Sylvia Plath1932-1963

“The blood jet is poetry / there is no

stopping it.”

A brief biography: childhood

• Born in Boston on October 27, 1932, to Aurelia Schober and Otto Plath

• Idolised her father and longed to please him

• In 1940, when Sylvia was 8, her father died and she published her first poem.

• Her mother introduced her to poetry which she loved

After discovering poetry, Sylvia said I

“had fallen into a new way of being

happy.”

Sylvia Plath as a young woman

• At school she was a top student, excelling in English

• Suffers mental & emotional exhaustion

• Is rejected for a Harvard writing course

• First suicide attempt –overdose. Receives electric shock treatment.

• She writes about these experiences in her semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar

“I still do not know myself. Perhaps I never will. I am afraid of getting older. I

am afraid of getting married…I want, I think, to be omniscient…I think I would like to call myself the girl who wanted to be God. . . . Never, never,

will I reach the perfection I long for with all my soul.

. . .” (diary, age 17)

Sylvia goes to England• Wins a Fulbright Scholarship

to England

• 1956 She met Ted Hughes, a poet, at a Cambridge University party

• According to her journal, at this meeting he kissed her and she bit him on the cheek, drawing blood.

• • It was an intense courtship

and they were married within months.

He was “very simply the only man I’ve ever met whom I could never boss.” (Sylvia to friends)

Motherhood & Writing• Her and her husband return

to England and begin writing full-time

• In 1960 Plath had her first child, Frieda, and published her first book of poetry, ‘The Colossus’.

• In 1962, following a traumatic appendix operation and the birth of their son Nicholas, Plath's writing became more frantic.

Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes• Sylvia & Ted’s relationship was

passionate and tumultuous• She was attracted to his physical

power, his way with animals esp owls, his reputation as a poet, and appreciated his encouragement of her poetry

• She feared losing him

1962 – the beginning of the end

• June: 2nd suicide attempt – driving car off the road

• July: Discovers Ted’s affair with Assia Weevill.

• Sept: They separate• Oct: She writes 26

poems in one month• Dec: She takes her 2

children and moves into a maisonette in London

• She prepares Ariel, a collection of 41 poems

The End: 1963

• The Bell Jar is published under a pseudonym and receives good reviews

• She is depressed, isolated and mentally unstable

• February 1963, in one of the coldest winters in English history, she succeeded in taking her life

• Her body was discovered the following morning.

• She was survived by her 2 children.

• 1965: Ariel was published.• 1982 she is posthumously

awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Literature.

“MIRROR”

• Written in 1961 but published after her death by her husband 10 years later.

• It deals with the fear of age and self-reflection

Literary Device: Personification

Poem Type: Lyric