SYLVIA PLATH

by Caitriona O’Reilly

^
n the morning of 11 February the gender politics of the 1970s. The per-
O 1963, Sylvia Plath committed
suicide in London. At the time of her
sonal fallout from this almost unprece-
dented collision between a writer’s work
death, she was known as the author and her biography is incalculable. What
of a first, moderately well received can be asserted, however, is that Plath’s
book of poems, The Colossus (1960). In notoriety has obscured to a great extent
addition, she had recently published a the true value of her best work, tend-
novel, The Bell Jar (1963), under the ing to foreground the more sensational
pseudonym Victoria Lucas. She had of her poems at the expense of other,
published a number of prose stories quieter, and perhaps more important
and sketches in various magazines aspects of her writing. Forty years after
and journals. Plath also left behind a her death, and with several of the main
manuscript of newer work, titled Ariel, protagonists of Plath’s biographical
which consisted of poems written for drama no longer living, it has become
the most part in the last five months Sylvia Plath. somewhat easier to view her work in the
of her life. The eventual publication ( Bettmann/Corbis) balanced critical light it deserves.
of this book, somewhat altered in
form from Plath’s original intention, occurred in 1965. BACKGROUND AND EARLY LIFE
Plath’s considerable notoriety as a writer dates from Sylvia Plath was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on 27
the publication of Ariel, which was quickly recognized October 1932, the first child of Otto Plath and his second
as a poetic work of the highest order. As the facts wife, Aurelia Schober Plath. Otto Plath was forty-seven at
about her life, and particularly the manner of her death, the time of his daughter’s birth, twenty-one years older
became widely known, she developed a cult status. Many than his wife, and a dominant patriarchal presence in
critical commentators found themselves taking sides in a the household. He had emigrated to the United States
startlingly polarized debate about the merit of Plath’s late from Grabow, a town in the then ‘‘Polish Corridor’’ (later
work. Much of the critical controversy centered around called by Plath a ‘‘manic-depressive hamlet in the black
poems such as ‘‘Daddy’’ and ‘‘Lady Lazarus,’’ in which heart of Prussia’’) in 1901. Estranged from his devoutly
Plath conflates details from the recent past of Europe (in Lutheran family because of his conversion to Darwinism,
particular references to the concentration camps and the Otto Plath independently pursued advanced studies in
Nazi persecution of the Jews) with images depicting the languages, biology, zoology, and entomology, eventually
trauma of her personal history. receiving a doctorate from Harvard in 1928 for research
Rather than clarifying the ‘‘identity’’ of Sylvia Plath and into the life cycle of the bumblebee. Aurelia Schober
the root cause of her madness or genius, the publication had been born in the United States to Austrian parents,
of Letters Home: Correspondence, 1950–1963 in 1975, and and had worked as a high-school teacher of languages
of her Journals in America in 1982, seemed only to fuel before her marriage at the age of twenty-two. From both
the fires of controversy. Unfortunately, in a highly public parents, Plath seems to have inherited her strong idealism
and grotesque exaggeration of the blame-apportioning and drive toward self-improvement, and perhaps also
that can follow a death of such tragic nature, Sylvia an immigrant’s sense of the precariousness of worldly
Plath’s family and friends were caught in the crossfire of success, a sense of its having to be continually renewed
a critical debate often dominated and made rancorous by and bolstered. Otto Plath died following an operation

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to amputate a gangrenous leg in 1940, when Sylvia was by the experience. On returning home to Wellesley,
eight and her brother, Warren, five. He had stubbornly she was dismayed to discover that she had not been
refused to seek medical advice for his declining health, and accepted for Frank O’Connor’s summer writing class at
was much weakened by the time a diagnosis of diabetes Harvard. At loose ends in Wellesley, suffering badly from
was made. There is some evidence to suggest that Plath insomnia, and panicking at her inability to impose a
considered her father’s carelessness about his health as disciplined routine on herself, Plath began to slip into
tantamount to suicide, and therefore as blameworthy. depression. The family doctor prescribed sleeping pills
Written in 1962, ‘‘Daddy’’ is an angry tirade against and referred her to a psychiatrist, who recommended
the father who has deserted her, a Freudian drama of electroconvulsive therapy after a brief consultation. The
repetition-compulsion in which the speaker resurrects her ECT was ineptly administered, and the resulting pain
vampiric father only to kill him again in a contradictory and terror that Plath suffered apparently propelled her
attempt to efface the original source of her psychological toward suicide.
