Sylvia Plath: A Life

A speech written by
Catherine Collie
 The Sylvia Plath that we’ve been sold is nothing short of a tragedy; a haunted poet
who, from her pain and solace, birthed hundreds upon hundreds of literary masterpieces, a
cheated wife who was driven mad with anguish and rage and despair; a lonely woman,
trapped within the confines of her never-ending darkness with no way out.
But the real Sylvia Plath was–and is–so much more than the circumstances under which her
life ended; she is much more than the sum of the parts we’ve been shown. To know her, we
must stop reading her life backwards and tell her story in full.

Plath was born on October 27 in 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts, to Otto and Aurelia
Plath. Her father, Otto, died on the 5th of October in 1940 due to an untreated diabetes and a
leg amputation. Both his authoritarian attitudes and his death deeply influenced Sylvia’s
relationships and her poems.

Even in her youth, Plath was ambitiously driven to succeed. Plath published her first
poem at the age of eight in The Boston Traveler—this was the trigger for what would
become a life-long love affair with writing. From then on, she continued to be published in
regional magazines and newspapers throughout her teenage years. Shortly after graduating
from high school in New England, she published her first national piece in The Christian
Science Monitor and even through surviving a deep depression and a second suicide
attempt—with the first happening a couple years before when she was a teenager—she
graduated summa cum laude from Smith College in 1955.
After graduation, Plath moved to Cambridge, England, on a Fulbright Scholarship. In early
1956, she attended a party and met her soon-to-be husband, Ted Hughes; the couple
married shortly after, on June 16, 1959.

Sylvia returned to Massachusetts in 1957 and began studying with Robert Lowell.
Her first collection of poems, Colossus, was published in 1960 in England, and two years
later in the United States. She returned to England, where she gave birth to her children
Frieda, in 1960, and Nicholas, in 1962.
 According to Plath herself and others who were close to her during her lifetime,
Plath was at her best when she wrote—she felt her most creatively fulfilled. It was more
often that the trials and tribulations of life—especially those that came once she entered
marriage and motherhood—got in the way of her writing and her creative expression, that
her depression worsened. If she wasn’t happy, she couldn’t work.

To outsiders, Hughes and Plath’s marriage might’ve seemed picture-perfect, but this
was far from true. Hughes’ infidelity was brought to light, tearing apart their union; while
many believe this to be the cause of Plath’s suicide, further analysis of the writer’s journal
entries and letters left behind show Plath to be actually relieved upon the first day of their
separation. No longer being held back and forced into the role of doting wife, Plath now
had more time to herself and to most importantly, focus on her craft and write; Plath’s
looming divorce brought forth a burst of ideas and creativity, which led to the creation of
what would become her next work, Ariel, which was published posthumously. Though
Plath’s work is best described as surreal, the poems in Ariel are some of the only insight
historians have into Plath’s mindset leading up to her untimely death.

In 1963, during one of the worst English winters on record and one of her worst
bouts of depression, Plath wrote a note to her downstairs neighbor instructing him to call
the doctor, barricaded herself in the kitchen away from her children, and turned on the gas
oven. She died of carbon monoxide poising.

Despite all that happened in her life, describing and analyzing Plath’s poetry as
merely “biographical” is a lazy, irresponsible, and uninformed assumption. Experts and
fans describe Plath’s writing as sharp, fresh, passionate, witty, and provocative—this is
evident in pieces outside of her renowned poem, Daddy, and of course, her only novel, The
Bell Jar (published in 1963, months before her death). Her work, which often centered
around her fascination with womanhood, pleasure, sexual intercourse, and pain, was more
than poetic cries for help or auto-biographical pieces detailing her life’s suffering. If
anything, her poetry showcased how aware she was of her stance in this world, especially
as a revered, female poet.
 Due to Ariel’s posthumous publishing, Plath’s work was not released to the public
in the initial order that she intended. Because her divorce was not yet finalized at the time
of her death, Hughes was in control of Plath’s estate and had the final say on the editing
and publication of her final materials; it’s believed that Hughes’ manipulation and poor
management of Plath’s texts, which included two of her last journals (one that he lost and
one that he burnt) and the original manuscript for Ariel, helped continue the shallow
characterization of Plath that has defined her whole career and life until this very day.
Plath had intended for Ariel to tell the story of her survival, even ending the collection with
the poem Wintering, which, in turn, ended with the word “spring”. While her wishes were
not fulfilled, I believe that we now have the opportunity to honor them and end her story
the way she intended all along.
 Wintering
Sylvia Plath

This is the easy time, there is nothing doing.

I have whirled the midwife's extractor,
I have my honey,
Six jars of it,
Six cat's eyes in the wine cellar,

Wintering in a dark without window

At the heart of the house
Next to the last tenant's rancid jam
and the bottles of empty glitters ----
Sir So-and-so's gin.

This is the room I have never been in

This is the room I could never breathe in.
The black bunched in there like a bat,
No light
But the torch and its faint

Chinese yellow on appalling objects ----

Black asininity. Decay.
Possession.
It is they who own me.
Neither cruel nor indifferent,

Only ignorant.
This is the time of hanging on for the bees--the bees
So slow I hardly know them,
Filing like soldiers
To the syrup tin

To make up for the honey I've taken.

Tate and Lyle keeps them going,
The refined snow.
It is Tate and Lyle they live on, instead of flowers.
They take it. The cold sets in.

Now they ball in a mass,

Black
Mind against all that white.
The smile of the snow is white.
It spreads itself out, a mile-long body of Meissen,

Into which, on warm days,

They can only carry their dead.
The bees are all women,
Maids and the long royal lady.
They have got rid of the men,

The blunt, clumsy stumblers, the boors.

Winter is for women ----
The woman, still at her knitting,
At the cradle of Spanish walnut,
Her body a bulb in the cold and too dumb to think.

Will the hive survive, will the gladiolas

Succeed in banking their fires
To enter another year?
What will they taste of, the Christmas roses?
The bees are flying. They taste the spring.