five I was dumbfounded afresh
By my ignorance of the simplest things.

There are so many things about this poem I love. I love his description of her smile - the most wonderful smile in literature, of that I have no doubt: the smile that launched a thousand agonies, too, sadly. This scene is a clever inversion of the traditional ‘boy meets girl’ formula - instead, it becomes ‘boy can anticipate only one thing for his future - the girl’: the line is the moment, but the sensation is the future, only the future. The moment, for all its profundity, slips away in recognition of the amazing future that is soon to begin. 

The peach image is beautiful: so refreshing and lively, that I can feel my lips sink into the fleshy fruit as I type this. And I love the final lines: ‘at 25 I was dumbfounded afresh by my ignorance of the simplest things’. I think of that line frequently - being a young, easily dumbfoundable sort of girl - but I think it’s a line that can resonate with anyone, at any age - as the best poetry does.