SYLVIA PLATH - CONTEXTUAL INFORMATION

FAMILY
1. MOTHER - Aurelia Schober
  1. master’s student at Boston University when she met Otto Plath
  2. a second-generation American of Austrian descent
  3. (1906–1994)
  4. 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.
2. FATHER - Otto Plath
  1. Aurelia's master's professor
  2. Otto taught both German and biology, with a focus on apiology, the study of bees
  3. Otto Plath died on November 5, 1940, a week and a half after Plath's eighth birthday,of complications following the amputation of a foot due to untreated diabetes. He had become ill shortly after a close friend died of lung cancer.
  4. He had been a strict father, and both his authoritarian attitudes and his death drastically defined her relationships and her poems—most notably in her elegaic and infamous poem "Daddy."
  5. (1885–1940)
  6. Comparing the similarities between his friend's symptoms and his own, Otto became convinced that he, too, had lung cancer and did not seek treatment until his diabetes had progressed too far.
  7. Her father was buried in Winthrop Cemetery, Massachusetts. A visit to her father's grave later prompted Plath to write the poem Electra on Azalea Path.
  8. After Otto's death, Aurelia moved her children and her parents to 26 Elmwood Road, Wellesley, Massachusetts in 1942.
3. DAUGHTER - Frieda Plath
4. SON - Nicholas Hughes
COLLEGE YEARS AND DEPRESSION
1. In 1950, Plath attended Smith College and excelled academically.
2. She wrote to her mother, "The world is splitting open at my feet like a ripe, juicy watermelon".
3. Many of the events that took place during that summer were later used as inspiration for her novel The Bell Jar. During this time she was refused admission to the Harvard writing seminar.
4. Following electroconvulsive therapy for depression, Plath made her first medically documented suicide attempt in late August 1953 by crawling under her house and taking her mother's sleeping pills.
  1. 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."
    1. She spent the next six months in psychiatric care, receiving more electric and insulin shock treatment under the care of Dr. Ruth Beuscher.
  2. Her stay at McLean Hospital and her Smith scholarship were paid for by Olive Higgins Prouty, who had successfully recovered from a mental breakdown herself.
  3. 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.
5. She obtained a Fulbright scholarship to study at Newnham College, one of the three women-only colleges of Cambridge University 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.[16] She spent her first year winter and spring holidays traveling around Europe.
CAREER & MARRIAGE
1. TED HUGHES
  1. Plath first met poet Ted Hughes on February 25, 1956, at a party in Cambridge.
  2. "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 that this should keep on."
  3. Plath described Hughes as "a singer, story-teller, lion and world-wanderer" with "a voice like the thunder of God".
  4. The couple married on June 16, 1956, at St George the Martyr, Holborn with Plath's mother in attendance, and spent their honeymoon in Benidorm, Spain.
  5. Plath returned to Newnham in October to begin her second year. During this time, they both became deeply interested in astrology and the supernatural, using Ouija boards.
  6. N early 1957, Plath and Hughes moved to the United States and from September 1957 Plath taught at Smith College, her alma mater. She found it difficult to both teach and have enough time and energy to write and in the middle of 1958, the couple moved to Boston.
  7. Plath took a job as a receptionist in the psychiatric unit of Massachusetts General Hospital and in the evening sat in on creative writing seminars given by poet Robert Lowell (also attended by the writers Anne Sexton and George Starbuck)
    1. Both Lowell and Sexton encouraged Plath to write from her experience and she did so. She openly discussed her depression with Lowell and her suicide attempts with Sexton, who led her to write from a more female perspective.
      1. Plath began to conceive of herself as a more serious, focused poet and short-story writer
        At this time 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.
  8. Plath and Hughes traveled across Canada and the United States, staying at the Yaddo artist colony in Saratoga Springs, New York State in late 1959.
    1. Plath says that it was here that she learned "to be true to my own weirdnesses", but she remained anxious about writing confessionally, from deeply personal and private material.
  9. The couple moved back to England in December 1959 and[ lived in London at 3 Chalcot Square, near the Primrose Hill area of Regent's Park, where an English Heritage plaque records Plath's residence.
  10. In 1961, the couple rented their flat at Chalcot Square to Assia and David Wevill. Hughes was immediately struck with the beautiful Assia, as she was with him. In June 1962, Plath had had a car accident which she described as one of many suicide attempts. In July 1962, Plath discovered Hughes had been having an affair with Assia Wevill and in September the couple separated.
  11. Beginning in October 1962, Plath experienced a great burst of creativity and wrote most of the poems on which her reputation now rests, writing at least 26 of the poems of her posthumous collection Ariel during the final months of her life.
    1. In December 1962, she returned alone to London with their children, and rented, on a five-year lease, a flat at 23 Fitzroy Road—only a few streets from the Chalcot Square flat.
    2. William Butler Yeats once lived in the house, which bears an English Heritage blue plaque for the Irish poet. Plath was pleased by this fact and considered it a good omen.
FINAL DEPRESSIVE EPISODE & DEATH
1. The nurse was due to arrive at 9:00 the morning of February 11, 1963, to help Plath with the care of her children.
  1. Upon arrival, she could not get into the flat, but eventually gained access with the help of a workman, Charles Langridge. They found Plath dead of carbon monoxide poisoning with her head in the oven, having sealed the rooms between her and her sleeping children with wet towels and cloths.
  2. At approximately 4:30 am, Plath had placed her head in the oven, with the gas turned on. She was 30 years old.
2. In January 1963, Plath spoke with Dr. John Horder, her GP and a close friend who lived near her. She described the current depressive episode she was experiencing; it had been taking place for six or seven months.
  1. While for most of the time she had been able to continue working, her depression had worsened and become severe, "marked by constant agitation, suicidal thoughts and inability to cope with daily life."
  2. Horder prescribed her an antidepressant, a monoamine oxidase inhibitor, a few days before her suicide. Knowing she was at risk alone with two young children, he says he visited her daily and made strenuous efforts to have her admitted to a hospital; when that failed, he arranged for a live-in nurse.
    1. Commentators have argued that because antidepressants may take up to three weeks to take effect, her prescription from Horder would not have taken full effect
  3. Plath struggled with insomnia, taking medication at night to induce sleep, and frequently woke up early. She lost 20 pounds. However, she continued to take care of her physical appearance and did not outwardly speak of feeling guilty or unworthy

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