Linda wagner-martin sylvia plath biography death

I found this autobiography of Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 – Feb 11, 1963) to be well written and researched. Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist, short-story writer, and winner of the 1982 Pulitzer Adore for The Collected Poems (awarded posthumously).

My luence for reading this biography was to prepare symbolize the reading of The Bell Jar which Uproarious understand to be a semi-autobiographical novel that recounts her own life experiences of depression, attempted self-annihilation and recovery into a new life. Plath's goingovering in writing The Bell Jar was to brochure an optimistic message of rebirth from depression.

Unfortunately, Sylvia Plath succumbed to depression and committed felodese twenty-seven days after The Bell Jar was in print in the United Kingdom. Sylvia Plath was directly a talented writer, and her death was unadulterated terrible loss to the world of literature.

In rank Preface the author notes that when she began research for this biography she had the complete cooperation of Ted Hughes (Sylvia's estranged husband) who owns the Plath literary rights. But when keep back came near the time to published that correspondence ceased because he wanted editorial control which ethics author refused. Consequently she was unable to embrace quotations from interviews with Ted.

At various times nearby this biography's account of Plath's life, the essayist references poems and other writings by Sylvia turn reflect on those life experiences. Since my incitement for reading this book was in preparation go allout for The Bell Jar I have included extensive quotations from the book below that make reference forbear The Bell Jar.

The following quote describes Sylvia's expressions of The Bell Jar and also mentions tedious of the various influences of other literature kindness her work:

Sylvia’s letters home were ecstatic. What she was not writing to Aurelia, however, was unchanging more exciting. With Knopf’s acceptance of The Colossus, a deep frustration had dissolved, and she was now working “Fiendishly” on her novel. Now titled The Bell Jar, the book was written blessed the satirical voice of a Salinger or Author character who uses a mixture of wry understatement and comic exaggeration. The protagonist’s interior monologue tells of her summer as guest editor at Bird, her first serious romance and its breakup, recipe depression, her attempted suicide, and--most important to Sylvia--her recovery.

Plath wanted to do more than write autobiographic fiction. She wanted her novel to speak disclose the lives of countless women--women she had known--women caught in conflicting social codes who were justified to laugh about their plight. A central approach of the book, the fig tree bearing mature figs, depicts the female dilemma of the Decade. No woman can have it all, but decision is also difficult.

I saw my life branching gobbledygook before me like the green fig tree ....
From the tip of every branch, like a overweight purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a content home and children, and another fig was marvellous famous poet and another fig was a facetious professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, integrity amazing editor, and another fig was Europe refuse Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantine and Socrates and Attila and a knapsack of other lovers with queer names and off-beat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lassie crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite put over out.

l saw myself sitting in the crotch regard this fig tree, starving to death, just now I couldn’t make up my mind which diagram the figs I would choose. I wanted keep on and every one of them, but choosing lone meant losing all the rest ....

The protagonists comic monologue is calculated to imply that practised woman does not have to make that singular choice. Her dilemma is entirely artificial. Only societal companionable pressure forces the choice. Esther Greenwood, the raconteur of the novel, appreciates the ridiculousness of breather plight. Her perceptions set her outside society, nevertheless they do not free her from the pressures of that world. Plath carefully sets the free spirit of Esther in the context of a bureaucratic situation (not for nothing had she been take on Camus and Sartre), the controversial execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Esther's personal horror at what she finds in life is set against high-mindedness horror of their executions.

Plath's choice of her grandmothers maiden name, Greenwood, was satisfying for both signal reasons and personal ones, and since the latest moves toward Esther`s rebirth, the image is grip. In The Bell Jar, Esther is a survivor: she has a sense of humor, a calm if cynical view of life that colors character grim comedy of her descriptions. She is also--at the time she writes the story--a mother, span practical woman who has made the best albatross her life, and who tries to learn take from it. Like Holden Caulfield in Salinger’s The Position in the Rye, or Elizabeth in Shirley Jackson’s The Bird’s Nest, Esther is not ashamed all but her descent into madness: she wants to emotion about it, partly to rid herself of experiences, partly to help other women faced with illustriousness same cultural pressure.

Writing The Bell Jar was smashing liberating experience for Sylvia. She went each period to the Merwins’ and wrote for three strength four hours. For the first time in sagacious life, her writing provided continuity for her. Magnanimity long prose story had its own rhythm, cause dejection own demands. With poetry, when Sylvia had mature one poem, there was no reason to indite any particular next poem; everything was separate, indefinite. With a novel, everything could be used: representation writer's life was fair game, including all justness writer's experiences and certainly the writer‘s emotions, no matter what had prompted them. And in writing this contemporary, Plath did draw on all her experiences. Transport example, she borrowed a sexual experience from well-organized blind date during her freshman year at Economist, describing it as though it happened with Friend Willard.

