Literary Analysis of Sylvia Plath

Literary Analysis of Sylvia Plath

Hundreds of thousands of the world’s most prestigious and admired authors typically emerge out of hardships, internal struggles, family issues, and numerous other complications. Sylvia Plath, although not an exception to this cycle, had began her life with a desirable childhood filled with family and love. Things started to take a turn for the worse, however, when Plath was not yet even a teenager. As a modern period poet, author, and feminist growing up during World War II, Sylvia Plath did not struggle for new writing topics. Quite honestly, her mind rarely ever stopped moving.

Sylvia Plath was the first born in her family on October 27th, 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts, to father Otto Emil, and mother Aurelia Schober Plath. Sylvia was destined to be an A+ student. Otto had been an immigrant from Germany and studied at Harvard for Biology and attended classes at colleges including Columbia, University of Washington, MIT, and Boston University. Aurelia was one of the few women in the early 21st century to attend college. She took classes at Boston University, quickly met Otto, and fell in love. Sylvia did eventually become an older sister to her brother Warren Joseph, and had a wonderful childhood. Growing up along the Eastern edge of Massachusetts, Sylvia was infatuated with the ocean and spent the summers in a beach house right on the coast with her family and grandparents. As well as an exceptional family life, she was an extremely well-rounded student. Sylvia had been placed into in a first grade class by the age of four, and throughout her elementary years, displayed an obvious strength in academics (Haugrud Reiff 10-14).

Events in Sylvia’s life began to descend when her father’s health began to weaken. Otto had been infected with a sickness in 1932 that was believed to be lung cancer, but had not become a noticeable problem until approximately seven or eight years later. Otto wanted a quick death, refusing to consume any medication given to him. In early August, Otto had been informed that he had had diabetes, not lung cancer. The treatment for this disease would have been fairly simple if doctors had discovered and treated this earlier, but it had become too late. An infection that started in his toe that had spread up his leg forced Otto to get his leg amputated in October of 1940 (Steinberg 12 13). Aurelia had decided that it would be a logical idea to send Sylvia and Warren to her parents house as Otto began to become worse. Aurelia and Sylvia’s relationship did not change though; they still called each other and wrote letters daily. Otto’s health declined at a faster rate after the amputation and he unfortunately passed away on November 5th, 1940. This devastated Sylvia, even though her father did not display his love and affection often. Their relationship may not have been warm; however, it was a strong father daughter bond. Sylvia wrote a letter to her mom in despair after being informed of the death, stating, “I’ll never speak to God again,” (Haugrud Reiff 14 15).

Aurelia pushed Sylvia and her brother to get back on their feet, go to school, get involved, and to attempt to live their lives the way they previously had. In middle school and high school, Sylvia was an exceptional student; she kept her keen interest and thirst for knowledge, played the piano, violin, and viola, and had been an active participant in girl scouts. Although Sylvia seemed untroubled and content with her life, it was all a facade. She was considerably skilled at hiding all of her insecurities and mental health issues with a quick smile and laugh. Sylvia was extremely insecure about her high level of intelligence; she did not enjoy the stereotype that boys had about smart girls. That fact of human nature drove Sylvia mad; she became a perfectionist and cared a tad too much of how she appeared to others and how others perceived her. She also felt uneasy about the fact that in order to ‘fit in’, women had to be decently attractive. These misconceptions of women were the starting point of Plath’s feminist ways (Haugrud Reiff 16).

College did not bring anything more to Sylvia but stress and success. At Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, her writing and academics improved drastically, but her self-doubts took a toll over her life and led to extreme depression and anxiety. Sylvia had won many achievement awards from her honors classes for her works of poetry, and had gotten opportunities to be a writer and editor for numerous magazines such as Mademoiselle, Seventeen, and Harper’s (Haugrud Reiff 19). By not getting accepted into certain writing classes she aspired to be in, all of her success did not seem to matter to her; she became severely depressed and attempted to commit suicide by hiding in a nook of her basement and overdosing on sleeping pills (Steinberg 32 33). Sylvia began to attend therapy and had been given an electroshock treatment then left, claiming that she was cured. She then proceeded to return back to Smith’s for her second semester of her Junior year, then successfully completed her Senior year and graduated.

The next six or seven years of Sylvia’s life after college seemed to be filled with joyful events. She began taking more writing classes to earn her bachelor's degree at Cambridge University, traveled frequently, and fell in love with a man named Ted Hughes. Ted was a poet from Britain, and when the two had met, there were instantly sparks. Their love for literature and admiration for the same poets kept their bond strong. They were inseparable; however, every day the couple made sure that they had some time to be alone and write (Haugrud Reiff 29-31).

Sylvia and Ted got married on June 16th, 1956, followed by a summer-long honeymoon consisting of traveling around Spain. When they came back to Cambridge, Ted and Sylvia knew it was time to get back into reality. Ted began working at an all boys school as a teacher. Sylvia kept up with her classes and stayed consistent with her writing. Hughes became fed up with being a teacher, for it held back him and his time for writing. After publishing his first book in 1957, he and Sylvia decided to move back to America to focus on their writing. Although this seemed to be the right idea, Sylvia’s life had gotten back into its miserable and stressful cycle. She taught for a short amount of time as an English professor at Smith’s College, but despised it and decided to quit. She and Ted began to have financial problems, as both of them were out of work. Sylvia would take shifts at different places, picking up random jobs and hours, whenever she felt they truly needed the money. Sylvia and Ted would argue frequently under the stress of not having stable occupations, having little