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In the decades that have followed Sylvia Plath's suicide in February1963, much has been written and speculated about her life, most particularly about her marriage to fellow poet Ted Hughes and her last months spent writing the stark, confessional poems that were to become Ariel. And the myths surrounding Plath have only been intensified by the strong grip her estate--managed by Hughes and his sister, Olwyn--had over the release of her work. Yet Plath kept journals from the age of 11 until her death at 30. Previously only available in a severely bowdlerized edition, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath have now been scrupulously transcribed (with every spelling mistake and grammatical error left intact) and annotated by Karen V. Kukil, supervisor of the Plath collection at Smith College.

The journals show the breathless adolescent obsessed with her burgeoning sexuality, the serious university student competing for the highest grades while engaging in the human merry-go-round of 1950s dating, the graduate year spent at Cambridge University where Plath encountered Ted Hughes. Her version of their relationship (dating is definitely not the appropriate term) is a necessary, and deeply painful, complement to Birthday Letters. On March 10, 1956, Plath writes:

Please let him come, and give me the resilience & guts to make him respect me, be interested, and not to throw myself at him with loudness or hysterical yelling; calmly, gently, easy baby easy. He is probably strutting the backs among crocuses now with seven Scandinavian mistresses. And I sit, spiderlike, waiting, here, home; Penelope weaving webs of Webster, turning spindles of Tourneur. Oh, he is here; my black marauder; oh hungry hungry. I am so hungry for a big smashing creative burgeoning burdened love: I am here; I wait; and he plays on the banks of the river Cam like a casual faun.

Fragments of diaries exist after 1959, which saw the couple's return to England and rural retreat in Devon, the birth of their two children, and their separation in late 1962. An extended piece on the illness and death of an elderly neighbor during this period is particularly affecting and was later turned into the poem "Berck-Plage." Much has been made of the "lost diaries" that Plath kept until her suicide--one simply appears to have vanished, the other Hughes burned after her death. It would seem rapacious to wish for more details of her despair in her final days, however. It is crystallized in the poems that became Ariel, and this is what the voice of her journals ultimately send the reader back to. Sylvia Plath's life has for too long been obfuscated by anecdote, distorting her major contribution to 20th-century literature. As she wrote in "Kindness": "The blood jet is poetry. There is no stopping it." --Catherine Taylor ... Read more

Reviews (18)

Profoundly Sad
As I read the morbid journals of Sylvia Plath, I find that all of them have a beautiful intensity. Her words, which have a beautiful movement, are an extended description of her inner life. Her mind, illuminated always by poetry and prose, is moved by slight moments to rapture and despair. Even as she describes the raptures of being seventeen, her prose displays a profound melancholy, as though the fires of her nature foreshadow her darkest tendencies.

Great book!
It's about time that we got the nearly full story of what she really thought and felt. Although we will probably never see those missing journals which were written months prior to her death, still what remains is riveting.

As for the person who mentioned how disturbing her entries are and how she comes across as a 'monster,' well, apparently some people have no appreciation for a) how complicated artistic people are; and b) how we ALL have these thoughts from time to time, whether we are artistic or not. We just don't take the time to write them down in journals for pedantic 'chicken soup' types to thoughtlessly analyze after we're dead.

I do however, agree with the intelligent comment about the Euripedean relationship with that mother. Good use of Greek mythology. I think it was Camille Paglia who pegged the real source of Plath's anger when she described the redoubtable Aurelia Plath as someone who could castrate you from fifty paces. Hilarious and true. Poor Sylvia. I would be [angry] too with a mother like that.

Thank you for these wonderful glimpses into the human condition. If Plath's a monster, then we all are.

BEAUTIFUL
Her writing is beautiful. She does show remarkable growth in thought after college, and as she reaches her suicide, her writing is unbelievably stunning.

mike

What? Nothing to say, Ted?
Oh, that's right, you're dead now, aren't you?

Here, untainted by the interference of her unworthy ex, Ted Hughes, is an intense and revealing series of insights into the mind of this most brilliant woman.

I came to these journals after reading five volumes of the diaries of Virginia Woolf, and some of the parallels are quite chilling.

Whether Plath articulates it or not, the legacy of the Inquisition hangs over her as it has over so many women who are still trying to make sense of a world that is yet to be cleansed of the darker residues of patriarchy.

At the time of her suicide in 1963, women had only had been able to vote, own property and inherit property from their fathers for a pitiful 45 years. Incredibly, the centennial of women suffrage will not be until 2018. But of course, that can't be an issue, can it?

As for people who desperately manipulate threads of her words to 'prove' that she secretly wanted dependence, hinting that all women secretly crave dependence; consider that if women were naturally dependent on men, the patriarchy would never have needed to set up such a vast number of mechanisms to suppress them.

Having read most of her poetry, including the final Ariel poems, and having worked through the journals - a draining experience at times - I still feel Plath's basic Life dilemma is captured in the following hybridized stanza (a merging of lines from two separate stanzas) from Lorelei:-

Worse even than your maddening
Song, your silence. At the source
Of your ice-hearted calling...

The siren's wail is something primal, something heart-stoppingly elemental. The carrier wave for the Great Song, the Oran Mor of the Celts. It even appears in a similar form in Siddhartha, in the river of a thousand voices, ultimately all converging to form Unity.

Like any tortured soul, such as Virginia Woolf - plug in a name - the basic alienation and fear of meaninglessness clearly were there in Plath as with most humans, but her Lorelei references also suggested a fear of her own innate primal power. She had a glimpse of something that simply overloaded her circuits, perhaps like the Kundalini experience that led to the poet Shelley's drowning.

Yes, there in those lines, we have the dilemma. Which is the more terrible, the Silence or the Song? The fear of nothingness or the crushing tidal wave of everydayness? The entire process of Life. She lived vicariously to some degree, placing far too much importance on her relationship with Ted Hughes. A roving, cheating husband, a man without honor, who was simply not worthy of her, or of any decent woman.

Perhaps in her final bleak despair, she forgot that she had existed before him as Sylvia Plath and could have existed after him as Sylvia Plath. She misinterpreted the siren call of her Sisters. They were not calling her down to Death, but to reunification. Ted who? I rather fancy she was the better poet of the two, by a long sea mile.

