Sylvia Plath

I don’t want to say too much about Plath because I would like to save it for my presentation. But, something that is striking me more and more when I read her poetry and research her life is a conflict between her desire to be successful and her expectation to be a good wife and mother. It reminds me of the discussion we had after Tillie Olsen and “I stand here Ironing.”

According to her biography by Linda Wagner-Martin, Plath was always eager to please. As a child, she wanted to please her father, especially after he became ill. He had so little time for his children and in the few moments they got to spend with him, Sylvia and her brother “discussed what they had learned that day, recited poems, made up stories, performed. Hardly a normal interchange, this kind of session created the image of father as critic, judge, someone to be pleased.” So for Sylvia: “Doing things for the fun of doing them was less important than doing them because she could do them better than most people. It was a lesson that could end only in defeat and deprivation.” (26) She became a perfectionist at everything she tried. Depression resulted when she didn’t succeed.

This carried over into adulthood. She took it to heart when critics didn’t like her writing. She married Ted Hughes in 1956, and early in the marriage placed more importance on his writing. She concentrated on helping him and completing household tasks. But, she eventually began to feel frustrated with having too much responsibility and neglecting her own dreams. When reading “Tulips” I think of this conflict of roles. “Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage..” “My husband and child smiling out of the family photo; Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks.” Then, she describes the Tulips as weighing her down, like “lead sinkers.”

Wow, I often think I have too much going on, juggling motherhood, work, school, etc. that I begin to feel can’t fully commit to anything and be good at it. But, how much harder it must have been for women like Plath living in the 50’s and 60’s. The text notes: “her academic and literary achievements…were in conflict with the traditional view of women’s roles that prevailed in the 1950s, and she was unable to live comfortably with the contradictions.”