BIOGRAPHY: Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)
Sylvia Plath was an American poet best known for her novel 'The Bell Jar,' and for her poetry collections Colossus and Ariel. Colossus (1960) was the only book that was published in her lifetime.
The natural world features heavily throughout, Plath's energetic language formed into unorthodox lines that create tension and disturbance for the reader. As always there are great internal rhymes and rhythms in the mix, reflecting the poet's own unsettling energy.
Early Life
Plath was born on October 27, 1932, in Boston, Massachusetts. Plath was a gifted and troubled poet, known for the confessional style of her work. Her interest in writing emerged at an early age, and she began by keeping a journal. After publishing a number of works, Plath won a scholarship to Smith College in 1950.
While she was a student, Plath spent time in New York City during the summer of 1953 working for Mademoiselle magazine as a guest editor. Soon after, Plath tried to kill herself by taking sleeping pills. She eventually recovered, having received treatment during a stay in a mental health facility. Plath returned to Smith and finished her degree in 1955.
Relationship and Published Poetry
A Fulbright Fellowship brought Plath to Cambridge University in England. While studying at the university's Newnham College, she met the poet Ted Hughes. The two married in 1956 and had a stormy relationship. In 1957, Plath spent time in Massachusetts to study with poet Robert Lowell and met fellow poet and student Ann Sexton. She also taught English at Smith College around that same time. Plath returned to England in 1959.
A poet on the rise, Plath had her first collection of poetry, The Colossus, published in England in 1960. That same year, she gave birth to her first child, a daughter named Freida. Two years later, Plath and Hughes welcomed a second child, a son named Nicholas. Unfortunately, the couple's marriage was falling apart.
Death
After Hughes left her for another woman in 1962, Plath fell into a deep depression. Struggling with her mental illness, she wrote The Bell Jar (1963), her only novel, which was based on her life and deals with one young woman's mental breakdown. Plath published the novel under the pseudonym, Victoria Lucas. She also created the poems that would make up the collection Ariel (1965), which was released after her death. Plath committed suicide on February 11, 1963.
Legacy and Movie
Much to the dismay of some admirers of Plath, Hughes became her literary executor after her death. While there has been some speculation about how he handled her papers and her image, he did edit what is considered by many to be her greatest work, Ariel. It featured several of her most well-known poems, including "Daddy" and "Lady Lazarus." He continued to produce new collections of Plath's works. Plath won the Pulitzer Prize in 1982 for Collected Poems. She is still a highly regarded and much-studied poet to this day.
The story of Plath — her troubled life and tragic death — was the basis for the 2003 biopic Sylvia starring Gwyneth Paltrow in the title role.
SOURCE: Biography.com Editors (2020), Sylvia Plath Biography, The Biography.com website, A&E Television Networks, URL: https://www.biography.com/writer/sylvia-plath
Related Links
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| Sylvia Plath | Poet and Criticism | About the poet |
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| The Legacy of Plath | Plath: Importance to Literature | Plath: Profile of Poetic Icon |
Videos
Sylvia Plath
When a lot of people think about Sylvia Plath, they think about her struggles with mental illness and her eventual suicide. Her actual work can get lost in the shuffle a bit, so this video really tries to focus on the poetry. You'll learn about Sylvia Plath's role as a feminist poet, and you'll also learn about her extraordinary ability to recreate the experiences of real life in beautiful and relatable way.
SOURCE: Crash Course Literature 216 (2014), The Poetry of Sylvia Plath, Duration: 11:17 mins; URL: https://youtu.be/iJn0ZPd6mYo
Why Should You Read Sylvia Plath
Explore the haunting and intimate works of poet Sylvia Plath, who digs into issues of mental health, trauma and sexuality in works like “The Bell Jar.”
SOURCE: Iseult Gillespie (2019), posted on YouTube by TedEd, Duration: 4:45 mins; URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCWl8ZIgCHk
A Poet's Guide to Britain: Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath is one of the most popular and influential poets of recent history but her poetry is often overshadowed by her life - the story of her marriage to Ted Hughes, her mental health problems and her tragic suicide at the age of 30. A rich and important area of her work that is often overlooked is the wealth of landscape poetry which she wrote throughout her life, some of the best of which was written about the Yorkshire moors.
Sheers explores this rich seam, which culminated in a poem called Wuthering Heights. It takes its title from Emily Bronte but the content and style is entirely Plath's own remarkable vision of the forbidding Pennine landscape. Sheers visits the dramatic country around Heptonstall where the newly-married Plath came to meet her in-laws, a world of gothic architecture and fog-soaked landscapes, where the locals have a passion for ghost stories that connect directly with the tales that were told in the kitchen of the Bronte parsonage. His journey eventually leads out onto the high moors and the spectacular ruin known as Top Withens. Here amongst the wind and sheep 'where the grass is beating its head distractedly', Plath found the material for some of her most impressive writing.
SOURCE: ABC2 (2009), posted on YouTube, [28:45 mins.] Rated: PG, URL: https://clickv.ie/w/32wp
Click on the image above to access the video "Sylvia Plath."
Sylvia Plath’s status as a major American poet has been obscured by her reputation as a martyr, a victimized woman whose tragic life finally ended in suicide. Nevertheless, there are many who insist the poems in her posthumously published volume, Ariel, represent the most dazzling and productive short period of writing since Keats. In this verse, it is argued, Plath fully realizes the Keatsian sense of the sweetness of death–a longing to be swallowed up by something greater than oneself, to become part of the eternal.
SOURCE: Voices and Visions series (1988), Produced by the New York Center for Visual History. [Duration: 56:45 mins], video available from Annenberg Learner, URL: https://www.learner.org/series/voices-visions/sylvia-plath/
Quotes about Death by Sylvia Plath
#1: “Daddy I have had to kill you. / You died before I had time-”
- Poem: Daddy (1962)
- Techniques: Metaphor, emotive language
#2: “At twenty I tried to die / And get back, back, back to you”
- Poem: Daddy (1962)
- Techniques: Repetition, allusion, sorrowful tone
#3: “A vice of knives”
- Poem: Nick and the Candlestick (1962)
- Techniques: Symbolism, allusion
#4: “The last of Victoriana”
- Poem: Nick and the Candlestick (1962)
- Techniques: Cultural allusion, historical allusion, metaphor
#5: “Is it ugly, is it beautiful?”
- Poem: A Birthday Present (1962)
- Techniques: Juxtaposition, rhetorical question
#6: “When I am quiet at my cooking I feel it looking, I feel it thinking”
- Poem: A Birthday Present (1962)
- Techniques: Personification
#7: “But my god, the clouds are like cotton/ Armies of tem. They are carbon monoxide”
- Poem: A Birthday Present (1962)
- Techniques: Simile, metaphor, juxtaposition
#8: “Let us eat our last supper at it, like a hospital plate”
- Poem: A Birthday Present (1962)
- Techniques: Biblical allusion, simile
#9: “White as babies’ bedding and glittering with dead breath”
- Poem: A Birthday Present (1962)
- Techniques: Symbolism, paradox
#10: “If it were death I would admire the deep gravity of it, its timeless eyes”
- Poem: A Birthday Present (1962)
- Techniques: Metaphor, dark imagery, emotive language