Moving
Everything which Plath wrote in her journals has proceeded to appear profoundly sad; even as she writes of the raptures of her youth, lurking beneath the surface is a profound melancholy.
The journals are a moving account of this tormented poet's life as well as the nearness of her encounters with death and madness. Not merely autobiographical, it is as well a study of the process of the written word. Readers can refer to these journals as a source of artistic inspiration and deep portrayal of psychological pain. ... Read more

Amazon.com

Dianne Middlebrook launches Her Husband: Hughes and Plath: A Marriage, appropriately, with the birth of the poets’ lives together. Through her retelling of the historic moment of their first meeting, Middlebrook sets the balanced, literate, and brutally honest tone that she maintains throughout the book. According to Middlebrook, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes’s first encounter was violent and almost mythic, punctuated with kisses and biting. In 112 days they were married. Together, as Middlebrook shows, they formed a unique literary bond. They remained aggressive intellectual and erotic partners. But, six years later, Hughes left Plath and their two children for another woman. She committed suicide shortly after, while Hughes would go on to a long and successful career as a poet and as Plath’s literary executor.

What Middlebrook brings to this story, outside of the almost voyeuristic details gleaned from letters, diaries, interviews, and past biographies, is a scholarly commitment to infuse the reading of Hughes and Plath’s marriage with a reading of their poetry and prose. In less capable hands, using literature to reconstruct biography can lead to an undisciplined avoidance of real historical research. But Middlebrook drafts the writings to bolster her understanding of the couple in sophisticated ways that link their private language to their public statements in published works (especially Hughes’ Birthday Letters). At the same time, Middlebrook remains deeply aware that Hughes and Plath worked to re-construct themselves through their writings, often with conflicting self-portraits, for posterity. She is comfortable letting their contradictions exist side by side.

Her Husband is wonderfully told; it is difficult to imagine how this narrative of the marriage could be surpassed. One only hopes that Middlebrook will have the stamina to amend her own work—if necessary—when Hughes’s most private papers are made public in 2023. --Patrick O’Kelley ... Read more

Reviews (8)

Overrated!
I like Diane Middlebrook's writing, but this book is not one of her best. In general I thought it thin and shallow, and not very well structured. She didn't seem to have a point except gossiping and giving us a bland narration of the events. I felt like a voyeur reading this. I really felt she needed to do more analysis rather than just report on Plath and Hughes. For example, why did the birth of their son Nicholas send Hughes into such a tizzy? Its evident from several sources she cites that Hughes rejected the child unaccountably, and it seems that was a key event in the unravelling of their relationship. Well, why? She merely cites this evidence without analyzing it. Why did Hughes want "ten daughters" but could not tolerate one son? It seems rather obvious that the guy couldn't bear to have a male "competitor" in the family. If you're going to do a biography, then don't hold back! I felt Middlebrook repeatedly dropped the ball on a full analysis of Hughes and his psychology/behaviour.

For example, the way he treated Plath's estate was mind-boggling. Just randomly leaving it floating around his house so others could steal parts of it? Why does she not comment more on this! What a flagrant disrespect this shows for Sylvia Plath! That material should have been stored properly, at the very least! I've never read any in depth narrative of their marriage: this is the first one. I must say I formed an extremely negative view of Hughes from it--he seemed like a pure egomaniac underneath it all, and Middlebrook simply won't take a stance towards the evidence. Certainly, one could formulate a stronger critical stance without going to the extreme of blaming him for the behavior of the women who attached themselves to him. She seems blinded by a need to defend him while on the contrary, most of the material she cites paints a much more negative picture.

It bothers me that in some passages of the book Middlebrook celebrates the way Plath's poems after Hughes left her were able to help her heal and take responsibility for attaching herself to "dominant males," and for "collaborating in her own oppression" --yet then she goes on to (subtly) defend Hughes. Well which is it? She's read "Daddy"--it seems that Middlebrook wants to grant a feminist power to Plath for that poem and its sentiments but at the same time completely deny their truth. "Oh, he wasn't really that bad."

In general, a fuller account of the psychology and dynamics of both the main protagonists is needed in this book. Plath, also, is often rendered in a shallow and gossipy light.

I felt Middlebrook didn't have a clue about how to analyze the way Plath and Hughes helped each other write, and what the function of writing was in their relationship. I've read much much better analyses of creative marriages (i.e., by Susan Rubin Suleiman for example.) This was just superficial.

Another thing I found problematic was how Middlebrook does not do a better analysis of some of the events leading to Plath's suicide, such as, the publication of the Bell Jar. Why did this trigger Plath's last depression, as the evidence suggests, and why did Hughes resent that "damn" book so fiercely? The argument that it was just "brain chemistry" I found not convincing at all! Again and again I felt Middlebrook just drops out pieces of information but does not fully discuss them.

I think her bio of Anne Sexton is a much better book which I have read several times. This one I will never read again. For a better analysis of Sylvia Plath I think Rose's Haunting of Sylvia Plath is excellent.

Her Husband: Hughes and Plath, a Marriage
The marriage of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes has been written about for decades, the riveting aspects of their relationship splashed tabloid style across the pages of popular biographies and recorded for posterity in more scholarly tomes of journals and letters. But Middlebrook (Anne Sexton) offers the reader and Plath/Hughes-ophile something new, exploring their working relationship in terms of their intimate one. Looking into what she refers to as their "call and response" poetry, Middlebrook discovers how some of Hughes's and Plath's most famous poems are linked with or responses to each other's writing. She traces the roots of their literary relationship to the beginning of their romance and continues through to Hughes's death in 1998. By opening up their poetic life, she finds what drew them together and what, in turn, keeps readers fascinated with them. Her impartiality to this polarizing subject is refreshing and perhaps aided by her bicontinental status. Recommended for all literature collections.

Don't bother reading anything else!
Having read just about everything on the Plath/Hughes partnership I have to say that Diane Middlebrook's book is simply the best in the lucid intelligence and even-handedness with which she tackles a subject which has hitherto excited a great deal of sensationalistic biography and shallow "analysis" . Her understanding of both poets' work and placement within the culture is a tour de force. I can't praise it highly enough!

We did whatever poetry told us to do...
This is the first biography that doesn't portray Ted Hughes as a monster,
but as a man with weakness like anybody else, although, he may have had more weakness than others. But then, Plath knew this before she married him, didn't she? This may have been a part of the fascination, attraction. After all, Plath was no angel herself.

"Her Husband" begins with the famous 'Meeting'... Plath sees Ted at a party, flirts with him, recites some of his own poetry from across the room.(Now,this would turn a man on!)
He rips off her headband, trys to kiss her, she bites his cheek, drawing blood. A lusty, sexual,intense first meeting. A memorable first meeting. Ted had the scar to prove it.