pain. In Plath’s poetry and prose, Otto Plath was to become On 24 August she hid herself in the family basement and
a potent symbol of absence, signifying the impossibility took a massive overdose of sleeping pills. Having vomited
of lasting love, of God, or of any real meaning in life. The up a large quantity of the pills, she lay undiscovered in
death of her father was a shock from which Plath never a comatose state for two days, while police searched the
properly recovered. surrounding area for her. She was eventually discovered
and brought to the psychiatric wing of Massachusetts
COLLEGE LIFE AND ATTEMPTED SUICIDE General Hospital. Her physical health was recovered, but
Following Otto Plath’s death, the family moved inland the severity of her mental condition became clear, and
from Winthrop to Wellesley, Massachusetts. At this early she was transferred to McLean Hospital in Belmont,
stage in her life, Sylvia Plath was already embarked Massachusetts, at the expense of her Smith benefactress,
on a brilliant academic career, aspiring with immense Olive Higgins Prouty. Plath remained at McLean (whose
discipline and hard work to become the ideal all- other illustrious literary patients had included Robert
round student. She won a scholarship to study at Lowell and Anne Sexton) until February 1954, when she
Smith College, where she maintained her high grade was judged fit to return to Smith. The Freudian analysis she
average while enjoying an active social life, serving underwent as part of her treatment at McLean was to have
as an editor of the Smith Review, and publishing a profound influence on her writing. In 1958, while living
stories in Seventeen, the Christian Science Monitor, and in Boston with her husband, Ted Hughes, Plath voluntarily
Mademoiselle. Plath was later to find the transition from reentered analysis with her McLean psychiatrist, Dr. Ruth
her initial success as a precocious student, publishing Beuscher, and further refined her own interpretation of
in the ‘‘slicks,’’ as she called them, to becoming a the Freudian ‘‘family romance.’’ Plath’s artistic debt to her
more mature and considered writer a difficult one. analysis, and the rather programmatic narrative version
As a teenager she had mastered the art of tailoring of the traumatic events of her life with which it seemed to
her writing to meet the perceived requirements of the furnish her, remains one of the more controversial aspects
magazines in which she wanted to publish, and finding of her biography.
her own independent voice was to be a gradual and often
painful process. GRADUATION AND MARRIAGE
In June 1953, at the end of her second year at Smith, Plath returned to Smith in February 1954, and resumed
Plath embarked on a guest editorship for Mademoiselle her challenging work and social schedule, graduating
in New York City, together with nineteen other young summa cum laude in 1955. In the autumn of that year,
high achievers from colleges all over the country. She she embarked on a master’s degree course at Newnham
later satirized this period in her strongly autobiographical College, Cambridge. At a party in Cambridge in February
novel The Bell Jar, and from her descriptions of the 1956, she met the young English poet Ted Hughes. The
overwhelming summer heat of the city, the exhausting couple married within four months of their first meeting,
routine of hard work and socializing, and the competitive in a ceremony that took place in London on 16 June
cattiness of the young women with whom she was thrown, 1956. They spent their honeymoon in Benidorm, Spain,
it is clear that Plath did not enjoy her stint on Mademoiselle and then returned to Cambridge, where Plath completed
as much as she felt she ought to have, but was left drained her studies, graduating with a master’s degree in 1957.

