Depression In Sylvia Plath's Daddy

Sylvia Plath reflects her pain and suffering from depression in her life in the novel The Bell Jar, and Plath reveals her depression in her two poems, “Mirror” and “Daddy.” Plath had a weakness that was easy to spot but hard to control, “If Plath is to be faulted, this quality is perhaps her greatest weakness: she was not able to project her personae a great distance from herself. Plath was aware of this limitation. She once wrote: ‘I shall perish if I can write about no one but myself’”(Giles). She knew all of her literature was about her personal experiences, most of her writing is very dark and shows the world from a different point of view that not many people have. Plath commonly wrote about death, corpses, the moon, fetuses, and the sea. In “Mirror,” she wrote about hiding her inner self from the rest of the world, while in “Daddy,” she wrote about her selfish father, dying and leaving her to be alone. While critics such as Jeannine Johnson call her only novel, The Bell Jar an obvious “autobiography.”

Sylvia Plath started writing at a very

young age, as her mom has said, her life seemed to be shattered at the age of eight, when her father, Otto, died. Otto had complications with diabetes, and had to get one of his legs amputated, about a month later he passed away(Kehoe). After that tragic event Plath tried distracting herself with school, earning a scholarship and studying at college for free. Even having all these great opportunities and being top of her class, she did not feel happy. Plath attempted suicide although her mom caught her and she went to a woman’s hospital where she received shock therapy. This did not work and soon, on February 11, 1963, she locked her children up in a nearby room, boarder up the kitchen doors, and turned on the gas oven, committing suicide in the flat of her kitchen(Giles). Her depression never went away after her father died, and the pressure of her cheating husband, raising two children alone, and the thought that no one understands what she is going through led her to ending her life.
Right before she committed suicide she actually wrote her first and only novel, The Bell Jar. In fact, “...the book is narrated by Esther Greenwood, an obvious stand-in for Plath. The novel was so frankly autobiographical and it’s characters so thinly disguised and assiduously portrayed that Plath chose to publish it only in England under the pseudonym of Victoria Lucas…”(Kehoe). Her book was not published in the United States until a few years later, probably in fear that people would figure out who the fiction story is actually about. At the start of The Bell Jar, it introduces Esther who is an intelligent woman at a prestigious women's college; she got to study in New York for being top of her class, receiving many scholarships. Plath got the same opportunities and went to Smith college first, for writing, along with getting her own section in a New York newspaper to write poems(Johnson 35). Esther had anxiety and depression from school work, finding real friends, and confusion about sexual desire. Showing her depression in the first chapter saying, “The silence depressed me. It wasn’t the silence of silence. It was my own silence”(Plath Bell 13). When she left college she went to go live with her mom, distressed and upset she went into the crawl space swallowing pills, attempting suicide. Sylvia Plath had the same issues and left Smith college to go live with her mom, attempting suicide in her crawl space as well(Giles).
After attempting suicide, Esther and Plath’s families were both worried for them and took them to the doctors, who appointed them a psychiatrist at a mental facility. There, they each received shock therapy, which supposedly worked(Johnson 36). At the end of The Bell Jar Esther walks out of a meeting with a psychiatrist determining whether she has to stay in the mental facility. It leaves the reading hanging, not knowing whether she has to go back, but then Esther exclaims, “To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream”(Plath Bell 237). The Bell Jar is a metaphor comparing herself to being trapped in a bell jar with no way out; no way to escape her depression. In real life, even after the mental hospital, she never felt better and ended up committing suicide, it seems like from that maxum Esther was feeling and thinking the same way as Plath.
“Mirror” is a poem by Sylvia Plath, describing her thoughts and feelings about a metaphoric mirror.

This mirror symbolizes the good and the bad image that Plath did not want to see of herself, yet the bad image was the only picture of herself she could see(Freedman “Monster” 124). In “Mirror” Plath is explaining poetically that there is no good or happiness left in her by saying, “ In me she has drown a young girl, and in me an/ old woman/ Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish”(Plath “Mirror” 122). Critics such as Freedman, believe the root of her depression was losing her father at such a young age, this maxum shows that her happiness from when she was younger is gone, and swallowed up by the older black and white version of her. In fact, one of the last lines of the poem is, “I am not cruel, only truthful-”(Plath, “Mirror” 122), seeming like she was just naive to how dark the real world actually

is.
The mirror shows Plath’s weakness too, with her inability to face or conquer her depression, she seems afraid of her true destructive self since, “To do later is to risk looking into the mirror and seeing, not the pleasing young girl, but the terrible fish…”(Freedman “Monster” 124). For example, when she was at the mental facility she was resistant to shock therapy or any visitors, believing nothing could help her; she just wanted to leave the hospital, expecting to avoid the issue. When she described the mirror or reflection she meant herself, “...she is the personification---or reflection-- of the mirror as passive servant, the preconditioned object whose perception is a form of helpless swallowing or absorption”(Heims 152). Like how Plath told the story of her life through the character of Esther, she told her inner-self, or thought of herself through the mirror.
Finally, “Daddy” is one of Plath’s most famous poems, written about her father. People questioned what the cause of her depression was, although it could have been multiple reasons, “ She seemed convinced.... That the root of her suffering was the death of her father, whom she loved, who abandoned her, and who dragged her down after him into death”(Kehoe). He passed away when she was very young, since that age she appeared more upset, and focused more on school, almost as an escape route. In this poem she blames him for her sadness with name calling, declaring her rebellion, and showing aggression(Giles). Plath, even at an older age, was obviously still distraught by her father’s death, “...[Plath] still suffers both the stifling authority of her father and the pain of his early death. This tension between resentment and sadness forms the context for the poem's main theme: the speaker’s journey through horror and rage to self- individuation”(Dunn). One of the reasons she killed herself could be because of her dead father, after all she did write this only months before her death.
After calling her father nasty words, Plath shows some compassion towards him by writing, “Bit my pretty red heart into two./ I was ten when they buried you./ At twenty I tried to die/ and get back, back, back to you”(Plath “Daddy” 193). Around the age of twenty Plath attempted suicide, with this line it appears she attempted suicide to get to go back with her father. She shows sympathy for her father but by the end of the poem, her aggression builds (Freedman “Daddy”). In the last few lines, Plath in a way breaks through and takes a stand, telling her father, “There’s a stake in your fat black heart...Daddy, daddy you bastard, I’m through”(Plath “Daddy” 194). Freedman infers this to be a way of cutting the ties with her deceased father, letting that part of her anger and depression out using her writing.
Sylvia Plath reflects her pain and suffering from depression in her life in the novel, The Bell Jar, and Plath reveals her depression in her two poems, “Mirror” and “Daddy.” The Bell Jar practically shares every detail about her life, she just shares it through a fiction character named Esther. “Mirror” shows an accurate insight on Plath’s thoughts or feelings about herself and her self esteem. Finally, “Daddy” shows how the root, or one of the reasons for her depression can be easily inferred to be the death of her father at such a young age. Sylvia Plath will continued to be analyzed and depicted throughout the years for her depression and obscure, mysterious thoughts; but in reality her life story is already in her writing.