Middledbrook has broken her book down chronologically...the first meeting,the romance,struggling artists,prospering,
separating,etc...

I have read everything about Plath ... but this book adds new and fresh details into her intriguing life. For instance how she and Ted would annoy one another during the writing process..he picking his nose, she twirling the ends of her hair. Absolutely adore those kind of real-life elements.

"Her Husband" has allowed Ted Hughes to come out into the world as a human being, not just be remembered as the man who betrayed Sylvia Plath, caused her to throw her head into an oven, generated her darkness. No. He was more that that, and that is why Plath loved him.

My favorite chapters are those where Plath and Hughes are together, reading to one another, cooking great meals, talking about literature, having great sex, loving one another.

But... to be honest, Plath would not have written "Ariel" without the darkness and hopelessness that consumed her. She says so fittingling in her poem 'Edge' ... The woman is perfected/her dead body wears the smile of accomplishment.

Did you accomplish what you wanted Sylvia?

Sexton says in the book, "That was my death! She took it before I could." But then she took hers later, didn't she?

Loved "Her Husband" and would recommend it for all who appreciate Plath...

But beware...

you may appreciate Ted Hughes in this one too,
but that's alright.
With him and without him... Plath did her most brilliant work!

The Yin & The Yang Of A Creative, Destructive Pair - Superb!
Diane Middlebrook's book about the ill-fated marriage of poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes is an extraordinary combination of biography and literary criticism. Rather than focusing on Plath's depression and subsequent suicide, the author offers a valuable, unsentimental analysis of both their work and the influence they had on each other's lives and creative processes.

She portrays Hughes, not as an egotistical, philandering husband who abandoned his wife and family, but as a man and a poet, struggling with his failed marriage. In fact, how marriages fail, and the men and women who fail in making their relationships work, are part of the book's central theme. Hughes' inspired and encouraged his wife's creativity, but he also contributed to the anguish which led to her suicide. Living with Sylvia Plath was not an easy task though. Her work, her life and her death profoundly changed Ted Hughes' perspective on his own life and work.

Plath, more than thirty years after her death, has evolved into an icon of martyred feminism and is revered by her passionate following. Many believe that her tragic suicide was a result of the overwhelming societal demands placed on a woman/wife/mother/artist at the midpoint of the last century. However, Sylvia Plath is, foremost, one of the most brilliant poets of that century, with her roles as daughter, wife and mother taking second place to her art. Her death was a tragedy, not a personal statement or rebellion. Her history of mental illness, and the barbaric treatment she received for the disease, is a known fact. Her pain was a violent presence in her life, especially during the last months. There was nothing passive, quiet or calculating about it. Plath was a victim of her demons, perhaps the Furies, who finally claimed her.

During his lifetime Hughes was very reluctant to disclose information about his turbulent relationship with his poet wife, especially about their break-up and her months alone with her two children during a terrible London winter. He explained his silence as wanting to protect his children. Finally, in 1998, "Birthday Letters" was published, a volume of verse-letters about his relationship with his wife. Weeks after publication Hughes died. In this volume, Hughes breaks his silence and responds to critics, scholars, and in a sense to Sylvia. This material provided literary scholars with the perspective they had lacked for so long. Hughes, at last, describes his struggle to love and live with a beautiful, talented woman suffering from serious clinical depression. Middlebrook draws heavily on the book, as well as Hughes' papers at Emory University, Sylvia Plath's journals and papers at Smith College, and an abundance of written material heretofore unavailable.

Ms. Middlebrook also analyzes the profound effect both poets had on each other's work. She writes, "One of the most mutually productive literary marriages of the 20th century lasted only about 2300 days. But until they uncoupled their lives in October 1962, each witnessed the creation of everything the other wrote, and engaged the other's work at the level of its artistic purposes. They recognized the ingenuity of solutions to artistic problems that they both understood very well." Hughes believed that he and Plath had similar dispositions and often felt as if he was drawing on a "single shared mind." They shared tastes in literature, authors and poets. They sketched together, wrote together and were physically a passionate, well-matched pair. The author documents the descent of their happiness to drama and despair, while showing the effect of these emotions on their work.

Diane Middlebrook's insightful, literate, well-crafted biography must have been difficult to write. The amount of grief and pain contained in the literary work she researched and the lives she wrote about boggles the mind - and hurts the heart. She is a partisan of poetry - not of Ted Hughes nor of Sylvia Plath. She remains as objective as possible when drawing her conclusions. And most importantly, her focus is on the impact that Sylvia Plath's life and death had on her husband and his writing, allowing Plath's legacy to live on posthumously.
JANA ... Read more

Book Description

Since her infamous suicide at age thirty, Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) has been celebrated for her impeccable and ruthless poetry, which excels at describing the most extreme reaches of human consciousness and passions. The bestselling autobiographical novel The Bell Jar illuminated her life for millions of fans, followed by The Colossus, Ariel, and the Pulitzer-Prize winning Collected Poems.

Based on exclusive interviews and extensive archival research, Rough Magic probes the events of Plath's life-including her turbulent marriage to the English poet Ted Hughes-in the first biography to take a compassionate view of this fiercely talented, deeply troubled artist. ... Read more

Reviews (10)

Rough Magic
Paul Alexander's Rough Magic allows the reader to fully understand and enter the psyche of Sylvia Plath from her blissful childhood to her more tumultuous adult years. What I found was very nice about this biography was that it included Sylvia's poetry in a chronological order. It was so helpful to have her poetry included after just reading what her life was like at the immediate time that she wrote that certain piece. Also, by having her writing placed in a chronological order, I found that I could really pick up on how she developed her writing and honed her skills over time.
It is very apparent that the work gone into the making of this book was so thorough and in depth. Mr. Alexander did a fabulous job piecing Sylvia's life together in one book. It seems like every relationship Sylvia ever had has been accounted for and analyzied in this book.
I recommend this book to anyone who would like a deeper understanding of Sylvia Plath's life and her continuous descent into depression.

One-sided, but a good read
This is the only Sylvia Plath biography I've ever read, and while the book is thorough in its exposition it is very sympathetic to Plath and Plath's mother, Aurelia. I had the feeling it was presenting the side of the story that Plath's mother wanted told with not as much attention to the other side of the story.