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The couple moved back to the United States in the she produced as many as forty lyric poems of immense
summer of that year, Plath to take up a teaching job power, often writing two in a day. For a writer as self-
at Smith College, and Hughes to teach and write. Her conscious and painstaking as Plath had been, it was a
journals testify to Plath’s difficulties with teaching and true watershed.
her frustration with the lack of time it afforded her to In December, tired of her enforced isolation in Devon,
concentrate on her poetry and prose. During the difficult but exultant at her creative breakthrough, Plath moved
year of 1957–1958 Plath and Hughes resolved to try and back to London with her children. She continued to write
live by their writing. They spent the following year in poems, but with less ferocity than the initial outburst
Boston, where they met many writers, including Robert of the autumn. It seems she was also working on a
Frost, Robert Lowell, Marianne Moore, and Adrienne second novel, which dealt with the subject of her marriage.
Rich. Plath participated (with Anne Sexton) in Robert The manuscript of this work, if it still exists, has never
Lowell’s writing workshop at Boston University for a been released by Plath’s estate. The Bell Jar (a work
time, and in December 1958 reentered psychotherapy Plath dismissed to friends as ‘‘a potboiler,’’ probably
with Dr. Ruth Beuscher. because of the extremely unfavorable biographical
Plath and her husband spent the summer of 1959 portraits it contained) was published pseudonymously by
traveling across the United States by car, returning Heinemann in January 1963. However, difficulties with
home in late August. The autumn of 1959 saw them her new flat and with finding a nanny for her children,
at Yaddo, the artists’ colony in Saratoga Springs, New as well as ill health and the harshest winter England had
York. Her stay there was to be a productive time for seen for many years, combined to make her seriously
Plath. She was by this time pregnant with her first depressed. Despite the ministrations of concerned friends
child, and many of the poems she wrote at Yaddo, and of her doctor, Plath was clearly unable to cope, and
including the breakthrough sequence ‘‘Poem for a she gassed herself in the kitchen of her flat in the early
Birthday,’’ show her musing on her condition. ‘‘Poem hours of 11 February, having first taken steps to ensure the
for a Birthday’’ posits a connection between pregnancy safety of her two children, who were asleep in an upstairs
and her personal reemergence after the nightmare of bedroom. She was thirty years of age.
psychological disintegration and ‘‘electrocution’’ by ECT.
As well as this important poem, Plath also wrote several THE LEGACY
successful lyrics at Yaddo, including ‘‘Mushrooms’’ and
Sylvia Plath died intestate, and her husband, Ted
‘‘The Colossus,’’ which was to become the title poem of
Hughes, together with his sister Olwyn, took over
her first collection.
the administration of Plath’s literary estate after 1963.
RETURN TO ENGLAND, MOTHERHOOD, The publication of Ariel in 1965 was followed by two
AND THE GENESIS OF ARIEL further volumes of poetry in 1971, Crossing the Water
Late in 1959, Plath and Hughes left the United States (which contains poems written between The Colossus and
for England, where they intended to settle and raise Ariel) and Winter Trees (containing eighteen previously
a family. Until August 1961 they lived in London uncollected poems and a verse play for radio titled Three
(their daughter Frieda Rebecca was born in April 1961); Women). Aurelia Schober Plath published a volume of
thereafter they moved to Court Green, a former rectory Plath’s correspondence in 1975, and a children’s book
in the village of North Tawton in Devon. A second titled The Bed Book, written by Plath in the late 1950s,
child, Nicholas Farrar, was born there in January 1962. appeared the following year. In 1977 Hughes published
Heinemann had published The Colossus in London in Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams, a collection of
1960, and in 1962 Knopf published it in New York. Plath’s short stories and miscellaneous prose pieces, and
While in Devon, Plath began work on the poems that in 1981 Plath’s Collected Poems was published, a volume
would eventually be gathered into the Ariel volume. In that also included a substantial amount of juvenilia. It was
the early autumn of 1962, Plath and Hughes separated awarded the Pulitzer Prize.
