Sylvia Plath may be one of the most remarkable and idolized modern poets of the twentieth century. Sylvia Plath had an emotional life, and a troublesome past with her father's death, insecurities because of self-doubt, a tragic break up with her husband and severe depression, leading to her suicide in 1963. These tragic events in Plath’s life played a vast part in her career as a poet and novelist, by inspiring her to create her melancholy and notorious masterpieces.
Born on October 27, 1932, in Boston, Massachusetts, Sylvia Plath was the daughter of Otto and Aurelia Plath. Growing up during the Great Depression, the family lived under Mr. Plath's care until he became sick with diabetes, dying shortly after Sylvia's eighth birthday. In spite of her father's death, Plath's childhood seemed to have been relatively mere (Austin). It is said that, “Sylvia conformed to the notion of the model child--excelling in school and whatever intellectual activities interested her, being docile and responsive to her family's wishes, and aiming steadily for honors and success in the American tradition of the 1950s” (Wanger). However, beneath the surface of her seeming perfection laid some grave troublesome problems, brought on by the death of her father. To rid some of the stress because of the recent death in the Plath’s life, Aurelia moved the family to Wellesley, Massachusetts. Aurelia enrolled Sylvia in a new school, feeling that studying and being with children Sylvia’s age would console her (Alexander 21). On the contrary it is said that, “Sylvia was still confused and angry about her father’s death…Her strong and conflicting emotions of love, hate, anger and grief at the loss of her father were to affect Sylvia for the rest of her life” (A...
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... A Biography of Sylvia Plath. New York, NY, U.S.A.: Viking, 1991. Print.
Plath, Sylvia, and Karen V. Kukil. The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950-1962. New York: Anchor, 2000. Print.
Austin, David Craig. "Sylvia Plath." Modern American Women Writers. Ed. Elaine Showalter, Lea Baechler, and A. Walton Litz. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1991. Scribner Writers Series. Web. 25 Apr. 2014.
Wanger-Martin, Linda. "Plath, Sylvia (1932-1963)." Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia of American Literature. George B. Perkins, Barbara Perkins, and Phillip Leininger. Vol. 1. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. 850. Literature Resource Center. Web. 22 Apr. 2014.
Middlebrook, Diane Wood. Her Husband: Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath--a Marriage. New York: Penguin, 2004. Print.
Freedman, William (1993): “The Monster in Plath’s ‘Mirror.’” Papers on Language and Literature, 108.5: 152-69.
Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. Print.
---. Gale Contextual Encyclopedia of American Literature. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 2009. 780-783. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 8 Feb. 2011.
The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. "Sylvia Plath (American author)." 23 September 2013. Encyclopedia Britannica Online. 9 April 2014 .
During a time when women didn't have many rights or received much recognition, Sylvia Plath was born in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts on Oct. 27, 1932 (Rosenberg 10). Her parents would've never expected their daughter would one day become such a success in a male-dominated profession of writing. At an early age, her writing career started to kick off, as well as the start of many dark events that would become the inspiration for her writings. When I first read "Blackberrying" by Plath, I simply thought that it was a simple story about going to pick blackberries only to then get distracted by the lure of the sea. But after reading it a few more times, I started to pick up on the subtleties that lay within the poem.
Plath was born in the seaside town of Winthrop, Massachusetts during the year of 1932. In her first eight years of life, Plath was troubled with the birth of a new sibling, the death of a parent, and the start of a war. These eight years were the calm before the stormy life of Sylvia Plath. As an only child, Plath felt threatened by the new baby in the family. Her new sibling, Warren, sparked a disdain for children that Plath would harbor for the rest of her life. In 1940, Plath’s father died and essentially robbed the children of a proper relationship with their mourning mother. The family moved inland where Plath focused on writing poetry until she began to attend Smith College in 1950.
Sylvia Plath lived a good, yet depressed life. She was born on October 27th 1932, in Boston Massachusetts to Aurelia and Otto Plath. Sylvia grew up with her brother in an ordinary household, under a strict father. Her childhood was happy, until in 1940, a week and a half after her eighth birthday, her father died due to complications of his untreated diabetes. This led to a loss of faith for a young Sylvia that she would never be able to regain and fueled her desire to write poetry and stories when she was ten. During her adolescence, she won many awards and honors for her writings and at age eighteen she received a scholarship to Smith College. That was when Plath’s symptoms of her severe depression began to emerge. In 1953 she attempted to take her own life, by overdosing on sleeping pills. She was hospitalized and given electro-shock therapy, and she fictionalized her experiences in her novel, The Bell Jar. In 1955 Plath moves to Cambridge England on a scholarship and met Ted Hughes, and English Poet...
"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
Sylvia Plath, born in October 1932, went through a great amount of depression which never receded due to her father’s death in 1940. She unsuccessfully attempted suicide at the ages of 10 and 20. However, in 1954 things seemed hopeful, with Plath obtaining a scholarship to Harvard summer school, then in 1955 with her graduation from Smith College and her attendance to Cambridge University on Fulbright fellowship. On the 16th of June in 1956 Plath was married to Ted Hughes, who was also a poet.
Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. 1st U.S. ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1971. Print.
Sylvia Plath was born on 27 October 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts. Plath’s father was a very strict man with dictatorial attitudes that stuck with and scarred Plath. Her father died due to complications with his diabetes when Plath was only eight years old, inspiring her poem “Daddy” (Academy of American Poets). “Daddy” is one of her most famous works that basically declares her hatred for her father.
Works Cited Freedman, William. The. “The Monster in Plath’s ‘Mirror’.” Papers on Language & Literature 23.1 (1987): 152-169. Literary Reference Center.
Plath, Sylvia. “Mad Girl’s Love Song.” Perrine’s Literature Structure, Sound & Sense. Ed. Thomas R. Arp and Greg Johnson. 11th ed. Wadsworth Cengage Learning 2012. 1003-1004. Print.
The Troubled Consciousness of Sylvia Plath as seen in “The Arrival of the Bee Box”
Born in Boston on October 27, 1932 to Otto and Aurelia Plath, Sylvia had a pleasant start in life. She grew up in Winthrop, a seaside town outside of Boston, with her younger brother, Warren. When she was eight years old, her father died as a result of pulmonary embolism following an injury complicated by diabetes. His death had such an impact on her that she eventually became obsessed with dying and wrote many pieces on the subject. In her works, he became a Nazi, a devil, and a demon lover, calling her to the grave. In school, Sylvia proved to be an outstanding writer, winning numerous awards. In 1950, entering college, her first short story, "And Summer Will Not Come Again" was published in Seventeen magazine. She attended Smith College with a double scholarship from Wellesly Smith Club and a private fund endowed by Olive Higgins Prouty. In 1952 she won a guest editorship in Mademoiselle's College Board Co...
Sylvia Plath." Contemporary Literature Fall 1996: 370-90. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter and Deborah A. Schmitt. Vol. 111. Detroit: Gale Group, 1999. Literature Resource Center. Web. 22 Apr. 2014.