The Plath in "Rough Magic" is an impulsive, attractive, manic-depressive individual who is unquestionably talented. However, I felt sorry for the people she left behind in her wake as she swooped through life - the boyfriends and few female friends who were picked up and discarded easily as Plath moved from one year to the next. Plath was beautiful, smart and driven - and, I think, had been indulged by family and friends to the point that she was probably pretty hard to live with. Frankly, I feel that a lot of Plath's problems were her own creation - especially her primary problem, her marriage to Ted Hughes. She met and decided to become involved with Hughes based on a strong physical attraction and not much else, and within 4 months after getting together they were married. Her own mentor warned her about how the first excitement of love doesn't last, but Plath refused to listen. Maybe if Plath had taken more time before marrying him to find out about his bizarre relationship with his sister Olwyn, his violent temper, his womanizing, and his odd personality quirks - his refusals to bathe, his obsession with the occult, etc. she could have avoided marrying him and ending up in a bad situation. It is not a great idea to marry someone you know little about other than that you have sexual chemistry. Same thing with deciding to have children - she was desperate to have children and had two in short order, meanwhile criticizing childless women, and yet seemed to despair when she realized the children were going to require a great deal of time and care.

The book gave me insight into Plath, but I certainly didn't feel sorry for her. In my opinion her own impulsiveness and childish behavior were the root causes of her problems, not anything else. She seemed to me to be one of those people who is obsessed with obtaining life milestones (published work, marriage, children) as quickly as possible and then feel burdened once they have what they want. Obviously she had some chemical imbalance problems and in today's world probably would have been medicated before she committed suicide, but she had kind of a hysterical personality aside from the manic depression.

The book is worth reading if you have any interest in Plath, but expect a lot of sympathy for the Plath family in lieu of balanced fact-reporting.

A Compassionate & Complete View of a True Artist
Thank you, Paul Alexander, for a complete and compassionate view of the life of the poet, artist, mother, wife--and sunbather!--Sylvia Plath. You put her heart, mind, and poetry (and how she arrived at that poetry) first, chapter after chapter, so that the reader could feel so very close to Sylvia. I read this book with a collection of Sylvia's poetry at hand, which made the read feel especially all-inclusive, and thorough. You did such a wonderful job of pinpointing the days on which Sylvia wrote certain poems, so that it was a pleasure to follow along and read those particular poems at the 'right time'. Sylvia grew up in print--having published her first poem at eight then continuing to publish poems year by year, until (well, and after) her death.
I found so many of the details revealed in this biography fascinating (for instance, Ted's interest in the occult and hypnosis) and Sylvia's desires for "signs" when she was lost in her life. I appreciated that she felt she had received a sign from William Butler Yeats, given his own meanderings into the supernatural.
If not for this book, I would not have been touched by her life. Many thanks for the years you must have put into bringing the book--and Sylvia--into existence. I am thankful that she gave so much of herself to the world, and that you've shown us a great deal of that Self, that heady poet and that very brave woman Sylvia Plath.

Finally!
At long last, a biography of Sylvia Plath written by someone who refused to bow to the editorial demands of Ted & Olwyn Hughes, who unfortunately controlled the late poet's estate at the time. Choosing freedom of speech over permission to quote Plath's work, Paul Alexander has produced an extraordinary biography that reveals the true Sylvia Plath as a girl, woman, wife, mother, and most important, author. With interviews from friends and family who had never before spoken about Plath for publication, this is a book that any scholar of Plath's life and work should not miss.

The worst Plath biography
This is the worst of the Plath biographies; lurid, unscrupulous and shallow. For numerous reasons, this biography is unworthy of the attention of any individual with a serious interest in Plath and her work. This biography is virtually devoid of literary criticism; instead, its locus is Plath's sexuality. Rather than treating this subject sensitively, Alexander chooses to crudely fictionalize Plath's experiences, for, one assumes, maximum voyeuristic pleasure. I am also incensed by Alexander's treatment of Ted Hughes and the tragic suicide of his lover Assia Wevill: to paraphrase Janet Malcolm in her brilliant study "The Silent Woman," he eagerly demonizes Hughes to the cusp of libel law. Luckily, Alexander's hateful assumptions about Hughes have been discounted by the publication of Birthday Letters and Plath's unedited journals. In summary, Rough Magic is a poorly-written, one-dimensional portrait of Sylvia Plath not intended for the serious Plath scholar. ... Read more

Book Description

Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath were husband and wife; they were also two of themostremarkable poets of the twentieth century. In this stunning new account of theirmarriage,Diane Middlebrook draws on a trove of newly available papers to craft abeautifullywritten portrait of Hughes as a man, as a poet, and as a husband haunted—andnourished—his entire life by his relationship to Sylvia Plath.

Her Husband is a triumph of the biographer’s art and an up-close look ata couplewho saw each other as the means to becoming who they wanted to be: writers andmythicrepresentations of a whole generation. ... Read more

Book Description

"One of the most promising young poet-critics in America" (Los Angeles Times) examines a revolutionary generation of poets.

Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, John Berryman, Randall Jarrell, and Delmore Schwartz formed one of the great constellations of talent in American literature. In the decades after World War II, they changed American poetry forever by putting themselves at risk in their poems in a new and provocative way. Their daring work helped to inspire the popular style of poetry now known as "confessional." But partly as a result of their openness, they have become better known for their tumultuous lives—afflicted by mental illness, alcoholism, and suicide—than for their work. This book reclaims their achievement by offering critical "biographies of the poetry"—tracing the development of each poet's work, exploring their major themes and techniques, and examining how they transformed life into art.

An ideal introduction for readers coming to these major American poets for the first time, it will also help veteran readers to appreciate their work in anew light. 6 illustrations. ... Read more

Amazon.com

Sylvia Plath committed suicide in February 1963, and since then her poetry,fiction, and, increasingly, her life have maintained enormous power over readers'(particularly female readers') imaginations. Biographies continue to appear withregularity, despite the strong hold the Plath estate has on her work. But because of thathold, each biographer has been forced to accommodate the living (Ted Hughes, who wasseparated from Plath at the time of her death, and his larger-than-life sister, Olwyn, longthe executrix), often at the expense of the dead. In 1989, Anne Stevenson's peculiarhybrid, Bitter Fame,waspublished, complete with an appendix full of devastating memoirs. It was not youraverage biography. When Janet Malcolm was first sent the book, she was less drawn to itby the Plath legend than by the fact that she had known Stevenson in the '50s, but shesoon became captivated by the book's defeatist subtext. The dead woman's voice andwritings seemed to overwhelm Stevenson's tentative narrative; and if that wasn't enough,there was also the none-too-angelic choir of those who had known Plath. "Thesetoo, said, 'Don't listen to Anne Stevenson. She didn't know Sylvia. I knew Sylvia. Let metell you about her. Read my correspondence with her. Read my memoir.'"