acrimoniously after Plath’s discovery that Hughes had A heavily edited edition of The Journals of Sylvia Plath
begun an affair with Assia Wevill, wife of the young appeared in the United States only in 1982, and it was
Canadian poet David Wevill. Alone with her children in not until after Hughes’s death that a more comprehensive
Devon, Plath entered upon the most productive phase of edition of the journals appeared in Britain and the United
her creative life. Between September and December 1962, States in 2000, edited by Karen V. Kukil. In addition,

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it is thought that a substantial amount of Sylvia Plath’s loss: ‘‘My father died, we moved inland. Whereon those
writing either did not survive or has been withheld by nine first years of my life sealed themselves off like a ship
her estate. This includes two volumes of her journals in a bottle—beautiful, inaccessible, obsolete, a fine, white
covering the years 1960–1963 and a novel that she is flying myth.’’
believed to have finished, or at least brought close to The Bell Jar deals with the theme of isolation and
completion, by the time of her death. Of the journals, unhappiness in greater detail. The book is really a
Ted Hughes wrote: ‘‘Two more notebooks survived for a roman à clef detailing the traumatic summer of Plath’s
while, maroon-backed ledgers like the 1957–1959 volume, breakdown in 1953, and contains thinly disguised portraits
and continued the record from late 1959 to within three of her family and friends. It is generally supposed that
days of her death. The last of these contained entries Plath published the novel under an assumed name and
for several months, and I destroyed it because I did discouraged her mother from reading it because of the
not want her children to have to read it . . . . The other acidity with which some of these portraits are drawn.
disappeared.’’ Mrs. Greenwood, the mother of the book’s protagonist,
comes off particularly badly. In another recasting of her
SHORTER PROSE WORKS AND THE BELL JAR versatile Freudian-inflected myth of self, Plath makes
Even despite such absences, however, the totality of Plath’s clear that it is her heroine’s enforced proximity to her
published work indicates what a remarkably precocious well-meaning but hopelessly naı̈ve mother that leads
and multifaceted talent she possessed. Many of the to suicidal depression. During one climactic scene an
early stories contained in Johnny Panic and the Bible insomniac and desperate Esther Greenwood fantasizes
of Dreams are somewhat stilted, and amply illustrate about killing her sleeping mother: ‘‘My mother turned
what Plath wrote about so eloquently in the journals, her from a foggy log into a slumbering, middle-aged woman,
struggle to imbue her material with convincing life and her mouth slightly open and a snore raveling from her
psychological insight. An early success was ‘‘Superman throat. The piggish noise irritated me, and for a while
and Paula Brown’s New Snowsuit,’’ written when Plath it seemed to me that the only way to stop it would
was twenty-three. This semiautobiographical story is set be to take the column of skin and sinew from which
in Plath’s childhood during World War II, and deals it rose and twist it to silence between my hands.’’ The
subtly with the theme of discrimination against German- extreme detachment of this description borders on the
Americans in this period. However, such success in pathological, and is symptomatic of Esther’s feeling of
prose before 1960 was the exception for Plath. It is in general disconnectedness from reality. This is the ‘‘bell
the later, more directly autobiographical pieces, such as jar’’ state that Plath describes being trapped in, as
‘‘America! America!’’ (an amusing satire on American though a glass wall were separating her from her life.
patriotism written for Punch) or ‘‘Ocean 1212-W,’’ that a Its similarity to the sealed-off ship-in-a-bottle quality
freer, more confident prose voice can be seen emerging. of her childhood described above serves to underline
The latter piece, written for the BBC series ‘‘Writers the profound continuity of imagery throughout Plath’s
on Themselves,’’ is a tremendously skillful evocation work. A version of the bell jar would return in her late
of Plath’s early childhood in Winthrop, Massachusetts. poem ‘‘Medusa,’’ a counterpart to ‘‘Daddy’’ in which
Ostensibly it is about a young child’s jealousy at the the speaker violently rejects her smothering, controlling
birth of her baby brother, an event that brings her own mother, whom she also envisages as an airless receptacle:
isolation home to her: ‘‘Hugging my grudge, ugly and ‘‘Bottle in which I live, / Ghastly Vatican.’’
