Her friend, writer and critic Al Alvarez, penned an iconic description that furthered this image:
I hardly recognised Sylvia when she opened the door. The bright young American house wife with her determined smile and crisp clothes had vanished along with the pancake make‐up, the school‐mistressy bun and fake cheerfulness. Her face was wax‐pale and drained: her hair hung loose down to her waist and left a faint, sharp animal scent on the air when she walked ahead of me up the stairs. She looked like a priestess emptied out by the rites of her cult. And perhaps that is what she had become. She had broken through to whatever it was that made her want to write, the poems were coming every day, sometimes as many as three a day, unbidden, unstoppable, and she was off in a closed, private world where no one was going to follow her. (Alvarez, 1970)
In reality, we can never know what went through Sylvia Plath's mind during this time. Through letters she wrote and interviews with friends and neighbors during her last few weeks, we know Plath reached out to friends, her primary care physician, Dr. Horder, and her former therapist, Dr. Beuscher. Plath was severely depressed and without adequate support: “I am suddenly in agony, desperate, thinking Yes let him [Hughes] take over the house, the children, let me just die & be done with it. How can I get out of this ghastly defeatist cycle & grow up. I am only too aware that love and a husband are impossibles to me at this time, I am incapable of being myself and loving myself,” she wrote to Beuscher on February 4.
On Monday, February 11, 1963, Plath died by suicide. She sealed herself off in the kitchen, away from her children, and turned the gas on. She left the manuscript for Ariel and Other Poems neatly on her desk. Later, Dr. Horder explained that he had found a bed for Plath at a mental hospital and she was set to be admitted on February 11 (Clark, 2020, p. 891). Biographer Heather Clark thinks that, in addition to suffering from depression and using medications carelessly, “the prospect of a potentially horrific stay in an unknown mental hospital was one that filled Plath with fear…she was on the verge of surrendering herself to unknown psychiatrists—likely all men—in a notorious asylum” (Clark, 2020, p. 887).
Plath did not leave a suicide letter; a note was found by the baby stroller that simply read: “PLEASE CALL DR. HORDER AT PRI 3804.” Plath's body was discovered that morning by the visiting nurse she had enlisted to help care for the children.
Ariel and Other Poems was later edited by Ted Hughes and published as Ariel in 1965. In a controversial move, Hughes reorganized the structure of the manuscript and removed poems that he considered cast him in a bad light. Hughes chose to end Ariel on “Words,” a poem that references fate in its last lines: “fixed stars govern a life.” What Hughes seemed to be saying with his reorganization was that Plath's suicide was unpreventable and destined to happen—thus distancing himself from his wife's desperate act.
In 2004, Frieda Hughes released her mother's original poetic manuscript, which showed the public that her mother had a very different vision of the collection that made her famous. In particular, Plath concluded her version with the cycle of bee poems, with the last line of the last poem giving a sense of optimism: “The bees are flying. They taste the spring.”
THE TROUBLE WITH BIOGRAPHY
One of the biggest issues in Plath studies has revolved around Plath's biography: Who gets to tell her story and what written version of this life do we trust? What are the biases? What is at stake? Especially when the person being written about is not alive, and therefore cannot defend herself, the issue of biography remains complicated to this day.
Biographies are intended to be factual accounts of a person's life. Using eyewitness accounts, interviews, and artifacts such as letters and journal entries, biographers do the best they can to craft a truthful portrait. But as we have learned over time, eyewitness accounts can be faulty. Memories can change or evolve. And as we see from the editorial controversy around Ariel, narratives can be molded to satisfy certain agendas depending on who is determining them.
When biographers initially started to tackle Plath's life, they came up against various roadblocks. The most difficult to get around was Ted Hughes and his sister Olwyn. Olwyn had been placed in charge of Plath's estate and controlled who was able to use and quote from Plath's work and access her private materials. Specifically, biographers who were inclined to treat her brother with a gentle touch tended to get permission. One biographer, Linda Wagner‐Martin, explained as much in the Preface to Sylvia Plath: A Life (1987): “When I began researching this biography in 1982, I contacted Olwyn Hughes, who is literary executor of the Sylvia Plath estate. Olwyn was initially cooperative and helped me in my research … . As Olwyn read the later chapters of the book, however … her cooperation diminished” (Wagner‐Martin, 1987, pp. 13–14). Wagner‐Martin also added that both Olwyn and Ted's refusal to cooperate led to her inability to use more of Plath's writing in the book: “Consequently, this biography contains less of Plath's writing than I had intended. The alternative would have been to agree to suggestions that would have changed the point of view of this book appreciably” (Wagner‐Martin, 1987, p. 14).
In 1996, Olwyn gave up control of the estate to Frieda and Nicholas. After Nicholas's suicide in 2009, the estate fell solely to Frieda. Currently, Faber & Faber assists Frieda with administrative duties. Having the estate under Frieda's control has made it much easier for biographers to use material, and for readers to learn more about Plath's life and work.
Because Ariel eventually became a foundational text in American literature, and because Sylvia's death became so tied to those poems, her work took on new meaning. But to look at all of Plath's literary products through the veil of her suicide would be to do the poems a disservice.
Plath is not defined by her death. She was a human being who experienced the highs and lows of life and created art inspired by everything from nature to love to childbirth to traveling and so much more. Too often, the poems that deal most directly with mental illness and suicide have been made to stand in for Plath's entire oeuvre, obscuring the range of her poetic interests. As Frieda writes, “I saw poems such as ‘Lady Lazarus’ and ‘Daddy’ dissected over and over, the moment that my mother wrote them being applied to her whole life, to her whole person, as if they were the total sum of her experience.” Plath's death does not represent her entire life and work, but it is an example of how society can let down people who struggle with mental illness. Her art remains a testament to how someone with mental illness can still live a full and productive life.
Plath's life as well as her poetry and prose continue to influence readers in all kinds of ways. Plath is now a pop culture icon and a central figure in American literature. Whereas, when I was growing up and we studied one Plath poem, there are now entire college courses dedicated to Plath studies, indicating that her work is being taken more seriously. Conferences are held, books are written, and paintings and sculpture are created. Her London apartment at 3 Chalcot Square is a national landmark. People make journeys to her grave in Heptonstall, England, to leave pens. Her legacy is one of empowerment, especially for young women who feel stifled by societal expectations. When we study Sylvia Plath's life, we study all the ways that a woman was able to thrive, for a time, in a world that didn't expect her to achieve much.
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