Bitter Fame was soon garnering some powerfully bad notices, especially that ofA. Alvarez in the New York Review of Books. Alvarez, the author of one of themost influential pieces on Plath, in his study of suicide, The Savage God, had somespecial, personal cards to deal, as have so many others Plath left behind. BecauseMalcolm's great theme is treachery--that of the interviewer, the journalist, the teller ofjust about any tale--the Plath mess seemed a perfect fit, and she decided to become aplayer, too. In 1991, Malcolm was having lunch with Olwyn Hughes in North London, 28years to the day on which the poet died.

This is only one of the coincidences in The Silent Woman, a postmodernbiography par excellence, which is less about the drama of Plath's life and stillcontroversial death than about their continuing effect on the living. For Malcolm, allcards are wild, each one revealing more complexity, human cravenness, and, above all,brilliantly playful aperçus about human agency and writing's deceptions. I lookforward to the dictionary of quotations that foregrounds the elegant "The pleasureof hearing ill of the dead is not a negligible one, but it pales before the pleasure ofhearing ill of the living." And then there's, "Memory is notoriouslyunreliable; when it is intertwined with ill will, it may be monstrously unreliable. The'good' biographer is supposed to be able to discriminate among the testimonies ofwitnesses and have his antennae out for tendentious distortions, misrememberings, andoutright lies." It's clear that Malcolm doesn't see herself as a "good"biographer--she openly declares her allegiance, but is more than capable of changing itand of showing her cards. Or is she? In the end, The Silent Woman is a stunninginquiry into the possibility of ever really knowing anything save that "the gamecontinues." ... Read more

Reviews (21)

Compelling Look at the Biography Process
Malcolm's book is a compelling look at the process of writing a biography, as well as an interesting biography of Plath's and Hughes's relationship in itself. By examining the motivations behind Plath biographers, friends, and enemies, Malcolm comments on the process and biases of the biography genre, most importantly, the controversial Bitter Fame. In this book, we see the Hughes's sister shut out all biographers with a negative view of Hughes. We see Plath enemy Dido Merwin write a skewed tale about a Plath/Hughes visit. We see admirers of Plath's write scathing biographies blaming Hughes for the downfall of the Plath/Hughes marriage. What Malcolm attempts to do is to look at the union in a balanced manner, while exposing the motivations of the players in the Plath drama. She succeeds whole-heartedly in this excellent book.

One of the Best Books on Plath and the Art of the Biography
One could argue that The Silent Woman is nothing more than a look at the art of writing a biography, and why biographies are so unreliable. One could also view The Silent Woman as one of the best books written about Sylvia Plath to date, surpassing Bitter Fame and Chapters in a Mythology. Both would be correct. As the host of the Journals forum at BellaOnline, I found The Silent Woman an indespencable tool in writing my article on journals and why the online journal, like the biography according to Janet Malcolm, is so unreliable.

Ms. Malcolm's book takes us through England and the US, trying to piece together the history of the Hughes/Plath marriage. Along the way, she makes some rather remarkable conclusions not only about the Plath marriage but about the biography itself -- conclusions which transcent genre and, in the end, talk about most biographical/autobiographical works, such as journals, and why we cannot always believe what we read. A wonderful, scholarly piece that everyone interested in literature, reading, or Ms. Plath's life should read.

great book on the biography and sylvia plath
Malcolm has written a great book on the difficulties of writing a good and fair biography. She uses Sylvia Plath, and specifically Anne Stevenson's Bitter Fame as her example. What you get here is an interesting book that engages the reader and at times almost reads like a novel. The book is gripping and before you know it, you've finished it. Also, Malcolm claims to be on the "side" of Ted Hughes, but I still think she gives a fairly balanced view of the whole situation. But, this isn't a biography of Sylvia Plath. This is a biography of a biography.

A good gossip, that's all
This book is just gossip about two famous(or infamous) poets.Janet Malcolm elicits gossip from various people who came into contact with Sylvia Plath in some way.Most of these people wrote about Plath or were her neighbors for a while.They were not close to Sylvia. When she met them,Janet tells us what clothes these people wore, and in some cases, how they dished up a meal. There is no reliable information given about either poet.Janet tells us that interesting biography can't be objective. But really, she can't be objective because she is unashamedly in the pro Ted Hughes camp. If Janet wished to learn something about Sylvia and Ted she could have asked an astrologer. Then she would have found out that Sylvia was a Scorpio, and in Chinese astrology she was a monkey.A Scorpio monkey is a strange character. She can be obsessive, extremely secretive and perversely wilful. Janet would have be informwd that Sylvia's Sun was square with Saturn. This indicates a strict superego controlling the instincts.This inner conflict would boil over at times into destructive behavior. Ted,a Leo, had eight squares in his chart, showing much inner conflict. His Venus was afflicted, indicating self-indulgence, an unloving nature, and erratic behavior in love matters.There is in-built tension between a Scorpio and a Leo. Unless both parties compromise, their strong wills clash and turn the relationship into a battlefield. Ted's Mars is square to Sylvia's Venus, causing a hostile attitude towards her.His Mars is in her fourth house of the home, so his hostility would appear there.An astrologer could have told Janet this, and more on what made these two poets tick.If you like gossip about famous people, you'll find it in this book

The final word
If the intense animus that Janet Malcolm seems to inspire doesn't carry the day, this book should come to be seen as seminal an intellectual achievement as, say, "The Origins of Totalitarianism". Put simply, it is the final word on its subject - which is, of course, the act of biography, not Sylvia Plath or Ted Hughes.

That Malcolm presents herself as a major figure in the narrative, that she sides with Hughes against Plath (she says so in precisely those words; unlike every other book that addresses the Plath story, the agenda here is explicit, not veiled), is not merely apt but crucial. This, she argues convincingly, is what every biographer does - only usually with less self-awareness and honesty.