prickly, a sad sea urchin, I trudged off on my own, in The Bell Jar is written with considerable verve, and
the opposite direction toward the forbidding prison. As displays Plath’s gifts for gallows humor, forceful imagery,
from a star I saw, coldly and soberly, the separateness of and skillful inflection of voice, characteristics that she
everything. I felt the wall of my skin: I am I. That stone later raised to virtuosic level in the poems of Ariel.
is a stone. My beautiful fusion with the things of this However, the novel is less convincing as a bildungsroman
world was over.’’ On a deeper level, however, the piece or psychological self-portrait. The critic Stan Smith has
can be said to revisit the site of Plath’s obsession with written of Plath’s ‘‘irony of artifice,’’ suggesting that Plath
the death of her father, since it deals with a period of uses her heroine’s paranoia to ‘‘penetrate[s] the bland
happiness she now regards as forever out of reach. The benevolent surfaces of other people’s motives to discover
abruptness of the story’s ending underlines the shock of their inner and unconscious significance.’’ However,

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other critics of the novel, such as Pat MacPherson and or the poet’s suicide as the inevitable end point of the
Elisabeth Bronfen, have noted that the novel’s almost process. According to this interpretation of Plath’s life
nonchalant resolution, given the apparent severity of and works, the Ariel poems represent a triumphant, and
Esther’s psychological collapse, is unconvincing. The permanent, release from years of seemingly fruitless toil,
growth in self-knowledge and insight one expects from a psychological difficulties, and paralyzing writer’s block.
novel of crisis has failed to materialize, but this aesthetic Plath’s husband and executor, Ted Hughes, possibly the
weakness is perhaps indicative of another, more disturbing most important critic of her work, has argued that Plath’s
meaning. In The Bell Jar, ‘‘cure’’ is viewed not as a form poems represent stages in her healing and rediscovery
of internal healing, but instead as a test one must pass in of self. In a number of influential essays about Plath’s
order to rejoin the competitive society beyond the asylum writing, Hughes portrays her as a uniquely self-referential
walls. The novel depicts an encompassing dystopia to writer: ‘‘Sylvia Plath’s poetry, like a species on its own,
which there seems no viable alternative, and at its core exists in little else but the revelation of that birth and
is a nihilism that is avoided only by denial, a willed purpose. Although her whole considerable ambition was
redirection of the gaze. Esther’s suicide can in fact be fixed on becoming the normal flowering and fruiting
seen as a last-ditch attempt of the will to avoid coming
kind of writer, her work was roots only.’’ But perhaps
face-to-face with this more profound, unspoken reality,
to regard Plath as quite such a unique writer is to
not an outcome of having already confronted it. The
begin to pathologize her. Hughes, far from demystifying
Bell Jar, despite its jaunty, slangy narrative style, is a
Plath, has added greatly to her posthumous mythology by
work that studiously avoids admitting its own deepest
emphasizing her helpless passivity before a ferocious muse:
implications.
‘‘It [i.e., her development] gave the impression of being
THE ARIEL POEMS a secret crucible, or rather a womb, an almost biological
If The Bell Jar provides unsatisfying glimpses of a darker process—and just as much beyond her manipulative
truth, then it is in her poetry, with the resources of myth interference.’’
at her disposal, that Plath gives full voice to her particular The image of the woman artist which emerges from
tragic vision, and it is upon these late poems that her this portrait is that of a sibyl in the grip of a powerful,
reputation as a writer ultimately rests. ‘‘The Fearful’’ biologically determined process which it is beyond her
provides an arresting image of selves being devoured by power to actively control. Hughes diagnoses Plath as a
their attributes: unique case in the history of poetry: ‘‘The difficulty is
the extreme peculiarity in kind of her poetic gift. And
This man makes a pseudonym
the difficulty is not lessened by the fact that she left
And crawls behind it like a worm.
