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.
Aurelia Schober, Plath’s mother, was studying at Boston University when she fell in love with her professor that taught German and biology, Otto Plath, whom she would marry in January 1932. Later in that same year on October 27, Plath was born to the couple. Plath’s father passed away when she was only eight. (Academy of American Poets) From then on, Plath began publishing her poems. In everything she did, she strived towards being flawless; she had straight A’s, was a good daughter, and earned prestigious prizes (Gilson). Schober aided in pushing her daughter towards excellence and always made sure Plath knew how proud she was of her. In fact, Sylvia’s mother collected her daughter’s achievements and praised her highly for them (Liukkonen). By 1950, she had been given a scholarship to attend Smith College and had hundreds of publications, which she would add to substantially in the time she spent at Smith (Gilson).
Pollitt, Katha. "A Note of Triumph [The Collected Poems]". Critical Essays on Sylvia Plath. Ed. Linda W. Wagner. Boston: G. K. Hall & Company, 1984. 67 - 72.
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
Plath and Sexton's lifetimes spanned a period of remarkable change in the social role of women in America, and both are obviously feminist poets caught somewhere between the submissive pasts of their mothers and the liberated futures awaiting their daughters. With few established female poets to emulate, Plath and Sexton broke new ground with their intensely personal, confessional poetry. Their anger and frustration with female subjugation, as well as their agonizing personal struggles and triumphs appear undisguised in their works, but the fact that both Sexton and Plath committed suicide inevitably colors what the reader gleans from their poems. However, although their poems, such as Plath's "Daddy" and Sexton's "Little Girl, My String Bean, My Lovely Woman," deal with the authors' private experiences, they retain elements of universality; their language cuts through a layer of individual perspective to reach a current of raw emotion common to all human, but especially female, understanding.
Sylvia Plath showed interest in writing at a very early age. Plath published her first poem when she was eight years old. Sylvia Plath continued writing and published numerous stories and poems before the age of twenty. After graduation in 1950, Plath received the Olive Higgins Prouty Scholarship from Smith College (Smithipedia). At the private college, Plath managed to excel in school and write over four hundred poems while suffering from depression (allpoetry). It was at Smith College, where she attempted her first suicide. Plath graduated from the school in 1955 and moved to Cambridge, England to continue her studies (AAoP).
Plath was exceptionally smart and a very talented writer. Plath had published over fifty short stories and poems in magazines and newspapers while she was still in her teenage years. Her first publication was in the Christian Science Monitor, which was published right after she graduated from high school. Upon graduating from high school, Sylvia attended Smith College on a writing scholarship and continued to excel, publishing many works.
Giles, Richard F. “Sylvia Plath.” Magill’s Critical Survey of Poetry. Ed. Frank N. Magill, b. 1875. Pasadena: Salem Press, 1992.
After reading the poem “Mad Girl’s Love Song” and doing some research on Plath, I came to find out that the poem was very similar to Plath’s personal life. The poem is basically about a young girl who fell in love and gave her all to a boy who never came back to love her. The young girl fell in a depression and made herself believe that she was making it all up. She still had hope that she and the boy could be happy someday, but it never happened and it drove her insane. Perhaps the boy could have been Plath’s husband, Hughes. Everything about the poem is so similar to her marriage with Hughes; the story makes the reader believe the poem could possibly be about Plath herself.
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’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). Since she was so young she never got to work out her unsettled feelings with him. Even at age eight, she hid when he was around because she was fearful of him. When she was in his presence his strict and authoritarian figure had left an overpowering barrier between their relationship. Sadly enough by age eight Plath instead of making memories with her dad playing in the yard she resented him and wanted nothing to do with him (Kehoe). These deep-seated feelings played a major role in Plath’s poetry writings. Along with his “hilterian figure,” her father’s attitude towards women was egotistical and dismissive, uncondemning. This behavior infuriated Plath; she was enraged about the double standard behavior towards women. Plath felt controlled in male-dominated world (Lant). “Because Plath associates power so exclusively with men, her conviction that femininity is suffocating and inhibiting comes as no surprise” (Lant 631). This idea of a male-dominated world also influenced Plath’s writing. Unfortunately, Plath married a man just like her father Ted Hughes. “Hughes abandonment apparently stirred in her the memories and feelings she had struggled with when her ...
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 from carbon monoxide poisoning by placing her head in an 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.