The point can't be stressed enough - especially as several reviewers here seem to have missed it. Malcolm is only interested in Plath and Hughes (both of whom are more compelling, in my opinion, for the doom-filled lives they led than for their sub-canonical verse) as an unusually illustrative example of the impossibility of "objective" biography. Was he a cruel philanderer? Or was she a neurotic harpy? Or both? Not only don't we know, Malcolm says, we *can't* know. Her argument, presented in crisp epigrammatic prose that is its own unique pleasure, seems to me unanswerable. ... Read more

Book Description

Giving Up is Jillian Becker’s intimate account of her brief but extraordinary time with Sylvia Plath during the winter of 1963, the last months of the poet’s life.Abandoned by Ted Hughes, Sylvia found companionship and care in the home of Becker and her husband, who helped care for the estranged couple’s two small children while Sylvia tried to rest. In clear-eyed recollections unclouded by the intervening decades, Becker describes the events of Sylvia’s final days and suicide: her physical and emotional state, her grief over Hughes’s infidelity, her mysterious meeting with an unknown companion the night before her suicide, and the harsh aftermath of her funeral.Alongside this tragic conclusion is a beautifully rendered portrait of a friendship between two very different women.
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Reviews (5)

Too little, too late
What happened with this book? As other reviewers have noted, it is very slight -- less than 100 pages, almost pocket-book size.
The author never tells us exactly how she first became acquainted with Sylvia Plath and her husband Ted Hughes, and it would have been interesting to know how this striking and charismatic literary couple impressed her.
There's no context for her own part in the story -- what was Becker doing at that time? Had she begun to write professionally? She mentions giving up the notion of writing poetry when humbled by her reading of the work Plath showed her, but doesn't tell us much about her own ambitions, milieu or activities. Becker's husband Gerry plays an important role in the narrative, helping to take care of Plath, even driving her home on the night of her suicide, but we aren't told whether he too was a writer, artist or other brand of intellectual, nor whether the Beckers stayed married nor if he is even still living.
There is some unforgettable new material in Becker's account of the gathering in a pub after Plath's burial, which puts Ted Hughes in a bad light -- interesting, considering the recent rehabilitation of his reputation vis-a-vis Plath in Diane Middlebrook's "Her Husband" and Elaine Feinstein's biography of Hughes.
Unfortunately, Becker probably waited too long to tell her own version of the last events of Plath's life. Too often, she'll say that she doesn't remember what they talked about on some occasion -- honest, but frustrating.
When I finished the book, I started paging through it again, as if I thought I would find the rest of the story this time. Becker could have given us an authoritative glimpse of the young creative people she and Plath lived among in the London of that time -- "a string of luminaries about to be switched on" is her nice phrase for them -- but she seems to have been in a hurry to get the bare facts down and to move on.
She writes that she was moved to write the memoir because some of Plath's biographers had interviewed her, then used little or nothing of what she had to tell them. Where is all that misundertood or unused material? I felt that Giving Up had the potential to be a better, fuller book, but something -- time, guilt or disinclination to the memoir genre -- got in the author's way.

too much the writer and too little the friend
Becker does not seem an empathic, loyal friend of the late poet.
She uses gimcrackery effects to sell better her story:
"The exaggeration taken with her suicide makes it too probable that her final act was(...) dedicated to Posterity. Too much the writer and too little the mother, did she gas herself because the story she invented for her life demanded that ending?"
What about a deeply suffering woman, likely with post partum depression in the last months of her life, who was desperate?

Jillian, my dear -- No More!
In which a recent acquaintance of Sylvia Plath's attempts to comfort and protect the poet from herself during her last horrible days on this earth.

There is much that is scalding and unnecessary in this thin little book. It repeats so much of what we already know -- perhaps from Becker herself -- and is flawed by the author's insistent need to defend herself against (whose?) assumption that she should or could have "done something" to protect Plath from her compulsive need to kill herself. Well, maybe she could have or should have, but she didn't, as didn't many who knew her far better than Becker did, so there's really no need for all the justifications.

The lack of insight displayed here suggests that while Becker might have been stung by real or imagined criticism, she has done little in the last 40 years to understand the hopeless circumstances in which she found herself.

The fact that she barely knew Planth, but found it necessary to blather about it 40 years later, makes me wonder if there isn't a wee bit of the "cashing in" afoot on the part of the author.

Read the day after finishing Middlebrook's marvelous book on this subject, "Her Husband," I found it a total waste of paper.

Haunting
A measured and moving account of Sylvia Plath's final hours, as well as a keen portrait of Ted Hughes's egotism and denial. Jillian Becker proves herself a loyal yet honest friend, even though her relationship with Plath was brief. I've already read this slim book twice. I find it haunting.

Personable, Yet Lacks Creativity
I just finished this book and was suprised at the brevity. I expected more from a "memoir," and was disappointed that it lacked depth. I have read a great deal on Sylvia Plath and this book did not tell me much that I did not already know. I did, however, like the personal spin Becker put on her encounters with Plath and Ted Hughes. The writing is very accessible and personable without excess sentimentality, which I do appreciate. However, I found the narrative overall to be lacking in punch and wonder why it took Becker so long to come out with her version of the last days. Could she be riding the coat tails of the renewed Plath interest surrounding the upcoming release of Sylvia & Ted (the film)? ... Read more

Reviews (1)

The Low-Down on the High-Toned Poets of the Boston Fifties
In this juicy, lively memoir of the Boston poetry scene in the 1950's, Davison dishes the dirt not only on himself but also on such luminaries as Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton and Robert Frost. The decade of the 1950's was a time of delirious creativity for these poets perched on the threshold of fame and notoriety, and at the center of the vortex sat Robert Lowell, brilliant teacher, mentor and model of the wounded artist. Davison's group portrait shows men dominating these mythologized poetic years with the women cajoling, wheedling and flirting to be noticed, and then, once they had the men's attention, stepping forward with fierce work to be taken seriously. As readers will see, Plath and Sexton were up to any challenge and left behind for posterity both their great works and tales of their wild vamping exploits. Although Davison makes no secret that everybody in the group drank like fish and acted out with impunity, he ultimately celebrates those years as the apex of his social and creative life, a time populated by people of immense charisma and talent. The book is simply a love letter to the difficult geniuses of one of the great moments in 20th century American literary history. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Analysis
Ronald Hayman provides excellent insight into Sylvia Plath's life, effectively using much analysis of her poetry to tell her biography.