behind two completely different kinds of poetry.’’ The
This woman on the telephone first kind of poetry, in Hughes’s analysis, was everything
Says she is a man, not a woman. before the true ‘‘Ariel voice’’ emerged in ‘‘Elm,’’ which
The mask increases, eats the worm, was written on 19 April 1962. Hughes’s assertion that
Stripes for mouth and eyes and nose,
the end point of this process was a new, triumphant
The voice of the woman hollows— self and that ‘‘all her poems are in a sense by-products’’
More and more like a dead one . . . indicates that his interpretation of Plath has, ironically,
The image is that of a fiction taking on an autonomous much in common with feminist readings of her work, as
life, hollowing out or abstracting the living matter of the critic Jacqueline Rose has observed: ‘‘Let’s . . . note
which it was initially composed, in cannibalistic fashion. how close, aesthetically, that notion of the emergent
Throughout Plath’s work, the figure of a self subsumed real self is to the feminist reading of Plath in terms of
or reduced to its various, separable appurtenances has a an isolate selfhood that Hughes has also been seen as
counterpart in images of wholeness and intuitions of an suppressing.’’ Rose argues convincingly that Plath’s work
essential core of self. The latter trope has been emphasized is indicative of a less triumphant vision of self and reality:
by those who regard Ariel as a triumphant culmination; ‘‘I think we should be very cautious about attempting to
indeed, it may be regarded as the most commonly read Plath’s writing in terms of a positive emergence of
accepted interpretation of Plath’s achievement, although selfhood, of turning what may be better thought of in
it involves a strong teleological bias, with either Ariel terms of the unbearable coexistence of opposites into a

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narrative progression from suffering into self-discovery Plath’s most beautiful poems present images of absolute
or flight.’’ self-loss. One of these, ‘‘The Night Dances,’’ describes,
A careful chronological reading of the poems indicates according to Ted Hughes, ‘‘a revolving dance which her
that Plath’s themes are in fact remarkably consistent. baby son performed at night in his crib.’’ The smile that
While the Ariel poems may seem to represent a self that falls surrealistically into the grass at the beginning of this
has emerged from the inimical reality in which it has been poem is ‘‘irretrievable,’’ and the speaker compares this to
forced to exist, Plath’s best poems illustrate, conversely, the dancing gestures of her baby, which seem so significant
a troubling philosophical acquiescence to such realities. to her that she finds it hard to believe they are merely
Thus, in an early poem such as ‘‘The Thin People,’’ Plath ephemeral: ‘‘Surely they travel / The world forever, I shall
establishes the vampire metaphor she would later use to not entirely / Sit emptied of beauties, the gift / Of your
greater dramatic effect in ‘‘Daddy.’’ The ‘‘thin people’’ of small breath, the drenched grass / Smell of your sleeps,
the poem are never named, although it is clear that she is lilies, lilies.’’ The image of the lilies is then considered in its
thinking of the starved inmates of the Nazi concentration uniqueness—it is as if Plath is deconstructing the poem as
camps as they appeared in 1940s newsreels during the she writes it—‘‘their flesh bears no relation. Cold folds of
speaker’s childhood. Although she argues that the passage the ego, the calla, / And the tiger, embellishing itself— /
of time should logically make them disappear, they seem Spots, and a spread of hot petals.’’ This is the alienation
paradoxically to grow in power by virtue of their tenacity of extreme self-involvement: a lily is not just a lily but
in memory. Vampirelike, they return from the scene of is classified according to species; the calla lily (from the
their repression in ‘‘the contracted country of the head’’ Greek kallos) is wrapped up in its own cold beauty (there
is a submerged pun here on ‘‘callous’’) while the tiger
and begin to drain reality of its richness, as if in revenge:
lily embellishes itself alone. This introduces the theme
‘‘They persist in the sunlit room: the wallpaper / Frieze of
of indifference, or, as this poem expresses it, amnesia:
cabbage-roses and cornflowers pales / Under their thin-
‘‘The comets / Have such a space to cross, / Such coldness,
lipped smiles, / Their withering kingship.’’
