Sylvia Plath Sylvia Plath: Born: October 27th 1932, Boston Died: 11th February 1963, London Sylvia Plath was born in 1932 and her Brother Warren was born in April,1935. When she was around 8 years old (1940) her father Otto died and she was devastated but never showed it. In 1941 Plath’s poem was printed in the children’s section of Boston Herald, it was a short poem about what Plath’s saw and heard on summer nights. After Plath had just graduated in 1950, her Poem “ Bitter Strawberries” appeared in The Christian Science Monitor which was her first national publication. Also in 1950 Plath entered Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. 1952 Plath won Mademoiselle’s college fiction contest with her story “ Sunday At The Mintons.” Through college she dated many boys and had a serious relationship with Dick Norton. However she developed depression and often thought about suicide. Plath spent most of June 1953 as a guest editor at Mademoiselle’s magazine, she was one of twenty people to be involved in this. In August 1953 Plath stole the sleeping pills that had been locked away and crawled in the crawl space under the porch through the cellar, She took forty of them. Her parents found her 2 days later after hearing moaning coming from the cellar, when they found her she was covered in her vomit and dazed but alive. April 1954 Plath started bleaching her hair platinum blonde and was awarded a $1,200 scholarship for her next year at Smith and also received one to Harvard Summer School. During the summer in Boston (1954) Plath began to date an older man who she said had raped her and had nearly bleed to death from hemorrhage. She continued to him even after this incident had occurred. 1955 Plath’s “Go Get The Gloodly Squab” was published in Harper’s and she also received an honourable mention in Mademoiselle’s Dylan Thomas poetry contest for her poem “parallax.” “Circus In Three Rings” was her first poem to finally be published in The Atlantic Monthly. Early 1956 Plath had learnt that her grandmother had developed stomach cancer. At this time Plath was also suffered with insomnia and sinus infections and her writing was getting rejected from publication. She then had attended a party where she met Ted Hughes an English poet who immediately caught her eye at first glance. By the time Plath and Hughes had been together for 2 months they were discussing marriage and decided to get married secretly so it wouldn’t jeopardize Plath’s fellowship grant.
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath: 1950-1962. 430 Ed. Karen V. Kukil. Transcribed from the original manuscripts at Smith College. New York: Anchor, 2000.
"The bell jar hung, suspended, a few feet above my head…” For most people, when the name Sylvia Plath comes to mind, the word “psychotic” is the word that follows; however, there was more to Plath than her demented works. Throughout her shortened life, Plath had a variety of titles bestowed upon her: daughter, sister, student, wife, mother, teacher, author, and poetess However, Sylvia Plath was a haunted soul, as she also had the labels of “manic depressive” and “bipolar.” Her constant struggles with her mental illnesses are evident in her writing, especially her semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar.
Wagner, Linda W., ed. Critical Essays on Sylvia Plath. Boston: G. K. Hall & Company, 1984.
The highly recognized female novelist and poet, Sylvia Plath, lived a hard and tragic life. Plath was diagnosed with depression, a mood disorder that causes consistent feelings of sadness, at a very young age that made her life complicated in many ways. The battle continued on when she was diagnosed with severe depression later on in life which contributed to her death. Sylvia Plath was a very successful novelist and poet in the thirty short years of her life, however, the achievements were not enough to mask her depression battle that ran and ended her life.
Plath is a very personal poet. She also uses symbolism throughout the majority of her poetry and prose. Plath writes based on everyday occurrences during her lifetime. Most of her work is actually diary entries without punctuation. Plath gets most of her inspiration from her everyday life. She enjoyed writing about the things that happened day to day.
While at Smith, Plath received many awards in regard to the poetry that she had written. After winning the Mademoiselle fiction contest, the popular magazine offered Plath a place on their editorial board. While working with Mademoiselle, Pla...
"About." Personal Blog, n.d. Web. 15 Nov. 2015. [When finding an explanation for the similarities between the writers, it is important to play close attention to biographies. In case the psychoeconomic factors that Ruonco describes are true, then biography constitutes most of the development of the Sylvia Plath affliction. Moreover, the biography provides an insight into the views of the author for a better and more accurate understanding of her poetry. Furthermore, it is imperative to use her auto-statement since she referres to her "muse" as something out of her control which can be traced to Kaufman's
Sylvia Plath’s life was full of disappointment, gloominess and resentment. Her relationship status with her parents was hostile and spiteful, especially with her father. Growing up during World War II did not help the mood of the nation either, which was dark and dreary. At age 8 Plath’s father of German ancestry died of diabetes and even though their relationship was never established nor secure, his death took a toll on her. “For Sylvia, who had been his favorite, it was an emotional holocaust and an experience from which she never fully recovered” (Kehoe 90).
In Plath's "Daddy," written just before her death and published posthumously, the most readily accessible emotion is anger, and much of the poem is couched in autobiographical allusions. Plath's own father died of a gangrenous infection, caused by diabetes he refused to treat, when Plath was eight years old, and his death was "the crucial event of her childhood" (Baym 2743). Plath makes personal references to her father as a...
middle of paper ... ... eals the mother’s attitude towards her new role. Just as in the Victorian era where women were limited in their development as individuals and mainly served as wives and mothers, the speaker feels as if she is confined to her new role as a mother and is denied her creative freedom. Clearly, Plath’s poems take a profoundly different approach to the concepts of pregnancy and motherhood, which are usually looked upon as rewarding and fulfilling stages in a woman’s life.
Sylvia Plath, an innocent scarred by her memories, shares her story through her considerably dark poems. On October 27, 1932 in
Giles, Richard F. “Sylvia Plath.” Magill’s Critical Survey of Poetry. Ed. Frank N. Magill, b. 1875. Pasadena: Salem Press, 1992.
The poem, “Mad Girl’s Love Song”, highlights Sylvia Plath’s struggle with depression and her mental illness. As a form of expression, Sylvia Plath wrote “Mad Girl’s Love Song” in 1953, her last years of her life. Six years into Plath’s marriage with English poet, Ted Hughes, depression started to kick off in her life. Hughes began seeing other women and not responding to Plath as her husband. According to the Poetry Foundation, “She let her writing express elemental forces and primeval fears”. Plath’s poetry slowly became more violent and intense. Many people like to blame Hughes for her mental illness. In 1953 Plath decided to end her life by using her gas oven.
Plath’s father died early in her life leaving her with unresolved feelings, and this brought a lot of troubles later on in life. Sylvia was a great student but when she was overwhelmed with disappointments after a month in New York, she attempted suicide (“Sylvia Plath”). After receiving treatment and recovering, she returned to school and later moved to England where she met her future husband, Ted Hughes (“Sylvia Plath”). Their marriage with two children didn’t last when Ted had an affair. They separated and Ted moved in with the new woman, leaving Sylvia and their two children. Battling depression during this time, Sylvia soon ended her life. She left behind numerous writings that many might see as signs of her depression and suicide attempts.
According to “Sylvia Plath” Sylvia Plath struggled with severe depression throughout her life. She first experienced depression during her third year of college because of insecurities and self-esteem issues. Furthermore, Plath’s troubled marriage with Ted Hughes fueled her depression later in life; he had cheated on her with a younger woman and left her to raise their two children. Once again, she was overcome by self-esteem issues and anxiety that led her down a dark path. Plath attempted suicide three times, and she succeeded on her third attempt at the age of thirty. She died