Suicide as Life
The main problem of writing a biography of Sylvia Plath is the roadblocks that are constantly being thrown out by her husband's controlling estates. Unlike other biographers, Hayman has managed to be honest and critical about who Plath is, and how she was treated by people around her, including her husband and his mistress. Hayman addresses critically and honestly Plath's husband controlling nature. He controlled her life when she was alive, but worse still he controlled her totally after she died. There are many crucial works and correspondences of Plath that were destroyed, or mysteriously disappeared (presumable by her husband). Hayman argues that these materials are extremely valuable to understand more Plath's life as suicide. ... Read more

Book Description

No other major contemporary American writer has inspired such intense curiosity about her life as Sylvia Plath. Now the intimate and eloquent personal diaries of the twentieth century's most important female poet reveal for the first time the true story behind "The Bell Jar" and her tragic suicide at thirty. They paint, as well, a revealing portrait of the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet whose stature has seldom been equalled.
"A revelation." The New York Times
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Reviews (10)

under the water with sylvia plath
The Journals of Sylvia Plath are an undisputible link to the base of her poetry. For a journal of a life, the entries are incredibly written and interesting. I have been very interested in her death by suicide which was the reason why I picked up these journals in the first place, but I found myself underlining sentences of her different viewpoints on life, ironically. If you you want to figure out about how Plath wrote her poetry and what events formed the woman who is such a mystery today, read this book. The only place where I thought that the diaries lacked was that all the information was not included. Some of her most passionate outrages and angry words have been taken out which I think are definitely a key to her poems that we do not possess. I am aware that the people in the journals must be protected but hope that the full works will be published in the future. The first half of the journals while Sylvia was in college have spoken to me and given me words and reasonings for my feelings that I had not been able to form myself before. I think any college student would benefit from reading her viewpoints and beautiful words. Anyone who is interested in the author will be impressed.

The Best Plath Available
This is Plath at her best -- and at her worst. Reading her journal entries allows you to become familiar with her style and her themes and helps to bring her poetry together.

This text is like an old friend to me, really. I read it and re-read it all the time.

This collection of journal entries offers far more and far more accurate insight into Plath and her life and struggles than any of her biographies do.

Plath is boring.
This book was horribly depressing. I wish she could have shoved her head into the oven earlier.

An Essential Book
If you love Sylvia Plath's amazing poetry; if you have an affinity for either reading journals, or writing your own; or if you simply have an interest in the lifestyles and choices of women of some 50 years ago, these collected journals are a must.

Real
Another reviewer wrote that this book was a big disappointment - that it stinks. How can one criticize someone's journals? I'm pretty sure Plath didn't expect these to be published one day - and so she didn't write them for the general public to read. These words are honest, riviting, disturbing, wonderful, priceless. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Stunning achievement
A stunning achievement written with a steadfast hand invoking Hitchcockian detail, dramatic irony, and dread. Edward Butscher returns the reader to the source - Plath's collection of poetry, The Bell Jar, and her entire work. With Butscher's insight into Plath's "extended suicide note", balloons will never be the same. ... Read more

Book Description

"By far the most intelligent and the only authentically satisfying of the five biographies of Plath."--Janet Malcolm, The New Yorker

In this authoritative and controversial biography, Stevenson charts the ways in which Sylvia Plath created her own legend--one at odds with the posthumous myth that has grown up around her.It is "the most genuinely feminist account of Plath's life yet: one in which Plath herself is held to be responsible for her own life, her own death" (Washington Post Book World).

(A Mariner Reissue) ... Read more

Reviews (17)

good bio on sylvia plath
This is one of the better biographies of Sylvia Plath (as is the Wagner-Martin biography, though Stevenson is much more thorough). Supposedly Stevenson comes down on the side of Ted Hughes, but to me the biography seems objective and fair. Even in those biographies written to make Plath look like a victim, she still comes across as tempermental and difficult to live around. I think Stevenson's biography is fair, if at times a bit ponderous to read. I'd suggest Silent Woman as a companion piece (it's a biography of Stevenson's biography). Bitter Fame has three appendices--memoirs of Sylvia written by others--Lucas Myers, Dido Merwin, and Richard Murphy. You get a sense of dread as you approach Dido's little memoir. I'm sure Plath was difficult and I'm sure Dido has her reasons, but you get the impression that she wrote her memoir just to 'get back at' Plath. To show her up so to speak, even though its tone isn't much different then what else you'll find in the book. Anyway, regardless of what type of person Sylvia Plath was, difficult or not, you cannot deny her genius, which is far greater than those who she came in contact with or have written about her.

You chow down on that paté, girl!
Janet Malcolm's superb THE SILENT WOMAN makes this book a must-read for anyone interested in biographical studies. Stevenson's book famously (or infamously) was written with the cooperation of the Plath estate--that is, Plath's windower Ted Hughes and his fearsome sister Olwyn, the latter of whom was berserkly antipathetic to Plath's memory--, and the result is a biography curiously hostile and judgemental of its subject. For good measure, Stevenson included in the book the hilariously bitter memoir of Plath (fittingly entitled "Vessel of Wrath") by W.S. Merwin's wife Dido, who seems to have been angrily sitting around for twenty years waiting for nothing more than to uncork her fury regarding how Plath once wolfed down some foie gras she had prepared for guests "as if it were Aunt Dot's meatloaf." (The memoir seems to embody everything that American guests fearfully fantasize about foreign hosts judging their every innocent gesture as malicious, selfish, and outrageous.) The result is a fascinating portrait of how, as Malcolm explains in her book, bearing resentful witness against someone else harms the bearer more than the subject of the rant.

Just a Little Too Bitter for My Tastes
Anne Stevenson begins this book with a real dislike for Plath and her bi-polar or as she puts it "psychotic" fits. What she fails to see, (or maybe she just does not want to admit), that Ted Hughes is just as guilty of feeding Sylvia's jealousy, her unstable behavior. He never "puts his foot down" to Plath's behavior or insists that Sylvia seek help with her depression, etc. Instead he leaves Plath after starting an affair with a friend of both of theirs without any concern for leaving his children with a woman he knows is unstable. Plath is a brilliant poet, but she suffers from bouts of depression, aggression (she destroys the book Hughes is working on in a fit of jealousy), and is prone to paranoia.

The job of the biographer is to lay out the facts and let the reader see into the life of the subject of the book. Stevenson takes sides, mostly with Hughes' sister. The book comes off interesting (as Plath is an interesting subject), but tainted. Overall, it left a very bad taste on my palate for this author's work.