forgetfulness.’’ She considers the movement of the comets
Similarly, in the 1957 poems ‘‘All the Dead Dears’’ and
to be a more appropriate metaphor for her son’s gestures:
‘‘The Disquieting Muses,’’ Plath introduces the theme of
‘‘so your gestures flake off— / Warm and human, then
maternal blame she would later fine-tune in ‘‘Medusa.’’
their pink light / Bleeding and peeling / Through the black
Although Plath’s early lyrics are rather stilted and self-
amnesias of heaven.’’ By this time the speaker seems to
conscious, demonstrating how heavily, at first, she relied
have given up her belief that the self and its gestures can
on the formal poetic resources of rhyme and meter,
retain their identity, and the image is a disturbing one, a
her development as a poet was rapid. By the time of vision of dismemberment.
her return to England in 1959, following the decisive In ‘‘The Night Dances’’ the self is a disintegrating
breakthrough of ‘‘Poem for a Birthday,’’ she was writing structure, its gestures inevitably swallowed up in
lyrics full of disturbingly powerful and suggestive imagery. inhospitable and unconscious space. The fatalistic tone of
In ‘‘Crossing the Water,’’ for example, she imagines herself the poem is reflected in Plath’s avoidance of the question
and her husband as ‘‘two black, cut-paper people’’ whose mark, a technique she uses here twice: ‘‘And how will your
fragile identities are threatened by the immensity of night dances lose themselves.’’ And again at the end, when
the ocean. Such themes—the terrible insecurity of the she compares her son’s dances to falling snow: ‘‘Why am
self, the reality of indifference and lovelessness, and the I given / these lamps, these planets / Falling like blessings,
inevitability of death and loss—preoccupied Plath from like flakes / Six-sided, white / On my eyes, my lips, my
the beginning of her writing life to the end. It is in the hair / Touching and melting. / Nowhere.’’ The speaker of
poems of Ariel that they are most powerfully reiterated, ‘‘The Night Dances’’ entertains no hope of an answer to
however. Apart from the controversial poems such as her questions. This poem provides an image of self not as
‘‘Daddy’’ and ‘‘Lady Lazarus,’’ in which Plath dubiously emergent but as fragmented, dissipated, obsolescent.
inflates her personal trauma to rival that of the Jewish The consciousness of Ariel has many different masks
victims of the Nazis (an aesthetic lapse for which she has and positions; part of the excitement of the volume comes
attracted a great deal of critical opprobrium), it is in other, from the restless dynamism of a voice that repeatedly
better poems that the poignancy of her tragic vision comes insists on escaping from deadening enclosures. Such
through most clearly. a movement always entails loss, however; the speaker

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of ‘‘Ariel’’ imagines sloughing off ‘‘dead hands, dead Brennan, Claire, ed. The Poetry of Sylvia Plath: A Reader’s
stringencies’’; the ascending consciousness of ‘‘Fever 103’’ Guide to Essential Criticism. Duxford, U.K., 2000. A
experiences orgiastic self-loss, ‘‘my selves dissolving, old very useful sourcebook of the main Plath criticism.
whore petticoats’’; and the symbolically liberated queen Britzolakis, Christina. Sylvia Plath and the Theatre of
bee of ‘‘Stings’’ is horribly injured, a metonymic ‘‘red scar’’ Mourning. Oxford, 1999. A complex study of the
already murdered by the ‘‘wax house’’ that has engulfed function of mourning in Plath’s writings.
her. In other, remarkable poems such as ‘‘Totem,’’ Plath Bronfen, Elisabeth. Sylvia Plath. London, 1998. A
restates her disabused and fatalistic recognition that ‘‘there comprehensive and readable introductory study of
is no terminus, only suitcases / Out of which the same self Sylvia Plath.
unfolds like a suit / Bald and shiny, with pockets of wishes, / Gilbert, Sandra M. ‘‘In Yeats’s House: The Death and
Notions and tickets, short circuits and folding mirrors.’’ Resurrection of Sylvia Plath.’’ In Sylvia Plath: The
‘‘Words,’’ written the week before her death, posits an Critical Heritage, edited by Linda Wagner-Martin.
absolute division between the autonomy of ‘‘words dry London, 1988. This and the 1989 essay are insightful
and riderless’’ and the ‘‘fixed stars’’ that ‘‘govern a life.’’ works by an important feminist critic.
