Emma Kenney

Sylvia Plath was born in Boston, Massachusetts on October 27, 1932 to Otto Emil Plath and Aurelia Schober Plath. Her brother Warren was born roughly 3 years later in 1935. Plath grew up Winthrop, Massachusetts, located near Boston. Her father worked at Boston University in Boston until his health began to drastically decline leading to his death shortly after Plath’s eighth birthday. The man had thought he was dying of lung cancer, but he had actually died due to diabetes, something which could have been treated and managed with relative ease.

Shortly after the death of Otto Plath, Aurelia Plath moved Sylvia and Warren to Wellesley. This would be Plath’s home from the time she was ten until the time she left for college. After the move, Plath became an exceptional student, having all “A”s but especially excelling in her English courses. The girl’s first poem was published in The Boston Herald in 1941 after the death of Otto Plath when she was only eight. Plath eventually received a scholarship to an all-girls college called Smith College. The college was located relatively close to home, in Northampton, Massachusetts. She continued to write poetry during this stage of her life, though not much of it was published. Though Plath had the technical skill of a successful writer, she had yet to figure out what it was exactly she was trying to say. The stress of trying to maintain the exceptional grades she had gotten before college also affected the quality of the poems and stories Plath produced during these years of her life.

However, by 1953 Plath was well on the track to becoming a successful author. Her works were published in magazines and newspapers alike, such as The Christian Science Monitor and The Daily Hampshire Gazette. Eventually Plath’s writing earned her a guest editor position for a magazine in New York City over the summer. She stayed with a few other women at an all-women hotel in the city, which she wrote about in her novel The Bell Jar. That summer was incredibly difficult for the young woman, and it ultimately did her more harm than good. Plath had been hoping to be accepted into a writing program at Harvard and was devastated when she got the news she had been rejected. This, among other things, led to the woman being physically and mentally drained and eventually having a mental breakdown. Plath returned home in a much worse state than the one she had been in when she had left for New York City only a few months prior. She wrote she could barely sleep or write or even read, though her mother says one of the only things she did was read. Eventually, Plath decided to try to commit suicide. She left a note for her family telling them she was going for a walk, but in reality the girl took a glass of water and a bottle of sleeping pills into a crawl space in the house and attempted suicide. The young woman was found two days later still living but not in good health. She was admitted at McLean Hospital in Belmont where she was treated by Dr. Ruth Barnhouse Beuscher. Though it was hard, Plath would eventually recover and be in good enough shape to go back to Smith College for the spring semester.

Things began to look up after Plath returned to college. She met a man named Richard Sassoon, and the two eventually became lovers. Her grades were once again outstanding, despite everything she had experienced that past year. Plath reapplied for Harvard’s summer program, and this time the young woman was accepted into it. That summer she shared an apartment in Massachusetts with a woman named Nancy Hunter-Steiner, who was also in Harvard’s summer program. Plath returned to Smith College the following year, where she continued to excel. Her honors English thesis was superb, and after the woman graduated she received a scholarship to attend Cambridge in England the following year. Plath returned home for the summer and eventually ended things with Richard Sassoon, saying she preferred to see what kind of men England had to offer her.

Though Plath had been thrilled to be able to attend a university as highly renowned as Cambridge, the woman was in for a rude awakening when she arrived. Plath had not realized how hard it would be to be an American in the midst of British students. She spent her first few weeks in England simply sightseeing before she arrived at Cambridge for the school year. Her first disappointment was the fact her dorm was at the very back of the university. However, Plath soon fell in love with the campus and all it had to offer her. Plath soon realized the British education system was incredibly different from that of America and struggled to adjust to the new way of academics she was being forced to experience. Eventually the woman found a mentor and got used to the new system of college. She ultimately found she had an easier time at Cambridge than she did during all her years at Smith College in the United States. This caused Plath to decide to join something called the Amateur Dramatics Club, which was basically a small theater program for college kids at Cambridge. While she was participating in this club Plath received a small role as a clinically insane poet.

Eventually Sylvia Plath got back together with Richard Sassoon, who was staying in Paris at the time. The two spent their winter vacations together in Paris and other parts of Europe. However, shortly after Plath returned to Cambridge Sassoon wrote to her and requested they take a break in their relationship for a while. Plath soon fell into a horrible depression caused by this breakup and the fact she hated the harsh winter she was experiencing in England. On top of this depression, Plath was ill quite frequently that winter and even ended up with a splinter in her eye. Plath eventually decided to see a psychiatrist named Dr. Davy after it got to be too much for her to handle on her own. The young woman was furious at Sassoon for breaking up with her and was desperate to find someone who would love her at all.

After she left her appointment with Dr. Davy, Plath purchased a literary journal and read poems by a man named Ted Hughes. She quickly found out about a party being held for the poet at the Falcon Yard that night. Plath went to the party with a date, but she promptly ditched him and began looking for Ted. The two found each other, and Plath recited some of poems she had memorized only hours earlier. Hughes was impressed by this, and the two began dating soon after the party. Plath even went on spring break with him that year.

The next year Plath moved in with Hughes instead of staying on campus at Cambridge. Eventually, in 1956, the two married without informing Ted’s family. Plath continued to study at Cambridge until 1957 when the two decided to move to America. By this point, Hughes’s parents knew about the marriage, and Ted’s mother decided to have a party for the couple where the two made lots of new connections. They had both been continuously writing up to this point, and they both continued to do so after. They were given many new opportunities for people to read and experience their works.

Plath took a job teaching, but she found it so much harder than she had originally thought, and her depression began coming back again. She eventually quit her teaching job and went back to writing poetry, but things continued to get harder for her. Her health began to get bad again around Christmas, and she was bedridden for weeks. After that, she began fighting with Ted. It is rumored the man began beating her around this time period. Shortly after, the two had their first child named Frieda. Plath became pregnant again later, but that pregnancy resulted in a miscarriage. Plath got pregnant a third time and give birth to a son. Plath and Ted eventually divorced and Plath moved away with the children. She continued to write frequently throughout this time until her death.

On February 11, 1963, Sylvia Plath used a gas oven to kill herself, first making sure to seal off the door between her and her children and make sure her neighbors weren’t home. Her death was determined to have been a contemplated suicide, with too much detail and thought having gone into it for it to have been a spur of the moment choice. Plath’s depression plays heavily into her image today, and leaves her one of America’s most famous poets.

Bibliography

Beckmann, Leipzig Anja. “Sylvia Plath (1932-1963).” Sylvia Plath Homepage. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Feb. 2017. <http://www.sylviaplath.de/&gt;.

Steinberg, Peter K. “Biography.” Sylvia Plath. N.p., Dec. 2007. Web. 09 Feb. 2017. <http://www.sylviaplath.info/biography.html&gt;.