If you're interested in Plath...
The amount of secondary material on Sylvia Plath is enough to make anyone feel a bit queasy about her myth, and makes you question the motives of anyone who's adding to this morbid little industry. What is their agenda?
Undeniably, Plath fascinates, and not only because of the glassy, chill violence of her last poems. Ann Stevenson's biography does justice to both Plath as poet and as myth, though she tries to avoid salaciousness and does not ask questions that perhaps need answering. The thing is, Plath just becomes more and more mysterious the more you learn about her, and her death more bewildering and shocking. Does Stevenson subscribe to the chemically unstable theory? Or was Plath just an unstable personality? Stevenson never really delves into this murky but crucial territory.
The most interesting and poignant part of this biography is actually about Sylvia's early womanhood, in which Stevenson seems to have a particular feeling for her subject (perhaps because Sylvia's journals are available to her through these years). Stevenson seems to become more hesitant, more uncertain as she approaches adult Sylvia and her fabled Ariel poems, the Hughes marriage and suicide, preferring not to speculate too much on Plath's psychology and focus instead on Plath's poems, which is theoretically fine, but makes for less interesting biography because Stevenson does not write about the Ariel poems with particular insight. (She's competent enough and suitably admiring, but does not probe as deeply as is perhaps necessary.)

Still, this is a readable, if finally dissatisfying, biography. That said, it would be hard to write an entirely dull biography of Plath. I haven't read any of the other biographies available, but I can vouch that at least this one is balanced and scrupulous, if a bit over-cautious. My only other gripe would be
pictures, which are very shadowy and rarely show Sylvia herself.

Completely unobjective
It is curious that Stevenson claims hers to be the "objective" biography to correct "misunderstandings" about Sylvia Plath held by her followers ... never have I read a less objective piece of writing that attempted to pass as journalism. The book is riddled with negative adjectives for Plath at every turn ("brusque, mocking, scornful, contemptuous, fierce, snapping" - just in the course of half of one page), and every anecdote seems to be presented with the goal of depicting Plath as an emotionally stunted, deliriously ambitious, shallow American. True, all the major facts of her life are presented, given about an obligatory paragraph or so apiece, but given this kind of summary account, it is impossible for the reader to develop a sense of Plath as a whole person, an understanding of the imagery of her writing, in the same way that one does, for example, from reading Plath's unabridged journals or the excellent biography by Paul Alexander, "Rough Magic." In fact, Stevenson admits that she relies on information strictly from Hughes-based sources and certain passages from Plath's journals that reinforce her pereception of Plath as a gushing, phony American with a heart of black rot. Clearly Plath had her difficulties with various people. She had depressive tendencies and was probably not the most pleasant person to be around from time to time. But where Ted Hughes was not the epitome of evil, neither was she, and this biography does nothing to explore her humanity or the power of her poetry. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Sylvia Plath-An insight
This book gives an great insight into the mind of one the most incredible writers ever. All her thoughts and feelings are expressed so wonderfully. Even in her letters she keeps the same dry wit and rage that draws so many people to her. She was an incredible writer and this is just another example of her fine work. ... Read more

Reviews (5)

a good starting off point
This biography is a well-written, entertaining biography. It seems to be a good place to start your study of Plath. Trouble with the Hughes caused there to be much less quotes from Plath herself than we would have liked to have seen. And it seems a bit short to cover one of our most important poets in just under 250 pages. But still, it is a good book and a good place to begin.

Wagner-Martin a Solid Scholar
When she was simply Dr. Linda Wagner, the author was one of the shining stars of the faculty of Michigan State University Department of English. That's where I met her. When this biography was published, i was a doctoral candidate in English and American Literature at NYU. I wrote Dr. Wagner-Martin a congratulatory note and was oh-so pleasantly surprised that she not only responded, but she remembered me from my undergraduate days. Linda's (she was VERY informal) scholarship and academic acumen are world-class. One of her Michigan State colleagues, Dr. Clinton S. Burhans, Jr., once described her, admirinigly, as "a book factory." The Plath biography gives a wider audience a chance to appreciate the fine teacher, pain-staking scholar and tough-minded critic that Linda Wagner-Martin is. Highly-recommended for anyone seriously interested in American Literature, woman writers or the British-American literary milieu of the '50s and early '60s. (Incidentally, Ted Hughes WAS a creep..and not half the poet Sylvia was...despite recent [2003] attempts to rehabilitate his image. Linda is right on point here!)

Informative
I had the pleasure of taking an American Women Authors class taught by Linda Wagner-Martin at UNC Chapel Hill, and let me tell you, she really knows her stuff about Plath. She fascinated us with her tales of the process of writing this book. For a fresh perspective on the life and work of Sylvia Plath, this is a good one.

Clear, precise description of a haunted woman
So far, this is one of the clearest, and easiest to read biographies of one of the finest (and most intriguing) female poets of the 20th century. I recommend this book for anyone who wants to know more about Sylvia Plath, but doesn't feel like sorting through endless fluff and interpretations of her work. This book simply describes the life of a tortured woman writer. Good job, great reading!

Highlights the life of the gifted poet.
Wagner-Martin shows you a life of a woman writer who was treated badly by illness and Ted Hughes. There are alot of personal photographs from her childhood. She was also an excellent sketch artist! ... Read more

Book Description

The poet Sylvia Plath has been a cultural icon since 1963 when she took her own life on a cold winter morning at the age of 30. This up-to-date biography explores the nature and sources of the mythology that has surrounded the poet's life by presenting a balanced account of her own life and the many significant people and events that influenced her. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Very Interesting Study of Plath
I bought a used version of this book because I wasn't sure if I would like it or not. I was pleasantly surprised and impressed. I have not read tons of Plath criticism, but I felt this was the first I have read to really articulate what makes her poetry so compelling for me. Chapter Two on Orality and Writing I thought was just deadly accurate about Plath's work. I kept thinking, "Exactly! Wonderful!" Rose takes a few psychoanalytic ideas from Kristeva and Freud and makes them really work--this chapter should be a model for how to use psychoanalytic theory in interpreting literature in a productive and succinct way. I would have liked to see this chapter expanded--the ideas in it can be a little dense and quick (like Plath) and I would have liked to see Rose expand this to an analysis of more poems. I felt truly enlightened after reading this. The fourth chapter on Plath, feminism and fantasy is also excellent: Rose gave me so much to think about. She really opened up a way to read Plath again and she negotiated the question of Plath's relation to feminism very well. (To me) her ideas were unique and original.
My only criticism is that throughout I would have liked to see Rose analyze more poems. This book in fact struck me as a blueprint or outline for what should be a longer, more extensive analysis of the work. But overall, it will leave you inspired to do your own readings of Plath. I feel grateful for the provocative and helpful insights of this book.

Harrowing
This is a fascinating account of the controversal life and death of one of America and England's most wondered-about poets. Gives many new details and fresh insights. Highly recommended! ... Read more

Book Description