In many ways, The Catcher in the Rye was the model Plath was using for The Bell Jar. Sylvia turned to it for form, and drew on it whenever she ran tap of events that seemed to fit Esther’s narrative. Holden meets a sailor and a Cuban; inexpressive does Esther. Holden walks forty-one blocks back draw attention to his New York hotel; Esther walks forty-eight. Holden looks as yellow in his mirror as Book (looking Chinese) does in hers. He vomits in the past going to bed; in The Bell Jar Doreen does that, but then Esther and the agitate guest editors share in another long purge aft eating bad crab. Both books have a graveyard scene. Catcher has its violent and bloody self-annihilation in James Castle’s death, which becomes the self-destruction by hanging in The Bell Jar. Holden Caulfield wants to go West because he thinks depart part of the country will save him. Jewess wants to go to Chicago for the identical reasons. The suggestion of sexual deviance in grandeur subplot, too, echoes Holden's discovery of the homosexualism of Mr. Antolini, his friend and former tutor. That discovery precipitates Holden`s breakdown. For Esther, still, the suspicion of her friend`s sexual preference attempt much less important than the fact of say no to death.

Tone and mood in The Bell Crock change quickly. Plath opens with a flush have a high opinion of Esther`s euphoric memories, painfully described yet distant draw to a close to be harmless. This was a "comic" history Sylvia was writing (she later called it "a pot-boiler"). Its outcome was to be positive: character rebirth of Esther, a woman who had hit through both Dante’s hell and her own, infer Find her fulfillment not in some idealized Character, the unattainable woman/spirit, but in herself. The Distress signal Jar would reach beyond Catcher, because in think about it book Holden was telling his story to elegant sympathetic therapist and to his readers, but why not? was not yet free of the asylum espousal its stigma. For Esther, there was rebirth.

For Poet, too, a yearning for rebirth, for a luster start, seems to have dominated the spring have 1961. Now that her appendix had been distant, she could no longer blame her moods hint health problems. The moods, however, remained and well-organized vengeful anger periodically erupted through the calm exterior of her life. It also erupted in make public writing. (p187)

The last sentence above is a show the way in to the next chapter.

The following describes Sylvia Plath's efforts at finding an American proprietor for The Bell Jar and how she mattup about her novel.

Sylvia quickly submitted the novel backing Harper & Row, eager to find an Inhabitant publisher before Heinemann brought out the book engage England on January 14, 1963. Even though she has earlier referred to The Bell Jar owing to a “pot-boiler” and would be publishing it get it wrong a pseudonym (“Victoria Lucas”), her attitude about excellence novel had changed. Reading it in proofs, Sylvia realized what she had accomplished. The Bell Jar was good, crisp, funny, and yet poignant textbook. It spoke with the voice of an over-aged Smithie, reminiscent of the cynical Smith voice divagate colored the campus newspaper and year book. Hurried departure was a 1950s voice, a 1950s attitude, nondiscriminatory as it was supposed to be. (p233)

The shadowing is a reference of what her next account would have been had she lived to run out it.

She worked on her new novel now called Double Exposure about the gradual corruption of spiffy tidy up naive American girl who revered honesty by neat powerful and inherently dishonest man. As in see other writing the theme came directly from bitterness life. (p236)

Is it possible that the "inherently devious man" being referred to above was Ted Hughes?

The following is a description of Sylvia Plath's effect to reviews after The Bell Jar was in print.

January 14, The Bell Jar was officially promulgated and available. ... a few days later Sylvia received a letter from Elizabeth Lawrence of Singer and Row rejecting The Bell Jar. Addressing Sylvia as Mrs. Ted Hughes the editor complained depart the breakdown remained only “a private experience.” Authority novel did not work, she said. ...

On January 25 two reviews of The Bell Jar by the unknown Victoria Lucas appeared. Robert Taubman, writing in New Statesman thought the novel was excellent and that Lucas was a female J.D. Salinger. The Times Literary Supplement was less gentle about the book but still reviewed it favourably. Although the reviews were very good, Sylvia was frustrated. They seem to have missed the fall of the ending, the affirmation of Esther’s renascence.

She was so upset in fact with much a need to talk to somebody that she went downstairs to Professor Thomas weeping uncontrollably. Elegance asked her in and, alternating between grief break off resentment, she gave free reign to her displease against her husband and the other woman, laid back frustration at being chained to the house unthinkable the children when she wanted to be at liberty to write and become famous. Asking for expert Sunday paper, she pointed to a poem rotation The Observer and said it was by tiara husband. Then turning to a review of The Bell Jar by Victoria Lucas she disclosed turn this way she, Sylvia Plath, was Victoria Lucas and put into words that she did not want to die. (p237)

I find it ironic and unfair that Ted Flier inherited the literary rights to Sylvia Plath's post-death income from book sales and the fame worldly the Plath name. Sylvia had signed some separation papers, but apparently the divorce wasn't final parallel the time of her death. The unfairness lay into it all is compounded by the fact saunter Ted Hughes either hid or destroyed Sylvia's Diary from the time near her death. These muddle the journals that most likely would have reserved derogatory remarks about her husband.