This poem stands as a salutary reminder to those who
Gilbert, Sandra M. ‘‘ ‘A Fine, White Flying Myth’:
would simplistically conflate Plath’s biography with the
Confessions of a Plath Addict.’’ In Sylvia Plath, edited
personae of her writings. At its most extreme, this critical
by Harold Bloom. New York, 1989.
approach has tended to view Plath’s entire oeuvre as
Heaney, Seamus. ‘‘The Indefatigable Hoof-Taps.’’ In his
an extended suicide note, or (in Hughes’s analysis) as
The Government of the Tongue. London, 1988. A review-
the ‘‘by-product[s]’’ of her quest for self-realization. But
essay of Plath’s Collected Poems.
the connections between a writer’s life and her work are
numerous, indirect, and mysterious. Plath’s poems stand Hughes, Ted. Winter Pollen: Occasional Prose. Edited by
as a poignant testament to the tragic loss of a remarkable William Scammell. London, 1995.
talent, but they are also undeniably powerful and achieved Hughes, Ted. Birthday Letters. London, 1998. These two
works of art in their own right. Hughes items are indispensable reference works for the
[See also Writing as a Woman in the Twentieth Century.] study of Sylvia Plath.
Kendall, Tim. Sylvia Plath: A Critical Study. London, 2001.
WORKS A good introductory study.
Lane, Gary, ed. Sylvia Plath: New Views on the
The Bell Jar (1963)
Letters Home: Correspondence, 1950–1963 (1975) Poetry. Baltimore, 1979. An illuminating collection of
Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams (1979) essays.
Collected Poems (1981) MacPherson, Pat. Reflecting on The Bell Jar. London, 1991.
The Journals of Sylvia Plath (2000) An excellent reference work, containing sharp criticism
and social commentary.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Malcolm, Janet. The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and
Ted Hughes. London, 1994. Examines the controversy
Alvarez, A. ‘‘Prologue: Sylvia Plath.’’ In his The Savage
God: A Study of Suicide. London, 1971. A controversial surrounding Plath’s literary estate and the difficulties
early contribution to the Plath mythography, Alvarez’s encountered by her biographers.
account was objected to by her estate. This article Rose, Jacqueline. The Haunting of Sylvia Plath. London,
examines Plath’s work in the light of her suicide. 1991. Examines the function of fantasy both in Plath’s
Axelrod, Steven Gould. Sylvia Plath: The Wound and the work and in the controversy that surrounds her
Cure of Words. Baltimore, 1990. A Freudian reading of legacy.
Plath’s career and work. Smith, Stan. Inviolable Voice: History and Twentieth-
Bloom, Harold, ed. Sylvia Plath. New York, 1989. Aside Century Poetry. Dublin, 1981.
from the dismissive introduction by the editor, this is Smith, Stan. ‘‘Attitudes Counterfeiting Life: The Irony of
a useful collection of essays. Artifice in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.’’ In Sylvia Plath,
Brain, Tracy. The Other Sylvia Plath. Harlow, U.K., edited by Harold Bloom. New York, 1989.
2001. An interesting examination of the social and Stevenson, Anne. Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath.
environmental concerns of Plath’s writing. Harmondsworth, U.K., 1990. Well-written but very

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controversial, this is the only biography fully authorized of Plath provide an interesting contrast to Stevenson’s
by the Plath estate. Bitter Fame.
Wagner-Martin, Linda. Sylvia Plath: A Biography. London, Wagner-Martin, Linda, ed. Critical Essays on Sylvia Plath.
1988. Boston, 1984.
Wagner-Martin, Linda. Sylvia Plath: A Literary Life. Wagner-Martin, Linda, ed. Sylvia Plath: The Critical
London, 1999. Wagner-Martin’s biographical studies Heritage. London, 1988.

See also the article on The Bell Jar, immediately following

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