A Research Paper On Sylvia Plath

It’s inevitable that if you mention Sylvia Plath in a group of people, someone will say “Isn’t that the lady who killed herself by sticking her head in an oven?” She lives on in infamy for her last act, and because of this the rest of her life is constantly overlooked as insignificant. But Sylvia was more than the woman who sealed her two children in their bedroom and let the gas fumes from her stove kill her. She was an amazing author; a mother; an award winner; and someone who, despite her tragic end, spent her life trying to be okay. Sylvia Plath had a life that consisted of more than her suicide and should be remembered as such.

Plath was born on October 27th, 1932, in Winthrop, Massachusetts. Her father, Otto, and her mother, Auriela, were both of German descent, a controversial quality during World War II that seeped into Plath’s childhood. Sylvia’s younger brother, Warren Joseph, was born in 1935, disrupting Sylvia’s life as an only child. Auriela was timid, and Otto, 21 years older than her, was something of a tyrant. Sylvia lived a typical happy childhood until 1940, when her father, to whom

She had moderate success as an author during her lifetime, but her popularity increased exponentially after her death. She wrote about uncomfortable topics, and played a role in opening up channels for discussion of mental illness and suicide. Not only that, but it helped inspire a generation of feminists. Jeanette Winterson, author of Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal, states, “The Bell Jar was a call to action because it is a diary of despair.” Another piece of her legacy is becoming the namesake of the Sylvia Plath Effect, which is the theory that poets are more susceptible to mental illness than other writers. Psychologist James C. Kaufman maintains that out of all types of authors, poets are the most likely to suffer from mental illness and that out of all women, those who are poets are also the most likely to be mentally